PERSPECTIVES ON THE INNER CITY: Its Changing Character, Reasons for Decline and Revival
L.S. Bourne
Research Paper No. 94
Draft of a chapter for "The Geography of Modern Metropolitan Systems" Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, Columbia, Ohio
Centre for Urban and Community Studies University of Toronto
February 1978
Contents
1. INTRODUCTION 1 Objectives 3
2. WHAT AND WHERE IS THE INNER CITY? DEFINITIONS 5 AND CONCEPTS A Process Approach 6 A Problem Approach 9
3. DIVERSITY: THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE INNER CITY 14 Types of Inner City Neighborhoods 16 Social Disparities and the Inner City 20 Case Studies 25
4. WHY THE DECLINE OF THE INNER CITY? 30 The "Natural" Evolution Hypothesis 30 Preferences and Income: The "Pull" Hypothesis 32 The Obsolescence Hypothesis 35 The "Unintended" Policy Hypothesis 36 The Exploitation Hypothesis: Power, 40 Capitalism and the Political Economcy of Urbanization The Structural Change Hypothesis 43 The Fiscal Crisis and the Underclass Hypothesis 46 The Black Inner City in Cultural Isolation: 48 The Conflict Hypothesis Summary: Which Hypothesis of Decline is Correct? 51
5. BACK TO THE CITY: IS THE INNER CITY REVIVING? 55
6. CONCLUSIONS AND A LOOK AHEAD 63 Problems, Policies and Emerging Issues 66 Summary Comments 69
FOOTNOTES 71
REFERENCES 73
Preface
The inner city is again a subject of widespread debate in most western countries. This paper undertakes to outline the nature of that debate and to document the reasons for inner city decline and revitalization. The argument is made that there is no single definition of the inner city which is universally ap plicable. Nor is there a unique set of properties, nor a single theory, which would account for the diversity of inner cities and for their decline and/or revival. A set of hypotheses related to decline is examined and all are found wanting; as is the evi dence which would support or refute assertions of a widespread return-to-the-city movement.
This paper represents a draft of a review chapter prepared for a textbook entitled "The Geography of Modern Metropolitan
Systems", edited by R.A. Harper and C.M. Christian. The book is to be published later this year by Charles E. Merrill Publishing
Company, Columbus, Ohio and is reprinted here with their permission.
The purpose of releasing the paper in this form is to solicit re actions, from an audience, not likely to be consumers of the final textbook, in time to permit revisions. Since this is a preliminary draft, formal permission to reprint figures and tables has not as yet been obtained. Comments would be appreciated.
L.S. Bourne
PERSPECTIVES ON THE INNER CITY: Its Changing Character, Reasons for Decline and Revival
L.S. Bourne University of Toronto
1. INTRODUCTION
The inner city represents both a geographic area, albeit vague,
and a cluster of social problems. In recent years governments, the
media and academic researchers have shown a renewed interest in
changes within the inner areas of their largest cities. Those tradi-
tional problems so often equated with the inner city - physical de-
terioration, poverty, a declining economic and population base, crime,
social pathologies and fiscal difficulties - all appear to have wor-
sened under recent pressures of inflation, high unemployment, racial
tension, economic uncertainty and slower population growth.
Although the oldest parts of cities have been considered cri-
tical areas in one regard or another since cities began (see Vance,
1977), current trends and problems are usually attributed to the process of rapid urbanization under industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The growth of the indus-
trial city, particularly the larger metropolis, laid the basis for many of the inner city characteristics which we observe today. Rapid and uncontrolled economic growth, unplanned and often poorly con- structed working-class neighborhoods, and short-sighted government policies combined with inadequate social services, created a legacy of debt which was not to be called in for many decades. - 2 -
Historically, political interest in the inner city has been in consistent, and policy initiatives have been largely cosmetic. Only during periods of unusual social or economic stress has the inner city been in the political forefront. For example, the inner city became an area of social concern during the period of massive in dustrial growth in nineteenth-century Britain, when working-class and often poor-quality housing districts expanded dramatically (Engels,
1844); in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America when immigration swamped the older cities; during the immediate post-war reconstruction period in Europe; during the 1950's urban renewal phase of American urban policy; and following the 1960's social
(racial) riots in U.S. cities. At other times interest in the inner city waned (Kennedy, 1974; Harrison, 1974).
What is different about the current interest in the inner city - and the rationale behind this chapter - is the recognition both of the increasing scale and complexity of the problems involved and the broadening context within which explanations and solutions are sought for these problems. The latter trend has resulted in the formulation of competing hypotheses to explain inner city decline.
In particular there has been a shift away from simplistic assertions, often blaming the victim for the problems, towards an attempt to link the inner city to changes in the national economy, in demographic structure and in social attitudes, as well as to the direct and in direct effects of government and institutional policies. - 3 -
Objectives
The purpose of this paper is to outline the nature of the
debate relating to the character of the inner city. It is not an
attempt to provide detailed summaries of the geographic form and
social problems of inner cities; these are available in numerous
standard texts. Instead it seeks to clarify what processes are (or
have been) operating to shape the character of the inner city, set
in a spatial context whenever possible, and to outline the arguments
on what can and should be done in terms of policy. vThe key questions
are "why" have inner cities developed as they have, and why are
many such areas now in rapid if not precipitious decline, while
others remain relatively healthy and still others are revitalized.
The approach used here draws heavily on national and international
differences in the character and well-being of inner city areas.
Emphasis is giveq to the diversity of these areas, within the same
city and between cities in different regions or countries. Gener alizations across national boundaries are always difficult, but are even more so for the inner city. All too often we assume that our own images of what the inner city is like are universally appli
cable; by and large they are not.
The chapter is organized into six broad sections. The follow ing section examines definitions and concepts. What is the inner city and how is it defined? Is one set of common definitional cri
teria possible or necessary? The third section examines the diverse - 4 -
and changing character of inner city areas, with examples drawn from cities in several western countries. The fourth section looks at explanations for the increasing plight of inner cities in many western countries and the fifth examines the question of inner city revitalization, and the so-called "return to the city" trend. The concluding section looks briefly at differing views on the future of the inner city. - 5 -
2. WHAT AND WHERE IS THE INNER CITY? DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS
There is no single definition of the inner city; nor should
there be. The term is strictly relative. That is, the inner
city has to be defined from a specific point of reference and set within a particular social and political context. In some instances, such as a planned new town or a city centred on religious or his-
toric monuments, the term inner city has little meaning or utility.
To most observers, however, the inner city means the older por-
tion of an urban area innnediately surrounding the central business district (C.B.D.). To some it includes the C.B.D., to others it does not. Geographically it may extend only a short distance out- ward from the C.B.D., or it may extend to the political limits of the central city or even beyond. It may also refer only to the area of "transitional" land uses between the C.B.D. and the ring of "mature" neighborhoods beyond.
The term inner city itself is also value-laden. To many stu- dents of the city it conveys the image of an area of blight, poverty and crime. Some equate the inner city with the slum or ghetto, or with specific kinds of ethnic or racial communities which happen to be located near the C.B.D. These views are not only misleading but they are clearly ethnocentric and class-specific. They reflect the - 6 -
...... adle-class social status of most urban observers and writers.
Not surprisingly, given the vagueness of the term inner city and the prevalence of subjective interpretations of its character, most standard texts totally avoid any formal definition. Use of the term in geography and planning is largely implicit.
A Process Approach
Whatever definition we use it must reflect the processes which are operating to produce the specific attributes we assign to the inner city. Since these processes vary from one city to another, and from one political and economic system to another, the meaning of the term inner city will also vary.
The inner city is defined here as a geographic area or set of areas in which the built environment, that is the social overhead capital, is on average older than that in the rest of the urban area and which, by definition, occupies a central location. Here we ex- elude the C.B.D. It is this unique match between central location and such specific attributes which defines the inner city. As such, the area is subjected, and has been for some time, to three dominant and parallel processes:
1) the aging and obsolescence of its housing, social services, infrastructure and industrial base.
2) land use competition through the expansion of central area (or C.B.D.) commercial functions, as well as of highways and institutional uses.
3) demographic transition, notably the aging of the population and the loss of family households. - 7 -
. - The first and third of these pressures obviously reflect the timing of development of the inner city, as well as the costs of renewing an aging physical plant; while the second reflects location and the threat of redevelopment and land use succession. The three sets of processes are of course related: as an area ages the pressures for reuse of the land generally increase.
This simple definition avoids prejudging the character of the inner city. It allows us to include for example both high status residential and commercial areas in the inner city as well as those of the lowest status. It also suggests that the area of interest need not be spatially contiguous nor adjacent to the downtown core.
And it implies that where these processes do not produce undesirable outcomes, the inner city need not exist as a problem area.
A simple illustration of this type of definition is provided in Figure 1. Here the inner city of Toronto is defined on the basis of only one criterion: the average age of the housing stock. Cen- sus tracts are included in the inner city if the average age of the stock (in 1971) was more than twice the average age for the entire metropolitan area. Tracts which did not meet this criterion, but which were surrounded by those which did, were also included. Note that the area encompasses almost all of the politically-defined cen- tral city, except in the north, as well as some of the older inner suburbs. It also includes areas of the highest income and those of the lowest income in the metropolitan area, and it includes areas which are declining and those which are stable or improving. co
Average f;amily Jncome
Under $8.000 $8,000 - 10.4 99 $10.600 - 12,999 $13,000 - 16,499 I $15.500.
Figure 1: One Definition of the Inner City of Toronto. - 9 -
This definition is not as inadequate as it might seem at first glance. The age of an area's housing stock is an important ele- ment in the calculus of urban change, and a critical variable to be monitored by planners and researchers. Moreover, it is an expli- cit criterion which can be measured directly and easily applied.
Nevertheless it has some obvious limitations. Notably it obscures those areas which are in fact subject to stress through land use competition, and those undergoing serious physical deterioration or rapid social change.
A Problem Approach
A complementary approach to the above process-based definition is to begin with a list of those social and physical problems typi- cally associated with large and/or "mature" cities. This list for most western cities would include many of the following:
1) a declining economic base, loss of blue-collar jobs and
high unemployment.
2) an overall loss of population, particularly in the most pro-
ductive age groups, which undermines both the demand for
social and retail services and the social diversity needed 1 to maintain an attractive residential environment.
3) the in-migration of low income, unskilled groups; which pro-
duces a mis-match between workers' skills and the kinds of
jobs available. - 10 -
4) absolute poverty: the disproportionate concentration of
society's most economically disadvantaged.
5) crime, disease, social pathologies and the fear of ethnic
or racial groups which are seen to be different.
6) physical deterioration of buildings and roads and of social
services such as schools, police, fire and garbage collection.
7) environmental pollution, litter and noise.
8) fiscal problems deriving from the interaction of a declining
tax base and the increased costs of social services.
9) discrimination by private lending agencies and government
housing problems.
Those areas which consistently show the highest incidence on some or all of these problems constitute the inner city.
One example which combines several of these indices is given in
Figure 2. Here neighborhoods in Philadelphia are classified accord ing to environmental quality and the need for public intervention.
