Model Cities Program
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The Model Cities Program was an element of U.S. President
Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
's
Great Society The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University ...
and
War on Poverty The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national ...
. The concept was presented by labor leader
Walter Reuther Walter Philip Reuther (; September 1, 1907 – May 9, 1970) was an American leader of organized labor and civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history. He ...
to President Johnson in an off-the-record White House meeting on May 20, 1965. In 1966, new legislation led to the more than 150 five-year-long, Model Cities experiments to develop new antipoverty programs and alternative forms of municipal government. Model cities represented a new approach that emphasized social program as well as physical renewal, and sought to coordinate the actions of numerous government agencies in a multifaceted attack on the complex roots of urban poverty. The ambitious federal urban aid program succeeded in fostering a new generation of mostly black urban leaders. The program ended in 1974.


Program development

Authorized November 3, 1966, by the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, the program ended in 1974. Model Cities originated in response to several concerns of the mid-1960s. Widespread urban violence, disillusionment with existing
urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...
programmes, and bureaucratic difficulties in the first years of the War on Poverty led to calls for reform of federal programmes. The Model Cities initiative created a new program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) intended to improve coordination of existing urban programs. Several cities including
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
,
Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
,
Newark Newark most commonly refers to: * Newark, New Jersey, city in the United States * Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey; a major air hub in the New York metropolitan area Newark may also refer to: Places Canada * Niagara-on-the ...
and Camden received funding. The program's initial goals emphasized comprehensive planning, involving not just rebuilding but also rehabilitation, social service delivery, and citizen participation. In 1969 the
Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
administration officially changed course; however in the majority of cities, citizen participation mechanisms continued to play an important role in local decision-making. Other evaluations have identified both failures and success in the Model Cities program, with its limited effectiveness attributed to a combination of complicated bureaucracy, inadequate funding, and competing agendas at the local level.


Specific cities

Smithville, Tennessee Smithville is a city in DeKalb County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 5,004 at the 2020 census, up from 3,994 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of DeKalb County. Smithville is home to the Smithville Fiddler's Jamboree, whic ...
, the smallest city to receive such funding, is an example of a city that benefited from the Model Cities Project. Congressman
Joe L. Evins Joseph Landon Evins (October 24, 1910 – March 31, 1984) was an American lawyer and politician who served 15 terms as a Democratic U.S. Representative from Tennessee from 1947 to 1977. Early life Evins was a native of the Blend Community ...
secured his hometown's inclusion in the project. Several buildings in downtown Smithville, such as the Dekalb County Court House and the Smithville City Hall, were built from funds from the Model Cities Project. They are still in use as of 2014 and make up a good portion of the downtown landscape. Pikeville, Kentucky was the location of one of the biggest Model Cities projects. The
Pikeville Cut-Through The Pikeville Cut-Through is a rock cut in Pikeville, Kentucky, United States, created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, through which passes a four-lane divided highway (Corridor B, numbered as U.S. Route 23 (US 23), US 119 ...
is wide, long, and deep. The project was completed in 1987 following 14 years of work at a cost of $77.6 million. The cut-through provides a path for a four-lane highway, a
CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...
railroad line, and the
Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River The Levisa Fork (also known as the Levisa Fork River or the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River) is a tributary of the Big Sandy River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe Nati ...
, which snaked through the downtown area, to eliminate almost yearly flooding. The river bed then was reclaimed by depositing fill from the cut-through into the old riverbed, significantly increasing the available space for development within the city.
McAlester, Oklahoma McAlester is the county seat of Pittsburg County, Oklahoma. The population was 18,363 at the time of the 2010 census, a 3.4 percent increase from 17,783 at the 2000 census,Shuller, Thurman"McAlester" profile ''Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History an ...
, represented by Speaker of the House
Carl Albert Carl Bert Albert (May 10, 1908 – February 4, 2000) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 46th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977 and represented Oklahoma's 3rd congressional district as a ...
, was another Model Cities site. There, the program was instrumental in acquiring the land for a regional hospital, among other projects.
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
,
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
was one of the largest Model Cities projects. Mayor Jerome P Cavanaugh (1962–69) was the only elected official to serve on Johnson's task force. Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which used $490 million to try to turn a section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a model city. In
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
, there was a battle between competing visions. The city's political and business elite, and city planners, along with Atlanta's black middle class, wanted the federal funding to accelerate the economic growth of the entire city. They sought to protect the central business district property values from nearby slums and to construct new revenue-generating structures. However local community activists rallied poor residents in opposition to these plans. They said federal renewal funding should be used to replace deteriorating housing stock, whether with new public housing or low-cost housing built by private developers.Holliman, Irene V. "From Crackertown to Model City? Urban Renewal and Community Building in Atlanta, 1963–1966," ''Journal of Urban History'' (2009) 35#3, pp. 369–86.


References


Further reading

* Fine, Sidney. ''Violence in the Model City: The Cavanaugh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967'' (1989) * Frieden, Bernard J., and Marshall Kaplan, eds. ''The Politics of Neglect: Urban Aid from Model Cities to Revenue Sharing'' (MIT Press, 1975) * Greenstone, J. David, and Paul E. Peterson. ''Race and Authority in Urban Politics: Community Participation and the War on Poverty'' (University of Chicago Press, Russell Sage Foundation, 1976) * Haar, Charles. ''Between the Idea and the Reality: A Study in the Origin, Fate and Legacy of the Model Cities Program'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975) * Weber, Bret A., and Amanda Wallace, "Revealing the Empowerment Revolution: A Literature Review of the Model Cities Program," ''Journal of Urban History'' (2012) 38#1 pp. 173–92 * Sasso, John, ''A Little Noticed Revolution: An Oral History of the Model Cities Program and Its Transition to the Community Development Block Grant Program'' (Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2005) * Schindler, Susanne,
Model Cities Redux
" Urban Omnibus (October 2016). * Schindler, Susanne,
Model Conflicts
" e-flux Architecture (July 2018).


Dissertations

* Larry Richard Davis, “An Appraisal of Selected Economic Development Projects of the Texarkana, Texas Model Cities Program” (PhD diss., University of Arkansas, 1975) * Franklyn Lee Hruza, “Seattle Model Cities Program: A Case Study of Citizen Participation in the Planning Process During the Initial Planning Year, 1967–68” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1972) * Solomon G. Jacobson, “Implementation of a Federal Program at the Local Level: A Critique of the Introduction of the Model Cities Planning Program in Detroit” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1977) * Martin David Lowenthal, “The Politics of Planning in the Model Cities Program” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970). * Ricardo A. Millett, “Examination of ‘Widespread Citizen Participation’ in the Model Cities Program and the Demands of Ethnic Minorities for a Greater Decision Making Role in American Cities” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1973) * Susanne Schindler, "The Housing that Model Cities Built: Context, Community, and Capital in New York City, 1966-76" (PhD diss., ETH Zurich, 2018). * John Mitchell Sidor, Jr., “Comprehensive Planning in a Pluralist Environment: Model Cities Planning in Pittsburgh” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1969) * Charles Tantillo, “An Analysis of the Model Cities Program in Atlantic City, New Jersey” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1974) {{Lyndon B. Johnson Great Society programs Urban planning in the United States