Urban decay in the context of "West Pier"

Urban renewal (sometimes called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address real or perceived urban decay. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of areas deemed blighted, often in inner cities, in favour of new housing, businesses, and other developments.

Suburbanization (American English), also spelled suburbanisation (British English), is a population shift from historic core cities or rural areas into suburbs. Most suburbs are built in a formation of (sub)urban sprawl. As a consequence of the movement of households and businesses away from city centers, low-density, peripheral urban areas grow. Proponents of curbing suburbanization argue that sprawl leads to urban decay and a concentration of lower-income residents in the inner city, in addition to environmental harm.

Suburbanization can be a progressive process, as growing population pushes outward the zones of the concentric zone model that move outward to escape the increasing density of inward areas. For example, Kings County, New York served New York City as farmland in the 18th century, with boats carrying produce across the East River. The steam ferry later made Brooklyn Heights a commuter town for Wall Street. Streetcar suburbs spread through the county, and as elevated railways further extended its reach, the City of Brooklyn grew to fill the county. Areas along the river became industrialized and apartment buildings filled the places where factories did not replace the scattered houses. As a result, much of Brooklyn transformed into a suburban economy and later into an urban economy entirely.

Detroit (/dɪˈtrɔɪt/ dih-TROYT, locally also /ˈdiːtrɔɪt/ DEE-troyt, French pronunciation: [detʁwa] , literally "Strait") is the most populous city in the state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. It is the 26th-most populous city in the United States and the largest U.S. city on the Canada–United States border, with a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census. The Metro Detroit area, at over 4.4 million people, is the 14th-largest metropolitan area in the nation and second-largest in the Midwest (after the Chicago metropolitan area). The county seat of Wayne County, Detroit is a significant cultural center known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive and industrial background.

In 1701, French explorers Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. The city's population rose to be the fourth-largest in the nation by 1920, with the expansion of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. One of its main features, the Detroit River, became the busiest commercial hub in the world. In the mid-20th century, Detroit entered a state of urban decay that has continued to the present, as a result of industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, and rapid suburbanization. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit's population has declined by more than 65 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, but successfully exited in 2014. In 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Detroit's population grew for a second consecutive year and led population growth in Michigan for the first time since the 1950s.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a 1961 book by writer and activist Jane Jacobs. The book is a critique of 1950s urban planning policy, which it holds responsible for the decline of many city neighborhoods in the United States. The book is Jacobs' best-known and most influential work.

Jacobs was a critic of "rationalist" planners of the 1950s and 1960s, especially Robert Moses, as well as the earlier work of Le Corbusier. She argued that urban planning should prioritize the needs and experiences of residents, and modernist urban planning overlooked and oversimplified the complexity of human lives in diverse communities. She opposed large-scale urban renewal programs that affected entire neighborhoods and built freeways through inner cities. She instead advocated for dense mixed-use development and walkable streets, with the "eyes on the street" of passers-by helping to maintain public order. She suggested preserving the existing city fabric, including old buildings and established communities.

Delray is a neighborhood in southwest Detroit in the U.S. state of Michigan. Its area extends south to the River Rouge, east to the Detroit River, west to Fort Street, and north to Clark Street. The two census tracts that cover the neighborhood had a population of 2,783 at the 2010 census.

Delray was platted in 1836. Initially a rural area, heavy industry arrived in the 1890s, beginning a prosperous era leading to Delray incorporating as a village in 1897. Delray's population swelled, fueled largely by immigrants from Eastern Europe, and the village's 7 square miles (18 km) were annexed into the city of Detroit in 1906. By 1930, Delray peaked at approximately 24,000 residents, but the population has dropped precipitously since World War II due to increased industrialization, pollution, and urban decay. By the late 1960s, the city's master plan for Delray was to transition it to a purely industrial area. In 2007, the Detroit Metro Times described Delray as "the closest thing to a ghost town within a city."

Knoxville is a city in Knox County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Located on the Tennessee River within the Appalachian Mountains, it is the largest city in the Grand Division of East Tennessee. Knoxville had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in Tennessee. The Knoxville metropolitan area has an estimated 958,000 residents.