Where one draws the line for the inner city depends of course on one's definition of desirable levels of neighborhood quality, and on one's ideology regarding the desirable extent of public inter vention in urban development. Or we could simply define the study area as that area reflecting specific social problems, such as housing abandonment, crime, overcrowding, or as areas in which children are frequently bitten by rats. Figures 3 and 4 illus trate the spatial distribution of the last two problems. A word
of c<;lutio'Il_,~ howgyer,:_. not all urban social nrohl.ems ar.e.. ..exp~c:i~d -
spatially. - 11 -
•
N•i9hborhood 01tality
,,... 1•• "'*••: '"'*"-*'-• ,., ,.,.,.,, ...... "•• Hi1h Priottt, '•••t•w.t/OpH' S11toic. 0
0 •
Figure 2 ;· Philadelphia Housing and Neighborhood Improvement Strategy Areas.
(after Dear, 1976). - 12 -
• • u•--•-*°'""'--'""''"'•.. o-•••""' CJ lf,.H'll. .,.,,.,.,,..v., ..... o-·..-41'M D ~··· " ... '" ... o .... ,-.. v...... o..a•• .,,,,...... ""'"" ...... - •. c..,
Figure 3: Overcrowded Housing in Atlanta, 1960-1970. (after Mercer and Hultquist, 1976) •
...... !' ..... &...... -......
!
!.,.:~ i ; ! ; • :...... , ":...... :
Region of Rot-Bitten Babies
loom::• 0.1~0.., ...... _.CortHf;JOnt..-c:•1•1t. CITY OF DETROIT
Figure 4: Rat-Bitten Children in Detroit. (after Bunge and Bordessa, 1975). - 13 -
Most of these same problems, however, could arise anywhere, in rural areas or small towns. Thus it must be the intersection of the process and problem definitions which delimits the inner city for present purposes. Like the term "suburb•', which has no clear geographic definition other than the political one (i.e. suburbs are outside the central city), the inner city has meaning only in a particular social and political context. Our search for simple definitions should end here, and our search for explan ations should begin. - 14 -
3. DIVERSITY: THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE INNER CITY
No single essay can hope to convey the rich diversity of areas which we might define as constituting the inner city. If we dig deeper, beyond those superficial generalizations which we find in the literature of the inner city as a slum or ghetto, we find im- mense heterogeneity in social character, attitudes, housing types, life styles and vitality. Perhaps the common image of a grey, im- proverished and decaying inner city is simply a middle-class view from the picture-windows of suburbia, particularly those in white
American suburbs.
In reality any detailed look at the older central part of our cities shows both areas of rich and poor, containing representatives of all racial groups, both the old and young populations and stable as well as declining areas. When we undertake to compare cities in different countries this diversity becomes so large that the term inner city itself begins to loose any explicit meaning. It hardly seems appropriate to talk of the inner city of Paris or Rome or Peking, not to mention Jerusalem, Mecca or Williamsburg, as decay- ing regions. Nor does the image fit much of the Third World where the wealthy tend to l.ive in the city and the poor in squatter settle- ments and shanty towns around the suburban periphery (Mountjoy, 1978). - 15 -
The concept of the inner city as an area under stress, with
an implicit connotation of a declining social status, is clearly
not universal. It applies primarily to older industrial cities 2 in western countries, and perhaps only to Anglo-Saxon cities. Of
course most cities have neighborhoods in central locations which
are subject to the ~redominant processes of aging and land use com-
petition outlined above. Although the processes may be universal,
their physical and spatial expression is certainly not.
The inner city crisis is not typical of cities in France or
Germany or much of Scandinavia, and not of Eastern Europe or the
Mediterranean region. But why not? In most of these countries the
negative consequences of land use competition are more closely con-
trolled; the cities are anchored by central areas of historical or
cultural significance; government policies have generally not en-
couraged decentralized; and residents appear to place a higher value on the amenities of older housing and a central location compared
to those of the suburbs, at least relative to the preferences ex-
pressed by residents in most North American cities for example. At
the same time the opportunities for relocation, and the attractive- ness and accessibility of the suburbs, are often considerably less in these countries. Neither have these countries felt the massive
decentralization effect of the automobile, at least not for as long
as North American cities. Moreover, in most Eastern Europe and
Mediterranean countries, unlike North American and Britain, there is still a severe housing shortage. The demand for housing - 16 -
high everywhere, including the inner city. Further many
inner cities of Eastern Europe, as well as Germany and
Japau are new, having been extensively rebuilt after the second world war.
Types of Inner City Neighborhoods
Given this diversity we would not expect that a single compre hensive classification of types of inner city areas would be pos sible. This holds true even if, as in this chapter, our attention is on residential neighborhoods. Such areas could be differentiated on the basis of any number of criteria or combination of criteria: broad socio-economic characteristics, race, housing conditions and mixed land uses, or on the basis of social problems, such as physi cal deterioration (Dear, 1976), crime (Harries, 1974), unemployment or poverty (Harrison, 1974), or specific indices such as rat bites among children (Figure 4), noted earlier.
An alternative set of criteria looks at older neighborhoods in terms of the direction of change, irrespective of their initial character or starting position. One example set out in Table 1 is a classification developed by the federal Ministry of State for
Urban Affairs for application to Canadian cities. Four types of neighborhoods are recognized within the inner city: 1) declining,
2) stable, 3) revitalizing, and 4) those undergoing massive redevelop ment. Differences between neighborhoods are drawn on the basis of TABLE 1: INNER-CITY NEIGHBORHOOD TYPES
Decline Stability Revitalization Massive redevelopment
Population Continuing loss of population No significant losses or gains Little change Gain in population Socio-economic status Decreasing Stable Increasing Increasing Family status Increasing proportion of non- Maintenance of population mix Maintenance of population mix Loss of families, gain of singles, family units and elderly young couples Ethnicity Varies-can be influx of deprived Sometimes strong ethnic Sometimes loss of ethnic Seldom important ethnic group or breaking down community groups of traditional community Community organizations Poorly organized, unstable Varies Increasingly well organized Usually unorganized Physical conditions Worsening Stable Improving Improved housing, possible environment problems Housing/land costs Increasing much less than Increasing at same rate as Increasing more rapidly than Increasing more rapidly metro average metro average metro average than metro average Tenure Increasing tenancy Varies, but often high Little change Tenancy ownership t-' Non-residential functions Loss of commercial-industrial Maintaining a mix of functions Maintaining a mix of functions Losing some commercial "-J functions with no replacement functions, but gaining others Pressure for redevelopment Low Low Strong, but controlled High
Source: McLemore, Aass and Keilhofer, 1975. - 18 -
variations from metropolitan-wide average changes in population,
socio-economic and family structure, ethnicity, physical and
housing conditions, land use succession and pressures for redevelop ment.
Although the specific characteristics attributed to each type
are readily apparent in the table, and need not be repeated here,
it is worth stressing that these same characteristics can apply
to very different communities. Stable neighborhoods can be rela
tively low income working-class neighborhoods or high and middle income enclaves, both may consist of either low-rise or high-rise housing as well as ethnically different populations. Only the revitalization process usually implies a particular social group - higher income professionals - although even that image is changing. We now recog nize the modest but important contributions of ethnic or minority groups to inner city revitalization (Chow, 1976; Hall, 1977). More over, public agencies have begun to enter the field of subsidized rehabilitation for those of modest income (Plan Canada, 1973; Mercer and Hultquist, 1976; James, 1977b).
To illustrate this diversity, Figure 5 outlines a schematic classification of different neighborhood types in the inner city which combines three sets of criteria: 1) average income levels,
2) the type, tenure and density of housing, and 3) recent directions of change in neighborhood quality as previously outlined. In all DENSITY/TENURE/HOUSING TYPE
High Medium/Mixed/ Rise/ Apts, Row Low/Owned Rental housing single family INCOME
high Gold .Society Rosedale coast Hill
middle ~ '°
public working working-.. low housirtg class areas class are·as Redevelopment:
Revitalizing
none ••• skid row ••• Stable
DIRECTION OF CHAi.~GE
Figure 5: A Classification of the Diverse Types of Inner City Neighborhoods - 20 -
48 different types are possible here~ but note that each could be
further subdivided by race or ethnic status, degree of non-resi
dential land use penetration, average age of building construction,
or position relative to the metropolitan area as a whole. Examples
are given of well-known inner area neighborhoods: the Gold Coast
in Chicago, Society Hill in Philadelphia and Rosedale in Toronto,
to suggest the range of diversity which is possible.
Social Disparities and the Inner City
With so many different types of neighborhoods in the inner city
aggregate comparisons can obviously be misleading. Nevertheless
some useful summary statistics can be cited.
Perhaps the most pervasive single characteristic of inner cities,
in the context of western industrial countries, is their deprivation
relative to suburban areas. In the United States, for example, inner
cities, particularly in the northeast and north central regions, have lower incomes, poorer services, higher taxes, and older popula
tions than do the suburbs. Since comparative data on these char
acteristics are not available on a uniform basis for inner cities,
the best approximation we can use is a 1977 study of central city
suburban differences in the nation's 85 largest urban centers (Ad
visory Commission on Intergovernmental Affairs, 1977).
Table 2 provides a summary of some of the indices in that study
for selected metropolitan areas in which the central city-suburban TABLE 2: SELECTED INDICES OF DISPARITY BETWEEN U.S. CENTRAL CITIES AND SUBURBS
Age Racial Se~resation Structure Seatial Structure Index of Change Percent Change in Rate of Number of City Pop. City Pop. Income in Income Change % Pop. % Pop. Change local as % of Density Central Disparity Disparity in Jobs Black Black in Pop. Gov't SMSA (per City and 1973 1960-73 1960-70 1970 1960-70 18-64 Age Units 1973 acre) S.M.S.A.:f (1) (2) (3) (4) 1973
1. Newark 0.56 0.86 -12.5 54.2 +20.1 -.12 207 0.19 24.4 2. Cleveland 0.66 0.96 -12.9 38.3 + 9.7 -.16 210 0.33 13.9 3. San Antonio 0.65 0.88 49.4* 7.6 + 0.5 .14 69 0.81 4.6 4. Hartford 0. 72 0.86 o.o 2 7 .9 +12.6 -.04 68 0.22 13.3 5. Dayton 0. 77 0.83 14.0 30.5 + 8.7 -.05 161 0.25 8.7 6. Miami 0. 77 0.88 7.4 22.7 + 0.3 .11 33 0.25 16.l 7. St. Louis 0.78 0.95 -14.2 40.9 +12.3 -.21 483 0.23 14.2 8. Baltimore 79 0.87 o. - 4.6 46.4 +11. 7 -.05 29 0.41 17.5 N I-' 9. Boston 0.79 0.98 - 4.0 16.4 + 7 .3 -.08 147 0.22 20.9 10. Chicago 0.80 0.92 -12.1 32.7 + 9.8 -.08 1172 0.45 22.5 11. Detroit 0.80 0.90 -18.8 43.7 +14.8 -.12 241 0.33 15.7 12. San Jose 0.80 0.87 49.9* 2.5 + 1.5 1.25 75 0.45 5.5 13. Rochester 0.80 0.87 0.5 16.8 + 9.4 -.07 198 0 .31 11. 7 14. Milwaukee 0.82 0.90 -10.2 14.7 + 6.3 -.05 149 0.48 11.3 15. Philadelphia 0.83 1.01 - 4.1 33.6 + 7 .2 -.05 852 0.38 22.6 16. New York 0.84 1.00 - 1.9 21. 2 + 7 .2 -.01 538 0.67 39.8 17. Birmingham 0.84 0. 72 5.7 42.9 + 2.4 -.11 92 0.39 5.6 18. Washington 0.84 0.85 8.2 71.l +17.2 -.02 90 0.24 18.6 19. Atlanta 0.84 0.83 19.5 51.3 +13.0 .01 86 0.30 5.3 20. Buffalo 0.85 0.94 -15.8 20.4 + 7.1 -.15 142 0.31 16.0
Continued ... For all 85 largest cities
Mean 0.96 0.92 15.8** 19.6 + 4.0 +.14 - 0.44 8.5 Standard deviation 0.17 0.09 22.5 14.5 + 2.5 .32 - 0.14 5.6 Coeff. of variation 0.18 0.10 1.4 o. 7 0.6 2.28 - 0.32 0.7
Notes: 1. ratio of per capita income in central city (cc) in income for areas outside central city (occ) 2. ratio of cc/occ income in 1960 to cc/occ income in 1973 3. employment by place of work 4. % Black 1970-% Black 1960
N *Annexation involved N **Unweighted average tRanked in order of disparity index, 1973.
