History of Urban Renewal.

Deduplicated total: 142 unique links

Predicting Historical Urban Renewal Areas in the United States

Article link | Wenfei Xu / Environment and Planning B | 2024

This article uses machine learning to identify likely federal urban renewal areas, expanding the evidence base for studying where renewal projects occurred and who was affected.

Urban Renewal Projects: Overview

Article link | ArcGIS / Digital Scholarship Lab Data | 2021

This data layer supports mapping of urban renewal projects, drawing from Renewing Inequality and related spatial-history work.

From Redlining to Urban Renewal

Article link | The Metropole | December 14, 2017

This article introduces Renewing Inequality as a digital project connecting New Deal redlining history to postwar urban renewal displacement.

Maps Show How Tearing Down City Slums Displaced Thousands

Article link | National Geographic | December 15, 2017

This article summarizes the Renewing Inequality project and explains how urban renewal displaced hundreds of thousands of people, disproportionately people of color.

Urban Renewal, 1950-1966

Article link | Digital Scholarship Lab / University of Richmond | 2017

This interactive map documents families displaced by federally funded urban renewal projects, allowing users to compare displacement by city, race, and project area.

Renewing Inequality

Article link | New American History | 2017

This educational resource explains how federal urban renewal programs intended to revitalize cities often displaced families of color and deepened urban inequality.

University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab Unveils Urban Renewal Mapping Project

Article link | University of Richmond News | December 13, 2017

This release describes the launch of Renewing Inequality, a mapping project focused on urban renewal, family displacement, and race in 1950s and 1960s cities.

Urban Renewal History Project

Article link | New York State Museum | Undated

This project documents urban renewal in New York State and places local redevelopment within the broader federal program that affected more than 1,200 cities.

Urban Renewal

Article link | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History | Undated

This encyclopedia article provides a broad overview of national urban renewal policy, its implementation from 1949 to 1973, and its lasting physical and social legacy.

Urban Renewal

Article link | Wikipedia | Updated regularly

This overview defines urban renewal internationally and includes U.S. examples such as the Hill District, East Liberty, Detroit, and the phrase “Negro removal.”

The People & the Program

Article link | Digital Scholarship Lab / University of Richmond | Undated

This story-map introduction explains the people affected by urban renewal and the federal-local program that made large-scale displacement possible.

For Students: Renewing Inequality

Article link | New American History | Undated

This student guide helps readers investigate how the federal government perpetuated social inequalities through urban renewal projects in American cities.

Mapping Inequality

Article link | Digital Scholarship Lab / University of Richmond | Undated

This project maps 1930s redlining, providing crucial background for understanding why many neighborhoods later targeted for urban renewal had already been denied investment.

From the Archives: West End Relives Urban Renewal Nightmare

Article link | EastBoston.com | January 2, 2026

This article revisits Boston’s West End as a warning about the long shadow of urban renewal, emphasizing displacement, broken relocation promises, and the continued fear of redevelopment among remaining residents.

Boston's West End: The Spirit of a Neighborhood Destroyed

Article link | The Justice | April 29, 2025

This article recounts how Boston’s West End was demolished in the 1960s, displacing thousands and turning a working-class immigrant neighborhood into a symbol of urban renewal failure.

Engineering Boston: Demolition of the West End

Article link | Wentworth Institute of Technology Library | 2025

This resource uses Boston’s West End as an engineering and planning case study, tracing the neighborhood’s demolition and the urban renewal logic used to justify it.

The Creation of the U.S. Federal Urban Renewal Program

Article link | The West End Museum | 2023

This article traces the federal roots of urban renewal from New Deal housing policy to the postwar programs that enabled large-scale clearance and redevelopment.

The Lincoln Center and Narrative Control

Article link | The West End Museum | 2022

This article uses Lincoln Center as a case study in how famous urban renewal projects can be remembered as cultural achievements while obscuring displacement.

The Angels' Flight from the Hill: Urban Renewal in L.A.'s Bunker Hill Neighborhood

Article link | The West End Museum | Undated

This article compares Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill to Boston’s West End, emphasizing demolition, displacement, and the transformation of a dense neighborhood into high-rise redevelopment.

