The Inner City Research Paper

2. The Rise Of The Modern Inner-City Ghetto

One of the legacies of the historic racial and class subjugation in the United States is the growing concentration of poor and minority residents in the nation’s impoverished inner-city areas. The demand for low-skill blue collar workers in the North during the early twentieth century, coupled with the rise in southern blacks’ economic insecurity brought about by the declining demand for farm labor due to the increasing mechanization of agriculture, helped fuel the migration of blacks to northern industrial cities. In the North, blacks found themselves increasingly segregated in ghettos that previously housed white ethnic immigrants, who themselves were gradually assimilating into US society.

In spite of the tremendous obstacles faced by African-Americans, ghetto neighborhoods, in the early parts of the twentieth century, developed a diversified social and institutional structure, characterized by a mix of poor, working-class, and middleclass blacks and viable institutions (e.g., businesses, schools, churches, and cultural organizations) that fostered a vibrant social and cultural life. This social organization of earlier ghettos helped to buffer the deleterious effects of marginalization and concentrated poverty (Dubois 1899, Drake and Cayton 1962). And despite their disadvantaged status, well into the 1960s most ghetto-dwellers resided in neighborhoods where a majority of adults were employed.

3. The Social Transformation Of The Inner-City Ghetto: Competing Explanations Of The Growth Of Concentrated Poverty

Since 1970, conditions in those same inner-city neighborhoods have dramatically declined, reflecting a different social and economic environment than existed in early urban ghettos. The new urban ghetto has a much higher level of joblessness and a greater concentration of poverty (Wilson 1987, 1996, Jargowsky and Bane 1991, Jargowsky 1997). Explanations for the growth of inner-city joblessness and concentrated poverty have centered on four mitigating factors: economic changes, demographic shifts, government programs and policies, and the legacy of racial oppression.

Central-city labor markets have been altered by economic changes affecting the distribution and educational requirements of employment. Beginning in the 1970s, global competitive pressures and declining profits in manufacturing set off a wave of plant closings that decimated the old industrial centers of the USA. Many of the companies that survived moved off-shore or to the South to take advantage of lower production costs. Some employers, attracted by the cheap land and skilled labor force, moved to suburban areas. The decline in central-city manufacturing jobs was a major impetus to the growth of concentrated urban poverty (Wilson 1987, 1996).

Employment in the inner city has also been affected by the sectoral shift from goods-producing to serviceproducing industries and an associated increase in educational requirements of employment. Whereas most job growth has been in those industries that require higher levels of education, job loss has disproportionately affected the less educated (Kasarda 1989). Not only did the shift to higher-skilled service sector jobs reduce the demand for inner-city workers, new production technologies also eliminated many unskilled manual jobs in manufacturing. The social costs of the loss of low-skill manufacturing jobs and their replacement with more skilled jobs have not been equally shared. In particular, inner-city blacks have disproportionately felt the impact of these changes. The new spatial distribution of employment within metropolitan areas has also disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods and residents. In the competition for jobs, suburban areas, with their cheaper land, access to highways, and other amenities, have an advantage over central city areas. Thus, the intensification of inner-city poverty is at least partly the result of the increasing suburbanization of employment that has helped to generate a growing mismatch between the suburban location of employment and the inner-city residence of minority populations (Wilson 1987). Inner-city joblessness increases as residents must contend with both fewer employment opportunities nearby and longer commutes to jobs outside the central city.

A demographic trend that has contributed to the spread of concentrated inner-city poverty is the movement of nonpoor families out of inner-city neighborhoods, first by whites and later by blacks. Beginning in the 1950s, nonpoor whites began to move out of many inner-city neighborhoods and into suburban locations. The economic vulnerability of blacks, especially the increased likelihood of joblessness, meant that neighborhoods that became predominantly black were more at risk of becoming high poverty areas. In the face of a less restrictive housing market in the post-civil rights era, many working-class and middle-class blacks also left poor inner-city neighborhoods in search of more favorable living conditions. As the proportion of nonpoor families in the neighborhood declined, the levels of poverty increased, pushing many previously mixed income ghetto areas into greater poverty (Wilson 1987, Jargowsky and Bane 1991, Jargowsky 1997).

