The Suburbs and Inner Cities

Inner-city Inner-city social problems Lack of job skills Homelessness Failing schools Culture of poverty Crime Segregation/discrimination Redlining Inner-city economic problems Lack of jobs Dilapidated housing

Ghettoization Early southern ghetto pre-Civil War Charleston, SC and New Orleans Classic southern ghetto Lived near industry and railroads Worst land in a city More separated from white part of town Early northern ghetto Result of WWI/Great Migration Lived on the outskirts of the CDB Separation from white people enforced through redlining and zoning laws Classic northern ghetto Surrounding the CBD Overcrowding, dilapidation of housing

Race and Ethnicity in Urban Areas Redlining, a practice of marking off “red” zones, can beused to separate upper-class (white) residents from lower-class residents (blacks and Latinos) Redlining has keeps property values down in neighborhoods deemed “red” zones, leading to the further deterioration. Queens Bridge Projects, NYC Greenwich Village, NYC

Race and Ethnicity in Urban Areas Blockbusting (1960’s – 80’s) A practice by which real estate agents convinced white home-owners to sell their houses to them at a huge loss by playing on their fears that black people were starting to move into their neighborhoods. The agents would then turn around and sell these homes to middle-class black people at a higher-than-market rate. Agents were able to sell at a higher-than-market rate because most banks would not give a mortgage to most black people, so the real estate agents could do the lending instead, and charge super high interest rates in the process.

Race and Ethnicity in Urban Areas Zoning was used to prevent the mixing of land uses within an area of a city It was also used to prevent mixed-race neighborhoods in northern cities Used to separate housing, industry, and business land use For instance, in most U.S. cities, housing is separated from industrial parks, schools from CBD’s, and apartment buildings from large single-family houses

Most, if not all, U.S. cities are segregated based on race. (“Little Italy”, “Chinatown”, South Side, etc…)

Gentrification The process of upper-class white people moving back to poor inner-city neighborhoods Why? Cheap housing Great access to CBD Results: Improved buildings and streets Safer neighborhood Property becomes much more expensive Poor families are pushed out of the neighborhood

Gentrification Chicago  Boston 

Problems of Suburbs Cost of suburban sprawl Destruction of good farmland pollution from consumption Transportation High rate of car ownership Rush-hour traffic pollution Lack of public transportation Costs are very high and service is lacking - due to large distances between places Local government fragmentation Metropolitan government

Changes in Cities in the U.S. Developed Countries: suburbanization wealthy move to suburbs Good roads and cheap gas; better services idyllic settings slow pace, yet high tech connections to services and markets U.S. population has been moving out of the city centers to the suburbs: suburbanization U.S. intraregional migration during 1990s.

Suburbanization and Edge Cities/Boomburgs In the U.S. suburbanization began after WWII when ex-soldiers were given their GI Bill (money) for education and/or housing purposes. As transportation improved (highways) in the suburbs, many jobs and industries relocated there. Today, many of these suburbs, or boomburgs, have in many cases become independent of the CBD of a major city, and have formed their own nodes. Well-represented by the multiple-nuclei model and the Peripheral Model

Peripheral Model of Urban Areas Fig. 13-20: The central city is surrounded by a ring road, around which are suburban areas and edge cities, shopping malls, office parks, industrial areas, and service complexes.

Edge Cities/Boomburgs around Los Angeles The urban realm model helps to explain a modern U.S. city that incorporates edge cities and their CBD’s

Atlanta, GA Edge cities are connected through a beltway, or circular highway around the center of the city

Tempe, Arizona

Anaheim, California

Escondido, California

Sunnyvale, California

Aurora, Colorado

Coral Springs, Florida

Naperville, Illinois

Henderson, Nevada

Arlington, Texas

Bellevue, Washington

Beltway Atlanta

Urban Sprawl Brought on by the invention and wide use of the automobile in the U.S. Older cities in the east are less affected Process of “unrestricted growth” outside major cities Characterized by strip malls, housing developments, and large highways/freeways Prime agricultural land is usually destroyed in this process

Urban Sprawl in Los Angeles

Las Vegas

Chicago

The Suburbs and Inner Cities