Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning
cityA city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...
, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. It may feature
deindustrializationDeindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially heavy industry or manufacturing industry. It is an opposite of industrialization.- Multiple interpretations :There are multiple...
, depopulation or changing population,
economic restructuringEconomic restructuring refers to the phenomenon of Western urban areas shifting from a manufacturing to a service sector economic base. This transformation has affected demographics including income distribution, employment, and social hierarchy; institutional arrangements including the growth of...
, abandoned buildings, high local
unemploymentUnemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement,
crimeCrime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape.
Since the 1970s and 1980s, urban decay has been associated with Western cities, especially in
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and parts of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. Since then, major structural changes in global economies, transportation, and government policy created the economic and then the social conditions resulting in urban decay.
The effects counter the development of most of Europe and North America; in countries beyond, urban decay is manifested in the peripheral
slumA slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
s at the outskirts of a metropolis, while the city center and the
inner cityThe inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the lower-income residential districts in the city centre and nearby areas...
retain high
real estateIn general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
values and sustain a steadily increasing populace. In contrast, North American and British cities often experience population flights to the suburbs and exurb
commuter townA commuter town is an urban community that is primarily residential, from which most of the workforce commutes out to earn their livelihood. Many commuter towns act as suburbs of a nearby metropolis that workers travel to daily, and many suburbs are commuter towns...
s, i.e.,
white flightWhite flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
. Another characteristic of urban decay is blight—the visual, psychological, and physical effects of living among empty lots, buildings and condemned houses. Such desolate properties are socially dangerous to the community because they attract criminals and street gangs, contributing to the volume of crime.
Urban decay has no single cause; it results from combinations of inter-related socio-economic conditions—including the city’s
urban planningUrban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
decisions, the
povertyPoverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
of the local populace, the construction of freeway roads and rail road lines that bypass the area, depopulation by
suburbanizationSuburbanization a term used to describe the growth of areas on the fringes of major cities. It is one of the many causes of the increase in urban sprawl. Many residents of metropolitan regions work within the central urban area, choosing instead to live in satellite communities called suburbs...
of peripheral lands, real estate neighborhood
redliningRedlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a...
, and
xenophobicXenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
immigration restrictions.
Background
During the
Industrial RevolutionThe Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, rural people moved from the country to the cities for employment in manufacturing industry, thus causing the urban population boom. However, subsequent economic change left many cities economically vulnerable. Studies such as the Urban Task Force (DETR 1999), the Urban White Paper (DETR 2000), and a study of Scottish cities (2003) posit that areas suffering industrial decline—high unemployment, poverty, and a decaying physical environment (sometimes including contaminated land and obsolete infrastructure)—prove "highly resistant to improvement".
Changes in means of transport, from the public to the private – specifically, the private motor car – eliminated some of the cities' public transport service advantages, e.g., fixed-route buses and trains. In particular, at the end of World War II, many political decisions favored suburban development and encouraged
suburbanizationSuburbanization a term used to describe the growth of areas on the fringes of major cities. It is one of the many causes of the increase in urban sprawl. Many residents of metropolitan regions work within the central urban area, choosing instead to live in satellite communities called suburbs...
, by drawing city taxes from the cities to build new infrastructure for remote, racially-restricted suburban towns. That was the context of racial discrimination exercised as "
white flightWhite flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
", the middle- and upper-class abandonment of U.S. cities, and the start of
urban sprawlUrban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...
; only the non-white and the poor inhabited the cities.
After
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Western economies lifted tariffs and
outsourcedOutsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...
most of their
manufacturingManufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
industries and businesses overseas, where foreign labor is cheaper than domestic. During the change from a manufacturing to a services economy, buying an automobile became economically feasible for most people. In the U.S., the federal government legislated
discriminatory lending practicesMortgage discrimination or mortgage lending discrimination is the practice of banks, governments or other lending institutions denying loans to one or more groups of people primarily on the basis of race, ethnic origin, sex or religion...
for the
Federal Housing AdministrationThe Federal Housing Administration is a United States government agency created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. It insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building and home buying...
(FHA) via
redliningRedlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a...
.
Later, under president
Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
, urban centers were drained further through the building of the
Interstate Highway SystemThe Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, , is a network of limited-access roads including freeways, highways, and expressways forming part of the National Highway System of the United States of America...
. In North America this shift manifested itself in strip malls, suburban retail and employment centers, and very low-density housing estates. Large areas of many northern cities in the United States experienced population decreases and a degradation of urban areas. Inner-city property values declined and economically disadvantaged populations moved in. In the U.S., the new inner-city poor were often African-Americans that migrated from the South in the 1920s and 1930s. As they moved into traditional white European-American neighborhoods, ethnic frictions served to accelerate flight to the suburbs. In
Western EuropeWestern Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
the experience differs, in that the effect was often unknowingly assisted by public sector policies designed to clear 18th- and 19th-century slum areas and movements of people out into state-subsidized, lower-density suburban housing.
On continental Europe and Oceania, the historical core of major cities has usually remained relatively affluent; it is generally the inner-city districts and the edge-of-town suburbs made up of single-class state-subsidised housing, such as the French "
citéCité is a French language word whose dictionary definition is city.In common parlance the term tends to have a negative nuance implying a high-rise 20th century inner-city HLM like the US term projects or the British term housing estate.* Cité-jardin is a gardened kind of planned satellite town*...
s" or "
banlieueIn francophone areas, banlieues are the "outskirts" of a city: the zone around a city that is under the city's rule.Banlieues are translated as "suburbs", as these are also residential areas on the outer edge of a city, but the connotations of the term "banlieue" in France can be different from...
s" and British
council estatesA council house, otherwise known as a local authority house, is a form of public or social housing. The term is used primarily in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Council houses were built and operated by local councils to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at...
