Spatial Deconcentration Theory:

Government Motives for Redeveloping the Lower East Side

Since the 1930s, the city’s renewal policies resulted in the wide scale disruption and dissolution of many established minority communities. Many sociologists, anthropologists, historians and others have written of these effects in relation to the LES. In the early 1980s a theory of “spatial deconcentration� emerged as a probable government motive to redevelop the area. Originally proffered by Yolanda Ward, a 22 year-old black Howard University student and member of the Washington, D.C. based Grass Roots Unity Conference and co-chair of the City Wide Housing Coalition, spatial deconcentration theory is based on a military strategy for establishing control over urban areas (Morgan, 1983). It appears to have first been outlined in the Kerner Commission Report in 1968 and later referred to explicitly in Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) documents uncovered by Ward and her colleagues. The Kerner Commission, formally known as the National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders, was convened by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the wake of the wide spread urban rioting of the late 1960s. Johnson charged the commission with examining the cause of the urban riots and developing strategies to control or prevent future unrest (Ward, 1980).

Spatial deconcentration theory has since been a subject of hot debate among some urban scholars, anarchists, and activists. It is a set of housing, economic development, and land-use policies designed to disperse low-income populations. Deconcentration of the poor is achieved through slum clearance, aggressive tax collection, and code enforcement resulting in foreclosure or condemnation of slum buildings. Section 8 Certificate and Voucher programs, which encourage relocation by providing the poor with portable housing allowances, is a more recent spatial deconcentration tactic. Since the targets of such policies are often poor minorities, theorists speculate that the policies' goal is to re-establish white, middle-class dominance in the inner-cities. Although spatial deconcentration theory did not surface until 1980, it has implications that relate to the inner city abandonment that escalated after the Kerner Commission released its 1968 report. The theory also provides an explanation for the slum clearance and urban renewal policies of earlier decades.

Anthony Downs, a consultant to the Commission, had developed what he called the “Law of Dominance� even before his tenure with the Commission. He observed, “Whites—like most other middle-class citizens of any race—want to be sure that the social, cultural, and economic milieu and values of their own group dominate their own residential environment and the educational environment of their children� (1968, p. 1338). Downs further developed this theory through his work with the Commission where it is presented in the policy recommendations of the Report’s 16th and 17th chapters (1970; 1973; 1994). Downs predicated the revival and future stability of the inner-cities on re-introducing and maintaining white, middle-class dominance. This “law of dominance� is at the heart of the spatial deconcentration theory. While working at both the Brookings Institute, and the Manhattan Institute (a conservative think-tank that influences Giuliani administration policy), he has used dominance theory to shape public policy (Morales, 1997; PC Morales, Nov 9, 1998).

Downs steeped his theory of spatial deconcentration in the rhetoric of integration and equality (1968, p. 1340-1). Piven and Cloward, however, make a strong case against integration through spatial deconcentration due to its hindrance of the achievement of equality:

Minority groups will win acceptance from the majority by developing their own bases of power, not by submerging their unorganized and leaderless numbers in coalitions dominated by other and more solidary groups…In these terms, then, physical desegregation is not only irrelevant to the ghetto but can actually prevent the eventual integration of blacks in the institutional life of this society. For integration must be understood not as the mingling of bodies in school and neighborhood but as participation in and shared control over the major institutional spheres of American life. And that is a question of developing communal associations that can be bases for power—not of dispersing a community that is powerless (p. 198).

Advocates of integration policies claim that poor and minority residents are able to access better community resources through such policies. However, by deconcentrating poor and minority populations, the government dilutes any political or social power these groups have. Particularly on the LES, where traditionally there is very little economic or political capital among individuals, communal associations and community groups are tools for acquiring and wielding political power. Urban renewal, forced relocation and evictions wreak havoc on community associations, destroying their power and effectively de-politicizing the poor.

Christopher Mele writes that, “Spatial deconcentration of Puerto Rican residents…displacement from their homes by urban renewal projects, and the unscrupulous tactics of landlords, inhibited the formation of the community-based self-help organizations that had been crucial in easing the transition for earlier immigrants� (p. 130-1). Mele draws a comparison between the Puerto Rican immigrants of the post-war period who, in large part, did not match the success of the predecessors who were able to achieve success and move out of the LES. He attributes the success of the earlier generations to the strong social networks they formed through self-segregation in the neighborhood, an option that the government’s housing policy hindered for later immigrants (Jargowski, 1997, p. 13).
Jacobs discusses the important role that community groups play in creating political power by mobilizing votes to influence the political decisions that effect the community:

Of course other qualities than sheer population size count in effectiveness [of a district] – especially good communication and good morale. But population size is vital because it represents, if most of the time by implication, votes. There are only two ultimate public powers in shaping and running American cities: votes and control of the money.…An effective district—and through its mediation, the street neighborhoods—possesses one of these powers: the power of votes. Through this, and this alone, can it effectively influence the power brought to bear on it, for good or for ill, by public money. (p. 131)

The two other strengths that Jacobs refers to besides money are “good communication and good morale.� Spatial deconcentration and planned shrinkage undermine communication and morale through the destruction of communities. Not only does the Puerto Rican population of the LES experience the primary barrier of language (it is still a problem in the community garden preservation battles of today), there is the added obstacle of geographic dislocation caused by urban renewal, landlord abandonment, and evictions. As Mele and Jacobs point out, this geographic dislocation hindered the type of organizing that fosters the development of political power. Spatial deconcentration also decreases the number of voters in a district, as it has in the LES.