INNER CITY NEIGHBORHOODS

CHALLEN

GES

GROUNDING

Most of the space in urban settlements is devoted to housing.

In the US, the most fundamental spatial distinction is between inner-city neighborhoods surrounding the CBD and suburban neighborhoods on a city’s periphery.

In the US, poverty is concentrated in inner city neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods face distinct problems.

PHYSICAL ISSUES

OF INNER CITYNEIGHBORHOODS DETERIORATION

Much of the housing in US inner cities was built before 1940, and thus is simply aging.

PROCESS OF DETERIORATION

In the US, as families gain wealth, they tend to move to the suburbs.

The rural poor, as they move to urban areas, move to inner city neighborhoods being abandoned by middle and upper income families.

Middle income families will then either sell or rent the inner-city properties to lower-income families.

FILTERING

In the 1900s, wealthy families built large homes in the inner city.

They then moved to suburbs and sold their homes to middle-income families.

They then moved to the suburbs and subdivided the larger, inner-city homes into a number of apartments to rent to lower-income families.

FILTERING is the process of subdividing homes with occupancy by successive waves of lower-income families.

At some point in the filtering process, the rent a landlord gets for a home is less than the upkeep costs, and they will stop maintaining it.

Because the conditions lessen, the rent then decreases. AND at some point, the rent becomes less than the property taxes and/or mortgage. So an owner will abandon the home.

REDLINING

Often, a number of deteriorated and abandoned homes will cluster in the same neighborhoods, since those neighborhoods are also where lower-income families can afford to rent.

REDLINING is an illegal banking practice where banks will draw lines around especially poor/deteriorated neighborhoods and refuse to grant loans to buyers hoping to buy in those neighborhoods to rehabilitate homes.

PHYSICAL ISSUES

OF INNER CITYNEIGHBORHOODS URBAN RENEWAL

When an urban neighborhood deteriorates, it can either be torn down and rebuilt or rehabilitated.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, many American cities endorsed a practice called URBAN RENEWAL.

Under the practice, cities bought blighted areas from their owners, relocated the residents and businesses, demolished the site rebuilt the roads and services. They then turned over the site to private developers to construct new buildings and services.

The practice was widely criticized as unfair to the poor, who could afford to live nowhere else, and most US cities have stopped the process.

URBAN RENEWAL

PUBLIC HOUSING

RENOVATED HOUSING

In the US, many cities demolished deteriorated inner-city houses and replaced them with high-rise PUBLIC HOUSING.

Public housing is housing reserved for low-income households who must pay 30% of their income for rent. A housing authority established by the local government, manages the buildings while the federal government pays the cost of construction, repair, maintenance and management that is not covered by the rent.

Most public housing in the US was built in the 1950s and 1960s and is now considered an unsatisfactory environment.

Not only are buildings deteriorating, but they concentrate the poor and thereby amplify the effects of poverty (gang violence, substance abuse, crime).

The US government has stopped funding public housing and now promotes projects like HOPE VI and SCATTERED SITE approaches (dispersing public housing throughout the city rather than concentrating it in a large, high-rise project).

Between 1980 and 2000, the number of subsidized homes dropped by 1 million, but the demand rose by 2 million.

Deteriorated housing can be renovated instead of demolished. In some cases, non-profits (like Habitat for Humanity) will renovate a home and then sell or rent it to a low-income family.

In most cases, the process occurs through GENTRIFICATION (middle-class people, to access larger, less-expensive, historical homes, move into a deteriorated, inner-city neighborhood and renovate the housing).

The process is controversial because, as the renovations expand, property values rise, and the poorer inhabitants are forced out of the neighborhood.

SOCIAL ISSUES

OF INNER CITYNEIGHBORHOODS UNDERCLASS

UNDERCLASS is the title given to inner-city poor who are trapped in a permanent cycle of economic and social problems.

The underclass suffer from high unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, illiteracy, juvenile delinquency and crime. Schools are deteriorated and housing is scarce. Neighborhoods lack police and fire protection, shops, hospitals, clinics and other health-care facilities.

THE CYLCE OF POVERTY

The status of the underclass is often seen as a cycle that is nearly impossible to escape:

An child is born into a poor family in a poor neighborhood… that child grows up in an environment with high levels of crime and drug use and is therefore more exposed to it… the schools in that child’s neighborhoods are poor and underfunded, and so the education is inferior… many parents are single and working and therefore cannot supervise

the child… with a poor education, the grown child cannot get a decent job and college is too expensive… most jobs require computer literacy and technical skill that the grown child will not have… the low-skill jobs have moved with the services to suburbs… that grown child will then stay in the same neighborhood with the same conditions and have

children born into the same conditions.

Some of the underclass are homeless.

Underclass status is often concentrated in ethnic minorities (African Americans, Latinos) due to the lingering effects of racism and segregation in the US.

ECONOMIC ISSUES

OF INNER CITYNEIGHBORHOODS ERODING TAX BASE

BALTIMORE, MD

Low-income, inner-city residents require public services but can afford few of the taxes that provide those services.

Cities have two options to close the gap between the cost of needed services and the tax base that funds them, both of which have large downsides:

REDUCE SERVICES

(Shrink trash service, close bus routes, delay school improvements, close libraries, etc.)

This option imposes hardships on families and encourages suburbanization for middle class families, thus further reducing tax base.

RAISE TAX REVENUE

(Provide tax breaks for hotels, offices, restaurants and stores to locate downtown)

This option ends up taking away funds for inner city services to provide subsidies to businesses locating in the area.

URBANREVITALIZATION

Economic Influences

In the 1990’s, a number of cities saw a renewed interest in revitalizing and reforming their central business and urban residential districts.

A number of factors influenced this renewed interest.

Demographic Influences

Sense of Place Influence

Urban Policy Influences

--Economic restructuring from secondary to tertiary activities--Shift in actions/decision making process of businesses and entrepreneurs

(tertiary expansion, agglomeration economies, rent gaps, need for face to face interaction, small business growth, tourism focus, housing demand)

--Change in pattern of household and age composition, and residential location including migration/immigration

(new household forms without children, single-person or non-traditional families), Aging of baby-boomers and empty nesters, recent international immigrants)

--Gov/non-profits revitalize central cities through public policies and incentives

(subsidies, tax incentives, public-private partnerships, zoning and building codes, city-driven historic preservation, public safety concerns, replacement of older public housing with mixed income housing, creation of green spaces and open areas)

--Emotional attachment to central city locations due to cultural amenities, landscape, lifestyle

(desire to consume historic/nostalgic city character, attraction to cultural amenities, concentration of people with similar interests or diversity, community pride)