The causes and effects of inner city decline

The inner city areas are typified by economic, social and population decline, political problems and poor physical environment.

Economic Decline

• Lack of investment- after 1945 money channelled into the ‘new towns’

•Old plants with the oldest techniques, lowest productivity and high unionised workforce located in inner city areas were the types of workplace most likely to be closed

• Global economic change lead to the relocation of manufacturing industries overseas- cheap labour needed in order to be competitive

• Not enough suitable land and premises in inner city areas to accommodate changing levels of technology and space requirements of the new manufacturing industries

• High tech, new industries did not locate into inner city areas- former labour force lack relevant skills

•Growth of service industries not sufficient to compensate for massive job losses in manufacturing

Social and Population Decline

• Poor image of the inner city (i.e. poverty, dirt, crime, overcrowding, and unemployment)

• Changing residential preferences

• Increased accessibility to & job growth in suburban and rural areas

•Young and skilled leave inner city areas leaving behind the old, the less skilled and the poor

Poor Physical Environment

•19th century terraced houses now in poor state

•Ham fisted slum clearance in the 60s and 70s- unsightly poorly constructed houses and high rise flats

• Few amenities (parks, open spaces, play areas)

• High levels of vandalism, dereliction, graffiti and flyposting

Political Problems

•Political clashes between local inner-city governments and central governments (e.g. cutting housing benefits)

• Feelings of rejection lead to UK’s lowest election turnouts

• Election of far-right parties such as the BNP to local councils to draw attention to their plight

Key figures•between 1960 and 1981 over 1.6m manufacturing

jobs were lost in inner city areas- 75% of job

losses in the UK•in 1994, inner cities in

Britain had an unemployment rate 50% higher than the rest of the

country

Key Figures• 1951-1981, UK’s

largest conurbations lost

35% of their people

Inner City AreasInner City =

Characteristics of Inner Cities

The Cycle of Decline, Despair and Deprivation

•A continuous process which transmits relative deprivation from one generation to the other and which makes escape from deprivation very difficult.

An area in older cities, surrounding the CBD, where the prevailing economic, social and environmental conditions pose severe problems

The Cycle of Deprivation