inner city

An inner city is the central area of a major city. In the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the poorer parts of the city centre and is sometimes used as a euphemism with the connotation of being an area, perhaps a ghetto, where people are less educated and unwealthy and where there is more crime. These connotations are less common in other Western countries, where deprived areas may be located in outlying parts of cities. For instance, in Paris, Vienna or Amsterdam, the inner city is the richest part of the metropolis, where housing is the most expensive, and where elites and high-income individuals dwell. Poverty and crime are more associated with the suburbs. The French word for "suburb" ("banlieue"), as well as the Swedish equivalent ("förort") often have a negative connotation, especially when used in the plural.

Dependence and depravity

The United States has had what has been described as a culture of "anti-urbanism" that may date back to the early days of the Union, as Thomas Jefferson wrote that "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body." On the businessmen who brought manufacturing industry into cities and hence increased the population density necessary to supply the workforce, he wrote that "the manufactures of the great cities ... have begotten a depravity of morals, a dependence and corruption, which renders them an undesirable accession to a country whose morals are sound." Similar radical sentiments for rustic virtue may be found in the works of Rousseau.

Modern anti-urban attitudes are to be found in America in the form of the housing development profession that continues to develop land on a low-density suburban basis, where access to amenities, work and shopping is provided almost exclusively by car rather than on foot. These new communities are sometimes as large and dense as Jefferson's "great cities." There is usually significant opposition to expanding mass transit, typically on financial grounds.

Contemporary anti-urban attitudes in the United States may at times be linked to racism. In the United States, large numbers of African Americans migrated from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North during the 20th century, in what became known as the Great Migration. Meanwhile, the development of interstate highways allowed for easy access to suburban areas, helping to spur white flight to suburban areas. By the late 20th century, many large American cities had non-white majorities, while suburban areas were often heavily white. Patterns of white flight have also taken place in parts of large British cities as immigrants from South Asia, the Caribbean and elsewhere have moved in.

Old and new

A rival contemporary North American movement is that of New Urbanism, which calls for a return to traditional city planning methods in where mixed-use zoning allows people to walk from one type of land-use to another, as was done did before the invention of mass transit and zoning. The movement seeks to have housing, shopping, office space, and leisure facilities located within walking distance of each other, thus reducing the demand for roadways and also improving the efficiency and effectiveness of mass transit.

The thriving of "old urbanism" in inner cities, in which prosperous individuals and families move into formerly poor neighborhoods, is known as gentrification.

Further Reading

Harrison, P. (1985) Inside the Inner City: Life Under the Cutting Edge. Penguin: Harmondsworth. This book takes Hackney, London as a case study of inner city urban deprivation.

See also

• Central business district
• Da Hood
• Ghetto
• Industrial deconcentration
• Suburban colonization
• Urban sprawl

External link

Inner City Press - uses the South Bronx as its example and laboratory of New Urbanism.

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