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I wonder as real estate prices continue to escalate to extreme levels... if the older industrial legacy cities will see a booming housing development...
Places like Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis etc... where housing prices are still so low to cause people to move there in droves??
I know in Philadelphia the development cannot keep up with the demand and housing is starting to sky rocket like crazy and gentrification in Philadelphia is on a scale that DC saw in the early 2000s...
Cairo is pretty remarkable, it is almost in a league of its own.
Funny, I look at these pictures from Cairo and see a small town with some abandoned buildings, but neat and clean. When my family drove from New Orleans to Chicago a couple of years ago, we stopped in Cairo because I wanted to see the infamous town for myself. The term "ghetto" never entered my mind, but just the word "sad" that this rural town never reached its full potential. Even the "mansions" that remained looked fairy normal by today's standards, but were occupied and in fairly good condition.
The only amazing thing was that, since we rented our car to keep the wear and tear off our regular cars and it happened to be a nicer car, the kids were waving at us on the street corners because of the car we were driving. I remember that, and was amazed because where we are from, the car would not get a second look.
The worst "ghettos" i have seen were Highland Park, Michigan., a once wealthy town surrounded by Detroit, and Camden and Trenton, NJ. I don't consider empty streets "ghettos" they are just empty streets to me. To me a ghetto is a string or group of burned out or dilapitated buildings, graffiti, garbage, and a scary feel. Cairo really fit none of those.
Probably Detroit for its urban prairie. I mean parts of it look like abandoned villages of Ukraine/Belarus/Eastern Europe. Sections of the city that were once dense residential, commercial, industrial blocks are now empty fields and some have even returned to nature (scrub/woods). It's kinda surreal. There are many other cities where this has obviously occurred too.
Blight is everywhere in all large cities practically, so it's gonna be hard to find the worst. As far as the human experience of suffering is concerned the Skid Row section of Los Angeles has thousands of unsheltered homeless living in a few block radius, with large "tent cities" and litter on the streets, sidewalks, alleys. Some of the beaches have this too.
Urban parries aren’t ghettos, and they certainly aren’t scary like actual ghettos are.
We must remember that our Ghettos were NOT created that way. Slums as the Favela kinds exists when homeless people or squatters occupy vacant plots of land, and build their homes out of things they can get scavenging. Though some give ghetto as a synonym for slum and Favela..... there is or should be that distinction as the UN even sees it. Why the UN does not see the US as a Nation with Slums. It seems to define the difference as our Ghettos were once build as middle-class housing with all the conveniences of the eras built to upper-classes build neighborhoods and still have the running water and sewers infrastructure in it today.
UN-Habitat definition of a Slum -- A slum was defined as an area that combines the following characteristics: - inadequate access to water,- inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure,
- poor structural quality in housing,
- overcrowding and insecure residential status.
A slum household, as defined by the United Nations, is a group of individuals living under the same roof and lacking one or more of the following conditions:
- access to improved water,
- access to improved sanitation,
- sufficient living area,
- structural quality and durability of housing and security of tenure (UN-Habitat, 2009).
Let's hope ....the homeless living in tents though some cities.... do not turn to building a more permanent Favela in these cities. It could happen as to a degree perhaps it has with Skid Row. Still the homeless DID NOT build the buildings even there that exist.
What we did was allow as a Capitalist Nation Corporate America to just abandon cities they helped build. Pick up and just build new elsewhere.
In the 1960s was a Racist Housing Policy called REDLINING (still used today) and a Unethical Scare Tactic by REALTORS. Called -- BLOCK BUSTING.
What is Block Busting -- First and foremost, blockbusting is a discriminatory and illegal real estate practice. It involves convincing property owners to sell their homes based on the assumption that a new neighbor will change the socio-economic makeup of the neighborhood.
Blockbusting Blockbusting -- occurs when real estate professionals convince homeowners to sell their properties for cheap prices for fear that shifting demographics will cause them to depreciate in value. White flight and blockbusting typically happen simultaneously.White-flight took with its retail and small businesses too. Detroit's being the worst. That has TOTAL abandoning of even its housing left.
