Problems of Inner Cities

One severe and frequently occurring problem within the inner city environment is that of voluntary and involuntary uprooting of individuals and groups, primarily minorities, from one place of residence to another. When these individuals are uprooted, they often feel helpless in that they have little or no opportunity to express themselves and feel themselves to be somewhat victimized. Within this process of victimization, a sense of a ripping away of any semblance of social identity frequently occurs.

Although it is true that federal and state funds are allocated to help in the relocation process, urban renewal often destroys more home than it builds. It also removes the type of affordable homes that the local community was living in, and places higher priced, and thus unaffordable, homes in its place. This paper will address such questions in a basic three part study of the problem: the problem of urban renewal, the problem of freeway

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the construction of housing for the poor."4 Yet this has contributed little more than to the construction of mass segregated housing, which, in turn, becomes as bad, if not worse, than the inner city ghetto itself. Thus, one may reasonably conclude that urban renewal is not working to the advantage of minorities.5 As well, one need only give a cursory glance to the literature to know that the satisfaction levels of minorities, particularly in the California area, is clearly not positive.6 Another area in which minorities are significantly affected is that of freeway and highway construction. More likely than not, transportation engineers pay scant attention to the needs of minorities when planning new transportation systems due to the needs of growth accentuated by urban renewal. Although some have advocated new organizational ____________________ 4 Wilson, 83. 5 See Elijah Anderson, "Racial and Class Boundaries," Social Science and Modern Society 21 1 (NovemberDecember 1983), 3540. 6 See Chalsa Loo, "Neighborhood Satisfaction and Safety  A Study of a LowIncome Ethnic Area,"Environment and Behavior 18 1 (January 1986): 10931. methods in order to alleviate some of the problems associated with commuter traffic,
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Approximate Word count = 2252
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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