South Bronx

[19] The Cross Bronx Expressway, completed in 1963, was a part of Robert Moses's urban renewal project for New York City, funded by the Housing Act of 1949.

In turn, areas of the Bronx that became predominately African American or Hispanic were considered bad risks by lenders ("redlining"), contributing to the decline in real estate values and lack of investment in the existing housing stock.

[20] New York City Mayor John Lindsay (who served from 1966 to 1973) suggested that socioeconomic factors (including low educational attainment and high unemployment) limited housing options for the remaining low-income tenants, prompting the reduced upkeep by landlords.

Around this time, the Bronx experienced some of its worst instances of urban decay, with the loss of 300,000 residents and the destruction of entire city blocks' worth of buildings.

During the game, as ABC switched to a generic helicopter shot of the exterior of Yankee Stadium, an uncontrolled fire could clearly be seen burning in the ravaged South Bronx surrounding the park.

A progressively vicious cycle began where large numbers of tenements and multi-story, multi-family apartment buildings, left vacant by White flight, sat abandoned and unsaleable for long periods of time, which, coupled with a stagnant economy and an extremely high unemployment rate, produced a strong attraction for criminal elements such as street gangs, which were exploding in number and beginning to support themselves with large-scale drug dealing in the area.

The abandoned property also attracted large numbers of squatters such as the poor and marginalized, drug addicts and the mentally ill, who further lowered the borough's quality of living.

However, the HUD rate was not based on the property's actual value and was set so low by the city that it left little opportunity or incentive for landlords to maintain or improve their buildings while still making a profit.

[23] The result was a disastrous acceleration of both the speed and northward spread of the cycle of decay in the South Bronx as formerly desirable and well-maintained middle-to-upper class apartments in midtown, most notably along the Grand Concourse, were progressively vacated by White flight and either abandoned altogether or converted into federally funded single room occupancy "welfare hotels" run by absentee slumlords.

The massive citywide spending cuts also left the few remaining building inspectors and fire marshals unable to enforce living standards or punish code violations.

This encouraged slumlords and absentee landlords to neglect and ignore their property and allowed for gangs to set up protected enclaves and lay claim to entire buildings.

This scheme became so common that local gangs were hired by fixers for their expertise at the process of stripping buildings of wiring, plumbing, metal fixtures, and anything else of value and then effectively burning it down with gasoline.

The rate of unsolved fatalities due to fire multiplied sevenfold in the South Bronx during the 1970s, with many residents reporting being burnt out of numerous apartment blocks one after the other.

After the establishment of the (then) state-of-the-art Co-op City, there was a spike in fires as tenants began burning down their Section 8 housing in an attempt to jump to the front of the 2–3 year long waiting list for the new units.

The local police precincts—already struggling and failing to contain the massive wave of drug and gang crime invading the Bronx—had long since stopped bothering to investigate the fires, as there were simply too many to track.

[22] On October 5, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter paid an unscheduled visit to Charlotte Street while in New York City for a conference at the headquarters of the United Nations.

[23] The 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, by the American writer Tom Wolfe, presented the South Bronx as a nightmare world, not to be entered by middle or upper-class whites.

[33] Primarily beginning in the 1980s, parts of the South Bronx started to experience urban renewal with rehabilitated and new residential structures, including subsidized multifamily townhomes and apartment buildings.

[32] The Bronx County Courthouse has secured landmark status, and efforts are underway to do the same for much of the Grand Concourse, in recognition of the area's Art Deco architecture.

[41][42] Despite significant investment compared to the post war period, many exacerbated social problems remain, including high rates of violent crime, substance abuse, and overcrowded and substandard housing conditions.

[48] The poorly maintained, substandard housing has caused disproportionately high asthma rates among children in the South Bronx, where residents are predominately minorities—mainly Black and Hispanic.

Hip hop is a broad conglomerate of artistic forms that originated as a specific street subculture within South Bronx communities during the 1970s in New York City.

Some songs played at these South Bronx house parties included "Give it Up or Turn it Loose" by James Brown and "Get Ready" by Rare Earth.

"[64] The technique of percussive breaks was then common in Jamaican dub music,[65] and was largely introduced into New York by immigrants from Jamaica and elsewhere in the Caribbean, including DJ Kool Herc, who is generally considered the father of hip-hop.

Upon this, a technique known as Jamaican toasting, or the act of speaking over a beat which later became rapping, was introduced by DJ Kool Herc in the South Bronx at this point of time as well.

[66] 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, an apartment building in Morris Heights,[67] is a long-time "haven for working-class families"; in 2010, The New York Times reported that it is the "accepted birthplace of hip hop.

"[55] As seen within the film The Hip Hop Years: Part 1, hip-hop aided in keeping violence from forming on the streets of the South Bronx and eased tensions with the police within the area.

After DJ Kool Herc and other DJs kept utilizing the break beat within their music, an abundance of people who were dancing normally, eventually hit the floor and began what is known as breakdancing.

[79] Among the institutions of higher education, Hostos Community College of the City University of New York is located in Grand Concourse and 149th Street, ten blocks from Yankee Stadium.

Per Scholas also works with a growing number of Title One South Bronx middle schools, their students, and their families to provide computer training and access.