Urban decay
[1] Another characteristic of urban decay is blight – the visual, psychological, and physical effects of living among empty lots, buildings, and condemned houses.
Urban decay is often the result of inter-related socio-economic issues, including urban planning decisions, economic deprivation of the local populace, the construction of freeways and railroad lines that bypass or run through the area,[2] depopulation by suburbanization of peripheral lands, real estate neighborhood redlining,[3] and immigration restrictions.
Studies such as the Urban Task Force (DETR 1999), the Urban White Paper (DETR 2000), and a study of Scottish cities (2003) hypothesize areas suffering from industrial decline, high unemployment, poverty, and a decaying physical environment (sometimes including contaminated land and obsolete infrastructure) – prove "highly resistant to improvement".
[8] Libertarian economists argue that rent control contributes to urban blight by reducing new construction and investment in housing and discouraging maintenance.
These modern "grands ensembles" were welcomed at the time, as they replaced shanty towns and raised living standards, but these areas were heavily affected by economic depression in the 1980s.
Many deprived suburbs of French cities were the scenes of clashes between youth and the police, with violence and numerous car burnings resulting in media coverage.
Hoyerswerda's population has dropped about 40% since its peak and there is a significant lack of teenagers and twenty- forty-some year olds due to the declining birthrates during the uncertainty of reunification.
[11] Part of the blight in east Germany is due to the construction and preservation practices of the socialist government under the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
At the end of apartheid in 1994, many middle-class white residents moved out and were replaced by mainly low-income workers and unemployed people, including many refugees and undocumented immigrants from neighboring countries.
Many businesses that operated in the area followed their customers to the suburbs, and some apartment buildings were "hi-jacked" by gangs who collected rentals from residents but failed to pay the utility bills, leading to termination of municipal services and a refusal by the legal owners to invest in maintenance or cleaning.
[15] Occupied today by low-income residents and immigrants and being over-crowded; the proliferation of crime, drugs, illegal businesses, and decay of properties have become prevalent.
[17] In London, many former slum neighbourhoods like in Islington became "highly prized",[17] however this was the exception to the rule, and much of the north of England remains deprived.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the 1980s and 1990s undertook extensive studies culminating with a 1991 report which analyzed the 20 most difficult council estates.
[23][24][25] Later urban centers were drained further through the advent of mass car ownership, the marketing of suburbia as a location to move to, and the building of the Interstate Highway System.
In North America, this shift manifested itself in strip malls, suburban retail and employment centers, and low-density housing estates.
In the United States, early government policies included "urban renewal" and building of large-scale housing projects for the poor.
Prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended ... Schools should be appropriate to the needs of the new community and they should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups.
"(In Chicago) while whites were among those uprooted in Hyde Park and on the North and West Sides, urban renewal in this context too often meant, as contemporaries noted, "***** removal".
