Book Review

Canada and the United States

Many historians have written about the shortcomings of urban renewal in America's largest cities. By examining the renewal experience of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, David Schuyler shifts the focus from the nation's major metropolises to a smaller city. Yet his criticisms of the renewal experience are not new. In accord with previous authors, he criticizes urban renewal for destroying more than it built and for burdening the poor, especially the African-American poor. As in larger cities, racial divisions and suburbanization were implacable problems, and urban renewal proved an inadequate weapon in the battle against these debilitating factors. Thus, in Lancaster as in larger cities, the legacy of urban renewal was gloomy. Much ado about rebuilding the aging city produced little worthy of praise.

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Schuyler examines both downtown renewal and attempts to upgrade residential areas in Lancaster's southeastern quadrant. The downtown story is typical of urban renewal sagas elsewhere. Many plans were presented that promised an ultramodern facelift for sagging commercial areas. Each plan elicited both opposition and support, and wrangling over the future of downtown extended over decades. Eventually bulldozers and wrecking balls leveled old buildings but new construction lagged, leaving empty expanses advertising to passersby the failure of renewal. The new construction never looked as good in reality as in the plans, and the predictions of planners usually proved wrong. Schuyler gives the impression that downtown Lancaster lost more than it gained from the long renewal effort. Suburbanization proceeded at an undiminished pace, and the old city core continued to lose business.

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