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Business & Economics

Could a bold anti-poverty experiment from the 1960s inspire a new era in housing justice?

Phys Org
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88% Informative

In the 1950s and 1960s , housing and urban inequality were at the center of national politics.

President Lyndon B. Johnson launched one of the most ambitious experiments in urban policy: the Model Cities Program .

Julian Zelizer : Model Cities aimed to move beyond patchwork fixes to poverty and instead tackle its structural causes by empowering communities to shape their own futures.

He says Model Cities emphasized what Johnson described as "comprehensive" and "concentrated" efforts.

Despite its ambitious vision, Model Cities faced resistance almost from the start.

The program was underfunded and politically fragile, but it offered a vision of how democratic, local planning could promote health, security and community.

Efforts such as participatory budgeting owe a debt to Model Cities' insistence that residents should help shape the future of their communities.