Carolyn Swope

The Evolution of Eminent Domain for “Slum” Clearance. Racial Capitalism and the Road to Urban Renewal
The midcentury federally-funded urban renewal program tore down communities nationwide and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents, disproportionately low-income people of color, in order to combat “slums” and “blight.” The destruction was enabled by the landmark 1954 Berman v. Parker case in Southwest Washington DC, in which the Supreme Court granted sweeping powers of eminent domain through a broad and flexible interpretation of the constitutional requirement that government takings of private property be for “public use”. This presentation examines the backstory of the decision in order to unpack exactly how and why race mattered for urban renewal.

The powers enshrined in Berman originated locally in efforts to eliminate “slum” alley communities inhabited by impoverished Black residents, evolving into battles over the relationship of slum clearance to low-rent housing and the role of private enterprise. I trace the use of state power to facilitate private capital accumulation through differentiating communities’ value along racialized lines – thereby justifying displacement and appropriation for “higher and better uses” by positioning Black communities as not “valuable,” indeed as in need of destruction. I position these logics within a racial planning tradition aligned with racial capitalism. In so doing, I argue that racially disparate effects were not an incidental and unfortunate byproduct of urban renewal, but rather racialized hierarchies were central to its function, design and deployment.

I also examine the ramifications of this approach, as Southwest’s former low-income Black residents ultimately not only bore disproportionate burdens of displacement, but were also shut out of the benefits of the ostensible public purpose. Southwest was handed over with subsidy to private developers, who broke promises to build affordable housing and rebuilt it as a middle- and upper-income, mainly white community. The case raises troubling questions for the present era of market-based approaches to affordable housing, including another wave of redevelopment in Southwest itself.

Carolyn Swope is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University. She also holds an MPH in Sociomedical Sciences. Broadly, her research interests focus on developing theoretically- and historically-grounded models for the relationship between housing and health justice. Carolyn’s dissertation, a case study drawing on qualitative and archival evidence, examines gentrification’s relationship with historical processes of dispossession, and the implications of this relationship for gentrification’s impact on low- to moderate-income Black women’s health. Her work has been published in journals including the Journal of Urban Affairs, Social Science History, Health & Place, Social Science & Medicine, and the American Journal of Public Health. Carolyn’s research has been supported by the Institute of Human Geography and the Society of Woman Geographers.

_The Lecture in Planning Series (LiPS) is co-organized by the MSUP Program and second-year PhD students in Urban Planning: Light refreshments will be served. This event is open to Columbia University affiliates with a valid university ID. Any questions on the events can be directed Rossella Asja Lucrezia Ferro, rf2930@columbia.edu and Daniela Perleche Ugas, dp3167@columbia.edu.