Urban Renewal in Boston's Charlestown Neighborhood and Lessons Learned from the West End

Article link | The West End Museum | Undated

This article compares Boston’s Charlestown urban renewal experience with the West End, emphasizing how earlier clearance shaped later neighborhood resistance.

Boston's West End: Urban Obsolescence

Article link | Daniel Abramson / Urban Reviewer | Undated

This paper examines how planners and officials framed Boston’s West End as obsolete, helping justify its clearance despite strong neighborhood life.

The Last Tenement: Confronting Community and Urban Renewal in Boston's West End

Article link | Journal of American Ethnic History / JSTOR | 1993

This review discusses a work on Boston’s West End that confronts community memory, demolition, and the trauma of urban renewal.

How Dawson Park's Origins Contrast with Its Legacy

Article link | Axios Portland | February 18, 2026

This article uses Dawson Park to explore Portland’s Black history, segregation, redlining, and the displacement pressures that followed urban renewal in Albina.

$70M Investment to Reshape Historic Albina

Article link | Axios Portland | November 21, 2025

This article describes a major investment in Albina intended to support revitalization after decades of displacement linked to urban renewal and redevelopment.

City Boosts Settlement for Displacement of Black Portlanders

Article link | Axios Portland | June 6, 2025

This article covers Portland’s settlement with descendants of Black residents displaced by urban renewal, hospital expansion, and redevelopment in Albina beginning in the 1960s.

Where to Find Black Historical Landmarks in Portland

Article link | Axios Portland | February 27, 2025

This guide highlights Black landmarks that survived or memorialize communities damaged by Portland’s urban renewal and redevelopment projects.

Williams & Russell Project Seeks to Revitalize Black Portland

Article link | Axios Portland | February 25, 2025

This article covers a reparative redevelopment project on land condemned during urban renewal and Emanuel Hospital expansion in Portland’s historically Black community.

Urban Renewal History and the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project

Article link | Fair Housing Council of Oregon | September 10, 2020

This article connects Portland’s I-5 Rose Quarter project to the history of urban renewal that depleted housing in the Black Albina neighborhood.

Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment

Article link | Karen J. Gibson / Transforming Anthropology | 2007

This influential article traces redlining, urban renewal, disinvestment, and gentrification in Portland’s Albina neighborhood from 1940 to 2000.

A Brief History of Urban Renewal in Portland, Oregon

Article link | Craig Wollner, John Provo and Julie Schablisky / Portland Development Commission | 2005

This report surveys Portland’s urban renewal history, including South Auditorium, Albina, Emanuel Hospital, and the racial impacts of redevelopment.

History of Albina

Article link | I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project | Undated

This history page describes Albina’s Black community and how urban renewal, I-5 construction, Memorial Coliseum, and hospital expansion displaced families and businesses.

History of the Albina Plan Area

Article link | Portland State University PDXScholar | Undated

This report provides a detailed history of Albina and the official urban renewal projects that affected Portland’s historically Black neighborhood.

A Push for Renewal in Lower Hill District Seeks to Reverse an Ugly Legacy

Article link | TribLIVE | 2025

This article examines current efforts to repair Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District after mid-century urban renewal demolished a predominantly Black neighborhood and displaced thousands.

Music and Entertainment Venue to Open in Lower Hill

Article link | Axios Pittsburgh | March 13, 2025

This article covers new development in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill, a neighborhood still shaped by the 1950s urban renewal clearance of a once-thriving Black community.

Pittsburgh's Newest Skyscraper Opens for Business

Article link | Axios Pittsburgh | February 18, 2025

This article places new Lower Hill development within the legacy of the Civic Arena redevelopment that followed the demolition of a majority-Black neighborhood.

Power Play Goal: Zoning Law and Reparations as Remedies to Historic Displacement in Pittsburgh's Hill District

Article link | Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy | 2022

This legal article analyzes Pittsburgh’s Hill District displacement and considers zoning and reparations as tools for responding to historic urban renewal harms.

