# How were North American cities built before World War 2?



## GSAA (Nov 2, 2009)

I've read several times that the immense sprawl of many North American cities began after World War 2, when the average family got richer and could afford a house in the suburbs. According to Wikipedia, Phoenix, AZ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix,_Arizona), a city now known for its sprawl, was a pretty large town (65,000) in 1940. So does this mean that Phoenix mostly consisted of dense quarters, like many such European towns, in 1940? Were these areas replaced with a highrise/skyscraper downtown while most people moved into the suburbs as the population grew?

In 1940, Los Angeles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles) had a population of more than 1,5 million people within the city limits. Today, the Los Angeles area is pretty much only sprawl. How was this city built prior to World War 2?

Similarly, most cities in Canada seem very sprawling. One exception would be Montreal, which seems to be denser in its central parts.

Mind you, I've never been to North America - so maybe I'm wrong...

EDIT: Sorry, I meant to post this in the Citytalk and Urban Issues section - could a mod move it there (or to another appropriate location), please? Thanks.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ Well, most Southwest cities were rather small because the entire Southwest was sparsely populated. Before water diversion schemes and air-conditioning, it was not easy to live in Albuquerque or Las Vegas, for instance, and bear 40 oC+ temps 4 months per year..


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

The Southwest gets so hot so it was AC being mainstream from the 1950s onwards that meant more people would live there...

And it was in the 1950s that suburbs became the fashion, so both factors combined meant there was a lot of sprawling suburbs built...


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

For the most part either inner city New Orleans, Chicago, and Minneapolis would be a good example since you had more walkable areas linked together by streetcars.

Also back then since A/C was not as widespread as it is now since many buildings (shotgun homes are one example) were designed to take advantage of the airflow to cool the inside so it would be more comfortable inside.


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## zaphod (Dec 8, 2005)

Yes.

Here is a thread on another forum full of pictures of Cincinnatti before and after
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=187656

However for small towns and less important cities west of the Mississippi, they would be more likely to have had mostly wood tenements, houses for multiple families, and slums of tiny shacks rather than many substantial buildings like in Europe or New York. I suspect this is how it would have been for Phoenix.


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## Chicagoago (Dec 2, 2005)

they were usually dense, built on grids and connected by streetcars or heavy rail.

The area I grew up in was in the state of Iowa. My city had around 30,000 people, and the larger city 30KM to the north had around 60,000 people. Even with small populations both places had streetcars and were connected by inter-urban trains running from city to city. They cities were laid on out grids with a center and then commercial/residential and industrial areas. 

The countries cities and many small towns were connected by railroads, and the cities were much more dense and had transit in the form of inter-urbans, streetcars and early buses. They were still not as dense as European cities though, as they were mostly fairly new cities, hadn't had time to fully develop, and there was just SO much land.

There were hundreds of electric streetcar lines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streetcar_systems_in_the_United_States

New York had roughly the exact same density it does today at 43,000/KM.
Chicago-Boston-San Fran-Philly-St. Louis-Detroit-Washington DC-Cleveland (in order of density) all had levels of between 20,000 and 30,000 people/KM.

The country as a whole though before WWII had far less than half the people it does today, and it was a MUCH MUCH more rural society. People didn't travel long distances, and the states were much more isoldated and independant in nature than today when things seem to really be based around the federal government.

Until WWI and WWII the federal government only had a fraction of the power and influence it does today.


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## Wapper (Feb 24, 2011)

Around what year did the typical towns that you see in western movies start to develop and start to build houses in stone?


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## mhays (Sep 12, 2002)

Chicagoago said:


> New York had roughly the exact same density it does today at 43,000/KM.
> Chicago-Boston-San Fran-Philly-St. Louis-Detroit-Washington DC-Cleveland (in order of density) all had levels of between 20,000 and 30,000 people/KM.


New York is about 9,000/km right now or probably within 10% of that. The others are much lower.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

Basically how it looks now, minus the sprawl.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Wapper said:


> Around what year did the typical towns that you see in western movies start to develop and start to build houses in stown?


It depends on the area. Occupation of the areas between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi basin started in early 19th Century, and most towns were first built with wooden buildings for haste and availability of materials. But it was not an uniform process, some indian land took a bit longer to be cleared up.

Areas far west on the slopes of the Rockies and the Great Basin, were only effective occupied from late 19th Century onwards. Hostile indians were still a problem in 1885. Then, on the Southwest, you needed irrigation and/or water diversion to make cities viable, and that was just on the beginning around that time.

