Urban renewal projects aim to transform worn-down or underused spaces to better serve the overall community, but the cost often comes at the expense of the residents who originally inhabited those spaces.
Although community improvement is vital for the progress of cities, the created displacement fractures communities and deepens social inequalities – causing long-term consequences that outweigh shortsighted development goals.
Beginning through federally funded initiatives in the 1950s and 60s, urban renewal project funds were given to local city governments with the intention of reinventing “blighted” parts of a city or areas that were labeled as “slums.”…