The Trap of Triage

In 1975, consultants from Team Four Inc. advised St. Louis planners to pursue a strategy of neighborhood triage: “conservation” for areas in good health, “redevelopment” for areas just starting to decline, and “depletion” for areas already in severe distress. The firm’s recommended strategy reflected the latest thinking among urban planners, but it provoked outrage among residents of the city’s predominantly black North Side, who read “depletion” as a promise of benign neglect. In this article, I explain how Team Four justified its advice, and why, four decades later, the controversy over its memo persists.