
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995                   TAG: 9502010023
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

URBAN RENEWAL'S LESSONS OF FAILURE

TODAY, 40 years after the houses started coming down, you could argue over the causes and motivations for how urban renewal uprooted Roanoke's black community, the subject of a special report in today's newspaper. You could argue, too, over the precise calculation of the damage vs. the benefits created by the razing of the old inner-city Kimball and Commonwealth neighborhoods, and a large part of Gainsboro.

But one conclusion is hard to escape: Roanoke botched the job.

Roanoke was not alone. Nationally, urban renewal, particularly as practiced in the '50s and '60s, earned its wretched reputation. (Indeed, one sobering thought is that in some respects - the quality of the public housing into which people were moved, for example - Roanoke did better than many cities.)

Even at its well-intentioned best, urban renewal operated on paternalistic assumptions, from ignorance of the nature of community in general and of its targeted communities in particular, and with disregard for the views and wishes of the people whom it most directly affected.

By the time razing and relocation had lost favor, most of Roanoke's targeted neighborhoods had been bulldozed, urban-renewal money no longer flowed abundantly, and mistrust of the city had grown too deep to be eradicated with a minor correction or two. The issue was (and remains) complicated by race, which deepened the gulf between mostly white renewers and mostly black renewees.

One lesson from urban renewal's history is that the interrelationship between social and physical conditions is more complex than the urban renewers saw. "New" isn't necessarily "better," especially if the price is community breakdown.

Another lesson is that programs imposed from the top often carry the seeds of their own failure. The die for Roanoke's urban-renewal neighborhoods was cast by people in Washington and City Hall, not in the affected neighborhoods.

Yet for all its failures, urban renewal shouldn't be made into an all-purpose scapegoat.

The decline of the sense of community is too widespread in America for urban-renewal programs to be held solely to blame. Roanoke's black life so uprooted by urban renewal, while stronger and richer than most whites were aware, was no golden age: It was a time of forced segregation and rank discrimination.

Nor should the shabby manner in which uprooted residents were often treated be allowed to obscure the dilapidation of much of the housing, or the fact that in some cases the "renewed" use of the land is preferable to its previous use.

In any event, simply lamenting the mistakes of the past is not enough. Ultimately, the point should be to learn from those mistakes, so the future will hold more successes.

by CNB