Yule Heibel's Library tagged slums →  View Popular, Search in Google

Not as powerful, perhaps, as photos of Detroit's ruins, these aerial shots of nature overtaking formerly built-up urban areas is startling in its own way:
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As with many industrial cities in America at the time, post-war St. Louis experienced a rapid decline of its inner city. Desperately seeking solutions before the decay could absorb downtown, local planners and politicians saw slum clearance as the best option.

Decades later, the results are nothing to celebrate. An aggressive demolition policy failed to create a better neighborhood. Instead, it led to a different kind of stigmatized inner city. The chaotic, dirty and declining urban condition of the mid-20th century gave way to the urban prairie of the 21st.
UNQUOTE

atlantic_cities st_louis slums urban_renewal urban_forest

Found via Richard Florida's "Creative Class" blog, Leinberger's article builds in part on a story that was reported in The Charlotte Observer a while back. With foreclosures on the rise and houses being abandoned, the absence of any sort of on-site amenities acts like an accelerant toward slum-hood.

atlantic_monthly chris_leinberger planning redevelopment slums sprawl suburbs