Urban Decay

[organicsabre 1]

The main argument on the urban decay especially with warehouses and office buildings is whether they are capable of doing their designed function for the modern would, in offices this is usually whether the offices can be upgraded to house airconditioning units, large IT systems etc. (depends on the ceiling levels and floor thickness's and construction) In the Uk we hve o prove whether a building has come to the end of its useful life before being allowed to demolish. In nottingham (city where I studied at unviersity) the old Lace factories in the Lace market area of nottingham have been converted into luxory appartments for city living, alot of work had to be done on them but it has payed off for the developers as they are making

[aestiva 0]

Camden, NJ; Kensington in Phila.; I will admit are real armpits (I've worked in both).  But no one has mentioned East. St. Louis, or for that matter St. Louis itself.  It once was the western capital of the U.S. in terms of culture and progress.  Now its downtown area is just another dirty ghetto.

-Aestiva  

 

NEW PAGE!

[fitchy 3]

What an awesome thread. 

 

Kansas City has several blighted areas, areas that are off limits in the night.  But it sounds like we have it a lot better than some cities!

 

[DetroitINC 0]

Ok Detroit is what i am giving my vote on as one if not the worst places to live when dealing with the ghetto. But its still a great city no madder what anyone thinks about the way it is here Swiss_Canadian. Yes the govt. is screwed up but we are not all just stuck here. Im from southwest Detroit and though it is ghetto people are still nice so before anyone goes bad mouthing any city remember people who live there may care, and you may piss somebody off. Not everything you see on the news should be taken as your only source of info, you need to get your facts straight. The main reason the city is like this is jobs, were the motor city, what are the big 3 doing right now??? laying off wokers, so what do those people become homeless, or poor what people call ghetto. what do you do when you don't have alot of money (survive). Now most of the people here are hard working and have fell on bad times, there are thugs here yes but mostly good people who care. Yes the govt is messed up but you have the mob to thank for that. They ran Archer out of office, the spending time with family line he said was bull. But this city will return again, and will be one of the best in america!!! Sorry if you all think im nuts and i went over board, but i am very proud of my city. I live, love and play here. So if you want to talk about somewhere talk about where you live and what you don't know, don't say...

Thanks DetroitINC

[1ajs 49]

sad to see such beatifull buildings get trashed like that in your city DetroitINC knows nuthing about detroit.


organicsabre plzz do come and invest in my city we need new plp to come and invest in winnipeg you can get houses here for under 35k cdn to 300k cdn in the core is the cheapest area lots of things to do here

[ldvger 19]

Interesting topic and equally interesting views.  Gotta chip in my own $.02.

The causes of urban decay are many and varied, some of which are natural and evolutional.  Cities are, like the beings who reside in them, living entitites that grow and change over time.  Part of why we are all posting thoughts about urban decay on a gaming site is because the game addresses this phenomenon (as best it can, given the limits of any computing system to model any living system).  So, not all urban decay is necessarily bad.  We all lose our baby teeth to make room for our adult teeth and we are not really very pretty to look at during this process of our personal evolution and while that anology is weak, you get the drift, I hope. 

 

That being said, the plight of major cities in America is really very sad, for the most part.  In many cities, it's getting better, slowly, over the past 10 years or so, as new theories about growth managment and city planning come into effect.  But, it will take time and money and commitment and, most of all education before a real corner is turned for most of America's cities. 

 

I personally feel that the single greatest cause of urban blight is suburban flight.  Prior to the building of the Interstate highway system on the 50's and 60's, suburbia didn't really exist, not as we conceptualize it in 2005.  There were cities, and towns, and farms, most strung together with roads that didn't have much carrying capacity, in terms of vehicles per hour.  It took a long time to travel from one area to another...farm to city, town to city, town to farm.  But the advant of the Interstates, which Eisenhower brought into being as a reaction to the Cold War as a way to rapidly deploy military force across the nation, changed all that.  Suddenly it was possible to travel from previously outflung areas to central markets in a relatively short period of time.  Thus was born suburbia.

 

With cheap land available in the newly born suburbs, middle class families began abandoning the cities.  People care about where they live but not much about where they work, in terms of basic environment.  And when people, middle class tax-paying people, started leaving the cities, the revenues of the cities started to fall.  Without revenue, the cities began to decay.  Because lower income people generate less taxes (and so less income for the city) than higher income people, those areas of cities that had been concentrations of lower income people decayed faster than areas of higher tax income.  The Golden Rule applies here: those who have the gold make the rules.  Cities pay more attention to the needs of those who provide income to the city more than to the needs of those who provide little (or no) income to the city. 

