How 'urban renewal' went from a vision for public good to a private enrichment scheme

America's numerous struggling cities face the unenviable task of addressing crumbling physical and social infrastructure, housing and affordability crises, and unemployment on shoestring budgets (after you account for the massive slices handed to police) and public debt. In the age of neoliberalism, the solution is all too often to turn to the private sector—which usually only results in an upward transfer of public wealth into private hands without substantial improvement to the problems at hand. Urban development, particularly in a city like Baltimore, is especially egregious in this regard. But it didn't have to be this way, and it wasn't always the plan. Urban planners of days gone by such as Edward Logue once advocated and fought for urban development as a project oriented towards public good and managed by government, rather than corporate interests. Historian Lizabeth Cohen joins the hosts of Tax Broke for a look into the origins of 'urban renewal,' how the idealistic visions of progressive urban planners were hijacked in service of private interests, and how we can fight for the cities of the future to really belong to all of us.

Lizabeth Cohen is the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies and a Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History at Harvard University. Her most recent book is Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age.

Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

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