Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C.

Conclusion

Conclusion The city,as one findsit in history,is the point ofmaximum concentrationforthe power and cultureof a community....here is where human experience is transformed into viable signs,symbols,patterns of conduct,systemsof order.Here is where the issues of civilizationare focused. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, 1938 If any city in the United States has borne the burden of serving as a symbol of American aspirations and has simultaneously been the place, as Mumford says, where the issues of civilization have been focused, it has been the nation's capital. Given Congress's power of exclusivejurisdiction aswell as the historical absence of powerful indigenous economic aswell as cultural traditions, Washington invited efforts to mold it. Whether it was George Washington's determination to use Washington to bind the new republic together, Charles Sumner's effort to forge new opportunities regardless of race, or Marion Barry's determination to utilize black political power for social renewal, each generation embraced a "New Washington" where it could put to work its vision for urban development. Within the framework of Washington's special relationship with the federal government, there have been creative periods, marked by activist, interventionist administrations inspired by the goal of addressing social needs. Reconstruction, Progressivism, the New Deal, and the Great Society all represented such eras. Each provided some hope for federalassistance in the resolution of persistent social problems. But more powerful and enduring among the forces determined to remake Washington were competing efforts to secure the city's beautification. Starting with L'Enfant and carrying through Alexander Shepherd's public works programs, the hlcMillan Commission, and the commission's successor agencies,Washington's measure of worthiness as the national capital came to be judged in terms of building a physically pleasing city When Justice William Douglas's 19j4 Supreme Court ruling cleared redevelopment of the Southwest by saying that legislatures had the power "to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy," he merely amplified Daniel Burnham's claim fifty years earlier that "People bid their wise men . ..to remove and forever keep from view the ugly,the unsightly and even the commonplace." Federal officials,in fact, achieveddramatic successin beautifying Washington , most particularly in carving out a distinctive federal enclaveat the city's core. They did so, however, at the cost of adequately dealing with social issues identified with local needs. To the degree that the government addressed a compelling problem like inadequate housing, it did so on a primarily aesthetic basis by attempting to extend design controls from the capital enclave into residential quarters. Once granted the power to remove "slum dwellings," the government improved the city's appearance, but it failed to provide alternative housing at affordable prices to those it displaced . As redevelopment, with its aesthetic orientation and attempt to stem the flight of white taxpayers to the suburbs, succeeded public housing as the chief element of urban policy, the problem of displacement only worsened, and resentment mounted in the black community. In 1967,asserting the importance of beautification in federally funded redevelopment programs, journalist Jeanne R. Lowe described Washington 's Southwest renewal effort as one that "helped the city realize not only aesthetic and monetary values . ..but also spiritual or civic values."' The black power movement that crystallized in the aftermath ofthe riots of the following year shattered that concept of civic revitalization. Social justice succeeded social uplift as the rallying cry of those who had previously been excluded from shaping policies intended for their benefit. The MICCO experience in Shawparalleled the first era of reconstruction in Washington in that local groups worked with federal assistance to shape their own destinies. But it went further, because for a short time at least black leaders set the agenda, not white sponsors.While neighborhood leaders did not accomplish all they intended, they did demonstrate the capacity to provide better housing facilities at affordable costs without giving up control of the land to outsiders. In utilizing the tools of urban planning and development for their own purposes, activists demonstrated the capacity to affect the social as well as physical renewal of their neighborhood . Given the power as \.yellas the money to develop programs central to their needs, Shaw residents did just that. To its credit, the Clinton administration has learned the lesson of the past generation that programs designed for social improvement must engage the energies and secure the commitment of the intended beneficiaries. In stressing citizen empowerment within the Republican concept of enterprise...