Slum Clearing- Gateway Edition

Is the Housing Act of 1949 the reason today for the hyper-local control of housing and real estate decisions? It’s hard to say. But the slum clearance, financed by the federal government, was significant enough to still be recognized today.

Judith A Martin, professor and director at the University of Minnesota, was a prominent figure in the local urban lore. This is an extract from her paper: Past Choices/Present Landscapes: The Impact of Urban Renewal on the Twin Cities

THE GATEWAY PROJECT
City planners assumed that the Gateway area, the old core of downtown Minneapolis, would qualify for federal urban renewal assistance when they proposed clearing and reconstructing about one-third of the entire downtown in the mid-1950s. Beginning in 1956, federal renewal officials raised serious questions about the size of the project: was what was proposed too big for the local real estate market? In 1957 a group of civic and government leaders, led by Mayor P.K. Peterson, went to Washington, D.C. to convince federal renewal officials that Minneapolis needed a project this size. They were successful, and returned with a commitment for the money.

Not everyone found favor with the proposed redevelopment however. Several owners of condemned property tried to stop the Gateway plan. They sued the HRA, claiming that the condemnation action was “arbitrary and unreasonable.” They also challenged the legality of the overall development plan. The owners did not win any of these suits, nor did the preservationists who sued to stop the destruction of the Metropolitan Building (formerly the Guaranty Life Building). This last suit made it as far as the Minnesota Supreme Court, which upheld the HRA’s right to condemn the Metropolitan Building. This decision essentially reaffirmed the “greater good” argument about eminent domain (Buildings 1961 b).

The 1956 Highway Act worked with the Housing Act by sometimes forging the interstate system through poor, dilapidated neighborhoods. While I suspect only the most dedicated automobile haters would argue against a national network of roads, the lamentation of housing being leveled still lingers today. And petitions are underway to return the freeway to neighborhood streets. (Although, most recently removed from the planning process.)

What is the balance between hyper-local governance—where people want to take out a freeway for residential streets—and an all-encompassing federal project? In the end, who owns the land?