The Federal Bulldozer

The Federal Bulldozer is really two books, uncomfortably contained within one cover. One book, by Anderson the scholar, is a Ph.D. dissertation written under the auspices of the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies. It presents a systematic, statistically-backed case against the existing federal urban renewal program. The other book, by Anderson the sensationalist, would have more appeal to a Sunday afternoon crowd in Hyde Park. It declares simply that private enterprise can do everything that federal planning has so far failed to do, and can do it faster.

It's unfortunate that The Federal Bulldozer suffers from this schizophrenia, because as a first in its field it could be quite an important book. No major work before has attempted to analyze the 15-year history of the federal urban renewal program, and Anderson has used previously-unpublished data from Urban Renewal Administration files.

He rejects the URA's programs because:

* They often have not operated in accord with goals made explicit by Congress--to provide "a decent home, and a suitable living environment for all," and have sometimes even aggravated the housing problems of the poor.

* They have cost more in public money than the government can, in the long run, afford, and have been of questionable financial benefits to cities and private developers.

* They have operated too slowly, creating new problems, increasing the program's cost, and lessening the chances for success of specific projects.

Having carefully built his case against federal urban renewal, Anderson pauses a moment to brush away any possibilities of modifying "an inherently bad program," and then launches into his soapbox appeal. For obvious reasons, he doesn't waste much time trying to defend empirically his gospel that "private enterprise can." Such defense as he offers--in the chapter on "The Quality of Housing"--rests on statistics showing that the greatest improvements in the overall quality of city housing between 1950 and 1960 came from the efforts of unaided private builders.

Seemingly, Anderson has lost sight of his own line of argument somewhere between these statistics and the gross generalizations which follow, for he never shows whether private enterprise could succeed where public enterprise has failed--in providing decent homes for all. In what kinds of housing have these impressive improvements in quality been achieved? Has unaided private enterprise been eager to build in slum neighborhoods? And if not, is there any evidence that private builders left to themselves would ever attack these hard-core housing problems?

Anderson the scholar implies that they wouldn't. In his chapter on the private developer, he says that free enterprise naturally builds where building is profitable. Urban renewal construction is potentially quite profitable, but it usually involves a high degree of risk. "It seems likely," he sums up, "that what has been accomplished so far by private enterprise in urban renewal has been largely a result of the government's decision to underwrite a substantial amount of the risk involved." One can only conclude that the author of the second book hasn't followed the arguments of the first.

Despite all this, The Federal Bulldozer is worth the time it takes you to get from the cover-picture of a fierce neighborhood-destroyer caught in the act, to the back-flap photo of the author, who looks the picture of innocence. Anderson dispels the long-standing myth that urban renewal is a cure-all for city housing problems. It is regrettable that he builds so many myths of his own.