Distributed or Democratic Risk Governance? Rendering Philadelphia Reinvestment-Ready in the Civil Rights Era

• In Event: STS and the City: Engagements and Interventions in Techno-Politics III

Abstract

Philadelphia has not officially adopted a plan to “right size” its real estate, like other ‘legacy cities’ that haven’t regained the residential population, commercial proprietors or industrial production they housed in the mid-twentieth century. In 1955, however, Philadelphia’s mayor announced, or by some accounts belatedly admitted, it had begun shifting its financial and human resources for real estate reinvestment towards conserving outer-borough properties at risk of depreciation after a decade of clearing redlined parcels throughout the inner city. Most urban historians attribute the city’s racially biased, short-sided approach towards urban renewal to actuaries, appraisers and lenders of the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency, which began in 1954 to incentivize rehabilitation of “good stock” (stable buildings and their white occupants) in otherwise subprime suburban subdivisions. Rather than dismiss the city’s belated confession to risk management as retrenchment rebranded, this paper highlights the city’s reliance on civic organizations based in outer borough communities to identify and indemnify insecure private property of public utility, namely railroad stations and grounds, with their sweat equity and citizen science if not financial and social capital. A distributed rather than democratic mode of risk governance, I contend, Philadelphia’s public-private partnerships between 1955 and 1985 demonstrate insidious methods of real estate recovery can insure resilience and abate recidivism. The paper concludes with a cautionary tale for municipalities that claim to “right size right” by incorporating corporatist community builders into risk assessment, for their civic epistemologies can undermine as well as underwrite the right to the city.

Author

• Fallon Samuels-Aidoo, Harvard University