Inner city

"The hood" redirects here. For the character, seeThe Hood.For other uses, seeHood (disambiguation).

For other uses, seeInner city (disambiguation).

The terminner cityhas been used, especially in the United States, as aeuphemismformajority-minoritylower-income residential districtsthat often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in adowntownorcity centrearea.Sociologistssometimes turn the euphemism into a formal designation by applying the terminner cityto suchresidential areas,rather than to more geographicallycentral commercial districts,often referred to by terms likedowntownorcity centre.

History

The terminner cityfirst achieved consistent usage through the writings ofwhite liberal Protestantsin the U.S. afterWorld War II,contrasting with the growing affluentsuburbs.According tourban historianBench Ansfield, the term signified both a bounded geographic construct and a set of cultural pathologies inscribed onto urbanblackcommunities.Inner citythus originated as a term of containment. Its genesis was the product of an era when a largely white suburbanmainline Protestantismwas negotiating its relationship to American cities. Liberal Protestants’ missionary brand of urban renewal refocused attention away from the blight and structural obsolescence thought to be responsible for urban decay, and instead brought into focus the cultural pathologies they mapped onto black neighborhoods. The terminner cityarose in thisracial liberalcontext, providing a rhetorical and ideological tool for articulating the role of the church in the nationwide project of urban renewal. Thus, even as it arose in contexts aiming to entice mainline Protestantism back into the cities it had fled, the term accrued its meaning by generating symbolic and geographic distance between white liberal churches and the black communities they sought to help.

Urban renewal

Urban renewal(also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in theUnited States) is a program of landredevelopmentoften used to addressurban decayin cities. Urban renewal is theclearing out of blighted areasin inner cities to create opportunities for higher class housing, businesses, and more.

In Canada, in the 1970s, the government introduced Neighbourhood Improvement Programs to deal with urban decay, especially in inner cities.Also, some inner-city areas in various places have undergone the socioeconomic process ofgentrification,especially since the 1990s.

See also

• Bid rent theory
• Black flightandwhite flight
• Concentric zone model
• Ghetto
• Industrial deconcentration
• Skid row
• Slum
• Suburban colonization
• Urban sprawl
• Urban structure
• The projects

Further reading

• Harrison, P. (1985)Inside the Inner City: Life Under the Cutting Edge.Penguin: Harmondsworth. This book takesHackneyinLondonas a case study of inner city urban deprivation.