Urban Renewal and College Campuses: Race, Housing, and the Expansion of Higher Education

Keywords: urban renewal, higher education, linnentown, race
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, multiple universities in the United States made use of Section 112 of the Federal Housing Act, acquiring urban redevelopment funds to expand their campuses. Data from the University of Richmond list 79 such projects at both private and public universities, with cumulative funding of $292 million. Supporters of these projects claimed that they provided public benefit both by supporting institutions of higher education and by the improvement of “slum” neighborhoods close to campus. Yet these projects often resulted in the forced displacement of low-income residents through the use of eminent domain, raising the question of which publics benefitted from this redevelopment.

This paper provides background on Section 112 and the projects it funded nationally, describing the extent and size of these programs. We then describe a case study in Athens, Georgia, where the University of Georgia partnered with city leaders to forcibly remove African-American residents of the Linnentown neighborhood, focusing on public correspondence of university leaders and elected officials, the tactics used by local leaders to remove residents, and the economic impacts of the resulting displacement. Through this analysis, we underscore how the supposedly public good of university expansion was in fact deeply uneven. In this way, Section 112 reflected another iteration of mid-century government subsidy that reinforced rather than challenged racialized systems of housing and higher education.