Word: blight
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Even the city dwellers of the Northwest live close to the land, their concerns and dreams shaped by their environment. Other Americans worry about urban blight, street crime, racial trouble, chronic unemployment. But not the Northwest. Its economy, based on the renewable resources of forests and farms, is expanding strongly. Its biggest manufacturer, Boeing, has a $5 billion backlog of orders. Its two major cities?Seattle (pop. 496,000) and Portland (377,000)?are bustling, clean and eminently livable. There are too few blacks for any real racial problems, and the small Indian minority?.8% of the population?...
...Blight. Seattle has rebuilt half of its city center since 1970 and renovated two previously downtrodden downtown districts, turning them into fashionable areas for restaurants, boutiques and offices...
...fight the blight...
There were six other Americans digging, and after we deciphered the headline we dropped our shovels and started whooping and dancing and hugging each other and rolling in the dirt. The blight was gone. But when the elation had passed, one of us--I think it was an accountant's son from Cleveland--looked at each of the others soberly and said, "What are we celebrating? The country has fallen apart...
City folk are hopeful that Carter will carry out his promises to do something about the staggering problems of blight and crime. Detroit Mayor Coleman Young foresees a new era of cooperation between the cities and the national Government. But others are skeptical about whether Carter can do much to reverse urban decline. Said Psychologist Wayne Oates of the University of Louisville: "The great poverty in America today is not for money. It's not for buildings. It's for ideas. People are tired of the old solutions...