This week in Detroit City History: 1968 - Federal "Model Cities" program

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This week in Detroit City History: 1968 -Detroit Common Council approves the Federal "Model Cities" program.

Model Cities was an element of President LBJ’s “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” programs. Created in reaction to the failure of other urban renewal, welfare and anti-poverty projects to stem the urban violence and disillusionment, the "Model Cities" program was intended to help agencies coordinate outreach. Results included such benefits as the subsidization of over 25,000 workers at municipal and nonprofit agencies nationwide. This subsidization was explicitly intended to increase the hiring of residents from the ghetto yet never more than 50% of workers were from ghetto neighborhoods.

Cities designated as "Model Cities" included Newark, Camden, Oakland and Detroit, but many cities like Chicago participated to a more limited extent.

Detroit is often cited as a "Model City" in the 60's, but few realize that this designation often refers to the many federal programs the City received in this period. Detroit was considered by many as a test laboratory for President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs. As was almost always the case, "Model Cities" was an ambitious federal urban aid program that ultimately fell short of its goals. Many argue the subsidization resulted in more of patronage benefits to City governments than real quality of life benefits to the urban poor. The programs also sparked strong resentment from suburban and rural residents which helped Nixon to flip many formerly Democratic voters in regions like Metro-Detroit and win the presidential election in 1968.

In 1969 the Nixon administration officially changed course, but being Nixon, rather than stopping the program immediately, he used the program to his own patronage benefits until it was ultimately discontinued in 1974- replaced with community development block grants and other HUD Policies. However, Detroit's "Citizen District Councils"- City-sponsored planning advisory boards in designated "Urban Renewal" areas composed of elected citizens- were born out of these programs and remain in place to this day.

While this might sound like ancient history if you look at the structure of "Empowerment Zones" and other continuing "development" programs in Detroit and Michigan you will find their structure follows this early model.