Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Unblighting The Burbs: Renewing The Edges, Mateusz Perkowski

Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies Publications

The term “urban blight” conjures up images of the stereotypical devastated American inner city: drunks and drug addicts sitting against graffiti-splattered walls, decaying buildings with broken windows that nobody bothers to replace, and alleyways layered with decades of discarded liquor bottles and other debris symptomatic of poverty and hopelessness. “Urban renewal,” which federal, state and local governments have used to combat blight since middle of the 20th Century, has itself become a phrase loaded with negative connotations, because many efforts to improve “slums” only ended up aggravating poor neighborhoods’ problems with crime and economic dysfunction. “Urban blight” and “urban renewal” …