Source: Advisory Collllll.ission on Intergovernmental Relations. Trends in Metropolitan America, Washington, D.C., 1977. - 23 -
disparity is greatest. The largest disparities, as expected, are
in older industrial centers, such as Newark, Cleveland, St. Louis,
Baltimore and Detroit, which tend to have high proportions of black populations and to have had a rapid loss of jobs between 1960 - 1970.
Newark and Cleveland for instance, lost 13 percent of their jobs,
St. Louis lost 14 percent and Detroit nearly 19 percent. During
the same period the relative shift in population from white to black within the central city was 20 percent in Newark, 15 percent in Detroit, 12 percent in St. Louis and Baltimore and 10 percent in Cleveland. Thus, the black population which has subtantially lower average incomes nationally, in moving to the central city has faced a rapidly declining base of job opportunities. The number of jobs still exceeds the labor force in most of these cities, but there is an increasing mismatch between the skills of the labor force and the type of jobs available (Harrison, 1974). Not sur prisingly income disparities have also increased in these same cities, notably in Newark and Baltimore.
But a declining economic base is not always the source of central city-suburban disparities. Nor are inner city problems only found in the north east and north central regions. Note in
Table 2 that three sun-belt cities, San Antonio, Miami and San Jose have substantial and increasing income disparities between central city and suburb, despite increases in the resident labor force and in the number of jobs in the central city. Although all three have relatively low proportions of blacks in the central city, pro- - 24 -
portions which did not increase significantly between 1960 and
1970, they do have large populations of other minority groups.
This lends some credence to the hypothesis developed later in this paper that racial and ethnic discrimination plays a major role in the current plight of the inner cities of urban America.
What is perhaps most disturbing about these disparities is that they seem to be increasing, at least through 1973. In the study cited above the mean ratio of central city-to-suburban income for all 85 cities was 96 percent. This is not in itself a large dif ferential, in part because the central cities of many metropolitan areas in the southwest and west are defined to include all or most of the high-income suburbs. The ratio of changes in the income index between 1960 and 1973, however, was 92 percent. The gap between central city and suburban is clearly widening.
In part the reason the gap is widening is because of the dif ferential income of migrants moving into or out of the central city
(Barabba, 1975). For all central cities, the average family incomes of out-migrants between 1970 and 1974 was $14,169, compared to
$13,349 for all families living in those cities in 1970. In-migrants on the other hand had average incomes of $12,864, over $500 less than that of all families at the beginning of the period, and $1300 less than those who left. The aggregate loss of income to the cen tral cities in only four years was estimated at over $27 billion.
This in turn reduced the demand for retail and social services, and decreased the tax base. - 25 -
What these data do not reveal is what is happening to income distributions within the inner city. Here comparative data are less readily available. Table 3 attempts to demonstrate the dif ferentials in income between racial groups and family types within the central city and suburbs. Unfortunately the data do not refer to change.
Yet even where the central city/suburban income ratio has remained close to one (in Table 2), income differentials within the central city, and the inner city in particular, have in many instances in creased. Even those inner cities which have retained their high income populations, such as New York, Boston and Washington, have also lost middle income and working-class households and gained more of the lowest income groups. The result is a polarization of income by social class and race, as well as geographically, within the inner cities. All of the imperfections of our industrial society and its labor markets are mirrored here.
Case Studies
To extend this analysis of inner city-suburban differences further requires that we restrict our discussions to case studies of individual urban areas. Two examples selected for comparison here are ones with which the author is personally familiar - metropolitan Toronto and Melbourne, Australia. Data for the inner city of Toronto are compared in Table 4 with those for Mel bourne. This comparison adds an international dimension to the - 26 -
TABLE 3: INCOME DIFFERENTIALS, CENTRAL CITY-SUBURBS, BY RACE AND TYPE OF FAMILY, U.S., 1973
Central cities Suburban rings Ratio Family Type (c.c.) (s. r.) (c.c./s.r.)
All families
Total $11, 343. $14,007 0.81
White (w) $12,332 $14,214 0 .86 Black (b) $ 7,517 $ 9,019 0.83
Ratio (b/w) 0.61 0.63
Families with female heads
Total $ 5,357 $ 7,069 0.76
White (w) $ 6,490 $ 7,429 0.87 Black (b) $ 4,176 $ 4,829 0.86
Ratio (b/w) 0.64 0.65
Source: U.S. Bureau of Census - 27 -
TABLE 4: A COMPARISON OF INNER CITIES IN THEIR METROPOLITAN CONTEXT, 1971
Toronto Melbourne
Census Metropolitan Inner Metropolitan Inner Statistical Criteria* City Area City Division
Population (1971) 642,290 2,628,070 634,016 2,503,450
% of CMA Population 24% 25%
Average Income: households $10,104 $11,911 per worker $3,933 $4,272
Age: % 65 and over 10 8 11.0 8.2
Education: less grade 9 (%) 42 32 24** 17** Univ. graduates (%) 6 6 4 3
Professional occupations (%) 16 19 16 18
Unemployment (%) 9 7 5 2
% Housing owner-occupied 43 55 65 84
% Apartments (or flats) 43 37 33 8
Foreign born (%) 45 34 36 27 .5
Overcrowding (%) 9 6 na na > 1 person per room
Crime rate (per 100, 000) na na 29.1 19.3
Population change (1971-76) (in thousands) -78,000 +175,000 -82,000 +101,000
(in percent) -12.1 +5.6 -12.9 +4.0
*Definitions of these criteria are not entirely compatible. **education less than 6 grades na = not available
Source: McLemore, Aass and Keilhofer, 1975; Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, 1977; Carter, 1977; Statistics Canada estimates, and calculations by the author. - 28 -
preceding discussion and it also shows examples of two inner cities which are not in decline. The Toronto inner city is as defined in
Figure 1, while the Melbourne inner city incorporates approximately the same area and population, but is delimited as the fifteen older and central municipalities of the metropolitan area (Melbourne and
Metropolitan Board of Works, 1977).
In many ways the inner cities of Toronto and Melbourne are remarkably similar. Both show many of the expected characteristics relative to their metropolitan aggregates. In both inner cities the population is now declining, after remaining relatively stable between 1961 and 1971 because of extensive redevelopment and massive foreign innnigration. Incomes are generally lower than the metropolitan average, the population is older with lower average levels of edu cation, and a higher proportion is foreign born. Also, unemployment and crime rates tend to be higher, and the housing stock shows a higher proportion of tenant-occupied units, apartments and higher levels of overcrowding.
The inner city-suburban differences often are not large, nor are the problems of the inner city as yet severe, but both are pre sent. Ironically, the inner city income differential; in Toronto
(0.85) and Melbourne (0.91) are in line with those cited for
American cities in Table 2. Yet in both cases the inner cities have remained relatively healthy and generally pleasant places to live (Maher, 1978). The question is why have some inner cities - 29 -
declined and others such as Toronto and Melbourne, or Boston and
San Francisco, have not? Is it simply a matter of the age or
timing of development: that Toronto or Melbourne will age and
follow Cleveland and Newark into decline? Or do these cities have unique characteristics which maintain the strength of their central areas? In the next two sections we examine these questions in more detail. - 30 -
4. WHY THE DECLINE OF THE INNER CITY?
Given the widespread interest in those inner cities which are declining it seems appropriate to attempt to isolate those factors which have been cited uo account for the decline. The diffi- culty here is not, as Leven and Mark (1977) note, that there are too few hypotheses but that there are too many. Everyone has their own list of "causes", their own theory of decline. Each may have some value in reference to particular cities at certain times, but none are universal. A conventional listing of the causes of, or factors encouraging, inner city decline would be a lengthy and ted ious exercise. Instead we might develop the various arguments that have been put forward as hypotheses of inner city decline. Specific factors will then emerge from each of these hypotheses.
1. The "Natural" Evolution Hypothesis
This cluster of ideas derives largely from the literature of human ecology. This view, typified by the early work of Burgess and the Chicago school of urban ecology, sees the inner city as the natural point of entry into the city for immigrants and other disadvantaged groups. These groups tend to occupy older areas and inexpensive housing near the commercial core abandoned by higher income groups who had moved to the growing suburbs. Inevitably, the ghetto, and the transition zone of mixed land uses around the core, expand at the expense of immediately adjacent residential - 31 -
areas located further out. This is the process of ecological suc
cession, with the spatial result being an urban area stratified
into concentric zones of increasing social status outward from the
city center.
The driving factor in this model is the growth of the city's
population through in-migration, particularly of ethnically differ-
ent populations, and the corresponding geographic expansion of the
C.B.D., through economic growth. The means by which this growth
becomes translated into spatial terms is through competition among
land uses for space and the filtering down of older housing from high to low income groups. As the city grows the spatial segre-
gation of land uses and social groups increases. The sequent oc
cupance of different concentric rings by socially or ethnically distinct
groups then appears to be an inevitable response to growth and to structural changes within the city.
The impression is one of a "mechanistic" or "natural" evolution of the urban structure, not unlike that of biological communities.
The older inner parts of the city become the depositories for those unable to compete and those newly arrived. As we now know there is little about this process which is in fact "natural" or predeter mined. It assumes rapid urban growth, in-migration, an industrial economy and the relative absence of planning. In other words, it reproduces the City of Chicago. To some critics this approach is, in effect, both an - 32 -
intellectual and perhaps an ideological straight-jacket (Castells,
1977). It is devoid of any consideration of social organization or politics or psychological attitudes. It ignores the variety of other forces which can lead to decentralization and the segre gation of land uses and social groups, and to inner city decline or revitalization. The decline of older neighborhoods is not, as
Guest (1977) argues, inevitable even with segregation.
2. Preferences and Income: The ''Pull" Hypothesis
This approach, based largely on microeconomic (and neoclassi cal) models of urban structure, sees the declining inner city as the logical consequence of the working-out of preferences and
tastes in the market for urban land and housing. People, as well as industries, have chosen not to remain in the inner city, or at least have shown a preference for living in suburban areas, despite the higher costs of commuting to work. As locational preferences shift away from the inner city, and the demand for housing declines, then housing will deteriorate and abandonment will spread. The argument is that people are willing to move to the suburbs because their preferences for new housing, larger lots, lower densities, three cars or other amenities, outweigh the costs and inconvenience of commuting. In other words, the elasticities of demand for suburban housing services are higher than for older housing, and commuting - 33 -
becomes an inferior good. The result is that people are "pulled" to the suburbs and away from the central city.
The underlying social premises in this argument are weak for a number of reasons. First, the fact that households, and industries, have moved to the suburbs in large numbers in the past does not necessarily mean that this reflects their preferences. It may, but it also may reflect constraints on the choice of a residential location.