 

This is not fair or right, but it's true. 

 

And, in the 50's and 60's, as middle class taxpayers fled to the suburbs, that left more and more lower income people stuck in urban areas spiraling into decay.  So the cycle became self-feeding, in many ways.  As urban decay progressed, almost like a cancer, businesses began relocating, taking away jobs for the left-behind residents and creating even more revenue loss for the cities. 

 

This process of downward decay has continued almost non-stop since then. 

 

How to turn things around and rescue America's cities?  A hard question, but one many cities are finally, FINALLY, beginning to address. 

 

First of all, the cities have to lure people back.  People care about where they live, so if people live in the city, they care about the neighborhood they live in. 

 

I live in Seattle and this city faced some of the worst urban decay of any city in the nation back in the late 60's and early 70's.  It was so bad that there was a huge billboard next to the southbound interstate that asked Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights?.  How could one of the greatest natural ports in the world have fallen into such a sad state? 

 

Well, the folks in charge of running the city back then decided they had to do something, so they took the time to study other vital and functioning cities around the world to see what made those cities work.  And the one thing common was that PEOPLE CARE ABOUT WHERE THEY LIVE.  So, they undertook to design a long-term growth and development plan that got people back to living in the downtown urban core.  New Urbanism almost 30 years ahead of it's time. 

 

And it worked.  Granted, Seattle still has a lot of very serious problems to solve, most of which have to do with the tremendous groth of the region (we have the worst traffic in the nation), but Seattle is proof that urban decay can be reversed.

 

As for the worst urban areas I myself have visited, I would have to say Erie, PA.  I traveled through there in 1992 and entire blocks of the downtown core were boarded up.  I traveled through much of the Great Lakes areas that year and saw much the same in all the lakeside cities.  The death of the steel industry has devasted much of the northeast, but any ecomony based on a limited resource is doomed to eventual death, so in many ways it was just a matter of time before those cities and surrounding areas fell into decay.  The west is full of ghost towns from the many and various gold rushes for much the same reason. 

 

And as for Detroit, I feel I can speak somewhat knowledgably, as I was born there, just off 7 Mile Drive.  I have lots of family in the area with who I am in close contact and they all feel the same way...it's a sinking ship.  Most are unemployed auto workers, now back in school, trying to learn a new way to feed thier families. 

 

Just my thoughts...

[organicsabre 1]

Date: 9/14/2005 1:01:28 AM
Author: 1ajs
sad to see such beatifull buildings get trashed like that in your city DetroitINC knows nuthing about detroit.



organicsabre plzz do come and invest in my city we need new plp to come and invest in winnipeg you can get houses here for under 35k cdn to 300k cdn in the core is the cheapest area lots of things to do here

quote>

Wish I had the money, its so expensive in the Uk the housing market that the only houses I can afford are in run down areas, the problem with that is their is a high crime rate ad not very good to live in. Thounsands of inner city houses in the uk are run down and bad areas to go, developers are turned off these potential areas due to the crime rates, it means that they can't ask for he high prices (ok high proffit) that they want, anything that ain't going to make them rich, their not interested with. I think developers should be forced b y the government to develop these areas as aprt of their work i.e. a certain percentage should be starter homes and homes for the lower income people. Its feasible to do, but no one wants to put the money into it, so we get near slums in certain cities and high crime hotspots.

If anyone can give me a million i'll be right over and start drawing up a scheme!!!!

[Aran 10]

I'd have to say that Detroit is probably the most decayed city I've ever experienced, but there are others that come to mind as blighted. Buffalo (the Armpit of America as my father calls it); Springfield, Mass.; and North Charleston, SC come to mind as other examples of poor planning and upkeep.

However, in spite of the blight and the hellish areas in Detroit (such as the Cass Corridor, probably the single most decrepit stretch of property in the midwest) I gotta love that city. There's a huge amount of culture and I have very fond memories of many, many buildings and events there.

As a side note, you might be interested in The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit a photographic tour of the Motor City that includes numerous shots of some of the most famous buildings and areas in Detroit suffering from age and neglect. I'd love to see some of these BATted - such as the Woolworth Building, National Theatre, or the Michigan Central Railroad Station - and would happily do them myself if I had an ounce of talent.

Detroit! Woot!

Cheers.

