Degraded condition of urban landscape

The 1970's saw increasing migration from the inner city. Industrial and professional resources moved to the suburbs, leaving a vast amount of unclaimed space, evident both in vacant lots and in empty, deteriorating buildings. Inner city buildings are also vacated and boarded up as a result of fire and substandard conditions. Furthermore, occupied housing is also deteriorating, a situation inevitable in the face of aging architecture, lack of repair and rapid turnover among residents. Still more unpleasing to the eye is the amount of litter strewn throughout most inner city residential areas. Broken glass and discarded paper along cracked sidewalks give the impression of deliberate carelessness. The effect of this condition is that even the well-cared-for space in the community and the few attempts at rehabilitation go virtually unnoticed; residents see little hope for dealing creatively with the area as a whole; there is an attitude of resigned acceptance in the face of mounting deterioration, encouraging further desecration which in turn increases the deterioration and deepens the despair. Until radical, expansive rehabilitation and new construction take place in such urban neighbourhoods, gradual deterioration of the area will continue to paralyse action and degrade human dignity.