Challenges Facing Urban Sprawl And Inner City Poverty

For those only weakly committed to city living, particularly middle-class people who have serious difficulty with social diversity and who have clear housing alternatives, the "problem-free" suburbs become tempting. After an incident such as a car break-in or a bicycle theft, a "last straw" can make them leave. (249)

Reduction of Service Considerations: Under a consolidated government, there could be a reduction in service for city residents.

I thought cities had more diversity, more poverty, and low income household than suburb areas and this was supported by the above data. I learned that the increase of wealth and income in a small community hinders the rest of community where middle and low income families live. The ability to live in a “good” neighborhood is linked to income. Income can be one of the factors that determine how a region can be segregated. Even in the city, the income of the household separates the lower income families from the higher income families. High income families tend to live together and low income families tend to live in the same

Housing allocation determinations and planning review powers were also passed down from the state to Councils of Government (COG), which served as regional planning commissions that were thought to be closer to municipal governments and less likely to be perceived as encroaching on local land use decision-making (Ramsey-Musolf para. 7). The need for regional, as opposed to decentralized housing policies, is significant: shortages of housing in one area simply push housing burdens to adjacent cities, exacerbating statewide levels of inequality. Unfortunately, a study cited in the Journal of Planning Literature found that this well-intentioned legislation has only created a production imbalance between LIH and MRH: though collective housing element compliance may have increased between 1990 and 1997, a sample of 53 California municipalities only produced 32% of its

Poverty in the suburbs has been a huge struggle for the government and its citizens. The suburbs make up about 60% of our nation’s populations. (Berube & Kneebone, 2013) Between 2000 and 2013, the suburban poor made up 56% of our nations poverty rate. Overall, poverty has increased and shifted substantially from just low income families to the working class. The main reason is wages are not covering individual needs. In efforts of the government, the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was established. In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was implemented. Federal welfare reform gave permission to states allowing them the opportunity to reform their welfare systems.

Presently, low-income occupiers are in deeper poverty because of the dislodgment caused by gentrification. Furthermore, a lack of resources plagues low-incomes families and forces them into shelters. Current actions taken by city officials are a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, by including more voices in urbanization of cities in the future, the advancement of cities can include all members rather than just the wealthy.

With regard to a mayor-council form, the system itself is based upon the presence of numerous factors which lead to the creation of a range of types which share one basic foundation. As suggested by the premise of this form of local government, the primary actors which come together to continue the sustenance of this framework include the mayor and the council, both of which must be elected (Center for Governmental Research 1). Consequently, the presence of these two parties within the wider framework entails the extent to which each actor holds a certain degree or extent of authority in managing the affairs of the city, this notion implies that the distribution of power and authority maybe classified as relative or absolute wherein it may favor the elected mayor or the elected council in terms of possession of power on the basis of the chosen variation of the mayor-council form of government.

Throughout the years, social classes have been bolder where people distance themselves from the poor creating buildings, parks, areas that can’t be afforded by the poor. These approaches are theoretically known as obstructive agreements, zoning regulations, building codes, and political regulator over extents of the regions of a nation. With these methods, sections are made within towns which dictate the areas that are only accessible to the middle to high class and areas that could be inhabited by the low class people.

Local government and the challenges of the future is a comprehensive topic and subject to many differing opinions as it relates to geographical area examination and their specific needs. Every country, province, city etc. has their own detailed challenges in urban and rural settings but internationally there are similarities.

Beginning in the 1960s, middle and upper class populations began moving out of the suburbs and back into urban areas. At first, this revitalization of urban areas was "treated as a ‘back to the city' movement of suburbanites, but recent research has shown it to be a much more complicated phenomenon" (Schwirian 96). This phenomenon was coined "gentrification" by researcher Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe the residential movement of middle-class people into low-income areas of London (Zukin 131). More specifically, gentrification is the renovation of previously poor urban dwellings, typically into condominiums, aimed at upper and middle class professionals. Since the 1960s, gentrification has appeared in

This paper is a review of past and current research based on the cause and effect of urban sprawl in the United States with a case analysis of Fairfax County, Virginia. The motivation for this review is to shed light on issues that surround urban sprawl in large metropolitan areas and to discuss recommendations for research and ways to improve various effects of sprawl. The second motivation for this research is to show that there needs to be uniformity among researchers and urban planners, better data and analysis should be done to combat sprawl. My goal with this literature review is to define urban sprawl, define classic patterns in the United States, how we measure sprawl, the cause and effect of sprawl in the United States, give detailed background information on Fairfax County, future trends and implications of sprawl in Fairfax County, how to combat sprawl in the United States as well as in Fairfax County and key priorities in future research.

Step one: I will refine and update the Ewing et al. (2002) metropolitan sprawl indices to 2010This study will differ from the Ewing et al.’s 2002study in three respects. First, it will include additional metrics from various data sources such as Walk Score, NAVTEQ road data, Smart Location Databases and National Land Cover Database in order to increase validity and captures more aspects of each four dimensions (development density, land use mix, activity centering and street accessibility).

Example: During the nineteenth century, the city of Chicago grew at an expedite rate due to the annexation of peripheral land. In 1837, for example, Chicago grew from a mere 10 square miles to 190 square miles in 1900. As time continued, specifically during the twentieth century, little land was annexed; the major annexation was on the northwest side for O’Hare Airport. In today’s day, cities are less prone to annex peripheral land. This is due to the fact that residents prefer to organize their own services rather than pay city taxes to them. In the past, some of the peripheral jurisdictions were small, isolated towns. The towns have a traditions of independent local governed

Over the decades, national and international organizations have focused on rural poverty without looking at urban poverty, which is the bigger challenge at the dawn of the century. It was not until the unrest caused by the misconduct of police in killing black men in Ferguson, Cleveland, Oakland, California, and Baltimore that the improvised lives of those living in urban cities came to light. Most of the minority groups in America’s big cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Kansas experience low education standards, unemployment, crime, urban diseases, high detention rates, and ghettoized housing patterns driving them to poverty (Lemons, 2015). In other cities in states like Florida, up to a third of the city population live below the federal

Metropolitan areas exhibit an amazing diversity of features, economic structures, amounts of infrastructure, historic roots, patterns of development, and degrees of conventional planning. Yet, lots of the problems that they deal with are strikingly acquainted. For example, as metropolitan areas grow, they grow to be increasingly diverse.