Not everyone has a choice in housing between the inner city and the suburb, either because of their low income, race or physical immo bility, or through exclusionary zoning in the suburbs. Third, a strict focus on preferences ignores those factors (or disamenities) cited above which act to push residents out of the inner city - such as high taxes, poor services, crime and pollution. Moreover, since the journey-to-work is now no longer for suburban residents in many cities than for central city residents, the hypothesis of a trade- off between housing and commuting costs as an explanation of sub- urban growth is now open to serious question.
Finally, the micro-economic approach ignores the direct role of institutions and government in designing the structure of the inner city. It assumes the free hand of a competitive market, while in fact that market is heavily constrained by public bodies, regulations and social attitudes. - 34 -
Perhaps the single most important factor facilitating the realization of this preference for suburban locations has been the rapid growth of personal income. Here the evidence is reasonably clear. Throughout most of the 1950's and 1960's incomes in North
America increased faster than housing costs. People were able to consume more housing, in terms of size or quality of service pro vided. Units of lower quality could be exchanged for higher qual ity units. Higher income, however, does not explain why increases in quality were made largely by relocation rather than by improving the existing units. Nor does it explain why the units selected in relocation tended to be in the suburbs rather than in the older central city.
The explanation comes in part from what Berry (1975) calls the cultural predispositions of Americans and the social bases of urban ization in the United States. He refers to the tendency for Amer icans to prefer the new over the old, private over public places, low density over high density and mobility over stability. The former are all characteristics of the suburbs. While most of these are still true, although there has been a rapid convergence between central city and suburb in terms of indices such as density, they in turn do not explain why some inner cities are declining in pop ulation much faster than others within the U.S., and why extensive decentralization is taking place in other countries which purport edly do not have these same value systems. We must therefore look for additional reasons. - 35 -
3. Jhe Obsolescence Hypothesis
Related to the argument on preferences is the assertion that the built environment and social infrastructure of the inner city have become obsolescent. Obsolescence can take several forms:
1) functional, in which the existing structure, such as a port facility, is no longer economically usable because of design, lo- cation or demand; 2) physical, in which the structure is now simply uninhabitable; and 3) social, where preferences have changed to the extent that the structure is no longer in demand.
A typical view of this source of the problems of the inner city is summarized in the following quotation:
"The root difficulty of the older urban regions ... is a secular one. They.ere built at too high population densities, with too much vertical and inefficient factory space to be fully competitive either in the eyes of to-day's housing consumers or today's business producers (George B. Peterson, quoted in Reigeluth, 1977, p. 550).
There is considerable validity to the technological (physical and functional) obsolescence argument in this hypothesis. The inner city is generally older, and as our earlier process-based definition suggested, is continually subjected to the pressures of aging. Nonetheless, aging need not implyobsolescenc~ except in the impact of technological change on industrial buildings and or- ganizations. Social obsolescence on the other hand requires a change - 36 -
in preferences or a change in policies which alter the choices avail
able for consumers. High densities, for example, are relative not
absolute. They are only high in comparison to some other areas,
among which there is a choice. Obsolescence then is an important
factor, but it is largely socially-defined.
4. The "Unintended" Policy Hypothesis
One variant of an approach which emphasizes the important role
of the public sector in shaping our urban areas is to view the de
clining inner city as the indirect and largely unintended result
of a set of non-urban policies. These policies were designed to
achieve other results and objectives, such as transportation im
provements, but when combined have had the side-effect of creating
or accelerating many of the traditional inner city problems. It
is in this sense that we speak of a "hidden or unintended urban policy"
which has designed the decline of the central city.
In the U.S., for example, one can identify a long list of pol
icies whose side-effects have been particularly severe on the inner
city. Among these are the agricultural and rural land banking acts
of the 1930's and 1940's, which were intended to make agriculture more efficient and stable, but also resulted in the dumping of a
large number of rural migrants on the central cities. These cities were for the most part unprepared to receive these migrants, and of course agricultural policies were not directly concerned with
the destinations of the labor force they displaced. - 37 -
Perhaps the two most significant post-war policies affecting the inner city are those on housing and on transportation, notably highway improvements. The former policies accelerated the con struction of new, owner-occupied housing in suburban areas, through such means as the provision of inexpensive mortgages, tax benefits and subsidized services. Initially intended for returning war veterans, these programs were gradually expanded to include a much larger proportion of the growing middle class. Although the ob jectives of these programs seemed laudatory at the time, their net effect, when combined with unfavorable tax treatment on improve ments to older housing, was to seriously undercut the demand for existing housing units. This in turn reduced the incentive to maintain the older housing stock in the inner city. At the same time financing for older housing was costly and restricted (Stegman,
1973; Harvey, 1975).
In the transportation field, the national highway planning act had two mutually re-enforcing consequences. It lead to the con struction of an extensive network of interstate and intraurban
"freeways", which vastly improved the accessibility of outlying suburban areas as places for living and working. In doing so, how ever, it encouraged decentralization and reduced the relative lo cational advantages of the inner city. Moreover, the financing - 38 -
of the highway system diverted public funds which might otherwise might have gone into public transit maintenance and the financing of new transit construction, further depressing the attractiveness of the inner city. Similarly, federal regulatory policies have favored truck transportation over rai~ further encouraging decentral ization. Second, the construction of the highway network itself had a direct effect: it destroyed vast areas of the inner city.
It removed social infrastructure, or paved it over, reduced the tax base, depressed land values and ruined the environmental quality of many inner city neighborhoods. Had these consequences been more fully anticipated at the time, it is unlikely ~hat the intra urban portion of the interstate highway system would have been built in the same way or to the same extent.
Numerous other government policies with similar but perhaps not as dramatic negative effects could be cited. Among those are tax policies which discourage reinvestment in older, smaller businesses and in the existingbuildingstock; national defense and treasury policies which favor high technology industries over high employ ment industries, where the latter are often located in the inner city; the fight against inflation and the rising costs of public services; immigration policies which do not provide services for - 39 -
new immigrants; and the restrictive policies of financial insti-
tutions in lending to inner city properties and households.
Tax policies have been particularly injurious to older central
cities, especially the larger ones. A recent report of the Urban
Institute (1977) concludes that federal tax provisions have:
1) favored low density sprawl over compact development, thus accelerating decentralization
2) favored the construction of single-family owner-occupied housing over rental and multi-family housing
3) favored the development of new commercial, industrial and residential buildings over the maintenance of older capital stocks
4) tilted the terms of economic competition towards the sub urbs and against the older central cities
5) favored investment in new housing over other types of in vestments
It is difficult to quantify these effects as such, but there
is no doubt of their serious negative impacts on the inner city.
These negative consequences have not been counter-balanced, in the
opinion of most observers, by government initiatives in the central
cities. Only recently has research begun to explore the impact of
this ''mesh" of non-urban policies on older urban areas (see Adams,
1976; Urban Institute, 1977; Rand Corporation, 1977). As this evi-
dence accumulates the strength of the unintended policy hypothesis will no doubt increase. - 40 -
5. The Exploitation Hypothesis: Power, Capitalism and the Political Economy of Urbanization
Another line of argument based on the role of institutions in
the inner city may be called the exploitation hypothesis (Edel,
1972). The literature in this area seems to show two avenues of
concern. One examines power relationships within urban areas and
specifically who makes decisions which influence the inner city
(Shank, 1976; Pahl, 1977). The second approach views inner city
decline as the inevitable consequence of systematic exploitation
under a capitalist system (Harvey, 1977; Gordon, 1977; Castells, 1977).
The two are often so intertwined that their separation becomes diffi-
cult.
The first hypothesis sees inner city decline as the result of
an imbalance of power in decision-making. This imbalance occurs
between central city and suburb, as well as among social groups and
business interests. The city is "manipulated" to suit the needs
of particular interest groups (Harrison, 1974; Gale and Moore, 1975;
Alcaly and Mermelstein, 1977). The city is designed from outside.
Thus, as Boulding (1968) notes:
"everyone knows that the problem with central cities is that decisions made on their behalf are not made by people who live there nor in fact have many of them ever been there, except passing through". - 41 -
In the politically fragmented American metropolitan area, in which the central city contains by far the largest deposit of the socially disadvantaged and economically-weak, it is not surprising that pol itical power rests elsewhere.
In some instances the arguments go beyond the lack of power by attempting to identify a "conscious plot" on the part of some sectors of society to undermine the economic base, community struc ture and environment of inner city areas. It is difficult to identify the culprits and the form of the plot, but selected examples can be cited. Some landowners, real estate agents and speculators at tempt to drive down the price of land and housing so as to buy cheap and sell later at much higher prices for private or public renewal.
The automobile companies, historically, benefitted enormously by the decline of urban transit systems, most of which were located in· the inner city. Some municipalities benefit by the deterioration of the business climate in a competing city. And some businesses of course benefit by altering the geography of market areas within and between cities. Some others argue that the plot, at least in U.S. cities, is based on racism.
Others criticize the role of public institutions and agencies.
Financial institutions, notably building societies and residential mortgage lending institutions have in their allocation of loans also discriminated against older inner city housing and ethnic neighborhoods - 42 -
(Williams, 1976; Boddy, 1976; Harvey, 1977). However, recent e.vi
dence tends to refute this hypothesis, better known as "redlining",
at least with regard to F.H.A. lending policies among black and white
neighborhoods, although there is still a bias against older housing
(MacRae and Struyk, 1977), and the poor.
Generally, however, these arguments blend into the approach
which in geography and economics is now called the "political
economy of urbanization" (Harvey, 1975; Harloe, 1977; Broadbent,
1977). In its broadest sense this hypothesis states that the mas
sive urban concentration which took place in the 1950's, and metro
politan decline of the 1970's, are the social and spatial outcomes
of the operation of an economic system which encourages, if not
necessitates, the under-employment of certain people and regions.
Large cities were created by the economic system in order to secure
the economies of agglomeration. Now that those economies are of
decreasing importance the industrial city is being abandoned. The
inner city, in this context, becomes one of the spatial and social
scrap heaps of modern capitalism.
The specific reasons why capitalism now seems to encourage the
running-down of the inner city is that the private sector can make more profits elsewhere, usually where short-run private costs are
lower. But what is wrong with that? This approach argues that it - 43 -
is wrong precisely because the private sector receives most of the profits, but does not bear its fair share of social costs. These costs relate to structural change in the economy, to job retraining and industry relocation, and to the rebuilding of worn-out urban areas.
These areas provided the infrastructure and human resources on which earlier private profits where made. Inner city problems then become not failures of the market, as the micro-economic approach suggests, but the result of the competitive market itself (Inner
City Working Group, 1977).
This approach explicitly raises the question of who benefits from and who pays for uncontrolled economic change and urban growth.
The argument is that private land owners, business and financial institutions are the major beneficaries of inner city decline, a1ded by governments which are dominated by property and business inter ests. The costs are borne, in general, by society as a whole, through its tax base, and by individual members of the society who are trapped by such changes in declining regions or inner cities.
6. The Structural Change Hypothesis
The term structural is used here in the general sense of aggre gate or macro changes in the national space economy and in demo graphic structure. The basic argument is that the national space economy, the integrated urban-industrial complex and its appended institutions, has shifted in structure in recent years to the detri ment of particular inner city areas. No one is to blame, just the system and exogeneous events beyond our control. Of course the - 44 -
inner city has always borne the brunt of excessive swings in the
national economy, as well as of changes in political attitudes
and in public policy. The spatial impact of such national shifts
is almost always uneven. Some regions gain others lose.