Remember: Arizona and New Mexico were still federal territories up to 1912, and Oklahoma, originally meant to be a giant indian reservation, was admitted to the Union in 1905 (not entirely sure about the date).


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## isaidso (Mar 21, 2007)

GSAA said:


> Similarly, most cities in Canada seem very sprawling. One exception would be Montreal, which seems to be denser in its central parts.


Montreal was Canada's largest city for a good 2 centuries so it's got the largest expanse of high density. You're correct that sprawl began after WW2 throughout north America. There's a perception that Montreal doesn't fit that north American pattern of sprawl due to that dense core. If you go beyond the core, it's a completely different story. Montreal actually has more km of roadway per capita than any other city in Canada due to the immense amount of sprawl there. Tourists just see the older bits: pre WW2.


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## desertpunk (Oct 12, 2009)

Here's a brief sketch of American cities:

Cities before 1870 were mainly dense warrens of housing, mills, and commercial blocks within a two mile walkable distance of the town center. In the later half of the 19th Century, the horsecar trolleys and then the electric trolleys extended dense urbanity, especially along trolley routes due to land speculators, farther out and away from congested old walking city districts. At this time, factories which outgrew their original mill locations were able to move to industrial areas further away from the core and with them, the working neighborhoods that were still connected to the core by trolleys. 

By 1920 the car emerged as a popular mode and those who could afford cars began to leave the city and live in inner suburbs characterized by detached houses with garages and somewhat dense urban villages where they could shop and conduct business. The post war suburb's explosive growth came from a combination of the wartime housing crunch which unleashed pent-up demand on areas newly opened to development by road and highway projects, and by the movement of modern single-floor factories and commercial development away from the cities altogether. Trolleys, which were decrepit from years of disinvestment due to the Depression and the war, gave way to buses which allowed more cars onto city streets and could change their routes nimbly and cheaply. The demise of trolleys led to the deterioration and abandonment of city center retail and commercial zones and in a desperate bid to compete with modern suburbs for investment, cities demolished many old buildings for freeway access, parking capacity and modern redevelopment.


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## sweet-d (Jul 20, 2010)

Suburbanist said:


> Remember: Arizona and New Mexico were still federal territories up to 1912, and Oklahoma, originally meant to be a giant indian reservation, was admitted to the Union in 1905 (not entirely sure about the date).


oklahoma was admitted to the union in 1907 you were close enough though


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## LtBk (Jul 27, 2004)

desertpunk said:


> Here's a brief sketch of American cities:
> 
> Cities before 1870 were mainly dense warrens of housing, mills, and commercial blocks within a two mile walkable distance of the town center. In the later half of the 19th Century, the horsecar trolleys and then the electric trolleys extended dense urbanity, especially along trolley routes due to land speculators, farther out and away from congested old walking city districts. At this time, factories which outgrew their original mill locations were able to move to industrial areas further away from the core and with them, the working neighborhoods that were still connected to the core by trolleys.
> 
> By 1920 the car emerged as a popular mode and those who could afford cars began to leave the city and live in inner suburbs characterized by detached houses with garages and somewhat dense urban villages where they could shop and conduct business. The post war suburb's explosive growth came from a combination of the wartime housing crunch which unleashed pent-up demand on areas newly opened to development by road and highway projects, and by the movement of modern single-floor factories and commercial development away from the cities altogether. Trolleys, which were decrepit from years of disinvestment due to the Depression and the war, gave way to buses which allowed more cars onto city streets and could change their routes nimbly and cheaply. The demise of trolleys led to the deterioration and abandonment of city center retail and commercial zones and in a desperate bid to compete with modern suburbs for investment, cities demolished many old buildings for freeway access, parking capacity and modern redevelopment.


Add to that changes in zoning laws that only allowed strict segregation of land uses, and catered to the automobile.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

LtBk said:


> Add to that changes in zoning laws that only allowed strict segregation of land uses, and catered to the automobile.


I'd frame it otherwise: segregation of land uses, long sought as a mean to sanitize cities and avoid the chaos of large population influx from rural areas to cities that accelerated - vastly - from 1935 up to the end of WW2, first driven by widespread farm bankruptcies and later by labor hot demand for war production, had become viable due to the increasing popularity of cars.

The willingness to keep commerce and, especially, industry out of residential blocks already existed. The car allowed it to be implemented.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Xusein said:


> Basically how it looks now, minus the sprawl.


I think that is wrong for many American cities. These pictures of Cincinnati illustrate why. Before the 50's it looked like American towns used to look like. the villages in Manhattan still retain that style to a large extend. 

