A city transformed : redevelopment, race, and suburbanization in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1940-1980 / David Schuyler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schuyler, David.

Contributor:

Wunsch, Aaron V., Former owner.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Urban renewal--Pennsylvania--Lancaster.

Urban renewal.

City planning--Pennsylvania--Lancaster.

City planning.

Lancaster (Pa.).

Pennsylvania--Lancaster.

Physical Description:

x, 278 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, [2002]

Summary:

As was true of many American cities, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, adopted urban renewal programs in the postwar years to revitalize a downtown that was experiencing economic decline. As the commercial and residential infrastructure of the city decayed, people and jobs migrated to the suburbs. Urban renewal was supposed to make the downtown viable again as a site for both businesses and residences. But as David Schuyler shows, redevelopment in Lancaster resulted in more failures than successes. A City Transformed tells a story that is familiar to other northern cities struggling with the legacy of segregation and the challenges of suburbanization. In the 1950s, Lancaster began a comprehensive revitalization program that dramatically altered key blocks of the downtown, replacing handsome turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts structures with modernist concrete boxes and a sterile public square. The strategy for eliminating density and blighted buildings resulted in the demolition of whole blocks of dwellings and, perhaps more important, destabilized Lancaster's African American community. Redevelopment in Lancaster, however ambitious, could not overcome the suburban growth that continues to sprawl over the countryside or the patterns of residential segregation that define city and suburb. As Schuyler observes, Lancaster's experience is the nation's drama played on a local stage.

Contents:

Part I The Discovery of Urban Blight

1 The Postwar Housing Crisis 13

2 The Problem with Downtown 35

Part II Planning a New Downtown

3 Best-Laid Plans 59

4 A New Heart for Lancaster 83

Part III Race, Housing, and Renewal

5 Race and Residential Renewal: The Adams-Musser Towns Projects 123

6 Church-Musser: Race and the Limits of Housing Renewal 151

Part IV Consequences

7 Sunnyside: The Persisting Failure of Planning and Renewal 185

8 Legacy: A Historic City in the Suburban Age 207

Table 1. Lancaster city population, 1940-1990 231

Table 2. Population, six suburban townships, 1950-1980 231

Table 3. Retail sales, 1948-1967 232

Table 4. Minority population in Lancaster, 1960-1990 232

Table 5. Population by race, suburban townships, 1980 232.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [233]-269) and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum circulating copy: From the Library of Aaron V. Wunsch.

ISBN:

0271022078

0271022086

OCLC:

49576185