Aran

[jsf539 0]

Speaking of St. Louis, a few months ago I accidentally made a trip to North St. Louis and ended up in the neighborhood of Hyde Park.  The urban decay has haunted me since then. I found a website of St. Louis's urban decay by googling this neighborhood. http://www.builtstlouis.net/arch.html .

[NaviMumbai 0]

I believe that one of the major causes of urban decay is mass suburbanization. However, Paris is one of the cities that has reversed the process. Inner cities have interesting architecture, and lots of cultural life, contrasting with the bland suburbs. I hope my generation dislikes the bland life in the suburbs and moves back to the inner cities. One of the ways the government can intervene is by a process called gentrification.

    Gentrification, coined by a British sociologist in the 1960's referred to making some decayed areas in London attractive to the gentry, or the rich class. Many municipal governments have tried many attempts to gentrify  central cities, by projects such as cleaning up, and repainting buildings, and by cleaning graffitti. I would most like to credit New York's mayor, Rudy Julliani, who declared war against graffitti. Detroit is also taking steps to liven up its neighborhoods. General Motors has decided to place a plant back in the central city, moving from its suburban location. I hope Detroit will return.

    However, gentrification has a negative side, and is often considered a swear word (explicitive) among the working-class families in the USA. In a capitalistic, supply and demand economy, the gentrification of a working-class neighborhood makes the neighborhood more attractive to the wealthy and upper-middle class, thus the demand for homes in that neighborhood increases, and the supply of housing stock remains the same. This causes the property taxes on the house, and the value of the house to increase. And, the working-class residents can not afford the rent, thus they get evicted.

 

    As for me, I am for gentrification of American inner-cities. Suburbs are simply too bland for me. Also, I hope this phenomenon does not happen in Indian cities. It probably will in a few decades, when the brand new urban hi rises and mid rises become old. The first step in the process has already begun: The construction of 6-lane highways connecting major urban areas.

    Also, strict zoning laws can also help, because the proliferation of suburbs causes more forests to be cut, more farmland to be converted, and more smog to be emitted into the atmosphere.

[Odainsaker 2,136]

Hmmm, i remember once watching a program on the gentrification of Norwalk, Connecticut.  Having lost its industrial base and in the midst of white flight, the inner city collapsed into an urban black ghetto of cyclical poverty and crime.  Realizing their plight, activists and inspired residents within these neighborhoods worked to clean up Norwalk, painting over the burned out buildings, removing trash, and working with local gangs to end violence.  With the backing of the city, they sought to rid themselves of the elements that blight their community.

 

Sure enough, the cleaner urban areas became more attractive, raising both the land values and subsequent taxes on the land owners, who passed the costs on to the residents through higher rents.  Clean sidewalks and fresh paint do not equate to better paying jobs with higher incomes, and the residents, having worked themselves to clean their own neighborhoods, found that they had in fact gentrified themselves out of their own homes and were evicted onto the streets.  To add insult to injury, the new white yuppie residents moving in would comment on how they try to give pocket change to these homeless people, but they truly hope they will leave or be removed as they are dragging down their newly revitalized community.  Yep, the element that had to be swept away was not the abstraction of poverty, but the poor blacks themselves.

 

Not surprisingly, racism is still a prime motivator in suburban white flight, even if it is wrapped and hidden within the more antiseptic discrimination of economic class.  It was not a year or two ago when Nightline broadcast the story of another white suburban neighborhood fighting to block a black single-mother moving from an inner city ghetto into a modest home in their community.  Fearing the ghetto was coming to them in the form of this one woman, the veiled racist attacks upon her became personally vindictive and threatening, with neighbors somehow getting hold of her personal financial information to publicly use against her while her home was vandalized.  Somehow, this was proof she could not pay to maintain her home, and that she was bringing ghetto crime with her.  Ultimately, several residents but their houses up for sale en mass, driving down their own land values in an attempt to cash out for whatever they could get before it was too late in the fear that their neighbors might shortly do the same.  Their own fears and desire to flee threatens to bring about the ghettoization they wish to avoid.

 

As an irony, I am also reminded of a trip I made to Dallas, Texas, twelve years ago.  We were going to see an exhibit of the Treasures of Catherine the Great on display at Fair Park, but somehow, the route there took us a few blocks past the superficially glitzy downtown and suddenly into a shambles of inner city ruin, complete with burned building shells, numerous small fires, and crowds of black men standing about wielding pipes and crowbars.  It felt like the aftermath of a race riot, and despite everything I might believe about fighting racial prejudice and stereotyping, I was truthfully scared, regardless of the lack of any overt threat.  Eventually we reached Fair Park, which itself is a gated park collection of white stone art deco gallery halls in the grandiose manner of old World's Fairs, but all surrounded by poor and dilapidated inner ring residential areas (oddly, the tagging and graffiti was in Chinese and Japanese characters).  At any rate, the contrasting effect of the exhibit on me was surreal:  czarist jewels, Faberge eggs, and crowns of Imperial Russia inside these monumental galleries, while surrounding us beyond the gates was an American urban nightmare of poverty and decay.

