Municipal disinvestment

It can happen when a municipality is in a period of economic prosperity and sees that its poorest and most blighted communities are both the cheapest targets for revitalization as well as the areas with the greatest potential for improvement.

Disinvestment in urban and suburban communities tends to fall strongly along racial and class lines and may perpetuate the cycle of poverty exerted upon the space, since more affluent individuals with social mobility can more easily leave disenfranchised areas.

[4] There was a period of intense residential expansion surrounding major US cities, and banks were gratuitously providing loans in order for families to afford moving there.

The programs that were then enacted provided more displacement than replacement,a nd the beginning years of housing and infrastructure development were defined by their clearance and destruction of communities.

[1] The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 extended demolition of neighborhoods with new roads cutting through the most vulnerable ones to create more direct arteries between the metropolitan and the downtown areas.

Highway construction expanded upon the already--widening schism of urban poor and the suburban by further enabling white flight and reducing the focus on public transport.

As the Civil Rights Movement was in full display through highway revolts and responses to racial violence, there was a growing mindset among urban planners that a communal-focused, people-first approach should be taken, along the same lines as community development handled by the recently-enacted Peace Corps.

[1] The new philosophy of the administration focused intently on Community Action Agencies, fulfilled the demand from modernist social theorists and poured funding and resources into volunteer forces.

Stemming from his controversial Moynihan Report, many of the programs that were enacted within the War on Poverty were intended to educate black and poor families to modernize their "culture."

However, when municipalities shrank programs that they directly ran, the money was diverted to smaller unorthodox community action associations with unions or "social protest agendas."

[5] It is during that time that Moynihan suggested to Nixon that black communities be treated with a "benign neglect," a philosophy of action that would later be translated into the planned shrinkage policies of the 1970s and 1980s.

However, the policy was widely seen as the municipal disinvestment to abandon urban neighborhoods, particularly ones with a majority-black population, as Moynihan's statements and writings appeared to encourage, for instance, fire departments engaging in triage to avoid a supposedly-futile war against arson.

[2] Planned shrinkage is a controversial public policy of the deliberate withdrawal of city services to blighted neighborhoods as a means of coping with dwindling tax revenues.

It has been advocated as a way to concentrate city services for maximum effectiveness given serious budgetary constraints, but it has been criticized as an attempt to "encourage the exodus of undesirable populations"[8] and to open up blighted neighborhoods for development by private interests.

[2]: 7 During the 20th century, a boom in suburban growth caused in part by increased automobile use led to urban decline, particularly in the poorer sections of many large cities in the United States and elsewhere.

A common view was that it was part of a "downward spiral" caused first by an absence of jobs, the creation of a permanent underclass, and a declining tax base hurting many city services, including schools.

"[16] He suggested that the city should "accelerate the drainage" in what he called the worst parts of the South Bronx through a policy of planned shrinkage by closing subway stations, firehouses, and schools.

According to their view, a planned shrinkage approach would encourage so-called "monolithic development," resulting in new urban growth but at much lower population densities than the neighborhoods which had existed previously.

[12] The remark by Starr caused a political firestorm, and Mayor Abraham Beame disavowed the idea while City Council members called it "inhuman," "racist," and "genocidal.

"[11] According to one report, the high inflation during the 1970s combined with the restrictive rent control policies in the city meant that buildings were worth more dead for the insurance money than alive as sources of rental income.

[19][20] According to one source, public shrinkage programs targeted to undermine populations of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans in the South Bronx and Harlem had an effect on the geographic pattern of the AIDS outbreak.

The neighborhood succumbed to numerous fires by out-of-town landlords seeking out the only way to earn back some profit on homes that no longer sold.

That includes investing in more aggressive land buyback and enforcement of eminent domain in order to obtain ownership of a property, relocate its residents, and demolish it.

[28] Proponents claim the plan will bring efficiency with less waste and fraud;[28] detractors complain the policy has been a "disaster" and advocate for community-based efforts instead.

Vacant homes, empty lots and illegal dumps make remaining residents feel isolated, kill community spirit, and breed crime.