Word: suburbanized
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Burke is right about the problem, though she may be very wrong about the likelihood of a new era soon. Suburbanization, the most irresistible demographic trend of the past 40 years, is indeed at the heart of why the inner cities have been reduced to hollow shells peopled largely by poor non- whites. The process began after World War II, when veterans by the thousands moved their families to suburbs like New York's Levittown. The draining of the cities accelerated during the 1960s and '70s, when malls sprouted across the nation, diverting shoppers from downtown business districts...
...Boston, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles -- many of the great American cities have been severely, perhaps fatally, undermined by the loss of jobs and taxpayers. In 1960, per capita income was 5% higher in a sample of the nation's cities than in their suburbs. By 1987, suburban per capita income was 59% larger than in the cities...
...contrast between South Central L.A. and Simi Valley is typical of the city-suburban divide. South Central, a largely black and Hispanic neighborhood of 260,000 people, has long been one of the poorest sections of the city. While there are pockets of prim bungalows sprinkled among the run-down commercial streets and crime-infested housing projects, the average income is just $10,000 per adult. More than a fourth of the area's families are below the poverty line...
...Nixon understood then, and what a great deal of state and federal policy has reflected since then, is that the suburbs control the nation's political destiny. Voters there will punish any candidate who would have them transfer tax revenue back to the cities. And even if the new suburban majority could be persuaded to agree to massive urban aid, the damage wrought by the shift of wealth and jobs to the suburbs might be too much for mere social programs to remedy...
...began as a housing program for inner cities. Now half the $3.5 billion allocated for the program this year will go outside center cities. The politically sacrosanct tax deduction for mortgage interest costs the federal Treasury $50 billion each year, a benefit that flows mostly to the purchasers of suburban homes. At the same time, federal aid to cities declined from $47.2 billion in 1980 to $21.7 billion 10 years later...