The centre of Cincinnati today is almost like an entirely different place, not only strangled by highways but with barely anything left from "old" days. Not every place is as bad as Cincinnati probably, Others have retained more of their old neighborhoods, if not the buildings at least the basic design but few have managed to look not like swiss cheese with lots of holes in the street view.


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## memph (Dec 11, 2010)

This is what Toronto's downtown looked like, lots of stone and brick buildings:










The inner city looked much like it does now. Just go into google streetview and look at the neighbourhoods between High Park and the Beaches, and South of St Clair, most of that was built before 1940.

This is an older neighbourhood, built in the 19th century.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=toront...=ugJfgoaZ8FpnPxfLpmaujQ&cbp=12,236.01,,0,-2.4

This is a neighbourhood that was close to the city limits at the time (1940).
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=toront...=tdeuFWuR8mSp_8c0q9oYLw&cbp=12,59.51,,0,-8.11

This is a streetcar suburb, built mostly in the earlier 20th century.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=toront...noid=52MnMOgruEcMCFoOlAo0rw&cbp=12,86.17,,0,4

Toronto was founded in the late 18th century. Most towns in Ontario were founded around that time, with the arrival of loyalists following the American War of Independence. In 1940, Toronto had a population of around 650,000.

PS: Is there any way of putting google streetview in a post as an image with a link without using paint?


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

Slartibartfas said:


> I think that is wrong for many American cities. These pictures of Cincinnati illustrate why. Before the 50's it looked like American towns used to look like. the villages in Manhattan still retain that style to a large extend.
> 
> The centre of Cincinnati today is almost like an entirely different place, not only strangled by highways but with barely anything left from "old" days. Not every place is as bad as Cincinnati probably, Others have retained more of their old neighborhoods, if not the buildings at least the basic design but few have managed to look not like swiss cheese with lots of holes in the street view.


Yeah I forgot, minus the "urban renewal" too.


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## Somnifor (Sep 6, 2005)

Streetcar suburbia of the sort built in the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a very pleasant enviornment to live in IMO. You have detatched houses and apartment buildings so you can have green and leafy neighborhoods but there is still enough density for walkable business districts. It has the best features of both suburbia and city, you don't need a car but you still have a yard. It is an urban pacing that lends itself well to biking and bus/streetcar transit, if you do have a car everything you need is two minutes away and parking on the steet isn't that hard. It is probably the best all around urban form we have had, we were stupid to stop building cities this way. Some examples from Minneapolis:


mplssept201007 by afsmps, on Flickr


mplssept2010104 by afsmps, on Flickr


mplssept2010107 by afsmps, on Flickr


mplsdec201001 by afsmps, on Flickr


mplsdec201003 by afsmps, on Flickr


mplsdec201058 by afsmps, on Flickr


mplsjan201159 by afsmps, on Flickr


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ Some of the units you showed are multi-family. I think multi-family units do not belong in the same street/block as single-detached houses or even row houses.


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## Somnifor (Sep 6, 2005)

weava said:


> Have they? I'm pretty sure both have some pretty bad areas.


Almost all of Minneapolis proper is streetcar suburb and it is one of the least "ghetto" big cities in the US. The worst parts of the city are still pretty nice. Mixing multi-unit housing with single family houses doesn't seem to have hurt it.


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

Suburbanist said:


> blah blah blah


I'd call you a racist, discriminant, etc, but you're worse than that. With racists, you can ignore them, tune them out, call them on their ridiculous behavior. You are worse than that because you disguise your racism with subtle rhetoric that is actually believable to the less informed. You are more dangerous than racists because you believe that you aren't. People like you are able to change people's minds with strawmen arguments and hyberbole. People like you are able to turn others' knee jerk reactions into reality and force (and indeed foster) a hostile environment to live in. It's sad.



> That was written in a thread about infrastructure to keep illegal immigrants from crossing into US territory via desert. Another completely different topic. Unless you are an universalist who believes in some inherent global right to roam and migrate. Which is completely out of the scope of this thread we're in.


It's relevant because you use the same racist rhetoric in both threads, acting as if you actually care about our immigration problem. You clearly _DO_ care, but not for the reasons that matter. You're too blind to see the reality.


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

weava said:


> Have they? I'm pretty sure both have some pretty bad areas.


Every city in the _WORLD_ has bad areas, ghettos, slums.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

I have been increasingly souring on the 'strict separation of uses' tenet of 20th century zoning and development control in most of the USA in recent years, and it has absolutely *zero* to do with anything relating to the 'r-word'.

