Comment 39214

By Kiely (registered) | Posted March 27, 2010 at 19:50:27

"Actually, a number of US cities are in fact tearing down suburban neighbourhoods where the maintenance costs on foreclosed homes has become untenable. Abandoned malls and big box stores are being demolished as well. Many are also being re-purposed, so there's no reason to believe that the demolition of suburbs will become widespread, but neither is it an outlandish idea." - Highwater

Sure, but that isn't quite the same thing. The people left those neighbourhoods long before they needed to be torn down. And where did they go? Even further away from the urban centres.

Cleveland is a perfect example of what you mention. Euclid is a "first ring" suburb of Cleveland that has many largely abandoned sections. But don't believe for a second those people left that suburb for downtown Cleveland, in fact in most cases they have moved even further from the urban centre. Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis are all examples of what you have mentioned (rotting, abandoned suburbs) but the suburbs were abandoned for suburbs even further from the city centre, so not quite the same thing highwater.

In those US cities, "white flight" (as it is known in the US) from the city core to the suburbs left the inner city poor that was followed by white flight from those first ring suburbs to suburbs being built even further away leaving the first ring suburbs poor. In St. Louis for example the suburbs are called the counties because the suburbs literally stretch right out into completely different counties.

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