Hamline University DigitalCommons@Hamline School of Business Student Theses and School of Business Dissertations 2013 Disinvestment and Suburban Decline Robert Streetar Hamline University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hsb_all Part of the Physical and Environmental Geography Commons, Political Economy Commons, Public Policy Commons, Regional Economics Commons, Urban Studies Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Streetar, Robert, "Disinvestment and Suburban Decline" (2013). School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations. 4. https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/hsb_all/4 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Business at DigitalCommons@Hamline. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Hamline. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. i Disinvestment and Suburban Decline Robert Streetar Hamline University 15 July 2013 ii ABSTRACT Beginning in the mid-1970s, U.S. suburbs started to experience many of the same problems typically associated with earlier inner-city decline including accelerating income decline, increasing family poverty, falling housing prices, growing income polarization, escalating crime, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity. Conventional wisdom often lays the blame for neighborhood decline on who moves in and who moves out. This is understandable, as neighborhood migration is easily observable. It is the hypothesis of this research, though, that the less visible disinvestment of capital from suburban neighborhoods is an initial cause of suburban decline that precedes and coincides with the more observable physical, social, and economic indicators of decline.