Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your last paragraph just slayed me.

It's just as bigoted as the so called bigots it alleges.

I took a number of courses in urban planning, including history. Many of you are forgetting or ignoring that by the 1950s large stretches of American cities were downright derelict. You talk of closely knit neighborhoods. Fine, they were closely knit. They were often also slums with no sanitation or proper running water or indoor toilets and squalid housing. They were filthy. They were overcrowded. There was practically no investment in American cities between 1920-1945 so when the country emerged from WWII large portions of many American cities, particularly the older east coast cities, were very, very rundown, with ageing housing stock and squalid conditions.

For every old person interviewed in a book or on NPR about how wonderful their childhood ghetto was, there's at least 2-3 others who would be more than happy to talk about how moving to a clean new suburb with detached housing was an amazing experience and represented a huge improvement in their quality of life. Yet they're never interviewed because they don't fit the narrative any more.

Having said that, there were certainly excesses committed by the post-war planning system. Robert Moses' highways did bulldoze their way through perfectly fine and decent neighborhoods. The wishes of poorer, whether white or black, areas were ignored for the sake of building large new infrastructure (mostly highways) that were seen to benefit the entire region (which it did). People were certainly ignored. I won't deny that. And racial based redlining did happen. But it's also dangerous to castigate the planners as bigoted wasps when their crime was to believe in bring about a better and more liveable environment for people and to clean up derelict slums and run down areas. Most of these planners were staunch Democrats and liberals and products of the New Deal and its vision for improving America. Many if not most were not actually WASPs as it is. Many were Jewish (Robert Moses, for example).

You completely deny that racism had an impact. And then go on to blame the liberals and Jews? I'm done with this forum.

Honey, did you read the post?

Let me quote it:

"People were certainly ignored. I won't deny that. And racial based redlining did happen."

Try not to take the poster out of context, will you? The original post alleges that a WASP ruling class was trying to reassert control. The respondent pointed out that the reality was far more complicated to suggest a wasp ruling class trying to control the masses. And he or she is right. Much of the move to the suburbs was driven by people looking for a better quality environment, trading cramped apartments and rownhouses in increasingly aging neighborhoods in polluted cities for cleaner and more spacious and new environments. Much of the urban clearances was because the original areas were slums. We forget that millions of Americans actually lived in conditions we would consider horrific today. Planners genuinely believed that new public highrises and midrises would be a big improvement, spurred on by the developments coming out of social housing in Europe. And yes, it is true, most of these planners and social workers were liberals and progressives and strongly driven by the New Deal philosophy. And yes, many were Jewish. That does not imply a Jewish conspiracy, but only to show that the picture of an evil Wasp hegemony playing political or social games is not only incorrect but unfair and deliberately provocative.

Sorry, but that is the equivalent of "I can't be racist, I have a black uncle". You're still a racist.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your last paragraph just slayed me.

It's just as bigoted as the so called bigots it alleges.

I took a number of courses in urban planning, including history. Many of you are forgetting or ignoring that by the 1950s large stretches of American cities were downright derelict. You talk of closely knit neighborhoods. Fine, they were closely knit. They were often also slums with no sanitation or proper running water or indoor toilets and squalid housing. They were filthy. They were overcrowded. There was practically no investment in American cities between 1920-1945 so when the country emerged from WWII large portions of many American cities, particularly the older east coast cities, were very, very rundown, with ageing housing stock and squalid conditions.

For every old person interviewed in a book or on NPR about how wonderful their childhood ghetto was, there's at least 2-3 others who would be more than happy to talk about how moving to a clean new suburb with detached housing was an amazing experience and represented a huge improvement in their quality of life. Yet they're never interviewed because they don't fit the narrative any more.

Having said that, there were certainly excesses committed by the post-war planning system. Robert Moses' highways did bulldoze their way through perfectly fine and decent neighborhoods. The wishes of poorer, whether white or black, areas were ignored for the sake of building large new infrastructure (mostly highways) that were seen to benefit the entire region (which it did). People were certainly ignored. I won't deny that. And racial based redlining did happen. But it's also dangerous to castigate the planners as bigoted wasps when their crime was to believe in bring about a better and more liveable environment for people and to clean up derelict slums and run down areas. Most of these planners were staunch Democrats and liberals and products of the New Deal and its vision for improving America. Many if not most were not actually WASPs as it is. Many were Jewish (Robert Moses, for example).

You completely deny that racism had an impact. And then go on to blame the liberals and Jews? I'm done with this forum.

Honey, did you read the post?

Let me quote it:

"People were certainly ignored. I won't deny that. And racial based redlining did happen."