Crossroads of the World: How Urban Renewal Changed the Hill

Article link | Heinz History Center | June 20, 2023

This article explains how Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District was cleared beginning in 1955, displacing more than 8,000 residents and hundreds of businesses.

The Hill District Community Collaborative: An Oral History

Article link | Carnegie Mellon University | 2001

This oral history documents Pittsburgh’s Hill District, including the neighborhood’s targeting for urban renewal and residents’ efforts to preserve community continuity.

Beginning of Demolition of the Lower Hill

Article link | Historic Pittsburgh | Undated

This archival item documents the beginning of demolition in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill, where urban renewal removed much of the neighborhood.

UCLA Report Shows How Freeway Construction Last Century Was Used to Destroy and Divide Communities of Color

Article link | Streetsblog California | November 25, 2025

This report connects freeway construction, redlining, and urban renewal, showing how highway siting reinforced racial segregation and destroyed neighborhoods in California and beyond.

The Fillmore District: A Cultural and Historical Tapestry of San Francisco

Article link | Freedom West Homes | March 17, 2024

This article summarizes the Fillmore District’s cultural history and the damage caused when 1960s urban renewal projects displaced long-established Black communities.

Bunker Hill Renewal Project, 1951-1956

Article link | Getty Research Institute | 2024

This archival collection documents Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill redevelopment, one of the longest and most consequential urban renewal projects in the city’s history.

The Legacy of the Freeway in Sacramento

Article link | K. Turner / eScholarship | 2024

This paper studies how Sacramento’s West End was displaced by urban renewal and freeway construction, connecting local history to wider patterns of racialized infrastructure harm.

The Fillmore Eclipse Immersive Theater Exhibit

Article link | Axios San Francisco | April 30, 2024

This article covers an immersive public-history project about San Francisco’s Fillmore District, connecting its jazz-era history to the devastation caused by urban renewal.

Stockton's Crosstown Freeway, Urban Renewal, and Asian American Communities

Article link | UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies / National Transportation Library | 2023

This report examines how Stockton’s Crosstown Freeway and urban redevelopment affected Asian American communities, businesses, and neighborhood life.

Urban Renewal of L.A.'s Bunker Hill Neighborhood

Article link | ArcGIS StoryMaps | December 16, 2022

This story map documents how Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill was transformed from a dense residential neighborhood into a cleared redevelopment zone.

Fillmore Revisited: How Redevelopment Tore Through the Western Addition

Article link | San Francisco Public Press | September 23, 2019

This article revisits San Francisco’s Fillmore and Western Addition, showing how redevelopment displaced Black residents and reshaped the neighborhood for decades.

Bunker Hill Once Was a Neighborhood. Then Progress Came

Article link | Los Angeles Times | May 22, 2019

This article reflects on Bunker Hill’s transformation, contrasting the neighborhood’s earlier residential life with the redevelopment that erased much of it.

A Split-Screen Tour of Los Angeles, Seventy Years Ago and Today

Article link | The New Yorker | 2016

This article discusses visual documentation of Los Angeles before and after redevelopment, including Bunker Hill’s long urban renewal project.

The Racial Triangulation of Space

Article link | C. Lai / Annals of the Association of American Geographers | 2012

This article uses San Francisco’s Fillmore District to analyze race, space, and urban renewal in postwar redevelopment.

Laws That Shaped L.A.: How Bunker Hill Lost Its Victorians

Article link | PBS SoCal | January 23, 2012

This article explains how redevelopment law and the Housing Act of 1949 helped enable the demolition of Bunker Hill’s Victorian homes and apartments.

The Lingering History of Urban Renewal in Black San Francisco

Article link | C. Jackson / Gettysburg College | Undated

This paper examines how San Francisco’s Fillmore urban renewal continues to shape Black residents’ memory, identity, and views of redevelopment.

City's Urban Renewal Era Captured in Photo Exhibit

Article link | Yale Daily News | 2025

This article highlights an exhibit on New Haven’s urban renewal era, using photographs to document redevelopment, demolition, and the transformation of neighborhoods from 1950 to 1980.

