Urban Decay Photography

In contrast, North American cities often experience population flights to the suburbs and exurb commuter towns, i.e., white flight. Another characteristic of urban decay is blight—the visual, psychological, and physical effects of living among empty lots, buildings and condemned houses. Such desolate properties are socially dangerous to the community because they attract criminals and street gangs, contributing to the volume of crime.
Urban decay has no single cause; it results from combinations of inter-related socio-economic conditions—including the city’s urban planning decisions, the poverty of the local populace, the construction of freeway roads and rail road lines that bypass the area, depopulation by suburbanization of peripheral lands, real estate neighborhood redlining, xenophobic immigration restrictions, and racial discrimination. In cities such as New York and Boston, gentrification has eased urban decay in some areas of the cities, although most U.S. cities have highly blighted areas.