In many areas, these legal controls have led to severe housing shortages and resulting 'black markets' for residential (see eastern Long Island, among many other places, for glaring examples of this), major real estate market distortions, lack of cohesive 'communities' in many areas, unnecessarily inducing traffic and so forth. Also, IMHO, some of the very BEST urban and even 'tiny-town' village neighborhood areas were all developed before zoning. It is that kind of random-mixed use, low-impact spontaneity of market-based development that often means the difference between a true community and an anonymous 'Beigeville'.

Mike


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## Rebasepoiss (Jan 6, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> That was written in a thread about infrastructure to keep illegal immigrants from crossing into US territory via desert. Another completely different topic. *Unless you are an universalist who believes in some inherent global right to roam and migrate.*


Correct me if I'm wrong but you are an immigrant in the Netherlands, aren't you?


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Rebasepoiss said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong but you are an immigrant in the Netherlands, aren't you?


Yes, I am. Legal immigrant. I'm not anti-immigration, indeed I'm a beneficiary of it. I just oppose illegality, be it under-the-table employment, unlicensed music pubs, illegal immigration, parking on moving lanes, smoking where it is forbidden etc..


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Northsider said:


> I'd call you a racist, discriminant, etc, but you're worse than that. With racists, you can ignore them, tune them out, call them on their ridiculous behavior. You are worse than that because you disguise your racism with subtle rhetoric that is actually believable to the less informed. You are more dangerous than racists because you believe that you aren't. People like you are able to change people's minds with strawmen arguments and hyberbole. People like you are able to turn others' knee jerk reactions into reality and force (and indeed foster) a hostile environment to live in. It's sad.


I'll give a credit that your argument is just not paranoia and answer this for the last time: I am NOT a racist. I do not believe in inherently good or evil coming from one's phenotype. It is just a medieval, backward idea. 

This being said, I'm also inconsequential in the sense that I don't care if the ideas I support "in thesis" will have unintended consequences that would foster hardship in people grouped by this lame criteria of "race". The concept of race is pretty much irrelevant, so that I like the position of countries like France where public authorities and employers are forbidden by law of asking or classifying people according to "race" unless it it a relevant information, and so far the only "relevant information" situations are things like medical research, DNA profiling, disappearance notices etc.

What I am, usually, is inconsequential in the sense that if an idea is workable and fair on the paper, I'll not care much if a particular subset of people are disadvantaged by that by chance or correlation. It's statistics, mate. Every people should have the same rights. And they should also have the same prerogatives of transportation or housing -provided they can pay, of course -. I see most of "racial" issues as mere poverty issues. There are more "African-Americans" living in sub-standard housing not because of the color of their skin, but because, by statistical chance, they are over-represented among the poor. So give every kid a fair chance through education and protection, and theoretically you eliminate the problem of "substandard housing" being higher among "African-Americans" (or any other group for that matteR). 

If you want to think that I'm racist, there is nothing I can do about it.


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

mgk920 said:


> I have been increasingly souring on the 'strict separation of uses' tenet of 20th century zoning and development control in most of the USA in recent years, and it has absolutely *zero* to do with anything relating to the 'r-word'
> 
> In many areas, these legal controls have led to severe housing shortages and resulting 'black markets' for residential (see eastern Long Island, among many other places, for glaring examples of this), major real estate market distortions, lack of cohesive 'communities' in many areas, unnecessarily inducing traffic and so forth. Also, IMHO, some of the very BEST urban and even 'tiny-town' village neighborhood areas were all developed before zoning. It is that kind of random-mixed use, low-impact spontaneity of market-based development that often means the difference between a true community and an anonymous 'Beigeville'.


I agree with you. However, in Subbys posts there's clearly some underlying issues that he won't outright say.

P.S. Threads are so much nicer with Ignore Lists. :cheers:


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## aaabbbccc (Mar 8, 2009)

Northsider said:


> Every city in the _WORLD_ has bad areas, ghettos, slums.


yep even Dubai has slums and ghettos parts I agree


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## chornedsnorkack (Mar 13, 2009)

Northsider said:


> Every city in the _WORLD_ has bad areas, ghettos, slums.


Do Havana, Pyongyang or Beijing?


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Of course they do!


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Northsider said:


> Every city in the _WORLD_ has bad areas, ghettos, slums.


