New Towns and Social Welfare Prospects: 1975 - 2000 A.D.

Authors

Arthur B. Shostak, Drexel University

Abstract

America's 15 HUD-aided new towns are mired in such serious financial problems as to make likely the emphatic close of the 1968-1974 Golden Age of modern new town development. Contrary, however, to present-day indications there is reason to expect a revival of new town prospects in the late 1970's, and social welfare components may be center stage in the matter.

There is no gainsaying the seriousness of the 1975 collapse of the American new towns movement: HUD, for example, from a prior commitment to approving at least ten projects a year between 1968 and 2000 A.D. is now refusing to even accept applications from would-be developers. Jonathan, Minnesota, is reputedly up for sale; Riverton, New York moves in and out of default on its financial obligations; and even the Glamour Child of them all, Columbia, Maryland, has been compelled to arrange financial reorganization. UDC's much-heralded Roosevelt Island project has lost both its educational innovation edge, and its access to LMIH subsidization monies, while elsewhere in the nation's 100 or so new towns plans for social welfare advances are quietly folded away in deep drawers.

Recommended Citation

Shostak, Arthur B. (1975) "New Towns and Social Welfare Prospects: 1975 - 2000 A.D.," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15453/0191-5096.1116
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol3/iss2/4