New Towns Intown in a National New-Communities Program

Abstract

Given the predominant attitudes in the United States today—largely those of resistance to racial and class mixing—a major movement of new-community building could easily become the 1970s counterpart of the FHA-encouraged segregated suburban building of the post-World War II years. A further polarization of our society would be a high price to pay for the improvement in life styles that new communities could conceivably bring about for their residents. It is possible that those new communities that have been reliant upon federal government subsidies could be forced to provide a certain amount of racial and income-class mixing as the price for the subsidies, but a little arithmetic—combined with the logic of modern United States politics—suggests that the number of minority and poor families that are likely to gain in this way would be quite small.