11-Building Affordable Housing Complex Re-Knits Sections of New Haven Divided by Never-Finished Urban Renewal Plan

Article link | New Haven Register | 2025

This article describes a new affordable housing project on land shaped by New Haven’s unfinished Route 34 urban renewal plan, framing it as a step toward reconnecting divided neighborhoods.

Demolishing Oak Street

Article link | The New Journal at Yale | March 15, 2022

This article examines New Haven’s Oak Street Connector and the way urban renewal became “urban removal” for communities divided by redevelopment and highway planning.

The Triumph and Tragedy of Urban Renewal

Article link | TeachIt Connecticut | 2022

This teaching resource uses Connecticut examples to explain urban renewal’s promises and costs, including highway building, clearance, and community disruption.

Displacement in Southwest, District of Columbia, 1939-2023

Article link | Docomomo US | October 19, 2023

This article uses archival material to revisit Southwest Washington, D.C., one of the earliest major urban renewal areas in the United States.

D.C.'s New Neighborhoods and How They Came to Be

Article link | Axios Washington, D.C. | August 18, 2022

This article places neighborhoods such as Southwest and The Wharf within Washington, D.C.’s redevelopment history, where renewal produced both investment and displacement.

One City for All? Residential Displacement in Southwest Washington, D.C.

Article link | F. Lindsay-Herrera / Land | 2019

This article compares two periods of renewal in Southwest Washington, D.C., connecting mid-century urban renewal to later displacement pressures.

The Mixed Legacy of Urban Renewal in Southwest Washington, D.C.

Article link | Francesca Russello Ammon / Journal of Planning History | 2009

This article analyzes Southwest Washington, D.C.’s redevelopment from planning through occupation, balancing design outcomes with racial injustice and displacement.

Urban Renewal: The Story of Southwest D.C.

Article link | Whose Downtown? | Undated

This article recounts Southwest Washington, D.C.’s urban renewal, connecting the project to earlier alley clearance and the displacement of Black communities.

Planning Southwest Urban Renewal Area

Article link | Southwest Neighborhood Assembly | Undated

This report documents the planning and rebuilding of Southwest Washington, D.C., one of the most consequential and controversial redevelopment projects in the capital.

Society Hill & Urban Renewal

Article link | ArcGIS StoryMaps | December 15, 2023

This story map explores Philadelphia’s Society Hill redevelopment, showing how preservation, clearance, planning, and displacement intersected in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Photographs as Planning Knowledge in Society Hill Urban Renewal

Article link | Journal of Planning Education and Research | 2019

This article studies how photographs shaped planning knowledge in Philadelphia’s Society Hill, where urban renewal combined clearance, preservation, and visual documentation.

Preserving Philadelphia's Society Hill

Article link | Penn Today | August 23, 2018

This article highlights research on Society Hill’s urban renewal history, emphasizing how residents, buildings, and planning decisions shaped the neighborhood’s transformation.

From Slums to Sleek Towers: How Philly Became Cleaner, Safer and More Unequal

Article link | WHYY | March 12, 2018

This article uses Philadelphia’s Society Hill to show how urban renewal, historic preservation, and early gentrification produced both physical improvement and social exclusion.

LotRec: A Recommender for Urban Vacant Lot Conversion

Article link | Md Towhidul A. Chowdhury and Naveen Sharma / arXiv | 2022

This paper addresses vacant-lot conversion in cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, relevant to post-urban-renewal landscapes where clearance left long-term land-use challenges.

Urban Renewal

Article link | Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia | Undated

This encyclopedia entry summarizes urban renewal in Philadelphia, including Society Hill, Independence Mall, University City, and the tension between preservation and displacement.

Seeing Lincoln Square

Article link | Lincoln Center | January 30, 2023

This essay revisits the Lincoln Square urban renewal project that cleared land for Lincoln Center, connecting cultural development to displacement and contested memory.

