Social-Welfare Planning

Social welfare is being forced by the activities of urban renewal to take on new dimensions and a new defini tion. The old apparatus of social-welfare planning has been able to disregard totalities of need, to avoid accountability for failure or gaps, and to function without discipline. Urban renewal cannot do this because its ultimate objective is a wholly sound city. It has been demonstrated that physical improve ments will not produce net gains unless accompanied by ap propriate and adequate social-welfare programs. Thus, social- welfare planning should be a function of the agency responsible for physical planning; plan and strategy for both must be developed together. Because discipline or conformity to plan cannot be imposed on voluntary agencies, both plan and implementation must be derived, primarily, from public sources. The concept now developing is based on two principles: first, priority must be given to the amplification and modification of those systems which operate naturally as the dynamics of upward mobility—namely, employment, income, education, and housing; second, social-welfare services should be focused first on the areas or projects of urban renewal so that problems of the city can be attacked at a feasible rate and that full use be made of "society" or social structure as an instrument of social rehabilitation.