You have to have a very flexible definition of slums then. In my understanding, your claim is wrong. While almost every city has poorer areas, some don't have slums. A slum is for me an area with insufficient infrastructure (water, waste water, electricity etc).


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

Slartibartfas said:


> You have to have a very flexible definition of slums then.(water, waste water, electricity etc).


Yes, I do have a very flexible definition. But it's irrelevant. Whether you call it a favela, a slum, a shanty, a ghetto, whatever...you wouldn't send a tourist there. Obviously a slum in North America will differ greatly than that of Central/South America, and likewise with Asia, etc. All the general characteristics are there though: poverty, crime, and poor infrastructure. I've seen the slums from USA to Brazil to Indonesia to Philippines to Argentina...they are all _basically_ the same.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

It seems that *Singapore* might be one of the few cities in the world without slums/ghettos or any bad area.


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## Bricken Ridge (Feb 16, 2008)

*Every* city does not have an slum. 'Poorer' areas maybe. Even that is debatable.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

I define "slum" in their strict sense as areas of illegally occupied housing, where essential public services like garbage collection or paved streets are lacking, crime is rampant as disregard for any urban ordinance is widespread. I think we need a narrowly defined terminology, better than shantytown, for areas that are "just" extremely run-down, dangerous and crumbling, but not still/yet in complete disarray.

In that sense, many cities don't have "slums". For instance, I don't think Dutch cities have slums, though some have poor areas that are crime-ridden (for the standards of the country) and relatively run-down.

Many Italian cities, though, have slums, mainly Gypsy precarious camps lacking sanitation, full of trash etc. There are also some cities with small pockets of precarious housing taken by poor illegal immigrants, cut-off from any state assistance, in former industrial grounds. They are a sad human tragedy and an urban eyesore.


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## chornedsnorkack (Mar 13, 2009)

Suburbanist said:


> I define "slum" in their strict sense as areas of illegally occupied housing,


There are plenty of countries where there is no such thing as illegally occupied housing simply because nobody gets away with illegal occupation for long and attempted illegal occupants of housing quickly become legal occupants of prison camps.

What services the legal occupants get is another matter.


Suburbanist said:


> where essential public services like garbage collection or paved streets are lacking,


That depends on where they are essential.

Obviously, even in rich countries, not every legally occupied lonely farmstead is connected to a paved road hundreds of kilometres long.

So, what makes a village or a suburb which, by its population density, might have some public services it does not have, a slum?


Suburbanist said:


> crime is rampant as disregard for any urban ordinance is widespread.


Crime as such exists in all countries, and it is not quite equally distributed in any country. But this does not mean it is "rampant", nor that disregard of urban ordinances, or rural ordinances, is particularly rewarding kind of crime.

Sparsely settled countryside and lonely villages that do not receive many public services are often occupied by law abiding people where crime of any kind is rare.


Suburbanist said:


> I think we need a narrowly defined terminology, better than shantytown, for areas that are "just" extremely run-down, dangerous and crumbling, but not still/yet in complete disarray.


"Run-down"? "Crumbling"? These imply that the place was previously in better condition, and built up.

How about slums that are new built, on land that was previously wild or rural?


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

chornedsnorkack said:


> That depends on where they are essential.
> 
> Obviously, even in rich countries, not every legally occupied lonely farmstead is connected to a paved road hundreds of kilometres long.
> 
> So, what makes a village or a suburb which, by its population density, might have some public services it does not have, a slum?


I was thinking of services deemed appropriated for the given pattern/density. Unpaved road in a farmsteads may be reasonable, in a 5000 inhabitants/km², it is certainly not.



> "Run-down"? "Crumbling"? These imply that the place was previously in better condition, and built up.
> 
> How about slums that are new built, on land that was previously wild or rural?


That situation is quite rare. Even in mid-range income brackets, I can't think of many countries where slums can LEGALLY be built as so on greenfield. Countries have building codes and minimum standards. If they are respected when housing is build, the new areas are usually acceptable upon completion, but they can be let root soon afterwards.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Northsider said:


> Yes, I do have a very flexible definition. But it's irrelevant. Whether you call it a favela, a slum, a shanty, a ghetto, whatever...you wouldn't send a tourist there. Obviously a slum in North America will differ greatly than that of Central/South America, and likewise with Asia, etc. All the general characteristics are there though: poverty, crime, and poor infrastructure. I've seen the slums from USA to Brazil to Indonesia to Philippines to Argentina...they are all _basically_ the same.


Belfast sends its tourists to its poorest neighbourhoods. Are they slums?

PS: The definition of a term is never irrelevant it often makes the difference between correct and incorrect.


