Chicago Department of Urban Renewal Records

The Chicago Department of Urban Renewal (DUR) was created through the combination of the Chicago Land Clearance Commission and the Community Conservation Board in 1962. This merger was the result of the State of Illinois Urban Renewal Consolidation Act of 1961, which required municipalities to create departments of urban renewal to manage projects and funding related to land clearance and redevelopment. However, Chicago’s long-standing interest in addressing the structural and demographic makeup of the city began earlier than the creation of the DUR, as evident through a 1939 Works Progress Administration enumeration study that documented dwellings by homeownership and racial demographics. These studies continued through the 1940s and 1950s.

Though the city continued to study land use and demographics, new building slowed drastically as attention was shifted to the war effort from 1939 to 1945. In the years immediately following World War II, Chicago faced new housing and development challenges. As suburbs developed, white, middle class residents moved out of the city in record numbers, resulting in lower property tax incomes and growing fear that “white flight,” and deteriorating neighborhoods, especially those close to the downtown business center, could pose a threat to the city’s economic future. Although the African American population had grown steadily throughout the Great Migration, from the 1920s to the 1940s, the vast majority of Blacks in Chicago lived in a limited area known as the “Black Belt,” located on the city’s South and West Sides. Overcrowding and lack of sanitation plagued many of these residences. After World War II, a national housing crisis exacerbated the urgent need for improved urban planning. Urban renewal was seen as a solution to these issues; city planners argued that if unsafe dwellings and objectionable businesses were removed, they could be replaced by improved buildings and raise property values at the same time.

Federal, state and local governments created legislation meant to safeguard the value of business centers and property tax bases while providing more modern structures for the city’s residents. The State of Illinois passed the Blighted Areas Redevelopment Act and the Relocation Act in July of 1947. These Acts gave municipalities broader rights of eminent domain and created state-level funding sources to demolish old buildings and construct new ones. The United States passed the Housing Act of 1949, assigning financial support to urban renewal projects and slum clearance, and was amended in 1954 to add funding for the rehabilitation of existing structures. The DUR (and its predecessor, the Chicago Land Clearance Commission) chose many neighborhoods as “study areas.” After collecting data and photographs, the DUR declared some areas “blighted” as a result of dilapidated buildings, overcrowding and outdated sanitation facilities. Some buildings in more stable areas qualified for conservation, which provided owners government funds to update structures. Areas deemed “slum” or “blighted” were often razed and replaced with public housing, private development or university expansions. In cooperation with the Chicago Housing Authority, the DUR facilitated the rapid expansion of high-density public housing projects in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s.

Opponents of urban renewal claimed that the city’s pattern for redevelopment consolidated wealth and removed poor and minority residents from valuable real estate near downtown business districts at taxpayers’ expense and noted that public housing sites were chosen in racially segregated areas. In Chicago, activists such as Faith Rich of the Chicago N.A.A.C.P.’s Housing Committee questioned the criteria used for defining blighted areas and argued that slum clearance did not solve housing problems for those removed. Jane Jacobs’s 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, critiqued the urban renewal movement as a continuation of existing racial and logistical problems in city planning. In 1963, author James Baldwin assigned Urban Renewal the pejorative nickname “Negro Removal.”

The DUR oversaw site clearance selection and assigned rehabilitation funds, but it did not retain ownership of cleared land. Sites were transferred to the Chicago Housing Authority or private organizations at a subsidized price after the DUR approved proposed plans. In 1974, the federal funding program supporting urban renewal ended and was replaced by the Community Development Block Grant program.

In 1992, the City of Chicago combined the Department of Urban Renewal with the Commercial District Development Commission to create the Community Development Commission.