 

[cnystrom1 1]

hmm i thought south central LA would have come up i was under the impression it was a horible, decayed, crime ridden area... is it as bad as these places, or is it more cleaned up now?

[crazyyaya 4]

One major city dealing with urban decay is Detroit. During the 1950's Detroit was the car capital of the world, with a population of almost two million. But every since the 1960's Detroits population has declined to almost half of the 1950's population. And the news about Toyota passing GM and Ford in sales dosen't help.

[spa 970]

One of the big reasons that many American cities fell to the point that they did that isn't as obvious is banking. When banks redlined whole neighbourhoods (wouldn't lend any money for building renovations or purchase no matter what) then downward things really had to go. Few people have the cash just sitting around to buy a building outright or to do that renovation they've always been meaning to. If they can borrow money and get on with their lives in a different part of town most are going to move. So banks really share a big part of the blame.

Because of a number of reasons, among them differing bank, fewer racial problems and fewer government urban renewal and expressway programs, Canadian cities didn't get hit as badly. Nevertheless my own home, Halifax NS, has one street in particular that has really gone down hill and stayed there. Gottingen Street was once the city's main retail strip, but it lost its purpose when suburban growth moved a lot of shopping to to the Malls and when Spring Garden Road took over as the main boutique area. The construction of Scotia Square, a huge office block, and the neighbouring Cogswell interchange in the 1970s severed Gottingen from the downtown and finally killed the struggling street. Gottingen today is a strip of public housing, social agencies, vacant lots and abandoned storefronts. It got so bad in reputation locally that homeowners at the far Northern end successfully petitioned City Council to rename their section Novalea Drive. Recently there have been some signs of life as artists have moved in and as neighbouring streets have gentrified but its still a really seedy place and the only area I can think of in Halifax that is actually decayed and not just poor.

Other more famous failures in Canada are Regent Park in Toronto, the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver (probably Canada's worst neighbourhood) and a good portion of Winnipeg's downtown (Winnipeg although no where near as extreme is Canada's equivalent of Detroit).

edit: btw if anyone is interested I came across this blog site a while back. It has some great pictures and commentary about the urban prairie phenomenon in Detroit http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=287 and http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=405

[hamsterTK 93]

Not too familiar with urban decay, because in the part of the US where I come from there isnt a whole lot of 'urban' period lol. Suburban decay on the other hand..

ILA, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, have suburban decay like crazy though. And it only takes 30 years or so from the time a subdivision is built for it go downhill.

I think public schools are the biggest contributor. Only a tiny part of a the students zoned to a school have to be from a ghetto area for that school to have a gang problem. And when a school gets a bad rap its only a matter of time before it brings that entire side of town down with it. Because homebuyers want their kids to go to a good school and won't pay hardly anything to buy a house in an area like that

Anyways, suburban decay is worse than urban decay in my opinion because its permanent. Nobody wants to be renovate some crappy 70's tract home with no historic value whatsoever. Maybe thats okay for residents because they dont have to worry about gentrification, but still. I imagine in 50 years or so there will be massive areas sprawl in southern cities that will be burned out and feeling the "urban prairie" effect. Oh well, I guess nature eventually reclaims everything

Anyways, in some places where cost of living is cheap I think its less racial prejudice and more social darwinism at work. In Houston there are some incredibly diverse suburban areas that are still nice. People like to live near those who share their values, especially when it comes to work and education.

[spa 970]

Interesting points Hamster. I remember reading an article in the Globe & Mail's Focus section severaly months back that actually argued that many suburbs will one day be the new slums if oil prices keep climbing and we don't find a technological replacement. The cost of fuel will make it living downtown attractive and the only people who will be left in the distant suburbs will be those who can't afford to leave.

