Urban Renewal of the 1950s through 1970s has acquired a very poor reputation, much of it deserved. But reducing it to an unchanging story of urban destruction misses some important legacies and genuinely progressive goals. Those include efforts to create more socially mixed communities, to involve suburbs-not just cities-in solving metropolitan inequality, and most importantly, to hold the federal government responsible for funding more affordable housing and other urban investments, rather than depend primarily on the private sector. Cohen will revisit this history by following the long career of Edward J. Logue, who worked to revitalize New Haven in the 1950s, became the architect of the "New Boston" in the 1960s, and later led innovative organizations in New York at the state level and in the South Bronx. She will analyze the evolution in Logue's thinking and actions, when and how he met resistance and accommodation by communities, and what he and many others who cared about cities learned in facing the challenges of urban revitalization during the suburban boom of the second half of the 20th century.

Lizabeth Cohen is the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of a American Studies in the History Department and University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard, where she has taught since 1997. From 2011-18, she was the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. This lecture is drawn from her recent book, Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019). Her previous books include A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America and Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. She is also the co-author with David Kennedy of the popular A.P. and college U.S. history textbook, The American Pageant.

Paul S. Grogan is President and CEO of the Boston Foundation, Greater Boston's community foundation, which seeks to bring the collective power of our region's people and resources together to drive real change, and is one of the largest community foundations in the nation-with net assets of $1.3 billion. In addition to grantmaking, the Foundation facilitates public discourse and action, commissions research into the most critical issues of our time and advocates for public policy that advances opportunity for everyone.