Urban triage

Saving the savable neighbourhoods in Milwaukee

Bibliographic Data

ID5790959
AuthorsDeanna Harlene Schmidt (University of Houston - Clear Lake, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume26
Issue4
Pages569-589
Publication date2011-09-30
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePlanning Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0266-5433 • E-ISSN: 1466-4518
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02665433.2011.601609
OpenAlexW2009275741
LanguageEN
Citations received8

During the 1970s, an era of increasing fiscal austerity and deindustrialization, cities across the United States sought to arrest the spread of urban disinvestment. In 1974, faced with similar concerns, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, implemented a two-part planning programme. First, planners conducted the Relative Residential Status (RRS) evaluation to assess, classify, and map neighbourhood health. The RRS map delineated three types of neighbourhoods: healthy, threatened but savable, and unsavable. Second, Preservation Planning prescribed policies and resources based on the RRS neighbourhood types, concentrating resources in the neighbourhoods classified as threatened but savable. The paper examines the implementation of RRS and Preservation Planning. I argue that RRS/Preservation Planning functioned as urban triage by seeking to bolster the housing market in moderately healthy, white neighbourhoods as it prescribed market-determined, inevitable death for less healthy, African-American neighbourhoods. The main point supporting this argument is that planners borrowed and recalibrated RRS/Preservation Planning to officially and systematically redline neighbourhoods that would have been judged savable in other US cities. In doing so, this form of urban triage exacerbated urban decline and racial injustice instead of arresting the spread of urban disinvestment. Keywords: urban planningurban policyurban declineredliningMilwaukee (WI) Notes J.K. Lee, Urban Triage: Race and the Fictions of Multiculturalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Urban triage is Lee's term. H.C. Mueller, 'Maier Tells of Strategy to Save City', Milwaukee Journal, April 29, 1977. See the section 'Milwaukee in the 1970s' for an explanation of the Rust Belt. G.D. Stanford, 'Urban Strategy: Life or Death', Milwaukee Journal, April 21, 1978, A1. J.A. Agnew, 'Devaluing Place: People Prosperity versus Place Prosperity and Regional Planning', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1, no. 1 (1984): 35-45; 39; C. Weiler, 'Urban Euthanasia for Fun and Profit', in Neighbourhood Policy and Planning, ed. P.L. Clay and R.M. Hooister (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983), 167-75. For an examination of the implementation of urban triage in CDBG funding, see P. Marcuse, P. Medoff, and A. Piereira, Triage: Programming the Death of Communities (New York, NY: The Working Group for Community Development Reform, 1980). M.B. Aalbers, 'When the Banks Withdraw, Slum Landlords Take Over: The Structuration of Neighbourhood Decline Through Redlining, Drug Dealing, Speculation and Immigrant Exploitation', Urban Studies 43, no. 7 (2006): 1061-86; 1061; A. Downs, 'A Basic Perspective Concerning the Community Development Program', in Neighbourhood Preservation: Legal and Administrative Documents, ed. Real Estate Research Corporation (Washington, DC: The Office of Policy Development, 1975), 1-20. J.T. Metzger, 'Planned Abandonment: The Neighbourhood Life-Cycle Theory and National Urban Policy', Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 1 (2000): 7-40; G. Sternlieb and J.W. Hughes, 'New Regional and Metropolitan Realities of America', in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully, ed. Subcommittee on the City and the Committee on Banking & Finance and Urban Affairs House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), 3-30; J. Rothenburg, G. Galster, R.V. Butler, and J. Pitkin, The Maze of Urban Housing Markets: Theory, Evidence, and Policy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991). Downs, 'A Basic Perspective', 4. W.R. Thompson, 'Land Management Strategies for Central City Depopulation', in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully, ed. Subcommittee on the City of the Committee on Banking & Finance and Urban Affairs House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), 67-78. R.S. Ahlbrandt and P.C. Brophy, Neighbourhood Revitalization: Theory and Practice (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1975), 153 and N. Krumholz, J. Cogger, and J. Linner, 'Make No Big Plans ... Planning in Cleveland in the 1970s', in Planning Theory in the 1980s: A Search for Direction, R.W. Burchell and G. Sternlieb (ed.) (New Brunswick, NJ: The Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1978), 29-40. H.S. Reuss, 'Foreword', in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully, ed. Subcommittee on the City of the Committee on Banking & Finance and Urban Affairs House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), VII-XIV. D.E. Thomson, 'Strategic, Geographic Targeting of Housing and Community Development Resources: A Conceptual Framework and Critical Review', Urban Affairs Review 43, no. 5 (2008): 629-62. I. Goldstein and C.S. Closkey, 'Market Value Analysis: Understanding Where and How to Invest Limited Resources', Bridges Summer (2006), 5-7. A.M. Rivlin D. Garrison, B. Margolis, M. McNally, and M. Ross, Revitalizing Washington's Neighbourhoods: A Vision Takes Shape (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Greater Washington Research Program, 2003), 6. G. Galster, P. Tatian, and J. Accordino, 'Targeting Investments for Neighbourhood Revitalization', Journal of the American Planning Association 72, no. 4 (2006): 457-74; 467. Marcuse, Medoff, and Piereira, Triage; for thorough review of strategic spatial targeting, see Thomson, 'Strategic Geographic Targeting', 629-62. A. Downs, 'Using the Lessons of Experience to Allocate Resources in the Community Development Program', in Neighbourhood Preservation: Legal