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designed by its early leaders, including Robert Weaver, the

former head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, who

became the first HUD secretary (and, in keeping with HUD's

focus on black neighborhoods, the first black cabinet secre-

tary in any department), and Robert Wood, the former head of

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Political Sci-

ence Department, who became under secretary.  Their views

and assumptions, as well as those of their colleagues and

allies, are well worth reexamining both as founding princi-

ples and in light of their effects.4

Were American Cities in Crisis?

"Our most critical domestic problem," wrote Weaver, "is

improving the quality of urban life for all Americans. . . .

It is our goal to reconstruct the physical and social fabric

of the American urban environment."5  That must be regarded,

in retrospect, as a vast amplification of perceived prob-

lems.  Although it is true that cities, if defined strictly

by their historical incorporation limits--that is, the city

limits--were losing population, their commercial downtown

centers continued serving as the financial hubs for the

expanding metropolitan areas.  Rather than there being a

generalized "urban crisis," something far more limited was

occurring.  People were leaving older, inner-ring residen-

tial neighborhoods (in effect, the first "suburban" residen-

tial areas outside the center city) that had been incorpo-

rated into cities during the Progressive Era.  Those neigh-

borhoods were found in various medium- and large-sized

cities from Paterson, New Jersey, and Rochester, New York,

to Oakland, California.  Specific examples include Boston's

Roxbury, Chicago's South Side, and the north side of Phila-

delphia neighborhoods.

Upwardly mobile families were choosing to leave behind

the multifamily homes and apartment buildings of such areas

in favor of newer suburbs with detached homes and yards.

Left behind were neighborhoods, which now had smaller total

populations, whose replacement populations (in many cases,

made up of southern-born black "immigrants") were less pros-

perous.  The result was, predictably, a group of inner-ring

residential areas shabbier than the surrounding, rapidly

expanding metropolitan area.  The perceived problem, which

was assumed to be long-term, lay in the cities' "gray," or

inner-ring residential, areas.