Some governmental programs and policies have exacerbated the decay of inner-city neighborhoods (McGeary 1990, Wilson 1996). Policies such as the selective underwriting of mortgages, and mortgage interest tax deductions, favored the suburbanization of middle-class whites. This trend was facilitated by the construction of highway networks linking the suburbs and central cities. The construction of massive federal housing projects in inner-city neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s isolated poor black families for decades and helped to create some of the most highly concentrated poverty in the country. More recently, the policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations pushed many city governments to near bankruptcy under the New Federalism program that substantially reduced the federal contribution to city budgets, at a time when cities were desperate for federal help in combating escalating urban problems.

Finally, the high levels of racial segregation in American society, combined with higher rates of joblessness and poverty among blacks, helped to spread and intensify the concentration of poverty in predominantly black inner-city areas (Massey and Denton 1993). Segregated ghettos are less conducive to employment preparation and employment than are other urban residential areas. Segregation in ghettos aggravates employment problems because it leads to weak informal employment networks and contributes to the social isolation of families and individuals, thereby reducing their chances of acquiring the human capital skills, including adequate educational training, that facilitate social mobility.

4. Concentrated Poverty, Social Organization, And Culture In The Inner City Neighborhoods

During the 1970s and 1980s, social dislocations such as crime, gang activity, joblessness, and welfare receipt soared in many of the USA’s segregated inner cities. Attempts by some social scientists to explain these trends centered on the behavior of the urban poor, behavior believed to be rooted in a cultural milieu of deviant norms and values (Murray 1984, Mead 1986).

Alternative explanations emphasized the structural underpinnings of the inner city and the extent to which macroeconomic conditions have undermined the social and cultural life of the ghetto (Wilson 1987). According to this view, ghetto-related behavior and attitudes are best understood as cultural adaptations to the lack of opportunities in the inner-city environment and the larger society (Clark 1965, Hannerz 1969, Rainwater 1970, Anderson 1990).

The social constraints faced by inner-city minorities, and their cultural manifestations, reflect their social isolation from mainstream society, especially the lack of employment opportunities (Wilson 1987, 1996). The outmigration of nonpoor blacks from poor innercity neighborhoods contributed to this isolation by eroding the social buffer that they provided, and by making it difficult to sustain basic institutions, such as schools, churches, stores, and recreational facilities. By reducing the opportunities for contact with regularly employed adults and the opportunities for access to the social resources that higher status families provide (e.g., job networks), residents in high-poverty neighborhoods are less likely to develop the culturally shaped skills, habits, styles, and orientations so prevalent in neighborhoods organized around work (Wilson 1987, 1996).

Also, concentrated poverty and joblessness under- mine the social organization of inner-city neighbor- hoods, or the ability of residents to maintain effective social control and realize common goals (Wilson 1996). Socially organized neighborhoods have strong and cohesive informal social networks and ample institutional resources for the preservation of neighborhood social order. Strong social networks are characterized by sustained social contacts that are based on trust, reciprocity, and normative consensus, and where there are extensive ties between parents, children, and other institutionally based adults (e.g., police, teachers, and other community leaders) (Coleman 1990). Social control is also aided by such institutional resources as effective policing, quality schools, and adequate community organizations and other locally based associations.

In contrast to socially organized neighborhoods, many segregated inner-city neighborhoods have few institutional resources and weak and less cohesive social networks. As a result residents are less able to enforce norms and control undesirable behavior in the community or to act collectively to preserve the quality of neighborhood life. When the effectiveness of formal and informal social control mechanisms drops below a certain threshold, sanctions against nonnormative behavior become ineffective and opportunities for illegitimate activities proliferate in the community (Sampson and Wilson 1995).

In sum, the cultural milieu of the inner city is embedded in the structural features of concentrated poverty, social isolation, and the lack of neighborhood social organization. Cut off from employment opportunities and trapped in neighborhoods with little access to conventional role models, social networks that contain social capital (e.g., informal job net-works), and institutional resources that support families, poor inner-city families face severe obstacles in their efforts to accomplish socially desired ends such as labor force participation and family stability.

5. The Inner-City Family: A Mediating Variable

Since 1970, marriage rates have been declining nationally and more children are being raised in single-parent families. Nowhere are these trends more prevalent than in the inner-city, where mother-only households are the norm in many neighborhoods. This situation has generated much public debate and, while public attention has focused on the marital disincentives of welfare policy, research has shown that a major reason for the collapse of two-parent inner-city families is the growing economic marginality of inner-city males (Wilson 1987, 1996). As male employment prospects receded, so did the economic benefits of marriage. The general weakening of social sanctions against out-of-wedlock childbearing in the larger society and especially in the inner-city ghetto further helped to undermine the foundation for stable relationships.