Not sure I buy the argument fully. I think it underestimates how deeply engrained the suburban ideal is in North America. I suspect people will be willing to sacrifice a lot for that green lawn and single-detached house. After all they are already willing to drive an hour or more each way to get to work. In terms of wasted time, assuming two hours a day over 232 days (356 days - 104 weekend days - 20 days for holidays and vacation time = 232) means that a suburbanite with an hour commute spends 19 days a year just sitting in traffic! That's more than two years over a 40 year career just sitting on the freeway. If you're willing to sacrifice two years of your life over the course of your career for that suburban spread... well somehow I think fuel prices alone aren't going to drive you back downtown.

[Jasoncw 11,946]

The bad image of cities is very very old.  Even back in the 1800s, the city beautiful movement was supposed to "fix" the city.

In Detroit, and probably in most American cities, you can actually track the wealthy neighborhoods and the downtowns around.

The wealthy neighborhoods with the big mansions and stuff were built on the outskirts of the city, and then "the city" grew over them, and they moved to a new location.  This was happening in Detroit since the 1800s.  At first horses and trolleys enabled people to live farther away, and then cars.  The physical make up of these neighborhoods have changed, but the social thoughts behind them haven't.

The same thing happened for the middle class.  Modern spacious housing, spaced away from the filth of the inner city.

The same thing even happened with downtowns in Detroit.  There's the original downtown, then New Center, built in the 1920s.  Then Southfield and then Troy in the 70s.

So the social thoughts that created sprawl (and urban decay) are very old and established.

But while a lot of areas in these cities are still declining, there are places that have improved a lot, and places that never declined.  To a lot of people, no matter how nice some places are, they'll always think they're ghettos.  They'll never believe people who say otherwise, and they'll never actually go there themselves to find out.  Reality is important, but image is more important, so everyone, please say nice things about your cities and try to reverse your cities' bad image.

[JakeMD 107]

I havent really been to any decayed places, although, you could call the city of rose wood minnesota is pretty old!

[belfastuniguy 18]

In my home city, Belfast. urban decay happened for a different reason and that was simply due to the 30 years of civil violence. People moved out of the city and into the surburbs. Now that times have changed, the entire city is undergoing massive redevelopment. Tens of billions is pouring into new projects, regeneration of decaying industrial areas and redevelopment of some of the oldest and most historic areas of the city. The Harland and Wolff  shipyard is set to become the largest waterfront development in Europe, Titanic Quarter,  and we are currently building one of Europe's largest city centre shopping centres, Victoria Square.

This has not only been based on peace but on the new confidence that people have about living in the city again. Confidence and investment will help with urban decay. In other cities the factors will be different, may it be crime, poverty, unemployment or constitent commerical/industrial decline.

In the US this can be seen with the mass sprawl of cities, people naturally want to move to cleaner, nicer surburbs that have the benefit of good transport links into the city centre. Untill urban sprawl, under-investment and crime are tackled then urban decay will remain a problem for many cities.

[montrouge 2]

Originally posted by: NaviMumbai

I believe that one of the major causes of urban decay is mass suburbanization. However, Paris is one of the cities that has reversed the process. Inner cities have interesting architecture, and lots of cultural life, contrasting with the bland suburbs.
_______________________________________________________________

Oh the myth of ...
Paris : rich 
suburbs : poor

Only some suburbs are horrible but the majority are nice.

The suburbs where I will live look at this and it is more vibrant than the historic center of Paris
Southern inner suburbs of Paris



O.K too many cranes, modern building to be in decay  
and too dense for be a real suburbs

That"s you call inner city, the core of urban area is formed by Paris and its inner suburbs wich represent 6.7 million inhabitants in 700km2  (10 million in the whole urban area)

The historical center of Paris is dead, exept near the Opera (CBD) and Chatelet
Only tourist go in these area. (Tourism is only 7% of Paris economy)
Parisian live, work, do shopping...  in the oulter arrondissements and the inner sububs.

In Paris buildings can be ugly and expensive or old and cheap
Main chinatown (South of inner Paris), a big appartement here cost  $1,000,000 



and appartements in Montrouge or in Issy (Inner suburbs in the 3 first pics) are as expensive
but an appartement in this district is twice less expensive. (North of inner Paris)


Why? because in fact it is not Paris rich and suburbs poor but
West and south for high and middle class. 
East and north for low and middle class.

In the north of Paris there is a lot of old factury warehouse and low income high-rises but now these areas are in redevelopments and a ton of office and residencial buildings are under in construction. 

I agree with you, oulter suburbs are bland with the sprawly houses and the high-rise low income buildings.

[Ijouhassei 0]

The most decayed place I've been to is Port Arthur Texas. It used to be nice...until the refineries moved in. And oh yea, this is my first post.