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

> Belfast sends its tourists to its poorest neighbourhoods. Are they slums?


So does Rio de Janeiro. Yes, they most definitely slums.



> PS: The definition of a term is never irrelevant it often makes the difference between correct and incorrect.


You have to use a loose definition because every country is different. The history of slums in the United States is very different than Brazil for example. In brazil, the slums are caused by the rural exodus and building of illegal settlements. In the USA, it's a result of a dynamic city: one ethnic group moving out and another in and land value decreasing. In the USA poor neighborhoods are made up of very old housing stock, in a neighborhood that was once middle class. In Brazil, it always was a slum (generally). You can't use one catch all definition. That's like defining "urban" for every city in the world. LA's "urban" is very different than Hong Kong.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Northsider said:


> So does Rio de Janeiro. Yes, they most definitely slums.


I know and it contradicts your own statement above where you said you wouldn't show tourists around in slums. 



> You have to use a loose definition because every country is different. The history of slums in the United States is very different than Brazil for example. In brazil, the slums are caused by the rural exodus and building of illegal settlements. In the USA, it's a result of a dynamic city: one ethnic group moving out and another in and land value decreasing. In the USA poor neighborhoods are made up of very old housing stock, in a neighborhood that was once middle class. In Brazil, it always was a slum (generally). You can't use one catch all definition. That's like defining "urban" for every city in the world. LA's "urban" is very different than Hong Kong.


No you don't have to keep it excessively loose in order to include almost anything which is working class. You could simply be precise instead and call different types of settlements differently. 

Not every city is completely different even though you can find unique aspects probably in every city. You can group them into different categories. Cities of developed countries are certainly different in various aspects from cities in poorer countries.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

I wouldn't describe those Belfast areas as slums. Every home there has access to drinkable tapwater, mains sewage disposal, municipal refuse/recycling collection, paved roads, 24/7 electricity, official telecoms connections, public transport links, formal legal title to land, buildings constructed legally according to local building codes etc etc.

Slums to me are places lacking many of these features. You could maybe describe some of those worst areas in Belfast as 'ghetto' in the general modern sense rather than the original sense as they can be low income, high unemployment, high crime, socially deprived and alienated districts.


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## nongcong4 (Jun 28, 2011)

Hello  I live Vietnamese


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## Northsider (Jan 16, 2006)

> I know and it contradicts your own statement above where you said you wouldn't show tourists around in slums.


I feel like I'm talking to 5 years olds sometimes...I hate how I have to spell out EVERY single word on this forum. Rather than argue ad naseum some minute definition or clarification of what I meant, please take my original comment IN CONTEXT. I stand by it: EVERY major city in the world has bad areas, ghettos, slums...

I drive these bad areas for work regularly, trust me, they're there.


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## zaphod (Dec 8, 2005)

> You have to use a loose definition because every country is different. The history of slums in the United States is very different than Brazil for example. In brazil, the slums are caused by the rural exodus and building of illegal settlements. In the USA, it's a result of a dynamic city: one ethnic group moving out and another in and land value decreasing. In the USA poor neighborhoods are made up of very old housing stock, in a neighborhood that was once middle class. In Brazil, it always was a slum (generally). You can't use one catch all definition. That's like defining "urban" for every city in the world. LA's "urban" is very different than Hong Kong.


Pretty much. Some cities did have vast areas of tenements and really bad quality housing from the industrial age when there was a rural to migration. But a lot of these were cleared out during urban renewal. What's interesting to me is now we are reaching the point where some housing and neighborhoods from the 1950s-70s is now in bad shape and becoming low-income areas.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Northsider said:


> I feel like I'm talking to 5 years olds sometimes...I hate how I have to spell out EVERY single word on this forum. Rather than argue ad naseum some minute definition or clarification of what I meant, please take my original comment IN CONTEXT. I stand by it: EVERY major city in the world has bad areas, ghettos, slums...


Every city has "bad areas"? Sure, unless a city is 100% homogeneous in terms of wealth it is going to have "bad areas". Isn't that a trivial statement?

The big question is what "bad areas" actually means. And there are huge differences especially between the developing and the developed world.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ I do indeed make a difference between some "rough" area in Madrid, where the buildings might be rundown and burglary is a rampant problem, and some "rough" area in Rio de Janeiro where the police has to mount military-style operations with armored trucks and helicopters to merely enter the place, where occupation was illegal in first place (geological hazard), floods wash away makeshift houses killing dozens and murder is a rampant problem.


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