The high rates of single parenthood are especially troubling because of their association with persistent poverty, welfare receipt, and deleterious effects on children. Children in mother-only households are themselves more likely to be school dropouts, to have lower earnings, and to depend on welfare as adults (Krein and Beller 1988, McLanahan and Garfinkel 1989). Moreover, growing up in communities where prospects for steady employment and stable marriages are perceived as remote, young inner-city adults are more likely to engage in behavior that further jeopardizes their chances for social and economic mobility.

6. The Inner City And Public Policy

After years of steady urban decline, the prolonged economy recovery in the USA has recently improved situations in central cities. Unemployment has declined dramatically from 8.6 percent in 1992 to 5.1 percent in 1998. And unemployment in the nation’s 50 largest cities fell from 8.6 percent in 1992 to 4.9 percent in 1998, a decline that exceeded the decreases in unemployment in the cities’ surrounding suburbs (US Department of Housing and Urban Development 1999).

The positive effects of these changes are seen in even the most depressed parts of the city. A new study by the economists Richard Freeman and William M. Rodgers of low-wage workers in 322 metropolitan areas, reveals that black men aged 16 to 24 with a high school education or less—including many with prison records—are employed in greater numbers, earning larger paychecks and committing fewer crimes than in the early 1990s. Although far too many of these young men are still jobless or in prison, the rise in legitimate employment has accompanied a drop in criminal activity. Indeed, crime has fallen most rapidly in regions with the sharpest declines in joblessness. (Freeman and Rogers 1999, Nasar and Mitchell 1999). Nonetheless, the highly disadvantaged urban areas have not rebounded to the same extent as other areas in the metropolitan regions. Moreover, if the economy slows down and the country is faced with a period of economic stagnation or a new recession the problems of joblessness and poverty will become acute once again.

Any real solution to the economic and social woes of the inner city will have to address the full range of economic and social problems that currently plague them. Policies that guarantee full employment, reduce income inequality, rebuild the physical and social infrastructure of cities, and provide adequate social support for the nation’s less fortunate would go a long way towards redressing the USA’s urban inequalities. However, in recent years such programs have not been reflected in government policy. Indeed, as discussed above, government action has often unwittingly contributed to urban inequalities. Similarly, governmental agencies often work at cross-purposes, for example, as one seeks suburban economic development, another tries to revitalize low-income urban communities by luring businesses back to the central city. Disparate and divergent policies of this sort have ‘worked to weaken the social, economic, and political strength of inner city communities’ (Ferguson 1999, p. 587).

Furthermore, cross-national comparisons of urban policy suggest that the fragmented governmental structure of the USA has been, and will continue to be, a major obstacle to halting the decline of inner cities. Few Western European cities witnessed the dramatic urban decay of US cities, in part because central governments there have sought to maintain the livability of cities by controlling urban growth boundaries, implementing more effective urban renewal programs, and building cheap and efficient public transportation systems (Weir 1993, Downs 1993). In contrast, the USA has no comprehensive federal plan to influence urban settlement patterns, and most urban matters are under the jurisdiction of local governments and are heavily influenced by powerful economic actors in the private sector.

However, there is mounting evidence that the problems of jobless ghettos cannot be separated from those of the suburbs, and that the health of metropolitan regions may depend on a viable central city. For example, research indicates that the reduction of central city poverty is associated with increases in metropolitan income growth, and that central city job growth increases the value of suburban properties (Gottlieb 1998).

In the global economy, metropolitan regions continue to compete for jobs. In an era of low transportation and information costs, high mobility and intense global competition, a metropolitan region is at a severe competitive disadvantage if it lacks a healthy urban core. ‘In a global economy, firms choose among regions—and the health of the central city is a key factor in deciding which region is best. Even firms that choose to relocate to the suburbs will choose areas surrounding a vibrant central city’ (U S Department of Housing and Urban Development 1999, p. 19). In the USA cities and suburbs should look to the creation of metropolitan and regional governmental bodies or city–suburban collaborative planning mechanisms to help resolve shared metropolitan-wide concerns. And paramount among these concerns should be the revitalization of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. It would be a serious mistake to assume that efforts to enhance the economic and social health of the metropolitan region can be achieved without combating the problems of poverty, joblessness, and related woes in the inner city.

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