Model City Blues: Urban Space and Organized Resistance in New Haven

by Mandi Isaacs Jackson

Overview

Model City Blues tells the story of how regular people, facing a changing city landscape, fought for their own model of the "ideal city" by creating grassroots plans for urban renewal. Filled with vivid descriptions of significant moments in a protracted struggle, it offers a street-level account of organized resistance to institutional plans to transform New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1960s. Anchored in the physical spaces and political struggles of the city, it brings back to center stage the individuals and groups who demanded that their voices be heard.

About the Author:
Mandi Isaacs Jackson is a writer and researcher who teaches urban history and social movements

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592136032
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	05/18/2008
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     xi
List of Abbreviations     xiii
Introduction     1
The Interstate and the Demonstration City: Master Planning and Maximum Feasible Participation     6
Contested Spaces in a Model City     12
Neighborhoods and Movement Spaces on the Ring Road Map     16
Mapping the Story     17
"The Ghosts of Oak Street's Paved Ravines": The Oak Street Project, the Construction of Public Consensus, and the Birth of a Slumless City     28
The Planning Tableau and the Experts' Dilemma     31
Creating Consensus and Illustrating Progress     35
The Progress Pavilion: "Watch the Picture Change!"     44
"Very Minimum" Dissent     49
On Dixwell Avenue: Civil Rights and the Street     52
The Mayor's Proposal     52
Two Dixwells, One Corner     54
A New Kind of Project     60
Taking the Street     64
Understanding the Avenue     67
Remaking "New Haven's Harlem"     75
The Hill Neighborhood Union and Freedom Summer North: Citizen Participation and Movement Spaces in a "Project Area"     80
The Hill     84
The Hill Neighborhood Union     86
The Hill Rent Strikes     92
The Freedom School     96
The Children's Park     100
Hill Cooperative Housing     106
The National Commission on Urban Problems: "Too Many People Are a Blighting Influence"     109
Maximum Feasible Urban Management: The "Automatic" City and the Hill Parents' Association     114
Hill Reconnaissance     114
A Particular Kind of "Model"     117
The Hill Parents' Association     123
Bracing for Summer     129
Renewal, Riot, and Resistance: Reclaiming "Model Cities"     138
The Riot     138
A "War Zone" on Congress Avenue     143
The Aftermath     148
Whose "Model Cities"?     152
The City and the Six-Lane Highway: Bread and Roses and Parking Garages     161
Bread and Roses     166
Unmasking the Ring Road     172
Route 34: "Like Blowing into a Hurricane"     176
The Language of Agitation     181
Public Rehearings     184
People Against the Garage     189
"You Can't Argue with Concrete"     191
Downtown Lives and Palaces: From "A Space of Freedom" to "A Space of Exclusion"     195
The Strand Hotel     197
The Park Plaza      199
Defining Home     202
"Clear a Space": Fighting for a Different Downtown     205
"Pulling Power, Buying Power, Growing Power"     209
Between the Strand and the Plaza     216
Conclusion: The "After"     222
Notes     235
Works Cited     265
Index     271