Urban Renewal: Healing Or Harming?

Psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD contends that urban renewal by eminent domain harms public health by its dislocation of residents from their homes, jobs, businesses, community institutions and their web of relationships. She terms this mental health harm "root shock." Both in her book: Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It and her website www.rootshock.org, she examines these effects.

As a Libertarian party activist against eminent domain and a reader of her book, I invited her to speak at the recent Libertarian Party of New York www.ny.lp.org convention. Her presence does not mean that she endorses the Libertarian Party www.lp.org or its candidates.

In her presentation, Dr. Fullilove had us picture what would happen if one luncheon table full of attendees was to be declared blighted and removed. Each person has a web of relationships that would be affected.

Dr. Fullilove suggested one consequence of the urban renewal efforts that followed the Second World War was to greatly diminish the number of jazz clubs in urban America. The clubs themselves were eliminated by eminent domain and the musicians and core black audience were removed to other locations. Compare this with the insights of economists Frederic Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman on unintended consequences of statist interventions. We are assuming for the moment that these are unintended consequences.

Hayek and Mises demolished the arguments of economic planners. Their insights are equally valid for urban planners. Economist Murray Rothbard (full disclosure: he was a friend of mine and published some of my early work) coupled libertarian political philosophy with free-market economic analysis to point out there was not necessarily benign intent behind the planners.

When I fought the Town of North Hempstead on behalf of St. Luke’s Pentecostal Church, the church’s Rev. Jenkins said that "The Town wants to renew the community with the bureaucrat’s plan and the taxpayers money. We want to renew the community with God’s plan and our own money."

Today, the planners are at work against Brooklyn property owners, tenants and all New York taxpayers in the Atlantic Yards project.

Dr. Fullilove’s reminds us that dispossession hurts not just for a while but for a lifetime with effects even on those who never lived there. We should thank her for her work. -30-

(Richard Cooper is the export/import manager of a Long Island, NY manufacturing firm. He was a Ron Paul delegate. He has served as Nassau County Libertarian Chair, Libertarian Party of New York chair and is now an At-Large member of the LPNY state committee. He supports Bob Barr www.bobbarr2008.com for president.)

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