Numerous examples could be cited to sustain this line of argu
ment. Recent declines in manufacturing employment in most western
countries, due to investment uncertainty, technological obsolescence,
reduced consumer demand and low-cost international competition, have been felt most severely in the older industrial districts (Sternlieb
and Hughes, 1975; Chinitz and Jacob, 1977). Many of these districts
are in the inner city. In the U.S. many industries in the older
industrial districts in the north-east and north-central regions have moved to, or expanded into, cheaper locations in the west and south, or even outside the country. New foreign plants have followed suit. Interestingly this decline does not appear to be related to size of city (Chinitz and Jacob, 1977). Thus, one interpretation is
that a new version of the familiar process of interregional competi
tion is now being waged with the industrial inner cities of the north as the new victim.
In the U.K., industries have also moved out of the inner city, but in London at least more jobs have been lost through plant clos ings than through relocation (Gripaios, 1977). A stagnant indust rial sector nationally, and resulting attempts at "rationalizing"
(which means concentrating) the ownership and location of - 45 -
remaining industries, have meant massive changes in British inner cities (Massey, 1976). Ironically the British government's regional policy during the 19SO's and 1960 1 s, which sought to encourage the decentralization of population into new towns and of industry from the major centers into depressed regions, clearly has contributed to inner city decline (Hall, 1977).
Other national structural changes have had similarly severe impacts on the inner city. One is the recent and dramatic change in demographic structure and the shift in migration patterns. Not only have population growth rates slowed, but family and household size have declined sharply during the late 1960's and early 1970's.
If the inner city is typically an area of low fertility, and high turnover and out-migration, with the resident population replaced by in-migrants from outside the urban area (or outside the country), then it is the first to feel the effects of slower population growth and lower rates of foreign immigration. Decreases in family size have of course "thinned-out" the population of almost all residential neighborhoods in the city, but again the initial effect was felt in the inner city where the population base was already thinning through continued out-migration.
In the U.K., where out-migration has been accelerated by public programs to relocate the resident populations in new towns outside the urban area, and to demolish the older housing, the impact has - 46 -
been devastating. The decline in population growth has left vast wastelands of cleared land for which there is no innnediate use in cities such as Liverpool and Birmingham (Stone, 1977).
At the same time interregional migration patterns in the U.S., and the U.K., as in most western countries, have shifted away from their traditional orientation to the major metropolitan areas to ward smaller urban centers even rural areas (Tucker, 1976). Most of the largest metropolitan areas (SMSA's) in the U.S. now have very large negative migration balances (Morrison, 1976). In fact, fully one-seventh of all SMSA's declined in population between
1970 and 1975. The inner cities, as noted above, which have tradi tionally replaced at least part of their population through in migration have been hit first and hardest.
7. The Fiscal Crisis and the Underclass Hypothesis
A subsidiary hypothesis on inner city decline emphasizes the increasing financial difficulties of the central cities, on which there is now a rapidly growing literature (Advisory Connuission on
Intergovernmental Relations, 1973; Nathan and Adams, 1976; Carey,
1976; Gorham and Clazer, 1976; Hill, 1976; Alcaly and Mermelstein,
1977). Basically the argument is that the declining resource base
(in people and jobs) and rising costs of providing services in U.S. central cities have discouraged investment in capital stocks and - 47 -
stimulated the out-migration of households and firms. As out migration continues, balancing the municipality's financial books becomesmore and more difficult. Taxes rise and services are with drawn, further stimulating out-migration in the classic model of circular and cumulative causation. New York's current crisis may be a prototype of the future.
One specific reason given for the crisis is the highly politi cally fragmented American metropolis. In this setting the central city.is burdened with much of society's social debts, including the operating costs and consequences of numerous federal programs, but less of society's total revenues. This produces sharp inequalities between city and suburb and even among the latter. There is now, as shown in Table 2, ample evidence of the existence and the extent of these inequalities (Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Re lations, 1965 and 1977; Hill, 1974; Masters, 1975; Coates, et al.,
1976).
Those households with lower income left in the central city, the 'underclass',are caught between rapidly rising costs and taxes and static or slowly declining real incomes (Eversley, 1972;
Lineberry, 1975). In part rising costs are directly reflected in property truces and in user charges for public services, but these are generally considered to be regressive in that they penalize inner city and rental housing units, and thus the poor. Although - 48 -
the debate on the "regressive" nature of property taxes and public
services is still continuing, there is little doubt of their nega
tive ~mpact on the older parts of the central city.
More generally, the fiscal crisis of central cities is seen
as part of the continuing financial crisis of government in western
societies (Hill, 1976), but it also has a specific geographic di mension. A common argument is that the near bankruptcy of central
cities is due in part to the absence of a metropolitan government
structure which would spread both costs and revenues more evenly over the urban area. This is true to an extent, at least if one
looks at the financial situation of urban areas which have metro wide tax sharing (i.e. Toronto) or area-wide-services (i.e. Minnea polis) or those that do not have restricted central city political unit (i.e. Houston). But it does ignore the difficulties faced by all local government units because of the imbalance between services provided or demanded, and revenue sources available. The latter is again compounded in the inner city by a declining population and employment base.
8. The Black Inner City in Cultural Isolation: The Conflict Hypothesis
Perhaps the prevailing characteristic of American inner cities, particularly those which are now in economic difficulty, is that their populations are made up increasingly of minority groups, notably - 49 -
blacks. The extent of segregation in American society and in its cities is a fundamental consideration in understanding the state of the inner cities (Becker, 1971; von Furstenberg, et al., 1974).
The inner cities are simply the most recent geographical expression of the segregation process, and a reflection of cultural isolation and polarization.
The inner city when viewed in this context becomes the fron tier, a cultural "outpost" well removed from the mainstream of
American urban life (Rose, 1972; Edel, 1972; Bunge and Bordessa,
1975; Downs, 1976; Castells, 1977). External cultural conflict with the larger white society, and uncertainty, disorganization and con flict within, are the basic parameters of life in the inner city
(Wolpert, Mumphrey and Seley, 1972). Ley (1974) acknowledges the wide divergence between society's perception of the black community as beseiged and monolithic (thus the outpost terminology) and the reality of disunity within that community. Benge and Bordessa (1975) liken the cultural distance between the increasingly black inner city and the white suburbs to that between white (and imperialist)
America and the Third World. Not only is the black inner city cul turally isolated, it also suffers from many of the problems common to frontier regions: high disease and death rates, inadequate social services, economic uncertainty and exploitation by a distant
(in cultural not physical terms) elite. - 50 -
There are at least two principal implications of this thesis
for the present study. One is related to our previous hypothesis
of the declining inner city as the result of systematic exploitation
and the isolation of minority racial groups. The second is the
distorted image of the black inner city h~ld by white suburban
America. This image in. turn has contributed to the further decline
of the inner city, the segregation of an important social group,
and to the repulsion of blacks from white areas and whites from
black areas. The latter no doubt encouraged the massive out-migration
of white Americans to the suburbs during the 1960's; at a rate
which exceeded that of any previous decade (Reid, 1977). Although
the importance of this "repulsion" effect is perhaps not as over
whelming as the literature has lead us to expect (Leven and Mark,
1977), its imprint is still readily apparent.
An additional implication of this line of argument is that
current urban policies directed toward an improvement of the inner
city through physical rejuvenation are likely to be ineffective.
If images, and prejudice, play such a large role in isolating the
inner city, then cosmetic solutions will be insufficient.
Ironically, Bunge and Bordessa (1975) and Harvey (1977) come
/ to this same conclusion, as does Banfield in his controversial book "The
Unheavenly City" (1974), although the latter starts from a very dif
ferent perspective. Both groups agree on the importance of social
class and racial conflict in shaping current inner city problems, - 51 -
but they disagree on both the origin of the conflict and its solu- tion. For the former the conflict derives from exploitation of one class by another; for the latter it means that one social class
(the middle-class and elite) is simply better able to take advantage "~·---- of opportunities. Other classes are simply left behind in the com- petition.
Summary: Which Hypothesis of Decline is Correct?
Although each of these hypotheses of inner city decline has validity, none is correct in that it applies consistently to all of the areas studied. The point to stress here is that the relative importance of each factor varies between cities and over time.
Similarly, the balance between external and internal pressures will also vary. Each factor must be studied in its appropriate social and geographic context.
Perhaps the most convenient form of summary is to identify those factors which act to push people and businesses out of the inner city, and those acting as attractors to the suburbs or which encourage business and households to pull out of the inner city.
For convenience these factors are smnmarized in tabular form below
(Table 5). No priority is intended by the ranking; nor do we need to discuss each factor at this point. Although we cannot attach - 52 -
TABLE 5: PUSH-PULL FACTORS IN INNER CITY-SUBURBAN COMPETITION*
Criteria Push Factors Pull Factor (from inner city) (in suburbs)
Population base declining growing
Environmental quality deteriorating inner city suburban amenities
Jobs declining growing
Racial balance increasingly black or ethnic homogeneous and white
Densities high low
Initial construction often poor more recent/subject to tighter controls
Infrastructure aging incomplete but new
Housing stock old, often deteriorating new
Income level decreasing increasing
Financing (mortgage) restricted/expensive abundant/inexpensive
Property taxes high lower, but increasing
Pollution levels high lower
Social services/schools deteriorating new
Highways destructive improved accessibility
Crime high and obvious high, but less obvious
Industrial capital obsolescent new
Land \lse competition severe limited
Redevelopment extensive (or threat of) minimal
Public covenants building code enforcement/ some times relaxed, but fire regulations buildings new
*These factors emphasize the problems faced by inner city areas, particularly those in American cities. - 53 -
weights to these factors, it is clear that not only have economic and social pressures been working against the inner city, but that government policies seem to have increased rather than lessened these pressures.
The iµterested reader might well ask: if the suburbs have all of these attractions, why not encourage more suburban develop- ment? One direct answer is that much of the suburban phenomenon of the post-war period took place at the expense of, rather than in a complementary fashion to, the older central city. The massive scale, low densities and relatively low costs of suburban housing construction were made possible to an extent precisely because resources were removed from the central city. Moreover, suburban municipalities were able to avoid paying their share of the costs of providing services for the full range of social needs, and of maintaining the central cities where most of them worked. Nor did they pay their share of the social costs of pollution, industrial obsolescence and segregation, because these were located in another jurisdiction. And through exclusionary zoning they were able to preserve amenities by restricting the access of others to suburban 3 living.
Ironically much of the initial low cost and attractiveness of suburban sprawl has turned out to be short term. Servicing costs are now rising rapidly in suburban areas and property taxes have - 54 -
virtually exploded. The future promises more of the same. As the need to replace or extend public services in these low-density
suburbs increases, and as the cost of energy and the difficulties of commuting rise and when the social costs of underpopulated inner
cities begin to appear in government expenditures, then perhaps
the real long-run costs will be visible. At that time the social value of land, housing and location in the inner city may be better appreciated. - 55 -
5. BACK TO THE CITY: IS THE INNER CITY REVIVING?
Despite the emphasis on decline in the preceding section it is premature to talk of the demise of the inner city. Even in the battered inner cities in the industrial northeast of the U.S. there are signs of revival. Almost daily our newspapers carry articles on the revitalization, primarily through private means, of an inner city neighborhood. How common is this process? Why and where does it happen? Does it involve people already living in the city, or is there in fact a movement of population back into the city? Is this the mechanism which will save the inner city? Or is the pro- cess so small, short term and sporadic as to have only a minimal effect on the quality of inner city life?
