In 1949, President Harry Truman signed the Housing Act, which gave federal, state, and nearby governments unprecedented energy to shape residential life. 1 of the Housing Act’s principal initiatives – “urban renewal” – destroyed about 2000 communities in the 1950s and ’60s and forced much more than 300000 households from their properties. All round, about half of urban renewal’s victims have been black, a reality that led to James Baldwin’s popular quip that “urban renewal signifies Negro removal.” New York City’s Manhattantown (1951) was one particular of the first projects authorized beneath urban renewal and it set the model not only for hundreds of urban renewal projects but for the subsequent 60 many years of eminent domain abuse at places such as Poletown, New London, and Atlantic Yards. The Manhattantown project destroyed six blocks on New York City’s Upper West Side, like an African-American neighborhood that dated to the turn of the century. The city sold the land for a token sum to a group of effectively-connected Democratic pols to create a middle-class housing improvement. Then came the usually repeated bulldoze-and-abandon phenomenon: With small monetary skin in the game, the developers let the demolished land sit vacant for many years. The community destroyed at Manhattantown was a model for the tight-knit, interconnected neighborhoods later celebrated by Jane Jacobs and other critics of leading-down redevelopment. In the early 20th century, Manhattantown was briefly the center of New York’s black music scene. A startling …
Video Rating: 4 / five

www.facebook.com ‘Substitute’ live at Numoon On Air – at the planet music centre Rotterdam 16 Oct 2009, broadcasted at NPS Cultura, video created by Arash Khosravi
Video Rating: four / 5