Assessing the Legacy of Planning in the South

Cities throughout the U.S. South created local planning institutions and engaged with urban planning professionals beginning in the early 1900s to address longstanding problems of unregulated development and blighted urban conditions. Central to the planning process was an effort to codify spatial segregation of black residences and businesses through implementation of racial zoning. The unconstitutionality of racial zoning shifted the strategy to embedding racial data in local planning processes to provide guidance to public investment and planning initiatives to sustain residential segregation. The increasing role of federal investments in military spending, urban renewal, highway development, and public housing from the 1930s through the 1960s accelerated transformation of center city neighborhoods while sustaining the segregation system. Concurrently, these planned interventions contributed to expansion of the city footprint and transformation of the South by the early 21st century to the region in the US whose urban social spatial structure was dominated by sprawl. Within this new urban pattern, however, southern center cities retained residential segregation of their black population. While no longer sanctioned by law, racial residential segregation remained a defining facet of southern urban life and largely attributable to the region's planning legacy.