We Live in a Motorized Civilization: Robert Moses Replies to Robert Caro

Article link | Geoff Boeing / arXiv | 2021

This document preserves Robert Moses’s response to Robert Caro, providing context for debates over highways, urban renewal, planning power, and mid-century New York redevelopment.

Lincoln Square Renewal Project, New York, 1955-1969

Article link | ArcGIS StoryMaps | December 16, 2020

This story map examines the Lincoln Square Renewal Project, which cleared land for Lincoln Center, Fordham University facilities, and new housing.

Mapping Urban Renewal, Then and Now

Article link | Gotham Center for New York City History | February 1, 2018

This interview discusses the Atlas of Urban Renewal and the use of historical maps to understand and challenge urban renewal’s legacy.

The Battle of Lincoln Square

Article link | Samuel Zipp / Planning Perspectives | 2009

This article studies organized resistance to New York’s Lincoln Square urban renewal project between 1956 and 1959.

Organizing in the Housing Projects of Cincinnati's West End

Article link | African American Intellectual History Society | November 4, 2024

This article looks at Black organizing in Cincinnati’s West End after urban renewal, showing how residents responded to displacement, public housing, and redevelopment politics.

The Impact of Urban Renewal and I-75 on Cincinnati's Historically African American West End Neighborhood

Article link | Green Umbrella / Sustainable Cincy | January 14, 2023

This article summarizes how urban renewal and the construction of I-75 damaged Cincinnati’s West End, destroying homes and severing a historically Black neighborhood.

Lasting Scars: Cincinnati's Urban Renewal in the West End

Article link | C. Meyer / Cornell eCommons | 2019

This thesis studies Cincinnati’s West End, a dense Black neighborhood targeted for slum clearance and reshaped by urban renewal and highway construction.

An Asset-Based Approach to Policymaking

Article link | Mahyar Arefi / Cities | 2004

This article revisits Cincinnati’s West End to argue for an asset-based approach to planning rather than redevelopment that treats neighborhoods mainly as blight.

West End Neighborhood

Article link | Cincinnati Sites and Stories | Undated

This local history entry describes Cincinnati’s West End as a dense African American neighborhood heavily transformed by mid-century urban renewal.

Urban Interventions to Revitalize Cincinnati's West End

Article link | Miami University Libraries | Undated

This project considers how Cincinnati’s West End suffered from urban renewal, highway construction, displacement, and later disinvestment.

Black Bottom and Paradise Valley

Article link | ResearchGate | 2024

This paper discusses Detroit’s Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, focusing on race, class, memory, and the representation of neighborhoods destroyed by urban renewal.

The Destruction of Detroit's Black Bottom

Article link | Reason | February 5, 2022

This article recounts the destruction of Detroit’s Black Bottom, connecting local demolition to federal housing policy, public housing debates, and mid-century urban renewal.

The People and Places of Black Bottom, Detroit

Article link | National Endowment for the Humanities | 2021

This article tells the story of Detroit’s Black Bottom, a thriving Black neighborhood demolished for urban renewal and freeway projects by 1960.

Capturing Black Bottom, a Detroit Neighborhood Lost to Urban Renewal

Article link | National Trust for Historic Preservation | February 27, 2019

This article explores photographs of Detroit’s Black Bottom before demolition, preserving visual evidence of a neighborhood erased by urban renewal.

Black Bottom Neighborhood

Article link | Detroit Historical Society | Undated

This encyclopedia entry explains how Detroit’s Black Bottom was demolished in the late 1950s and early 1960s for redevelopment, Lafayette Park, and freeway construction.

Urban Renewal: The North

Article link | Rise Up Detroit | Undated

This article explains how urban renewal and highway projects between 1953 and 1967 reshaped Detroit’s Black neighborhoods, including Black Bottom and Paradise Valley.

Miami's Overtown Neighborhood Is Rising on Its Own Terms

Article link | Miami Herald | May 6, 2026

This opinion piece frames Overtown’s current revitalization as an effort to rebuild Black ownership and identity after decades of highway and urban renewal damage.

Overtown: Overview

Article link | Segregation by Design | 2024

This visual history explains how Miami’s Overtown was damaged by urban renewal and highway construction, situating the neighborhood within national patterns of Black displacement.