, which suffer the worst decay and blight. Due to higher population densities in Europe, economics dictates that extremely low-density housing would be impractical.
Examples of decay
The
carAn automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
manufacturing sector was the base for
DetroitDetroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
's prosperity, and employed the majority of its residents. When the industry began relocating outside of the city, it experienced massive population loss with associated urban decay, particularly after the
1967 riotsThe 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan, that began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th and...
. According to the U.S. Census, in 1950 the city's population was around 1.85 million; by 2010, this had declined to 714,000, a loss of 1,136,000 people (61%). In addition, the homeless population has grown, and there are many abandoned structures in Detroit.
BritainThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
experienced severe urban decay in the 1970s and 1980s. Major cities like
GlasgowGlasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, the towns of the
South Wales valleysThe South Wales Valleys are a number of industrialised valleys in South Wales, stretching from eastern Carmarthenshire in the west to western Monmouthshire in the east and from the Heads of the Valleys in the north to the lower-lying, pastoral country of the Vale of Glamorgan and the coastal plain...
, and some of the major industrial cities like
BirminghamBirmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
,
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
,
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
,
NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
, and east London, all experienced population decreases, with large areas of 19th-century housing experiencing market price collapse.
Large
FrenchThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
cities are often surrounded by decayed areas. While city centers tend to be occupied mainly by middle- and upper-class residents, cities are often surrounded by large mid- to high-rise housing projects. The concentration of poverty and crime radiating from the developments often causes the entire suburb to fall into a state of urban decay, as more affluent citizens seek housing in the city or further out in semi-rural areas. In November 2005, the decaying northern suburbs of Paris were the scene of severe riots sparked in part by the substandard living conditions in public housing projects.
Response
The main responses to urban decay have been through positive public intervention and policy, through a plethora of initiatives, funding streams, and agencies, using the principles of
New UrbanismNew Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually continued to reform many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use...
(or through
Urban RenaissanceUrban renaissance is a term used to describe the recent period of repopulation and regeneration of many British cities, including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and parts of London after a period of inner city urban decay and suburbanisation during the mid-20th...
, its UK/European equivalent).
GentrificationGentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...
has also had a significant effect, and remains the primary means of a "natural" remedy.
In the United States, early government policies included "
urban renewalUrban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
" and building of large scale housing projects for the poor. Urban renewal demolished entire neighborhoods in many inner cities; in many ways, it was a cause of urban decay rather than a remedy. Housing projects became crime-infested mistakes. These government efforts are now thought by many to have been misguided. For multiple reasons, some cities have rebounded from these policy mistakes. Meanwhile, some of the inner suburbs built in the 1950s and 60s are beginning the process of decay, as those who are living in the inner city are pushed out due to gentrification.
In Western Europe and Asia, where land is much less in supply and urban areas are generally recognised as the drivers of the new information and service economies, urban regeneration has become an industry in itself, with hundreds of agencies and charities set up to tackle the issue. European cities have the benefit of historical organic development patterns already concurrent to the New Urbanist model, and although derelict, most cities have attractive historical quarters and buildings ripe for redevelopment.
In the inner-city estates and suburban cités, the solution is often more drastic, with 1960s and 70s state housing projects being totally demolished and rebuilt in a more traditional European urban style, with a mix of housing types, sizes, prices, and tenures, as well as a mix of other uses such as
retailRetail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...
or
commercialWhile business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
. One of the best examples of this is in
HulmeHulme is an inner city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England. Located immediately south of Manchester city centre, it is an area with significant industrial heritage....
,
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, which was cleared of 19th-century housing in the 1950s to make way for a large estate of high-rise flats. During the 1990s, it was cleared again to make way for new development built along new urbanist lines.
See also
- California Proposition 14
- Deindustrialization
Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially heavy industry or manufacturing industry. It is an opposite of industrialization.- Multiple interpretations :There are multiple...
- First Friday
- Ghost town
A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...
- Modern ruins
Modern ruins is a neologism referring to ruins of architecture constructed in the recent past, generally in the most recent century, or since the 19th century....
- Urban exploration
Urban exploration is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities. Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or...
- Urban riots
Riots often occur in reaction to a perceived grievance or out of dissent. Riots may be the outcome of a sporting event, although many riots have occurred due to poor working or living conditions, government oppression, conflicts between races or religions....
Features
- Planned shrinkage
Planned shrinkage is a public policy, practiced most notably in the 1970s in New York City, of withdrawing essential city services from neighborhoods suffering from urban decay, crime, and poverty so that neighborhoods may be claimed by outside interests for new development...
- Unfinished building
An unfinished building is a building where construction work was abandoned or on-hold at some stage or only exists as a design...
- Urban prairie
Urban prairie is a term coined to characterize vacant city lots. Urban prairie results from widespread building demolition to facilitate urban renewal....
Related
- Principles of Intelligent Urbanism
Principles of Intelligent Urbanism is a theory of urban planning composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns...
- Urban economics
Urban economics is broadly the economic study of urban areas; as such, it involves using the tools of economics to analyze urban issues such as crime, education, public transit, housing, and local government finance...
- Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
- Urban theory
Urbanomics describes the city formation phenomenon where economic priorities prevail to facilitate the city’s propensity to generate and accumulate wealth. Such city formation involves some irreversible spatial investments, massive resource allocations and financial investments recoverable only if...
External links