America's 'inner city' dichotomy

2016-10-17T14:00:00-04:00

In reality, the central neighborhoods of many major American cities are thriving. [...] “Inner city,” in short, is imprecise in describing today’s urban reality. It captures neither the true geography of poverty or black America, nor the quality of life in many communities in central cities. But politically, its 1970s-era meaning lingers. [...] But in any context, it is hard to shake the phrase’s association with an era when American cities looked very different from the way they do today.

Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, in recent debates with Hillary Clinton, had referred to the "inner cities" as “a disaster education-wise, job-wise, safety-wise, in every way possible,” and as places that if "You walk down the street, you get shot."

In fact-checking response, the Times lays out the drastic improvements in safety and home values that have occurred in these areas since the 1960s and '70s, when the "inner cities" were tagged as centers of violence and drugs. "The inner city is the place that burned when King was assassinated. It was Watts. It was the place Ronald Reagan had to try to conduct the war on drugs,” as described by N. D. B. Connolly, historian at Johns Hopkins University.

Nowadays, the Times referred to a study by the Federal Housing Finance Agency that found an increase in home values in the middle of large cities over the last 25 years—an uptick happening at a faster pace than anywhere else in the U.S. The article also points to statistics ...

Los Angeles' urban core is full (unlike most other major U.S. cities)

2016-08-25T13:39:00-04:00

This isn't your grandfather's urbanization: population figures in major U.S. cities, which on the whole are on the uptick after declining in the 1960s, are adding residents not to their already built urban cores but rather in the form greenfield sprawl, which makes use of farmland and lightly developed suburban housing tracts. The big exception? Los Angeles, whose urban core Slate pronounces full. Here's more detail from the piece:

A new and illuminating analysis by Yonah Freemark, a project manager at Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council and the author of the Transport Politic blog—well worth reading in full—reveals some important trends in the past half-century of city-building...

“The average of the 100 largest cities grew by 48 percent overall,” Freemark notes. “Yet the average city also lost 28 percent of its residents within its neighborhoods that were built up in 1960.” That’s not just true in Youngstown and Detroit, post-industrial Rust Belt cities that have struggled with...

Archinect - News

America's 'inner city' dichotomy

Los Angeles' urban core is full (unlike most other major U.S. cities)