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Fast Company
29-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Today's housing crisis could learn from this 1960s anti-poverty program
In cities across the U.S., the housing crisis has reached a breaking point. Rents are skyrocketing, homelessness is rising and working-class neighborhoods are threatened by displacement. These challenges might feel unprecedented. But they echo a moment more than half a century ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, housing and urban inequality were at the center of national politics. American cities were grappling with rapid urban decline, segregated and substandard housing, and the fallout of highway construction and urban renewal projects that displaced hundreds of thousands of disproportionately low-income and Black residents. The federal government decided to try to do something about it. the Model Cities Program. As a scholar of housing justice and urban planning, I've studied how this short-lived initiative aimed to move beyond patchwork fixes to poverty and instead tackle its structural causes by empowering communities to shape their own futures. Building a great society The Model Cities Program emerged in 1966 as part of Johnson's Great Society agenda, a sweeping effort to eliminate poverty, reduce racial injustice and expand social welfare programs in the United States. Earlier urban renewal programs had been roundly criticized for displacing communities of color. Much of this displacement occurred through federally funded highway and slum clearance projects that demolished entire neighborhoods and often left residents without decent options for new housing. So the Johnson administration sought a more holistic approach. The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act established a federal framework for cities to coordinate housing, education, employment, health care and social services at the neighborhood level. To qualify for the program, cities had to apply for planning grants by submitting a detailed proposal that included an analysis of neighborhood conditions, long-term goals and strategies for addressing problems. Federal funds went directly to city governments, which then distributed them to local agencies and community organizations through contracts. These funds were relatively flexible but had to be tied to locally tailored plans. For example, Kansas City, Missouri, used Model Cities funding to support a loan program that expanded access to capital for local small businesses, helping them secure financing that might otherwise have been out of reach. Unlike previous programs, Model Cities emphasized what Johnson described as 'comprehensive' and 'concentrated' efforts. It wasn't just about rebuilding streets or erecting public housing. It was about creating new ways for government to work in partnership with the people most affected by poverty and racism. A revolutionary approach to poverty What made Model Cities unique wasn't just its scale but its philosophy. At the heart of the program was an insistence on ' widespread citizen participation,' which required cities that received funding to include residents in the planning and oversight of local programs. The program also drew inspiration from civil rights leaders. One of its early architects, Whitney M. Young Jr., had called for a ' Domestic Marshall Plan ' – a reference to the federal government's efforts to rebuild Europe after World War II – to redress centuries of racial inequality. Young's vision helped shape the Model Cities framework, which proposed targeted systemic investments in housing, health, education, employment and civic leadership in minority communities. In Atlanta, for example, the Model Cities Program helped fund neighborhood health clinics and job training programs. But the program also funded leadership councils that for the first time gave local low-income residents a direct voice in how city funds were spent. In other words, neighborhood residents weren't just beneficiaries. They were planners, advisers and, in some cases, staffers. This commitment to community participation gave rise to a new kind of public servant – what sociologists Martin and Carolyn Needleman famously called ' guerrillas in the bureaucracy.' These were radical planners—often young, idealistic and deeply embedded in the neighborhoods they served. Many were recruited and hired through new Model Cities funding that allowed local governments to expand their staff with community workers aligned with the program's goals. Working from within city agencies, these new planners used their positions to challenge top-down decision-making and push for community-driven planning. Their work was revolutionary not because they dismantled institutions but because they reimagined how institutions could function, prioritizing the voices of residents long excluded from power. Strengthening community ties In cities across the country, planners fought to redirect public resources toward locally defined priorities. In some cities, such as Tucson, the program funded education initiatives such as bilingual cultural programming and college scholarships for local students. In Baltimore, it funded mobile health services and youth sports programs. In New York City, the program supported new kinds of housing projects called vest-pocket developments, which got their name from their smaller scale: midsize buildings or complexes built on vacant lots or underutilized land. New housing such as the Betances Houses in the South Bronx were designed to add density without major redevelopment taking place—a direct response to midcentury urban renewal projects, which had destroyed and displaced entire neighborhoods populated by the city's poorest residents. Meanwhile, cities such as Seattle used the funds to renovate older apartment buildings instead of tearing them down, which helped preserve the character of local neighborhoods. The goal was to create affordable housing while keeping communities intact. What went wrong? Despite its ambitious vision, Model Cities faced resistance almost from the start. The program was underfunded and politically fragile. While some officials had hoped for US$2 billion in annual funding, the actual allocation was closer to $500 million to $600 million, spread across more than 60 cities. Then the political winds shifted. Though designed during the optimism of the mid-1960s, the program started being implemented under President Richard Nixon in 1969. His administration pivoted away from 'people programs' and toward capital investment and physical development. Requirements for resident participation were weakened, and local officials often maintained control over the process, effectively marginalizing the everyday citizens the program was meant to empower. In cities such as San Francisco and Chicago, residents clashed with bureaucrats over control, transparency and decision-making. In some places, participation was reduced to token advisory roles. In others, internal conflict and political pressure made sustained community governance nearly impossible. Critics, including Black community workers and civil rights activists, warned that the program risked becoming a new form of ' neocolonialism,' one that used the language of empowerment while concentrating control in the hands of white elected officials and federal administrators. A legacy worth revisiting Although the program was phased out by 1974, its legacy lived on. In cities across the country, Model Cities trained a generation of Black and brown civic leaders in what community development leaders and policy advocates John A. Sasso and Priscilla Foley called ' a little noticed revolution.' In their book of the same name, they describe how those involved in the program went on to serve in local government, start nonprofits and advocate for community development. It also left an imprint on later policies. Efforts such as participatory budgeting, community land trusts and neighborhood planning initiatives owe a debt to Model Cities' insistence that residents should help shape the future of their communities. And even as some criticized the program for failing to meet its lofty goals, others saw its value in creating space for democratic experimentation.