This of course all lead to what our Legacy cities especially up North endured that Canadian cities did not to any degree as ours. So we have the severity of a Detroit and aspects in the rest to varied degrees. Those cities able and evolved to have a more diversified economy early .... fared better, just still have large swaths of their cities with it to this day and we call them the Ghetto's of today.
Cities with more gentrification and those that had it first.... show less of it along with kinds of industry that defined their cities, but gentrification is a total replacement of residents also.
I am not sure what in the way of a fully-operating vehicle producing plants remain in city-proper Detroit? We do have headquarters there. Still surprises me yet good that a Ford Plant on Chicago's Southside. Built in 1924 for the Model-T production..... is still going strong and had a Billion $$$ retrofit a few years ago. I know suburban Detroit still does and other areas in MI and OH.
Funny, I look at these pictures from Cairo and see a small town with some abandoned buildings, but neat and clean. When my family drove from New Orleans to Chicago a couple of years ago, we stopped in Cairo because I wanted to see the infamous town for myself. The term "ghetto" never entered my mind, but just the word "sad" that this rural town never reached its full potential. Even the "mansions" that remained looked fairy normal by today's standards, but were occupied and in fairly good condition.
The only amazing thing was that, since we rented our car to keep the wear and tear off our regular cars and it happened to be a nicer car, the kids were waving at us on the street corners because of the car we were driving. I remember that, and was amazed because where we are from, the car would not get a second look.
The worst "ghettos" i have seen were Highland Park, Michigan., a once wealthy town surrounded by Detroit, and Camden and Trenton, NJ. I don't consider empty streets "ghettos" they are just empty streets to me. To me a ghetto is a string or group of burned out or dilapitated buildings, graffiti, garbage, and a scary feel. Cairo really fit none of those.
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I agree, first it should be defined what a "ghetto" exactly means. I don't like the word "ghetto" in the first place because historically, it had an even more dark and negative meaning than today. I prefer to use the word "hood".
A hood has several of the following properties:
- it is economically depressed
- it has seen a huge population loss
- there is a lack of investment and development
- there is blight, boarded up homes, commercial buildings, or factories, with empty lots in between
- the homes and buildings still standing are in a state of disrepair and suffer from neglect
- the streets and infrastructure are poorly developed/maintained, the grass is not cut
- abandoned homes and buildings will get stripped
- there is litter and furniture in the streets that nobody cares about
- the overall atmosphere is depressing
- there are people hanging out in the streets 24/7
- crimes rates, and especially violent crime rates, are very high
Cairo meets several of the above criteria but has much less violent crime than other cities like East St. Louis. Both have their place in a topic like this but have different properties that makes them bad places so it is hard to compare them directly.
I found Cairo to be more run down on streetview but East. St. Louis is much more dangerous crime wise so I am not sure which one is worst. It would be East St. Louis probably because crime is worse than a few more boarded up homes and stores.
I live near Trenton, NJ and have passed through Baltimore and Gary, IN several times. Surprisingly, Trenton has some relatively nice areas such as its Polish and government areas. While Baltimore can be frightening, I think Gary is by far the worst. In Trenton and Baltimore, you're at least in cities where you have a chance to escape. Gary feels like an isolated trap. It also smells terrible.
Is there really no upward mobility possible for the hard working, ambitious residents of Gary, IN? Chicago is near and should provide opportunities. Just make sure you don't end up in the West or South side, that would be more like sideways mobility.
Michael Jackson originated from Gary and made it really big. A textbook example of the American Dream.
Is there really no upward mobility possible for the hard working, ambitious residents of Gary, IN? Chicago is near and should provide opportunities. Just make sure you don't end up in the West or South side, that would be more like sideways mobility.
Michael Jackson originated from Gary and made it really big. A textbook example of the American Dream.
Well I think thats the thing. A lot of people fro gary just end up in the South Side.
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