【正文】 6 In the national electionsof 1946, half of the Chicago area‘s congressional seats were won by Republicans (O‘Malley,1980). To preempt the growing reform wave, leaders of the city‘s Democratic organization choseKennelly as the party‘s nominee for mayor. A successful business executive with no previous ties to the machine, Kennelly was appealing to reformers. However, as the machine‘s candidate formayor with no political base of his own, he had little political leverage to assert his independencefrom the party organization (Biles, 1995).Kennelly was well known in business circles, serving as vicepresident of the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry, chairman of the Red Cross fund drive, a trustee of DePaulUniversity, and a member of the Federal Reserve Bank‘s industrial advisory mittee (Biles,1995). After assuming office in April 1947, he quickly made urban renewal a priority, appointing a 15member Committee for Housing Action to develop proposals for housing and slum clearance. The mittee, chaired by Holman Pettibone and including fellow MHPC board membersFerd Kramer and Milton Mumford, played a key role in the passage of the state‘s 1947 urban renewal legislation (Hirsch, 1998). In July 1948, Governor Green announced Chicago‘s first urbanrenewal project to be carried out under the new law (Chicago Tribune, 1948). Groundbreakingfor the construction of new public housing units followed several years later. While progress on urban redevelopment during the early postwar years was heartening tocivic leaders and other proponents of urban renewal, problems soon began to surface. Landassembly, slum clearance, and public housing construction were all taking much longer thanoriginally expected, in some cases placing the pletion of projects in jeopardy. The crux of theproblem, most civic leaders agreed, was the fragmentation of the city‘s administrative powers,which posed a barrier to quick, decisive action. Urban renewal policy was administered by severaldifferent agencies, with responsibilities for slum clearance, redevelopment, public housing, andother activities divided among the early 1950s, this structure had was increasingly difficult to achieve, creating ―many points at which success [could]be blocked。 Sturdy, 1950).6Several other city agencies—including the Chicago Transit Authority,the Department of Streets and Electricity, and the Park District—registered their opposition to the street closure (Neil, 1952). Meanwhile, a group of South Side aldermen opposed theproject altogether, arguing it would create unacceptable hardships for current residents of the area(Chicago Tribune, 1950b).By spring 1950, New York Life had begun to lose patience. In a letter to Mayor Kennelly,pany vicepresident Otto Nelson warned that ―fatal delay and eventual failure will result if thevarious agencies of the city who are involved yield to the temptation to promise and placateat every point where some individual or small group is affected adversely‖ (Nelson, 1950). Withthe fate of the city‘s first urban renewal project hanging in the balance, Kennelly made a rareappearance before city council to express his support for the development (Buck, 1950a). The following month, the council voted 31–12 to approve the project (Buck, 1950b). In February1952, nearly four years after the development was first announced, ground was finally broken onthe city‘s first renewal project. Although urban renewal proponents celebrated this milestone, thelengthy delays experienced by New York Life sent a strong message to private investors that urbanrenewal in Chicago under the present political conditions would require tremendous another wellpublicized case also illustrating the 山東建筑大學畢業(yè)設計外文文獻 及譯文 9 problems of administrative decentralizationfor urban renewal policy, a West Side alderman persuaded the Plan Commission to reclassify hisward from a ―blighted‖ area to a ―rehabilitation‖ area over the objections of the Land Clearance Commission (New York Times, 1950). The change meant that renewal efforts would have to takeplace through rehabilitation of existing structures—a method preferred by ward residents—ratherthan through slum clearance. The Plan Commission‘s decision preempted the efforts of the Land Clearance Commission, which was in the process of surveying the West Side to determine itsselection of slum clearance sites. Commission Chairman John McKinlay urged the mayor todelay action on the matter until the survey was pleted (McKinlay, 1950). MHPC PresidentFerd Kramer warned the mayor of the ―devastating effects of [the Plan Commission‘s] actionon the entire redevelopment program‖ (MHPC, 1950a). However, this time Kennelly declined tointervene, and the city council planning mittee approved the Plan Commission‘s decision by a252 vote. According to a 1950 MHPC report, such actions by the Plan Commission to ―sabotage‖the city‘s slum clearance program ―have discouraged some of the topranking planners who were persuaded to e to Chicago on the promise that ?things were going to happen here.‘ Duringthe past two years, nine professionals have called it quits and gone elsewhere‖ (MHPC, 1950b,p. 3). GOVERNMENT REORGANIZATION: PHASE I By the early 1950s, urban renewal advocates in Chicago had identified the fragmentation ofthe city‘s urban renewal powers as a principal cause of Chicago‘s sluggish redevelopment one civic group put it, ―It is obvious that Chicago has too many agencies working on differentsegments of its housing problem, and that this creates pointless rivalries, overall administrativeinefficiency, excessive costs and public confusion‖ (Citizens Committee to Fight Slums, 1954,p. 23). In 1951, the city council Committee on Housing missioned a study of the organization andadministration of the city‘s urban redevelopment program. The study was initiated by mit