Urban decay

Urban decay (also known as urban rot and urban blight) is the sociological process by which a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or deurbanization, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings and infrastructure, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate cityscape, known as greyfield or urban prairie.Since the 1970s and 1980s, urban decay has been associated with Western cities, especially in North America and parts of Europe (mostly the United Kingdom and France). Since then, major structural changes in global economies, transportation, and government policy created the economic and then the social conditions resulting in urban decay. The effects counter the development of most of Europe and North America; on other continents, urban decay is manifested in the peripheral slums at the outskirts of a metropolis, while the city center and the inner city retain high real estate values and sustain a steadily increasing populace. In contrast, North American and British cities often experience population flights to the suburbs and exurb commuter towns; often in the form of white flight. Another characteristic of urban decay is blight—the visual, psychological, and physical effects of living among empty lots, buildings and condemned houses. Urban decay has no single cause; it results from combinations of inter-related socio-economic conditions—including the city's urban planning decisions, tight rent control, the poverty of the local populace, the construction of freeway roads and rail road lines that bypass—or run through—the area, depopulation by suburbanization of peripheral lands, real estate neighborhood redlining, and immigration restrictions. During the Industrial Revolution, from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, rural people moved from the country to the cities for employment in manufacturing industry, thus causing the urban population boom. However, subsequent economic change left many cities economically vulnerable. Studies such as the Urban Task Force (DETR 1999), the Urban White Paper (DETR 2000), and a study of Scottish cities (2003) posit that areas suffering industrial decline—high unemployment, poverty, and a decaying physical environment (sometimes including contaminated land and obsolete infrastructure)—prove 'highly resistant to improvement'. Changes in means of transport, from the public to the private—specifically, the private motor car—eliminated some of the cities' public transport service advantages, e.g., fixed-route buses and trains. In particular, at the end of World War II, many political decisions favored suburban development and encouraged suburbanization, by drawing city taxes from the cities to build new infrastructure for towns. The manufacturing sector has been a base for the prosperity of major cities. When the industries have relocated outside of cities, some have experienced population loss with associated urban decay, and even riots. Cut backs on police and fire services may result, while lobbying for government funded housing may increase. Increased city taxes encourage residents to move out. Rent controls are often enacted due to public pressure and complaints regarding the cost of living. Proponents of rent controls argue that rent controls combat inflation, stabilize the economic characteristics of a city's population, prevent rent gouging, and improve the quality of housing. Capitalist economists have documented that rent control affects the supply and demand relationship in housing markets which can contribute to urban blight and does not provide the benefits its proponents advocate. Rent control contributes to urban blight by reducing new construction and investment in housing and deincentivizing maintenance. If a landlord's costs to perform maintenance consume too large a proportion of profit, that is revenue minus costs, from rent, the landlord will feel pressure to drastically reduce or eliminate maintenance entirely. This effect has been observed in New York City, a 2009 study by a lobbying firm found 29% of rent-controlled buildings were categorized as either deteriorated or dilapidated in contrast with 8% of non-rent-controlled housing . Historically in the United States, the white middle class gradually left the cities for suburban areas due to African-American migration north toward cities after World War I.