Urban Renewal in Virginia
Urban renewal comprised federal, state, and local housing policies and practices dating to the Great Depression and unfolding across much of the twentieth century that set the stage for the widespread destruction of lower-income Black neighborhoods in the name of redevelopment. Urban renewal had a major impact on communities across Virginia, including in Northern Virginia , Norfolk , Richmond , Roanoke , and Charlottesville . The Housing Law of 1937 provided federal funding to local housing authorities for the construction of public housing for lower-income families and individuals. However, the way the law was designed and enacted set the stage for the displacement of many majority Black communities across the country. The Housing Act of 1949 expanded federal funding for local housing authorities to acquire land perceived as blighted. Cities were allowed to tear down these homes and resell the property to private developers. In the following decades, city officials worked with influential urban planners to remake cityscapes across the United States, often along racial lines. While the construction of new affordable housing was the ostensible goal of both federal housing laws, ultimately residential units were built on less than a fifth of all cleared land. Much of the land was instead repurposed for the nation’s growing highway system, while the rest was transformed into parking lots, parks, institutions such as universities and hospitals, high-end residential buildings, and cultural amenities. Where housing was constructed, it almost always took the form of cheaply built public housing concentrated in Black communities.
Today, urban landscapes and communities across the commonwealth still bear the scars of urban renewal.
In Northern Virginia, the roots of removal of Black communities in the name of urban redevelopment go back as far as the Great Depression and paved the way for multiple federal agencies to expand their operations by expropriating privately held land from Black communities in the region during and after World War II.
NORFOLK was the first city in the United States to receive federal urban renewal funds for slum clearance. In the period between 1950 and 1970, thousands of acres of land in and around central Norfolk were razed, and tens of thousands of residents—mostly African American—were displaced.
In 1946, the city of RICHMOND contracted Harland Bartholomew, an ardent segregationist, to draft a master plan for the city's redevelopment. This plan focused on demolishing Black neighborhoods and repurposing the land for housing and amenities for white residents, as well as for highways. Black residents were displaced to a series of public housing projects that came to define the failure of urban renewal.