“As expected, the city zoning board today rejected a request by the Daggett development corporation to raze a block of landmark brownstones along Gotham’s Park Row. Thirty years ago Park Row was Gotham City’s most glamorous address, but in recent years the area has suffered a decline, and today, it is a slum better known as the infamous Crime Alley. but to its inhabitants, many of whom spoke at the zoning board today, Crime Alley is the only home they have, and they fear its loss.”
So, for anyone who doesn’t know, slum clearance is a real thing that happened, for a lot of reasons, as a part of “urban renewal.” One of the most famous movies about the topic is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which uses toons to depict the very real phenomenon of black neighborhoods being bought and destroyed to construct highways. The people living in these areas would lose their homes, and their communities.
“Others, like Roland Daggett, Director of the Daggett Development Corporation sees the situation differently.”
“It's tragic. Park Row may be an historical landmark, but it's also a breeding ground for crime. Of course, as much as we disagree with the Zoning Board's decision, our hands are tied.”
This is the kind of reasoning that was commonly used to justify slum clearance, but is now generally recognized as failing to deal with the real issues, and treats neighborhoods as both the cause of all of the problems within them, and as spontaneously generated things. It doesn’t confront why the buildings are in disrepair, or why the people who live there are committing more crime (at least, more street level crime) than the people who live elsewhere.
One common problems with urban renewal projects is that they would destroy all of the old buildings in bad shape, remove all of the people who live there, build something new... and then let either the new area, or whatever area replaces it as the poorest part of the city fall into the same disrepair that they wanted to fix with their shiny new neighborhood, because the systematic issues at the heart of the problem remain, and you couldn’t get the same grants or investments for minor consistent repairs over decades as you could over a big project that will see instant results.