Transportation and Urban Renewal Politics in Miami

Article link | M. Dluhy / University of Pennsylvania Repository | 2022

This scholarly work examines Miami’s Overtown, where transportation planning and urban renewal devastated a major African American community.

IPH Communities: Overtown Chronology

Article link | University of Miami Libraries | Undated

This chronology traces Overtown’s Black history and notes how urban renewal and highway planning began taking a toll on the neighborhood.

Exposing History: Miami's Overtown

Article link | The Jaxson | Undated

This article presents Overtown as a major Black cultural district damaged by interstate construction, redevelopment, and mid-century urban planning.

How Urban Renewal Harmed Black Populations

Article link | Black Police Precinct & Courthouse Museum | Undated

This article discusses how redlining, urban renewal, and mass transit projects harmed Miami’s Black neighborhoods, especially Overtown.

Charlotte's History with Urban Renewal and the Brooklyn Community

Article link | Africana Annual / University of Kansas | 2024

This article analyzes how urban renewal destroyed Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood, emphasizing the loss of Black institutions, culture, and community wealth.

How Bulldozing Brooklyn Cost Black Charlotteans Millions in Generational Wealth

Article link | Axios Charlotte | June 27, 2022

This article shows how the destruction of Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood during urban renewal erased Black homes, businesses, institutions, and generational wealth.

How Urban Renewal Destroyed Charlotte's Brooklyn Neighborhood

Article link | Brooklyn Oral History Project / UNC Charlotte | June 12, 2017

This article focuses on Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood, showing how federal urban renewal funds helped destroy a major Black community without delivering promised replacement housing.

History: Brooklyn Village

Article link | Brooklyn Village Charlotte | Undated

This page summarizes the history of Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood, which was razed during urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s.

Edgehill, Nashville, Tennessee and the Fight Against Displacement

Article link | V. Hensley / Middle Tennessee State University | 2022

This thesis connects Nashville’s Edgehill history to urban renewal, gentrification, historic preservation, and residents’ efforts to resist displacement.

What Happened to Edgehill?

Article link | The Tennessee Tribune | October 5, 2021

This article recounts Nashville’s Edgehill urban renewal history, including demolished rental housing, street widening, and long-term neighborhood change.

Digital Scholarship at Tennessee State University Edgehill Paper

Article link | Tennessee State University | 2018

This paper describes how Nashville’s Edgehill was radically altered from the 1950s through the early 1970s by urban renewal and public housing construction.

A City Swept Clean

Article link | Nashville Scene | September 6, 2001

This article examines Nashville’s urban renewal history, including cleared houses, redevelopment sites, and the consequences for Edgehill and East Nashville.

Edgehill Community Planning Study

Article link | Nashville Planning Department | Undated

This planning study identifies Edgehill as a historically African American neighborhood deeply changed by urban renewal and later redevelopment pressure.

Urban Renewal and Ghetto Development in Baltimore

Article link | Journal of Planning History | June 17, 2020

This article uses Baltimore’s Harlem Park to analyze how urban renewal administration produced racially unequal outcomes for Black residents.

Failure by Design: How Urban Renewal Fueled an Uprising

Article link | Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle | July 22, 2019

This article connects Baltimore’s urban renewal, disinvestment, and abandonment to later unrest, arguing that redevelopment decisions shaped neighborhood crisis.

Black Baltimoreans Fight to Save Homes from Redevelopment

Article link | Associated Press | 2022

This article connects Baltimore’s Poppleton redevelopment fight to the long history of urban renewal, eminent domain, displacement, and racial inequity.

Urban Displacement and Low-Income Communities

Article link | ResearchGate | 2016

This paper reviews urban redevelopment and displacement, using Baltimore and other cities to examine how low-income communities were affected by renewal policies.

Urban Renewal Files

Article link | University of Baltimore Archives | Undated

This archival exhibit presents documents from Baltimore’s 1960s urban renewal efforts, including correspondence, speeches, maps, plans, and resident responses.

Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Authority Records

Article link | University of Baltimore Special Collections | Undated

This archive collection documents the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency from 1962 to 1967, including planning records, budgets, minutes, and reports.

Urban Renewal Plans

Article link | Baltimore City Department of Planning | Undated

This government page explains Baltimore’s urban renewal plans as legally adopted area plans dating back to the late 1960s.

Redlining and Disinvestment: A Case Study on Racial Segregation and Gentrification Throughout Seattle's Central District

Article link | Systemic Justice Project | 2020

This paper links redlining, disinvestment, gentrification, and displacement in Seattle’s Central District, offering context for urban renewal’s long-term effects.

Data Science for Urban Equity

Article link | Bernease Herman et al. / arXiv | October 6, 2017

This paper uses Seattle as a case study for making gentrification and displacement legible to communities, policymakers, and data scientists.

Urban Renewal in Seattle

Article link | Seattle Municipal Archives | Undated

This exhibit documents Seattle’s urban renewal program and how redevelopment changed the city’s physical, cultural, and neighborhood landscapes.

Evolution of Urban Renewal

Article link | Seattle Municipal Archives | Undated

This exhibit section traces how Seattle’s urban renewal program evolved through the 1960s and 1970s, including changing language around rehabilitation and community development.

Kansas City's Blitz: How Freeway-Building Blew Up Urban Wealth

Article link | Strong Towns | June 24, 2020

This article argues that Kansas City’s freeway system worked as a tool of urban renewal, land speculation, and neighborhood destruction.

A City Without Slums: Urban Renewal, Public Housing, and Downtown Revitalization in Kansas City, Missouri

Article link | Kevin Fox Gotham / American Journal of Economics and Sociology | 2001

This article studies Kansas City’s urban renewal program, linking public housing, downtown revitalization, and the politics of slum clearance.

Urban Renewal: Kansas City, Missouri

Article link | Kansas City Public Library / KC History | Undated

This archival map shows downtown Kansas City urban renewal projects, public housing areas, and general neighborhood renewal planning.

Reassessing Urban Renewal in Atlanta and Beyond

Article link | Atlanta Studies | August 7, 2018

This review of Renewing Inequality explains how the project helps reveal the scale of urban renewal displacement in Atlanta and across the United States.

Using Data Science as a Community Advocacy Tool to Promote Equity in Urban Renewal Programs

Article link | Jeremy Auerbach et al. / arXiv | October 6, 2017

This paper studies Atlanta’s anti-displacement tax fund and shows how data tools can support communities facing redevelopment and urban renewal pressures.

Atlanta Hopes to Heal Neighborhoods Torn Apart by a Highway

Article link | Axios Atlanta | January 5, 2022

This article discusses efforts to reconnect neighborhoods divided by highways, linking modern repair programs to the damage caused by urban renewal and transportation planning.

Development and Displacement Down the Bay

Article link | University of South Alabama Archaeology Museum | May 21, 2024

This article links redlining, urban renewal, and interstate construction in Mobile, Alabama, showing how redevelopment displaced residents in historically marginalized neighborhoods.

Urban Renewal and Mill Creek Valley

Article link | Decoding the City / St. Louis | Undated

This article explains how St. Louis’s Mill Creek Valley was cleared under urban renewal, displacing thousands of Black residents and destroying churches, businesses, and homes.

Urban Renewal

Article link | Encyclopedia of Milwaukee | Undated

This encyclopedia entry explains Milwaukee’s urban renewal history, including Midtown, freeway planning, neighborhood clearance, and redevelopment politics.

A Case Study of the Consequences of Displacement Caused by Urban Renewal and Highway Construction

Article link | Comer L. Taylor Jr. / University of Tennessee | 1974

This thesis studies Knoxville, Tennessee, focusing on how urban renewal and highway construction displaced minority businesses and reshaped community life.

The Role of Archives in Addressing Urban Renewal's Legacy

Article link | M. Mohamed / MIT DSpace | 2025

This thesis examines how archives can document urban renewal harms, especially eminent-domain takings, forced relocation, and the disproportionate displacement of marginalized communities.