Fast Company
09-05-2025
- General
- Fast Company
The local bus should be like a sidewalk with a motor
You don't wait for the sidewalk. You don't check an app to see if it's working. You don't wonder if it's meant for someone else. Sidewalks are just there—always available, always on. And when they're well designed, you barely notice them. They quietly support everything: commerce, mobility, safety, health, and freedom of movement. Sidewalks don't require instructions. They're intuitive. Step on, move forward. That's the framing we need for local bus service. A well-run bus system is an express sidewalk—a piece of infrastructure that dramatically expands the number of destinations within walking distance. Unfortunately, buses aren't thought of that way. In most American cities, public transit is treated like a last-resort service, a social program for people who can't afford cars, something to be endured rather than embraced. And so they're designed that way: infrequent, inconvenient, hard to use, and often stuck in traffic. The blueprint If a bus system is going to function as a seamless extension of the sidewalk, it has to operate on the same principles: ● Frequency. You don't plan your life around a sidewalk's availability. ● Convenience. Buses must go where people actually want to go, with direct routes that don't meander like a bureaucrat's fantasy map. ● Safety. Waiting at a stop should feel as safe and dignified as standing on a downtown corner. ● Reliability. If you can't trust it to arrive when it says it will, it's not infrastructure—it's a gamble. If general purpose car traffic dominates the curb, buses will never scale, and walking—the most ancient, equitable form of transport—remains functionally capped. Dedicated transit lanes are the asphalt equivalent of pouring a continuous slab of concrete for pedestrians. Bus-only lanes ensure that the people choosing high-efficiency transportation aren't punished for it. (As an added bonus, people can ride bikes in the bus lanes.) Treat the bus like a sidewalk, and people will use it like one Most Americans only experience a transit system that treats them like a priority when they travel overseas. 'It was amazing. We didn't even have to rent a car.' Here in the U.S., we've been conditioned to expect low-frequency bus service with few shelters, unpredictable arrivals, and a cultural subtext that transit is a charity case for those people. But we don't build sidewalks out of pity. We build them because they're essential infrastructure like plumbing or electricity. If we want to cut congestion, reduce emissions, boost economic access, and improve quality of life, we already have the most elegant, human-scaled delivery system imaginable: walking. But to expand the range of walkability, we need a mobility system that functions like walking at scale—intuitive, frequent, and always ready. That's what a local transit system could be. The moment we stop treating the bus as a social program and start treating it like an express sidewalk, we unlock a public good that meets people where they are and moves them forward. The bus can't be stuck in traffic If the local bus is going to function as an express sidewalk, I can't overstate the importance of high-frequency, reliable service. That means it can't be stuck in traffic jams. On multilane roads, the obvious answer is dedicated transit lanes. Transportation experts typically think of road reconfigurations as replacing general purpose lanes with bike lanes and a center bidirectional left-turn lane. But on a busy transit corridor, the road diet can just as easily be designed for express sidewalks. DIY street design You don't have to be a professional engineer or graphic artist to come up with renderings that illustrate before-and-after scenarios for a street in your community. Streetmix is a free web tool that's ridiculously easy to use. It's set up for drag-and-drop design so you can make a typical section that reflects your local conditions. Here's a short article with instructions to use Streetmix (free!) and Google Maps (free!) to design the future you want, instead of the one you've been told is inevitable. A bus isn't charity, it's concrete infrastructure that expands the reach of your feet. When we treat it like an express sidewalk—built for frequency, protected from gridlock, and trusted like any utility—it stops being a backup plan and starts being the backbone of a thriving city. We don't need to convince people to ride the bus. We just need to operate it like we mean it.