and Administrative Documents, ed. Real Estate Research Corporation (Washington, DC: The Office of Policy Development and Research, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1975), 18-9, emphasis in original. Downs, 'Using the Lessons', 16-7. S.J. Pratter, Strategies for City Investment, in How Cities Can Grow Old Gracefully, ed. Subcommittee on the City of the Committee on Banking & Finance and Urban Affairs House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), 79-90; H.J. Schmandt, G.D. Wendel, and G. Otte, 'CDBG: Continuity or Change?', The Journal of Federalism 13, no. 3 (1983): 7-22; S.F. Liebschutz, 'Neighbourhood Conservation: Political Choices under the Community Development Block Grant Program', Publius 13, no. 3 (1983): 23-37; R. Starr, 'Making New York Smaller', New York Times, November 14, 1976, 255; R. Starr, 'The Intellectual Ambience of Decline', in Revitalizing the Northeast: Prelude to an Agenda, ed. G. Sternlieb and J.W. Hughes (New Brunswick, NJ: The Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1978), 190-6. M.H. Lang, Gentrification Amid Urban Decline: Strategies for America's Older Cities (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1982), 79. R.P. Taub, D.G. Taylor, and J.D. Dunham, Paths of Neighborhood Change: Race and Crime in Urban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 192. Marcus, Medoff, and Piereira, Triage; City of Milwaukee Planner in discussion with the author, February 2006. R.A. Beauregard, 'Federal Policy and Postwar Urban Decline: A Case of Government Complicity?', Housing Policy Debate 12, no. 1 (2001): 129-51. U.S. Census, County and City Data Book 1972 (Washington, DC: The Government Printing Office, 1973); U.S. Census, State and Metropolitan Area Data Book 1982: A Statistical Abstract Supplement (Washington, DC: The Government Printing Office, 1982); U.S. Census, County and City Data Book (Washington, DC: The Government Printing Office, 1983). U.S. Census, County and City Data Book 1972; U.S. Census, State and Metropolitan Area Data Book 1982. D.S. Massey and N.A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). U.S. Census Bureau, Summary Population and Housing Characteristics (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 1970, 1980, and 1990). U.S. Census Bureau, Summary Population and Housing Characteristics, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 1970, 1980, and 1990). Mueller, 'Maier Tells of Strategy'; 'Stabilization of City Requires New Strategy', Milwaukee Journal, May 4, 1977; 'Saving Milwaukee from Suicide', Milwaukee Journal, May 6, 1977; 'Save a Neighbourhood, Save a City', Milwaukee Sentinel, May 11, 1977. For example, see C. Gardiner, 'Developing Indicators to Assess the Potential for Urban Regeneration: Improvements Using the 1991 Census of Population Samples of Anonymised Records', Urban Studies 35, no. 9 (1998): 1519-40; A. Langlois and P. Kitchen, 'Identifying and Measuring Dimensions of Urban Deprivation in Montreal: An Analysis of the 1996 Census Data, Urban Studies 38, no. 1 (2001): 119-39; City of Milwaukee Planner in discussion with the author, February 2006. D.S. Cannon, M.L. Lachman, and A.S. Bernhard, 'Identifying Neighbourhoods for Preservation and Renewal', Growth and Change 8, no. 1 (1977): 35-8; 36. The equation used: Z i = (X i − X*)/SD x , where Z i is the standard score for census tract i, X i is the actual indicator (data item) for census tract i, X* is the indicator mean or average, and SD x is the indicator standard deviation. City of Milwaukee Department of City Development, 'Proceedings of Milwaukee's Preservation Seminar' (Milwaukee, WI: The Department, 1977); 'A Neighborhood Preservation Policy for Milwaukee' (Milwaukee, WI: Citizens' Coalition for Community Development Participation, 1978); Community Leader in discussion with the author, January 2006; M.R. Grover, 'The End of Politics: The Rise and Fall of the East Side Housing Action Coalition (ESHAC), 1970-1998′ (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2004), 1-284. Department of City Development, Relative Residential Status in Milwaukee 1975 and 1980 (Milwaukee, WI: The Department, 1983), 12. Department of City Development, City of Milwaukee, Linking RRS and CDBG (Milwaukee, WI: The Department, 1978), 9. Department of City Development, Relative Residential Status, 12. L. Merisalo, 'Milwaukee Sentinel and Journal to Merge', Chicago Sun-Times, January 18, 1995, 51; Stanford, 'Urban Strategy'. Department of City Development, Relative Residential Status, 14. Ibid., 15. U.S. Census, Summary of Population and Housing Characteristics (Washington, DC, 1970). City of Milwaukee Department of City Development, Linking RRS. City of Milwaukee Planner in discussion with author February 2006. Department of City Development, Relative Residential Status, 16. City of Milwaukee Planner in discussion with author February 2006. U.S. Census Bureau, Summary Population and Housing Characteristics, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000). D.S. Cannon, Relative Residential Status (RRS) and Household Character (HC): An Overview (Milwaukee, WI: Department of City Development, 1980), 11, 15. Department of City Development, Relative Residential Status, 22. Department of City Development, DCD/DNS Housing Plan (Milwaukee, WI: The Department, 2002). R.A. Beauregard, Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of US Cities, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2003); R. Goetze, Building Neighborhood Confidence: A Humanistic Strategy for Urban Housing (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1976); Taub, Taylor, and Dunham, Paths of Neighborhood Change. Goldstein and Closkey, 'Market Value Analysis'; Rivlin and others, Revitalizing Washington's Neighbourhoods; and The Reinvestment Fund, 'Market Value Analysis: San Antonio', http://www.trfund.com/policysolutions/market-sanantonio.html (accessed July 19, 2011

Austerity · Deindustrialization · Disinvestment · Neighbourhood (mathematics · Triage · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

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