Repair and Redress for the Damage of Urban Renewal and Highway Projects

Article link | Steve Brigham / LinkedIn | 2025

This article argues for repair and redress for Black neighborhoods damaged by federally supported urban renewal and highway projects from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Dynamic Models of Gentrification

Article link | Giovanni Mauro et al. / arXiv | 2024

This paper models gentrification and low-income displacement, connecting later redevelopment pressures to urban renewal’s continuing legacy in changing neighborhoods.

Universal Patterns in the Long-Term Growth of Urban Infrastructure in U.S. Cities from 1900 to 2015

Article link | Keith Burghardt et al. / arXiv | 2024

This paper provides long-run context for urban infrastructure growth, density, and sprawl, helping situate urban renewal within broader patterns of American metropolitan development.

The Lines That Shape Our Cities

Article link | ArcGIS StoryMaps | 2024

This story map links mapping, redlining, and urban renewal, showing how spatial policy decisions shaped neighborhood inequality and displacement.

Advancing Urban Renewal: Historical Arcade Facades with Stable Diffusion Models

Article link | Zheyuan Kuang et al. / arXiv | November 20, 2023

This paper explores modern urban renewal and historic preservation through AI-assisted facade generation, showing how the term “urban renewal” now also appears in heritage-design contexts.

Residents Sue Mississippi City for Declaring Their Properties Blighted in Redevelopment Plan

Article link | Associated Press | 2023

This article shows how the language of blight and redevelopment remains contested, echoing older urban renewal practices involving eminent domain and community displacement.

Dismantling Mid-Century Urban Renewal

Article link | A. Soomro / Brooklyn Law Review | 2019

This law review note argues for community participation and legal safeguards when old urban renewal plans expire or are replaced.

Mapping Inequality and Renewing Inequality

Article link | Journal of American History / JSTOR | 2018

This review discusses the relationship between redlining and urban renewal digital-history projects, connecting federal housing discrimination to later displacement.

Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America; Renewing Inequality

Article link | Journal of American History / JSTOR | 2019

This review evaluates two major digital projects that help explain how New Deal redlining and postwar urban renewal shaped racial inequality in American cities.

Urban Renewal and Redlining in Race

Article link | City Journal | Undated

This article discusses urban renewal, redlining, and racialized redevelopment debates, using Baltimore and other examples to revisit contested narratives of planning harm.

Urban Renewal and Highway Renewal

Article link | The Redress Movement | Undated

This article connects urban renewal, highway construction, real estate institutions, and the need for redress for communities harmed by mid-century redevelopment.

Urban Renewal and Its Discontents

Article link | Public Books | May 19, 2020

This review essay examines urban renewal’s political legacy, emphasizing inequality, segregation, and the difficulty of building democratic urban communities.

The Effects of Inequality, Density, and Residential Preferences on Urban Displacement

Article link | Geoff Boeing / arXiv | 2017

This modeling paper is not about federal urban renewal alone, but it helps explain mechanisms of displacement, inequality, and metropolitan structure relevant to renewal’s long-term effects.

Urban Landscape Is an Important Factor in Rising Inequality, Spatial Segregation, and Social Isolation

Article link | Philippe Blanchard and Dimitri Volchenkov / arXiv | 2013

This paper offers a broader theoretical framework for how urban form can reinforce inequality, segregation, and isolation, themes central to urban renewal history.

Involving the Community in Inner City Renewal

Article link | C. Zhang / Procedia Engineering | 2012

This article examines participatory inner-city renewal in Beijing, useful for comparing U.S. urban renewal with international approaches to redevelopment and displacement.

A Case Study on Urban Renewal Through Community Participation

Article link | Aron Hendrix / Lund University | 2009

This case study examines community participation in urban renewal, offering a contrast to top-down clearance models that displaced residents.

The Lost History of Urban Renewal

Article link | Alexander von Hoffman / Journal of Urbanism | 2008

This article argues that urban renewal was originally conceived partly as an alternative to slum clearance, complicating the common story of federal redevelopment policy.