Urban Villagers by Herbert J Gans
Boston's West End is the most well documented neighborhood destroyed by urban "renewal," made famous initially by Herbert Gans's book, The Urban Villagers, 1962. Although approximately 63 percent of the families displaced by urban renewal were African-American or Hispanic, this Boston community was mainly inhabited by working class Italians. It was a little piece of Italy, with narrow winding streets alive with urban social life. Too crowded and unAmerican for the middle class tastes of City planners, it fell to the bulldozer in 1959 and was replaced by high rise, expensive apartment buildings. ------------------------------------------------It is difficult for me to isolate the impact of *URBAN VILLAGERS*. Inmy experience it was but one contribution to growing criticism of urbanrenewal in the early 1960s and, with that, the physical orientation of
(Jay Stein's *Classic Readings in UrbanPlanning* 1995 includes some writing from this period. I think the impact of the *URBAN VILLAGERS* might best evaluated aspart of a creeping barrage of critical writing led off by Jacobs and*Death and Life . My own memory isthat so much was being written that we were responding to the largertrend more than to specific books. I would say, speaking from being in the trenches at that time, that the*Urban Villagers* did not have a big direct impact on urban renewal incities but, along with others, laid the groundwork for changingprograms and practice. *Urban Villagers* was published in'63 and Martin Anderson weighed in from the right in '64 with *The FederalBulldozer*. Urban renewal was a juggernaut, and work such asGans and others may have intensified urban renewal as its adocates andsupporters sensed they had a limited time to get their work done. Shortly after it waspublished I was both a writing my dissertation in urban geography atClark University and a project director in urban renewal, so Iwitnessed the impact in both urban renewal planning circles and in themore academic arena. It was part of the drum of criticism that led tothe 1966 Model Cities Act and the redefinition of urban renewal andrethinking of the field of urban planning. Although not concerned with urban renewal directly, Blake's*God's Own Junkyard* (1964) was a popular and graphically arrestingtreatment of the trashing of the built environment. AmesProfessor of Urban Affairs and GeographyUniversity of DelawareBibliography me andu.
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Acceptance Essays
