Urban Removal: Reshaping Urban Landscapes through a Responsive Communitarian Lens

Abstract

In the quest to build urban landscapes into utopias, we should not ignore historical lessons that illustrate how a dystopian reality often subverts our aspirations. The combined effects of private entities and individuals as well as federal, state, and local programs, policies, and practices in shaping racial segregation, displacement, discrimination, and poverty in urban communities nationwide are well-documented. However, current academic and policy conversations about gentrification discount these lessons. They suffer from a lack of explicit guiding principles and often avoid the inherent political, democratic, and moral contradictions.

This article breaks new ground presenting a case study of urban renewal, interstate highway construction, and housing policies in Tampa, Florida, from 1950 to 1965. In addition to the academic literature, it draws from such rarely accessed primary sources as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) archives at the United States Library of Congress and interviews with longstanding Tampa residents, to capture the context of exclusionary practices and their impact. The Tampa story of urban removal is a cautionary tale that has salience for contemporary discussions of gentrification patterns affecting cities nationwide. It should inform present and future efforts by regulators, private interests, and especially community residents to mobilize and reshape urban environments.

Drawing from lessons of the past, the article proposes a more balanced approach to reshaping urban environments, rooted in the concept of responsive communitarianism. Responsive communitarianism, a political philosophy that attempts to synthesize individual and community concerns, maintains that public and private actors have the power and choice to make modern cities more of, by, and for the people.

Keywords: suburban, urban, fair housing, urban renewal, advocacy, environment, activism, income inequality, segregation, discrimination, minority rights, communitarian, gentrification, civil rights, race, class, housing, political economy, property