Although there is increasingly widespread interest in this pro- cess, empirical evidence on recent trends is very thin. There al- ways has been some movement of upper and middle income groups into the inner city. Often, but nct:necessarily, these movements have been into formerly low-income areas: a process known by such euphemisms as "gentrification" in the U.K. and Australia, ''white painting" in Canada, and as neighborhood "revitalization" and c01mnunity con- servation in the U.S. Some cities have never been without such activity. However, what does seem unusual about the trend of the - 56 -
1970's, at least in American cities, is that the numbers involved
now appear to be larger than in the past and that the location and
character of the areas undergoing revitalization are different.
The data that do exist for U.S. cities (Stegman, 1973; Goldstein
and Davis, 1977; James, 1977a, 1977b, 1977c) suggest that there has
been considerable re-investment in the existing housing stock in
general, much of it in areas of the inner city which previously had
been deteriorating. In addition, there has been some growth in the
proportion of residents with high income (or professional occupations),
both within or adjacent to the C.B.D. and at other locations in the
central city. These trends, however, as Lipton (1977) shows, are
restricted to a few cities. Figure 6 demonstrates the wide variabil
ity in location and growth (or decline) of high income areas in the
U.S. inner city between 1960 and 1970. In some inner cities the
high income areas have continued to decline and to shift outward
(Atlanta) while in others they have expanded (Chicago, Houston);
in still others they are now almost non-existent (Baltimore and
Newark). The association between high income and housing stock
revitalization is of course tenuous. But areas which record
relative increases in income are also likely to show corresponding
improvements in housing quality and public services.
Those cities most likely to show substantial housing stock
reinvestment, and the maintenance or expansion of existing middle and high-income areas, are those with: 1) primarily government or - 57 ------~----· Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago
1970
1960
Newark LEGEND Houston
I' / I ·-' ~ .., AREAS WITH 'II AIOVE MEDIAN EDUCATION & INCOME \ TWO Mllf RADIUS FROM 0 CENTRAL IUSINESS DISTRICT mop• by I. o!>d c. ogrot~y "1wo MILES/
,. Figure 6: Changing Areas of Above __ f / Average Income and Educational I Levels, 1960-70, Selected Cities i..'i (After Lipton, 1977). - 58 -
service-based economies, 2) strong downtown office concentrations,
3) areas of historical, cultural or architectural significance,
4) a relative absence of racial conflict, 5) natural environmental
amenities, and 6) viable public transit systems. These attributes
act to maintain the relative attractiveness of the central city.
It also helps if there is somewhat restricted access to new housing
and jobs in suburban areas, either because of the distances and costs
involved in commuting or topographic barriers. New York, Boston,
Washington and San Francisco are obvious examples of American cities with these attributes; Toronto, Vancouver, Melbourne, Sydney and
London are other examples.
Another index of the rate and timing of revitalization used by James (1977c), is the relation of average prices for owner occupied housing, and rents for tenant-occupied housing, between
central city and suburb (Table 6). Average housing prices and
rents in central cities lagged behind those in the suburbs in the
1950's and 1960's. The differential then began to drop between 1970
and 1973. In 1973-75 the differential was reversed: housing prices and rents increased at a faster rate in.the central city. This shift is directly reflected in the marked increase in building permits for improvements on existing housing units since 1973, in relation to the total number of new urban housing starts. Figure 7 demonstrates this relationship for Washington, D.C. and Atlanta,
Georgia between 1967 and 1976. Clearly improvements to the existing stock are counter-cyclical: they rise when new construction declines. - 59 -
TABLE 6: TRENDS IN MEDIAN RENTS AND AVERAGE PRICE OF HOUSING IN U.S. CENTRAL CITIES AND SUBURBS, 1950-1975 (in percentages)
Owner-Occupied Units Rental Units Area 1950-60 1970-73 1973-75 1970-73 1973-75
Suburbs 50.1 41.8 19.8 24.6 13.7 Central 33.0 36.0 20.7 22.4 15.7 Cities
Source: Adapted from James 1977c and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Metro politan Housing Characteristics, Washington, D.C., 1976.
The reasons for this reversal of recent building and price
trends are many and varied. First, there is the importance attached
to particular cities as places to live, noted above. Second, a
number of social and structural changes have also taken place.
The dramatic shift in demographic structure toward smaller families,
fewer children and non-family households, as Kern (1977) argues,
has reduced the attractiveness of larger suburban houses which tend
to have more bedrooms and outside play space for children. More-
over, housing suitable for non-family households, and unattached
individuals, is less readily available in the suburbs than in the
central city. Similarly, the rise in female labor force participa-
tion, and therefore in two-income households has somewhat restricted
the choices in residential location open to those households because
of their joint commuting difficulties. The central city, with a. - 60 -
greater diversity of jobs and variable modes of transport, thus be-
comes more attractive. At the same time energy costs are beginning
to influence the willingness of households to undertake long dis-
tance connnuting from the suburbs to the inner city. This too would 4 encourage central city workers to live nearer their jobs.
ATLANTA itiASlllNGTON, D.C. 60 \ ~ HUllber of auilding Penait• ~-- for llome lmprove...,nta in the City \ ••••••Annual lloual.ng Start• in \ •••• th• Metropolitan Area 50 \ ' \ (lo h~dr~., • • .• • • • • • • • • • ... 40 ' ._,. .. ·. . . . . ' ,___ ... ·· .. .. . ·. "/ --- ..... --- ...... · .· .. ·. I , .. ·.. I ~ I • . I ./ (:ln tboueande) •. • "' ·. ... ___ • • • • • • • ...... / . 20 ' ·r -.. "" / .. ··...... ··.. ..······ .• • .• •. 10 •. :·: .....
1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 15175 1976 'Oil
Figure 7: The Relationship between New Construction and Improvements to the Existing Housing Stock, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. (after James, 1977c). - 61 -
It may also be argued that the recent inflation in housing prices and costs has curtailed the ability of young families to purchase housing. This in turn has restricted the demand for new suburban owner-occupied housing (Struyk, 1976). More explicitly,
James (1977c) argues that the recent revitalization of older hous- ing and inner city neighborhoods is directly related to the collapse of new housing construction between 1974 and 1976. This argument emphasizes the point made earlier in this paper in reverse: that policies which encouraged the massive construction of suburban hous- ing have been a major factor in the deterioration and abandonment o finner city. h ousing.. 5
Whether this modest improvement in inner city housing, and the relative increase in middle and upper income households, is a short term or long term movement is uncertain. The process is by all accounts not yet substantial overall. Nor will it likely be- come so, except in a very few cities, at least without significant changes in housing and taxation policies. Fortunately there are signs that the pendulum of housing policy is beginning to shift back toward an emphasis on preserving the older stock.
There is also insufficient evidence to conclude that the American inner city is being extensively revitalized. Granted revitalization is happening, even in cities with t;1e worst image, such as Detroit.
But as yet it tends to be limited in scope and impact. Nor is there much evidence that this process is a function of a back-to-the-city movement. The majority of households involved in revitalizing inner - 62 -
city neighborhoods have not come from the suburbs. They are pri marily in-migrants from outside the urban area or central city residents who have not moved out. As Lipton (1977) found this tendency was greatest in cities with high proportions of service and professional occupations and in those in which commuting dis tances from the suburbs are long. Whether the increasing costs associated with suburban living noted above will lead to a substan tial back-to-the-city movement in the future is impossible to predict; hut the signs are good.
If, on the other hand, the rate of new housing construction improves, as it has done during 1977, particularly in terms of single-family units in the suburbs, then the demand for housing in the inner city could again decline. The dilemma for policy makers faced with high unemployment levels, if the above argument holds true, is that any stimulus to the construction industry which favors suburban housing will take away some of the incentive for revital izing inner city housing. Similarily many suburban municipalities have vacant serviced lots which they want developed for tax pur poses. These pressures are likely to increase as population growth rates decline. - 63 -
6. CONCLUSIONS AND A LOOK AHEAD
This paper has attempted to demonstrate the immense diversity of inner city areas. It has been argued that there is no single concept or geographical definition of the inner city; nor a uni versal set of characteristics which apply to all inner cities even in the same country. The term itself has become so clouded, often with overtones of racial or ethnic prejudice, that it can serve little purpose as an analytical construct without a formal redefin ition in reference to specific processes or policy issues. By emphasizing diversity we are implying that any definition of the inner city must be directed to real problems not at some blanket statement of the "inner city crisis". Moreover, we must ask: whose crisis is it? Who suffers and who gains? This is not to say that the inner city, however defined, is not important. Indeed the older inner areas of most cities have serious problems, and these areas are emerging as one of the most difficult dilemmas facing urban policy makers in the 1980's. Some cities in the U.S. and U.K. have already reached the stage of rapid decline (U.S. House of Representatives, 1977; U.K. Department of the Environment, 1977); and cities elsewhere, such as western Europe,
Canada and Australia, are beginning to show similar trends (Reigeluth,
1977). Whether these cities follow the same path as those industrial centers in the U.S. and the U.K. is impossible to predict. - 64 -
Our images of the future of the inner city are shaped by the publicity given to extreme events. We have all seen pictures of abandoned housing in the Bronx being put to the torch; of relative ly new housing estates in Britain vandalized and boarded up; of the sordid world of the movie Taxi Driver; of riots and the destruction of vast areas of Detroit and Los Angeles. However critical these problems are, the only properties that these inner cities have in common with most others, as noted at the outset of this paper, are that they tend to have older infrastructure, declining popula tions and densities, and that they are continually subjected to stress through obsolescence, land use competition or rapid social change. Even these characteristics do not apply equally to all cities: to those with historic or cultural centers and those re built after war-time destruction.
Overlaying these processes in many American centers, and in creasingly in other countries, are the imprints of social and racial segregation, poverty, crime, unemployment and pollution. Yet the latter are largely national problems, emanating from the social fabric, cultural predispositions, the economic organization of society and the unequal distribution of wealth generally. These problems may be concentrated in the inner city, and perhaps are made worse by being there, but they are not problems of the city.
Consequently, they cannot be solved by urban planning alone. - 65 -
On a more specific level we have seen that the image of a de
clining inner city is also not universally applicable. It is
particularly evident in those older or mature industrial centers
in the U.S. and the U.K. which historically never had a strong
central focus, where employment has declined and racial tension
has increased and in which inner city neighborhoods were often
speculative and poorly-built in the first instance. These problems
are also not restricted to the largest cities. Although the large
city has been the focus of this paper, and of much of the litera
ture, it should not be overlooked that many smaller cities have
the same difficulties, often without the counter-balancing attrac
tions of central city locations as places for living or working or
the difficulties of commuting from suburban areas.
Nor is there a single theory of inner city growth, decline or
renewal which is universally applicable, even among industrial
cities. A mix of conditions which in one city may lead to decline,
in other cities does not. In some cities a racially and ethnically
mixed population may lead to tension and segregation and to an
"escape-from-the-cityn movement, while in other cities it creates
a pleasant heterogeneity. In some cities low-income neighborhoods
are stable; in others they are not. Moreover, some observers view
these problems as reflecting a failure of the competitive market
mechanism; others argue the reverse: that they derive from the ef
ficient operation of that mechanism (Inner City Working Group, 1977).