Try not to take the poster out of context, will you? The original post alleges that a WASP ruling class was trying to reassert control. The respondent pointed out that the reality was far more complicated to suggest a wasp ruling class trying to control the masses. And he or she is right. Much of the move to the suburbs was driven by people looking for a better quality environment, trading cramped apartments and rownhouses in increasingly aging neighborhoods in polluted cities for cleaner and more spacious and new environments. Much of the urban clearances was because the original areas were slums. We forget that millions of Americans actually lived in conditions we would consider horrific today. Planners genuinely believed that new public highrises and midrises would be a big improvement, spurred on by the developments coming out of social housing in Europe. And yes, it is true, most of these planners and social workers were liberals and progressives and strongly driven by the New Deal philosophy. And yes, many were Jewish. That does not imply a Jewish conspiracy, but only to show that the picture of an evil Wasp hegemony playing political or social games is not only incorrect but unfair and deliberately provocative.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/white-flight.html

"Not surprisingly, houses on the suburban side of the border have always been a little more expensive than their city counterparts. Using data on 100 border neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s, I find that this cross-border housing price gap grew by a few percentage points — to a 7 percent suburban housing price premium from a 5 percent premium — as black migrants flowed into the city, even though new black arrivals lived miles away. Households in these areas were motivated by concerns about how a changing local electorate would affect property taxes and service levels. In fact, for this set of households, what mattered most about the new Southern arrivals crowding into neighborhoods across town was not their race but their lower levels of income.

That doesn’t mean racism wasn’t a motivating factor. For the third of white households near a black enclave in 1940, concerns about new black neighbors was indeed a primary motivation. And those households moved out of the city at a higher rate than others, contributing more than a third to the white exodus. But for the remainder of urban whites, most of whom never interacted with a black family, leaving for the resource-rich suburbs was an economic calculus, one that was accelerated by the steady stream of poor migrants, both white and black, into central cities."

Another interesting hypothesis from Slaughter Of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing. https://www.amazon.com/Slaughter-Cities-Renewal-Ethnic-Cleansing/dp/1587317702/ From the Amazon description:

"Urban renewal was the last gasp attempt of the WASP ruling class to take control of a country that was slipping out of its grasp for demographic reasons. The largely Catholic ethnics were to be driven out of their neighborhoods into the suburbs, where they were to be “Americanized” according to WASP principles. The neighborhoods they left behind were to be turned over to the sharecroppers from the South or turned into futuristic Bauhaus enclaves for the new government elites. Using political tactics like eminent domain and “integration,” the planners made sure that the ethnic neighborhood got transformed into something more congenial to their dreams of social engineering than the actual communities of people they saw as a threat to their control."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your last paragraph just slayed me.

It's just as bigoted as the so called bigots it alleges.

I took a number of courses in urban planning, including history. Many of you are forgetting or ignoring that by the 1950s large stretches of American cities were downright derelict. You talk of closely knit neighborhoods. Fine, they were closely knit. They were often also slums with no sanitation or proper running water or indoor toilets and squalid housing. They were filthy. They were overcrowded. There was practically no investment in American cities between 1920-1945 so when the country emerged from WWII large portions of many American cities, particularly the older east coast cities, were very, very rundown, with ageing housing stock and squalid conditions.

Having said that, there were certainly excesses committed by the post-war planning system. Robert Moses' highways did bulldoze their way through perfectly fine and decent neighborhoods. The wishes of poorer, whether white or black, areas were ignored for the sake of building large new infrastructure (mostly highways) that were seen to benefit the entire region (which it did). People were certainly ignored. I won't deny that. And racial based redlining did happen. But it's also dangerous to castigate the planners as bigoted wasps when their crime was to believe in bring about a better and more liveable environment for people and to clean up derelict slums and run down areas. Most of these planners were staunch Democrats and liberals and products of the New Deal and its vision for improving America. Many if not most were not actually WASPs as it is. Many were Jewish (Robert Moses, for example).

Parts of this reminds me of a simple Sociology section in one chapter of one of my college texts: Take every wealthy urban neighborhood and then find the most poor/crime ridden. They are always geographically the furthest apart. This isn't an accent. It's systemic and deliberate. Racial inequity runs through almost every vein of this county's history. It's practically impossible to completely eradicate.

Anonymous wrote:Your last paragraph just slayed me.

It's just as bigoted as the so called bigots it alleges.

I took a number of courses in urban planning, including history. Many of you are forgetting or ignoring that by the 1950s large stretches of American cities were downright derelict. You talk of closely knit neighborhoods. Fine, they were closely knit. They were often also slums with no sanitation or proper running water or indoor toilets and squalid housing. They were filthy. They were overcrowded. There was practically no investment in American cities between 1920-1945 so when the country emerged from WWII large portions of many American cities, particularly the older east coast cities, were very, very rundown, with ageing housing stock and squalid conditions.

Having said that, there were certainly excesses committed by the post-war planning system. Robert Moses' highways did bulldoze their way through perfectly fine and decent neighborhoods. The wishes of poorer, whether white or black, areas were ignored for the sake of building large new infrastructure (mostly highways) that were seen to benefit the entire region (which it did). People were certainly ignored. I won't deny that. And racial based redlining did happen. But it's also dangerous to castigate the planners as bigoted wasps when their crime was to believe in bring about a better and more liveable environment for people and to clean up derelict slums and run down areas. Most of these planners were staunch Democrats and liberals and products of the New Deal and its vision for improving America. Many if not most were not actually WASPs as it is. Many were Jewish (Robert Moses, for example).

[/quote

Parts of this reminds me of a simple Sociology section in one chapter of one of my college texts: Take every wealthy urban neighborhood and then find the most poor/crime ridden. They are always geographically the furthest apart. This isn't an accent. It's systemic and deliberate. Racial inequity runs through almost every vein of this county's history. It's practically impossible to completely eradicate.