A ‘gray area’? Neighborhood decline and reclamation in 1950s and 1960s U.S. urban discourse and legislation

ABSTRACT

With a focus on the period between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, this paper analyses the use of the term gray areas as a descriptor for older neighborhoods in U.S. cities. First, the paper examines how the term gray areas was used in urban debates of the time. It is argued that the term reinforced assumptions of “blight” as a mobile force linked to inevitable decline. Furthermore, in following from stage theories of change, the term gray areas was also used to denote areas that could potentially be reclaimed. Secondly, the paper analyses the connection between gray areas and changes in FHA mortgage risk legislation in historic neighborhoods from “economically sound” to “acceptable risk.” Ultimately, in light of its “plastic” or “fuzzy” meaning, it is argued that the analysis of debates over gray areas highlights the importance of looking at urban change from a less linear, or epistemologically bounded, perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Gray areas
• blight
• historic neighborhoods
• acceptable risk
• neighborhood change

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Stuart Schrader, Emma Crane, Ailbhe O’Neill, Cian O’Callaghan, Tom Slater, David Madden, and Christina Kata of the RPA, for their help in completing this paper. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and editorial team from the Journal of Urban Affairs for all the useful pointers throughout the process of completing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The New York Metropolitan Region Study was undertaken by the Regional Plan Association between 1956 and 1959. Both the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation were major funders of the project, which was led by Raymond Vernon of Harvard University (see Ekman, 2021).

2. In an address to Thirteenth Regional Plan Conference, October 1958. Source: Provided from Archives of Regional Plan Association.

3. Gulick’s points here somewhat chime with a 1956 article entitled “Five Challenges in Today’s New Urban World,” in which he comments on what he sees as the obsolete nature of U.S cities of the time (Gulick, 1956). Later, in a discussion with a group of well-known urbanists held by Architectural Forum outlined in January 1960 (p. 105), Gulick described “gray areas” as a “massed area of contiguous obsolescence.”

4. Written simultaneously to the New York Metropolitan Region Study, Vernon’s The Changing Economic Function of the Central City (Vernon, 1959). In introducing this book, the chairman of the Area Development Committee of the CED, Jervis J. Babb invokes the term gray belt as an area of “growing obsolescence found in most central cities between the central business district and the surrounding suburbs—an indeterminate area which is becoming known as the ‘Gray’ belt” (Babb, in Vernon, 1959, pp. 8–9).

5. Petshek’s comments are in response to Hoover and Vernon’s (1959) invocation of “gray areas” within the Anatomy of a Metropolis.

6. This is something he further takes up in his 1966 book, entitled The Myth and Reality of our Urban Problems Vernon, Commenting similarly that a notion of a movement back to these areas as both “wistful” and “groundless” (Vernon, 1966, p. 78). It should also be noted that Vernon outlines the possibility of a socially segregated new “giant garden city” in the Bronx might find “takers,” and even offers the possibility of this as something that could be reproduced across cities in the United States (Vernon, 1966).

7. Under the title of The Future of Old Neighborhoods, Bernard Frieden (1964) sought to engage critically with above-outlined discussions of “gray areas.” Prior to outlining his own approach, he outlined what he refers to as the “hypothesis of the ‘gray areas.’” In opposition to authors such as Raymond Vernon and Chester Rapkin, Frieden (1962, 1964) proposed a more gradual form of change in these historic neighborhoods. Similarly, George M. Raymond (1960) put forward a proposal of a form of “continuous renewal,” which advocated for a combination of clearance and a form of time-limited retention of older structures within so-called “gray areas.”

8. The overlaps in meaning between Rains’s use of the term and that which would be used by Hoover and Vernon (1959) are striking. While it has not been possible to find a direct connection between the two, it is of note that Gulick’s use in 1958, discussed above, follows from his role as a Board Member of the Baltimore Urban Renewal Study Board in 1956. It is noted within the Report of the Urban Renewal Study Board of September, 1956 that Norman Mason had publicly used the term gray areas in a talk at the Private Industry Urban Renewal Conference, held in Baltimore in mid-1956. As such, two key points stand out. First, the term was being used among key commentators and legislators within conferences from 1956 onwards; secondly, it is possible that Luther Gulick would have drawn his 1958 usage from its use at this time, or, at the very least been aware of the use of the term. See: Report of the Urban Renewal Study Board to Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. Baltimore, Maryland (1956).

9. In a speech to the National Urban League in 1959, Norman Mason outlined the potential of urban renewal to achieve balanced cities. Explicit within this speech was a notion of displacement as a means of redressing a notion of a concentration of the Black community in city centers at the time. See: https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p15150coll7/id/36644/ (last Accessed, July, 17th, 2023]

10. There is also a subtlety of shift in wording from earlier iterations, whereby the afore-mentioned term “acceptable risk” replaces the originally proposed “reasonable risk.”

11. The detailed record of Senate Committee Hearings of 1964 which again discusses this potential shift in terminology from “economic soundness” to “reasonable risk” within older neighborhoods is initially mentioned in Bill S.2468. S.2468 then becomes S.3049 and is passed into law in 1964. The relationship between these two Bills is detailed in the following account: https://archive.org/details/PL88560/page/n293/mode/2up?q=2468.

12. In his 1965 book, Weaver notes the shifting dynamics of historic neighborhoods and reflects on the outcome of Housing legislation of that same year, noting the challenges of neighborhood upgrading and displacement (R. C. Weaver, 1965, p. 106). Yet, he also posited that rehabilitation would lead to less displacement than rebuilding would likely lead to (Weaver, 1965). In going on to discuss the manner in which it would still require a level of displacement, Weaver (Weaver, 1965, p. 109) sees rehabilitation as a form of compromise.

13. As well as chiming with the Upper West Side Urban Renewal plan, Operating at a similar time, at the level of more localized policymaking, in New York, Chelsea, Bloomingdale, East Harlem, Carnegie Hill, Morningside, Hudson and Hamilton Grange were incorporated in the “The Neighborhood Conservation Program,” where emphasis was placed “in developing and testing techniques for the prevention of blight in neighborhoods that are not appropriate for either slum clearance or complete remodeling.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the This research has been made possible through funding from E3 at Trinity College Dublin.

Notes on contributors

Philip Lawton

Philip Lawton is an assistant professor in global urbanism within the School of Natural Sciences (Geography) at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His research is focused on the intersection between urban discourse and urban change. Lawton’s previous work has been published in journals such as Regional Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Urban Geography.