Depending on which view one subscribes to, the policy implications will be very different. - 66 -
Similarly each city has its own unique set of factors con tributing to inner city residential stability and neighborhood revitalization. These may include an historical shrine, a parti cular type of minority or immigrant group, scenic topography, an enlightened leadership, an architecture style which is in vogue, or the absence of inner area expressways; any number of which may become determinants of revitalization in their own right.
On balance, the process of neighborhood revitalization and the return-to-the-city movement seem to be less widespread than is commonly believed. Most of those cities with relatively stable and healthy inner area neighborhoods have seen continual revitalizatton of their housing stock. There is little evidence as yet of a sub stantial movement of population back to the city; the revitalization process has been heavily dependent on residents from other parts of the central city, most of whom never lived in the suburbs, or on migrants from outside the urban area.
Problems, Policies and Emerging Issues
The real problems of the inner city - a declining population base, jobs, physical obsolescence, housing abandonment, pollution, the declining quality of local services, and the concentration of the nation's disadvantaged - defy simple generalization. Some are problems for which solutions are obvious, although politically dif- - 67 -
ficult, such as equalizing social services across a metropolitan area or the creation of more jobs. Others offer opportunities - for example, a decline in population densities in areas of very high densities may facilitate redevelopment at a more socially-acceptable density, allowing more park space and improved services.
Still other problems represent what Peter Hall (1977) calls classic dilemmas. One example is that of housing policy cited above; another is the suggestion of stimulating the migration of black Americans to the suburbs. The latter might reduce territorial segregation, but it would also further undercut the population base of the central city. Similarly attempts in the U.K., Canada and
Australia to reduce foreign immigration, in the face of rising national unemployment, are beginning to reduce the population in-flow and thus the demand for housing in their inner cities. This immi-· gration has in the past been a principal factor in maintaining the 6 relatively high quality of these inner cities.
When we look ahead, one of the most critical issues facing inner cities is the probable impact of rapidly declining population growth overall. As previously noted, aggregate population growth rates in most western countries are now at or below zero growth. In some countries there is also zero or negative -urban growth. As Alonso (1973) notes, structural change in cities and thus the pro- - 68 -
blems facing public policy may in fact be greater under zero growth than under the rapid growth of previous decades. Whether the inner city will suffer more under these new conditions is difficult to say, but it is likely that population decline will continue in most cities regardless of planning initiatives. The call is now frequently heard that we must begin to plan for de clining cities (Gans, 1975); or in another euphemism of American urban planning, to develop methods to allow the mature metropolis to age gracefully. Clearly the policy response in the future will have to be different than it has been in the past.
For most of the traditional inner city problems there have been corresponding policy initiatives, far too many to even identify here. These have included legislation encouraging a wider preser vation of historical.buildings (Zeigler, 1971)! urban homesteading
(Struyk, 1976), in-fill housing (Plan Canada, 1973), a bewildering array of community and neighborhood preservation grants (U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, 1977), job creation subsidy pro grams (Chinitz and Jacobs, 1977), the public acquisition of land for redevelopment (U.K. Department of the Environment, 1977), new towns-intown (Henley, 1975), changes in land taxation (Carey, 1976), public housing (Mercer and Hultquist, 1976), and on fiscal transfers
(Gorham and Glazer, 1976), to name but a few. Equally important are the cut-backs in such destructive policies as inner city highway construction and the renewal of interest in public transit, and in the decentralization of civic powers to local neighborhoods in areas 8 such as education and the police. - 69 -
In most instances, however, these measures have been too little
and too late and often misdirected. There has not been to date,
a comprehensive policy designed to deal with the real and emerging
structural problems of the inner city. This is not a passing issue since today's inner city problems are tomorrow 1 s problems for older suburban areas.
It does not seem unreasonable to conclude, moreover, that there will not be any significant improvement in the condition of those inner cities which are declining unless there is a fundamental change in social and political attitudes, in government policy and in the structure of the economic system in western industrial nations.
This is a strong generalization, and perhaps an irrelevant one, but it does suggest the limited utility of much of our current thinking on inner cities.
Summary Comments
Finally, we must rid ourselves of our simplistic notions of the character of and direction of change in inner city areas.
These notions, particularly those of physical decay and social de·- cline common in the U.S. and U.K. tend to become self-fulfilling prophesies. And, we must remove our preoccupation with theories which imply that inner city decline is a natural and inevitable process. It was argued, instead, that we have in fact "designed" the inner city of today: through such means as ad hoc and mented political structures and decision-making processes; the operation of a competitive market system in which economic benefits - 70 -
are privatized while costs are socialized; the segregation of minority group~ cultural predispositions which seriously under value what is old; the restrictive practices of financial insti tutions; exclusionary zoning in fortress-like suburbs; and perhaps most important, the direct but unintended consequences of non-urban policies such as housing and transportation which have favored decentralization and suburban sprawl. At a minimum we should acknowledge that the inner city is the product of our design efforts and that we can in turn redesign an alternative model if we wish to do so. - 71 -
FOOTNOTES
1. One of the limitations of existing measures of population change over time in the inner city (or central city) is that they use fixed boundaries. Given the universal tendency for urban densi ties to decline, one would then expect that the population of any fixed built-up area would also decline over time, unless there was massive redevelopment. A more appropriate measure of change would be one which reflects the growth of the urban area. If we compare the populations of the area of Toronto in Figure 1 in which the age of housing was more than twice the metro politan average, in both 1961 and 1971, we find that the population of the inner city grew rather than declined.
2. London provides a well documented example. Between 1961 and 1974 the population of Greater London fell by 803,000 and the number of manufacturing jobs declined by 335,000, fully one third of its manufacturing jobs - a decline seven times the national average. These declines took place not just in indus trial sectors which were declining nationally but in those sectors which were stable or growing at the national level. Between 1970 and 1975 the income level which defined the lowest quartile of the income distribution - roughly the population living in poverty - fell 7 percent in real terms although it remained stable in the rest of the country. Roughly 650,000 families in London survive with incomes below the poverty line.
3. Some recent studies have indicated that the homogeneity of sub urban municipalities is considerably less than commonly portrayed (see Pack and Pack, 1977).
4. Higher energy costs could of course have the reverse effect on the inner city: of stimulating a more rapid decentralization of jobs to the suburbs. Both trends will occur. However, given the large number of jobs already existing in the downtown core, and the continuing attraction of that location as a place of employment, the impact of energy costs on balance may benefit the central city.
5. The scale of housing abandonment in some inner cities in the U.S. is staggering (see Dear, 1976). In St. Louis for example, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (1973) estimated that over 10,000 or 4 percent of the total housing stock was vacant and derelict. In some neighborhoods the per centage rose to over 20 percent. In Baltimore, it was estimated
- 72 -
that nearly 5 percent of all inner city housing units are boarded up; about half of which are due to the abandonment process itself, the rest to government action (see Grigsby, et al., 1973). The rate of withdraw is about 4,000 units annually. This phenomenon is still rare in other countries except in the U.K. where aside for vandalism almost all of the vacant dwellings are the result of government action in clearing substandard nineteenth century housing. The reasons for abandonment vary from one neighborhood and city to another, although Grigsby (1973) argues that low income is not the major factor. The rising cost of mainten ance, absentee landlords, poor management of rental properties, vandalism, high turnover, racial change and the threat of government action, are the major causes. In some areas inade quate initial construction and overzealous code enforcement have also contributed to the process of abandonment. At the same time most governments do not have comprehensive housing policies which are directed to these issues.
6. This has led in Britain to suggestions that Commonwealth im migration be stimulated to bolster the population of the inner city.
7. With the passage of the Tax Reform Act in 1976 in the United States, significant new tax incentives became available to owners of historic buildings who wish to rehabilitate those buildings. The effect of this change, however, is likely to be small.
8. Some central cities, such as Detroit, have sought to reduce crime through the creation of multi-racial police forces and the establishment of mini police stations across the city. Crime rates have in fact declined in Detroit, as elsewhere in the U.S. in the last few years, only a part of which could be attributable to police reforms.
- 73 -
References
Adams, J. ed. 1976. Urban Policy Making and Metropolitan Dynamics: A Comparative Geographical Analysis. Cambridge, Mass.: Bal linger Publishing Co.
Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. 1965. Metro politan Social and Economic Disparities: Implications for Intergovernmental Relations in Central Cities and Suburbs. Washington, D.C.: A.C.I.R.
1973. City Financial Emergencies: The Intergovernmental Dimension. Washington, D.C.: A.C.I.R.
1977. Trends in Metropolitan America. Washington, D.C.: A.C.I.R.
Alcaly, R. and Mermelstein, D. eds. 1977. The Fiscal Crisis of American Cities. New York: Vintage Books.
Alonso, W. 1973. "Urban Zero Population Growth", Daedalus, Special Issue, "The No Growth Society", 102: 191-206.
Banfield, E.C. 1974. The Unheavenly City Revisited. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Barabba, V.P. 1975. "The National Setting: Regional Shifts, Metro politan Decline and Urban Decay", in G. Sternlieb and J. Hughes, eds. Post-Industrial America. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 101-138.
Becker, G.S. 1971. The Economics of Discrimination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Berry, B.J.L. 1975. "The Decline of the Aging Metropolis: Cul tural Bases and Social Process", in G. Sternlieb and J. Hughes, eds. Post-Industrial America: Metropolitan Decline and Inter Regional Job Shifts. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 175-185.
Berry, B.J.L. and Kasarda, D. 1977. Contemporary Urban Ecology. Riverside, N.J.: MacMillan. - 74 -
Birch, D.L. 1970. Economic Future of City and Suburb. New York: Committee for Economic Development.
Boddy, M.J. 1976. "The Structure of Mortgage Finance: Building Societies and the British Social Fonnation", Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 1: 58-71.
Boulding, K. 1968. "The City as an Element in the International System", Daedalus, 97, 4: 1111-1123.
Bourne, L.S. 1976. ''Housing Supply and Housing Market Behaviour in Residential Development", in D. Herbert and R. Johnston, eds. Social Areas in Cities, Vol. 1. London: J. Wiley, U.K., 111-158.
Broadbent, T.A. 1977. Planning and Profit in the Urban Economy. London: Methuen.
Brooks, E., Herbert, D. and Peach, G.C.K. 1975. "Spatial and Social Constraints in the Inner City", Geographical Journal, 141: 355-387.
Bunge, W. and Bordessa, R. 1975. The Canadian Alternative. Sur vival, Expeditions and Urban Change. Geographical Monographs No. 2, Downsview, Ontario: York University.
Carey, G.W. 1976. "Land Tenure, Speculation and the State of the Aging Metropolis", The Geographical Review, 66, 3: 253-265.
Castells, M. 1977. The Urban Question. London: E. Arnold.
Carter, R. 1976. "Changing Employment Structure, Incomes and Housing Markets in Inner Melbourne", Working Paper No. 1, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
Chinitz, B. and Jacobs, S. 1977. "Urban Economic Development: An Overview", paper presented to the Annual Meetings of the Regional Science Association, Philadelphia, Nov. 13, 1977.
Chow, W.T. 1975. "Reviving the Inner City: The Lessons of Oakland's Chinatown", Public Affairs Report, 16, 4: 1-7.
Coates, B.E., et 1976. Geography and Inequality. London: Oxford University Press.