Settled in 1786, Knoxville was the first capital of Tennessee. The city struggled with geographic isolation throughout the early 19th century before the arrival of the railroad in 1855 led to an economic boom. The city was bitterly divided over the issue of secession during the American Civil War and was occupied alternately by the Confederate and Union armies, which culminated in the Battle of Fort Sanders in 1863. Following the war, Knoxville grew rapidly and became a major wholesaling and manufacturing center until the 1920s when the city's economy began to stagnate. During the Great Depression, Knoxville's manufacturing sector collapsed, the downtown area declined, and city leaders became entrenched in highly partisan political fights. Hosting the 1982 World's Fair helped reinvigorate the city, and revitalization initiatives by city leaders and private developers have spurred growth in the city, especially downtown.

Newark has long been the largest city in New Jersey. Founded in 1666, it greatly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, becoming the commercial and cultural hub of the region. Its population grew with various waves of migration in the mid-19th century, peaking in 1950. It suffered greatly during the era of urban decline and suburbanization in the late 20th century. Since the millennium it has benefited from interest and re-investment in America's cities, recording population growth in the 2010 and 2020 censuses.

Roubaix (US: /ruːˈbeɪ/ roo-BAY, French: [ʁubɛ] or [ʁube] ; Dutch: Robaais; West Flemish: Roboais; Picard: Roubés) is a city in northern France, located in the Lille metropolitan area on the Belgian border. It is a historically mono-industrial commune in the Nord department, which grew rapidly in the 19th century from its textile industries, with most of the same characteristic features as those of English and American boom towns. This former new town has faced many challenges linked to deindustrialisation such as urban decay, with their related economic and social implications, since its major industries fell into decline by the middle of the 1970s. Located to the northeast of Lille, adjacent to Tourcoing, Roubaix is the chef-lieu of two cantons and the third largest city in the French region of Hauts-de-France ranked by population with nearly 99,000 inhabitants.

Together with the nearby cities of Lille, Tourcoing, Villeneuve-d'Ascq and eighty-six other communes, Roubaix gives structure to a four-centred metropolitan area inhabited by more than 1.1 million people: the European Metropolis of Lille. To a greater extent, Roubaix is in the center of a vast conurbation formed with the Belgian cities of Mouscron, Kortrijk and Tournai, which gave birth to the first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation in January 2008, Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai with an aggregate population of over 2 million inhabitants.

Society Hill is a historic neighborhood in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, with a population of 6,215 as of the 2010 United States census. Settled in the early 1680s, Society Hill is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia. After urban decay developed between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an urban renewal program began in the 1950s, restoring the area and its many historic buildings. Society Hill has since become one of the most expensive neighborhoods with the highest average income and second-highest real estate values in Philadelphia. Society Hill's historic colonial architecture, along with planning and restoration efforts, led the American Planning Association to designate it, in 2008, as one of the great American neighborhoods and a good example of sustainable urban living.

The neighborhood hosts one of the largest concentrations of original 18th- and early 19th-century buildings in the United States. Society Hill is noted for its Franklin street lamps, brick sidewalks, cobblestone and Belgian block streets bordered by two- to four-story brick rowhouses in Federal and Georgian architecture, and public buildings in Greek Revival architecture such as the Merchants' Exchange Building and the Old Pine Street Church.

The Rust Belt, formerly the Steel Belt or Factory Belt, is an area of the United States that underwent substantial industrial decline in the late 20th century. The region is centered in the Great Lakes and Mid Atlantic regions of the United States. Common definitions of the Rust Belt include Ohio, Indiana, Northern Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Upstate New York. Some broader geographic definitions of the region include parts of Central Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and West Virginia. The term "Rust Belt" is considered to be a pejorative by some people in the region.

Between the late 19th century and late 20th century, the Rust Belt formed the industrial heartland of the country, and its economies were largely based on iron and steel, automobile manufacturing, coal mining, and the processing of raw materials. The term "Rust Belt", derived from the substance rust, refers to the socially corrosive effects of economic decline, population loss, and urban decay attributable to deindustrialization. The term gained popularity in the U.S. beginning in the 1980s, when it was commonly contrasted with the Sun Belt, whose economy was then thriving.

Jeffrey Jeff Wall, OC, RSA (born September 29, 1946) is a Canadian photographer. He is an artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Early in his career, he helped define the Vancouver School and he has published essays on the work of his colleagues and fellow Vancouverites Rodney Graham, Ken Lum, and Ian Wallace. His photographic tableaux often take Vancouver's mixture of natural beauty, urban decay, and postmodern and industrial featurelessness as their backdrop.