Page 30 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Consumption in Context . 15

the result of such social processes as individual preference; that is, say-
ing that "blacks [or Puerto Ricans, or whites, or the Irish] like to live to-
gether" cannot entirely or even primarily account for the on-the-ground
situation. Rather, residential patterns can be seen as the not-wholly sur-
prising outcome of programmatic urban restructuring undertaken by
successive New Haven political administrations and city agencies. Thus,
while such communities as Newhallville are effectively isolated from the
rest of the city in multiple ways, this isolation has been accomplished to
a great degree through processes that originate outside the community.
Paradoxically, then, it is the very processes working to isolate areas like
Newhallville that also tie these locations into the larger region. Residen-
tial segregation is a case in point.
Already well under way in the first half of this century, residential
segregation was given a big boost in the years during which New Haven
undertook extensive urban redevelopment. It was also during this period,
roughly the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, that the local economy
made the difficult shift from manufacturing to service. The combined
pressure of these two major events proved especially disruptive for the
black community. In the United States urban renewal often has come
hand in hand with the decimation of black residential neighborhoods,
and the ghettoization of Newhallville has resulted in no small measure
from a combination of such projects and programs. One of the most im-
portant sources of funds was the federally supported "Model Cities" pro-
gram: New Haven had emerged as the nation's model "model city" by the
time the Great Society years were in full swing (Dahl 1961; Fainstein and
Fainstein 1974). Robert Dahl, in his classic study of political organiza-
tion and participation in New Haven, writes:

By the end of 1958, New Haven had spent more federal funds per
capita for planning its redevelopment projects than any of the coun-
try's largest cities, more than any other city in New England, and
more than any other city of comparable size except one. Only one city
in the country, the nation's capital, had received more per person in
capital grants. .. By 1959 much of the center of [New Haven] was
.
razed to the ground. (1961,121-22)
From the late 1950s through the early 1970s, over half a billion feder-
al dollars funded urban redevelopment projects to improve economic
and living conditions in New Haven. Much of the razing that Dahl notes
was accomplished in one of New Haven's oldest and most established
neighborhoods of black working-class homeowners. The now infamous