Deakin, N. and Ungerson, C. 1973. "Beyond the Ghetto: The Illusion of Choice", in D. Donnison and D. Eversley, eds., London: Urban Patterns, Problems and Policies. London: Heinemann. - 75 -
Dear, M.J. 1976. "Abandoned Housing", Chap. 3 in J.S. Adams, ed. Urban Policy-Making and Metropolitan Dynamics: A Comparative Geographical Analysis. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publish ing, 59-99.
Downs, A. 1976. Urban Problems and Prospects. 2nd ed. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Edel, M. 1972. "Development vs Dispersal: Approaches to Ghetto Poverty", in M. Edel and J. Rothenberg, eds. Readings in Urban Economics. New York: MacMillan, 307-325.
Engels, Friedrich. 1844. The Condition of the Working Classes in England. Moscow: (reprinted) Progress Publishers, 1973.
Ernst, R.T., al. 1971. "Competition and Conflict over Land Use Change in the Inner City: Institution vs Community", Antipode, 6: 70-97.
Eversley, D.E.C. 1972. "Rising Costs and Static Incomes: Some Economic Consequences of Regional Planning in Londonn, Urban Studies, 9, 3: 351-363.
Gale, S. and Moore, E., eds. 1975. The Manipulated City: Per spectives on Spatial Structure and Social Issues in Urban America. Chicago: Maaroufa Press.
Gans, H. 1975. "Planning for Declining Cities", Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 41: 305-307.
Goldstein, B. and Davis, R. eds. 1977. Neighbourhoods in the Urban Economy: The Dynamics of Decline and Revitalization. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.
Gordon, David. 1977. "Capitalism and the Roots of the Urban Crisis", in R. Alcaly and D. Mermelstein, eds. The Fiscal Crisis of American Cities. New York: Vintage Books, 82- 131.
Gorham, W. and Glazer, N. eds. 1976. The Urban Predicament. Washington: The Urban Institute. - 76 -
Grigsby, W., et al. 1973. "Housing and Poverty", report prepared for the Office of Economic Opportunity, Washington, D.C.
Gripaios, P. 1977. "Industrial Decline in London: An Examination of its Causes", Urban Studies, 14: 181-189.
Guest, A.M. 1977. "Residential Segregation in Urban Areas", Chap. 5 in K.P. Schwirian, ed. Contemporary Topics in Urban Sociology. Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 268-336.
Hall, P. 1977. "The Inner Cities Dilemma", New Society, 39, 748: 223-225.
Hamnett, C. 1976. "Social Change and Social Segregation in Inner London, 1961-71", Urban Studies, 13: 261-271.
Harford, Ian. 1977. 11The Inner City: Whose Urban Crisis", Journal of the Royal Town Planning Institute, 63, 4: 99-101.
Harlee, M. ed. 1977. Captive Cities: Studies in the Political Economy of Cities and Regions. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.
Harries, K.D. 1974. The Geography of Crime and Justice. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Harrison, B. 1974. Urban Economic Development: Suburbanization, Minority Opportunity and the Condition of the Central City. Washington: The Urban Institute.
Hartshorn, T .A. 1971. "Inner City Residential Structure and De cline", Annals, American Association of Geographers, 61: 72~96.
Harvey, D. 1972. 'Revolutionary and Counter Revolutionary Theory 11 in Geography and the Problem of Ghetto Formation , Antipode, 4, 2: 1-13.
1973. Social Justice and the City. London: E. Arnold.
1975. "The Political Economy of Urbanization in Advanced 11 Capitalist Societies: The Case of the United States , in G. Gappert and H. Rose, eds. The Social Economy of Cities, Sage Publications, Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, Vol. 9. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 119-163. - 77 -
1977. "Government Policies, Financial Institutions and Neighbourhood Change in United States Cities", in M. Harloe, ed. Captive Cities. New York: J. Wiley, 123-139.
Henley, J.W. 1975. "New Town in Town Downtown", Journal of Housing, 36, 6: 271-274.
Hill, R.C. 1974. "Separate and Unequal: Governmental Inequality in the Metropolis", American Political Science Review, 68: 1557-1568.
1976. "Fiscal Crisis and Political Struggle in the De caying U.S. Central City", Kapitalistate, 4-5: 31-49.
Ikemma, W.N. 1977. "Revitalizing Inner-City Minority Communi ties11, Urbanism Past and Present, 4: 11-18.
Inner City Working Group. 1977. Inner Area Studies: A Contri bution to the Debate. Birmingham: Joint Centre for Regional, Urban and Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England.
James, F.J. 1977a. Back to the City: An Appraisal of Housing Investment and Population Change in Urban America. Working Paper 241-01, Urban Institute, Washington, D.C.
1977b. Back to the City. Case Studies of Private Neigh borhood Revitalization in Eight Major Metropolitan Areas. Working Paper 241-02, Urban Institute, Washington, D.C.
1977c. "Private Reinvestment in Older Housing and Older Neighborhoods", Statement before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs of the United States Senate, July 10, Washington, D.C.
Kasperson, R. and Breitbart, M. 1974. Participation, Decentraliza tion and Advocacy Planning. A.A.G. Resource Paper No. 25. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers.
Kennedy, D. and M. eds. 1974. The Inner City. New York: Halsted Press.
Kern, C.R. 1977. "High Income Neighborhoods in the City: Will the New Demography Guarantee Their Future?", paper presented to the Annual Meetings of the Regional Science Association, Philadelphia, November. - 78 -
Kollias, K. 1977. Neighborhood Reinvestment. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs.
Korcelli, P. 1977. "Metropolitan Development Patterns and Policies in Poland and Implications for America", paper presented to Symposium on Alternative Strategies for the Mature Metropolis, St. Louis, Missouri, June.
Leven, C.L. and Mark, J.H. 1977. "Revealed Preferences for Neighborhood Characteristics", Urban Studies, 14: 147-159.
Leven, C.L., et al. 1977. Neighborhood Change: Lessons in the Dynamics of Urban Decay. London: Martin Robertson & Co.
Ley, D. 1974. The Black Inner City as Frontier Output: Images and Behavior of a Philadelphia Neighborhood. A.A.G., Mono graph Series No. 7. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers.
Lineberry, R.L. 1975. "Equity, Public Policy and Public Services: The Underclass Hypothesis and the Limits to Equality", Policy and Politics, 4, 2: 67-84.
Lipton, S.G. 1977. "Evidence of Central City Revival", Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 43, 2: 136-147.
Lomas, G. 1975. The Inner City. London: Council for Social Service.
London, Greater London Council. 1977. London, we're staying here. Rebirth of the Inner City. London: GLC.
MacRae, C.D. and Struyk, R. 1977. "The Federal Housing Administra tion (FHA), Tenure Choice and Residential Land Use", Journal of Urban Economics, 4: 360-378.
Maher, C.A. 1978. "The Changing Residential Role of the Inner City: The Example of Melbourne", Australian Geographer, forth- coming.
Marando, V.L. 1974. Metropolitanism, Transportation and Employ ment for the Central City Poor", Urban Affairs Quarterly, 10, 2: 158-169. - 79
Massey, D. 1976. 11 Restructuring and Regionalism: Some Spatial Implications of the Crisis in the U.K.", paper presented to the Annual Meetings of the Regional Science Association, Toronto, November.
Masters, S.H. 1975. Black-White Income Differentials: Empirical Studies and Policy Implications. New York: Academic Press, 1975.
McLemore, R., Aass, C. and Keilhofer, P. 1975. The Changing Canadian Inner City. Urban Paper A.75.3. Ottawa: Ministry of State for Urban Affairs.
Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. 1977. Melbourne's Inner Area - A Position Statement. Melbourne: Board of Works.
Mercer, J. and Hultquist, J. 1976. "National Progress Toward Housing and Urban Renewal Goals", Chap. 4 in J.S. Adams, ed. Urban Policy-Making and Metropolitan Dynamics: A Comparative Geographical Analysis. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publish ing, 101-162.
Morrison, P. 1975. "The Current Demographic Context of National Growth and Development", Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, mimeo.
Mountjoy, A.F. 1978. "Urbanization the Squatter and Development in the Third World", in L.S. Bourne and J.W. Simmons, ed. Systems of Cities: Readings on Structure, Growth and Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Nathan, R.P. and Adams, C. 1976. "Understanding Central City Hardship", Political Science Quarterly, 91: 51-55.
Pack, H. and J .R. 1977. "Metropolitan Fragmentation and Suburban Homogeneity", Urban Studies, 14: 191-201.
Pahl, R. 1977. 11Managers, Technical Experts and the State: Forms of Mediation, Manipulation and Dominance in Urban and Regional Development", inM. Harloe, ed. Captive Cities. New York: Wiley, 49-60.
Plan Canada. 1973. "Inner City Housing", Plan Canada, 13, 2: 112-117. - 80 -
Rand Corporation. 1977. The Urban Impacts of Federal Policies: Vol. 2. Economic Development. R-2028 KF/RC. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation.
Reid, C.E. 1977. "Measuring Residential Decentralization of Blacks and Whites", Urban Studies, 14: 353-357.
Reigeluth, G.A. 1977. "America's Older Cities: A Reflection of Europe's Urban Future", in Successes Abroad: What For eign Cities can Teach American Cities, U.S. House of Re presentatives, Washington, D.C., 511-578.
Rose, H.M. ed. 1972. Geography of the Ghetto Perceptions, Problems and Alternatives. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
Rust, E. 1975. No Growth: Impacts on Metropolitan Areas. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.
Shank, A. ed. 1976. Political Power and the Urban Crisis. Boston: Holbrook Press.
Stegman, M. 1973. Housing Investment in the Inner City. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press.
Sternlieb, G. and Burchell, R.W. 1975. Residential Abandonment: The Tenement Landlord Revisited. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University.
Sternlieb, G. and Hughes, J. eds. 1975. Post-Industrial America: Metropolitan Decline and Inter-Regional Job Shifts. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University.
Stones, A. 1977. "Liverpool Now: Inner City Wasteland", Built Environment, 3, 1: 47-50.
Struyk, R. 1976. Urban Homeownership. Lexington, Mass.: Lex ington Books.
Tucker, C.J. 1976. "Changing Patterns of Migration between Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Areas in the U.S.: Recent Evidence", Demography, 13: 435-444. - 81 -
U.K. Department of the Environment. 1977. Inner Area Studies Liverpool, Birmingham, Lambeth. London: H.M.S.O.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 1973. Abandoned Housing Research: A Compendium. Washington, D.C.: u .s. Government Printing Office.
U.S. House of Representatives. 1977. Successes Abroad: What Foreign Cities can Teach American Cities. Hearings before the Subcommittee on the City of the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Ninty-fifth Congress. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Urban Institute. 1977. "Federal Tax Policy and Urban Development", Search, 7, 1, Spring. Washington, D.C.
Vance, J. Jr. 1977. This Scene of Man: The Role and Structure of the City in the Geography of Western Civilization. New York: Harper's College Press. van Furstenberg, G., et al., eds. 1974. Patterns of Racial Dis crimination. Volume 1. Housing. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.
Weiss, S.F., et al. 1976. City Centers in Transition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Center for Urban and Regional Studies, 90 pp.
Williams, P. 1976. "The Role of Institutions in the Inner London 11 Housing Market: The Case of Islington , Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 1: 72-81.
Wolpert, J., Mumphrey, A. and Seley, J. 1972. Metropolitan Neigh borhoods: Participation and Conflict over Change. AAG Re source Paper No. 16. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers.
Zeigler, A. Jr. 1971. Historic Preservation in Inner City Areas. Pittsburgh: The Allegheny Press.