ABSTRACT
Even before World War II reached a conclusion, San Francisco city planners and politicians were thinking about urban renewal, a process that would sweep through most of the nation’s larger cities during the 1950s and 1960s. Mollenkopf (1983) notes, “To mayors, developers, downtown businessmen, the construction trades, and urban planners, urban renewal became an increasingly popular rallying cry” (77). Also called redevelopment, urban renewal was supposed to refurbish and revitalize areas of a city that had decayed and were turning into urban slums. However, more often than not politicians and planners made sure that “urban renewal would spur downtown development rather than neighborhood rehabilitation” (Mollenkopf; 1983, 137). This was the case with one of the fi rst areas slotted for renewal in the City, the predominately African American community called the Western Addition.
