You can accidentally wander into depressed urban areas in almost any metropolis of the prosperous United States. A whole ghetto culture has developed in America, which is known throughout the world by famous hip-hop artists. There are no unequivocal reasons why this happened: there may be acute social inequality, a slaveholding past, and high rates of urbanization.
Modern American Ghettos
The poor neighborhoods of American cities are mired in crime and social issues. Usually a ghetto has a population of one ethnic origin: African-Americans or Hispanics. Often these are people who came to work and were unable to adapt to the American lifestyle. The “white” population of the ghetto is drug addicts, prostitutes, drunkards, criminals and people with no fixed abode.
Life in the US ghetto is not the best: crimes often happen, they use drugs directly on the streets and sell illegal drugs, the police and doctors don’t come to calls, all the walls are painted with graffiti, on the windows of the bars, any passer-by can be shot from a passing car, and locals do not work anywhere. The strangers in the ghetto are very wary and openly hostile.
South Central, Los Angeles
A huge cluster of gangs is concentrated in the southern areas of Los Angeles. There are gangs of Mexicans, Blacks and Latin Americans in the ghetto, whose members differ in the style of clothing, tags (spray marks), and a signal-raspalspaltsovka system. One of the most dangerous modern groups is the Latin American MS-113. The territory of the district is divided between gangs and is practically not controlled by the police.
The history of the ghetto in Southern Los Angeles began in the 1930s, when African Americans from racist Texas and Louisiana began to massively arrive in California. The situation worsened during the war. By the early 1970s, there were virtually no “white” areas in the southern Los Angeles. The following scheme was applied: one house on the street was bought at an inflated price, an African American family settled there, and after a while all the houses nearby were sold almost half as cheaply.
In the same years, street gangs began to form, which were engaged in the sale of drugs and weapons. The heyday of crime came in the 1990s. Once the police counted the statistics on the South Central separately from Los Angeles, but monstrous figures were obtained. Then the southern part of the city was included in the general statistics. The numbers have become average, and the poor criminal area has disappeared from sight.
Marcy House, New York
The construction of social real estate for the poor in northern Brooklyn was completed by the early 1950s. This place was named after the eleventh Governor of New York, William L. Marcy. The depressive complex consists of twenty-seven six-story buildings, totaling almost two thousand apartments. More than four thousand inhabitants live in Marcy.
Once there was a Dutch mill, but in 1945 the city administration bought the land and began construction. The inconspicuous brick complex was inhabited by emigrants and workers, mainly African-Americans and immigrants from the Caribbean. The area has always been known for heightened danger. The JayZ rapper was born and raised in Marcy House, who repeatedly mentioned these depressed places in his notes, talking about shootings, everyday life of drug dealers and police raids.
Prowitt Aigou, St. Louis
Work on the construction of social housing for young and low-income families began in 1954. The project, designed by Minoru Yamakashi (author of the infamous New York twin towers), included the construction of thirty-three identical eleven-story buildings, which consisted of almost three thousand apartments. The area was named after the black pilot Wendell O. Prowitt, the hero of World War II, and the white-skinned Congressman W. Aigou.
At first it was planned to divide the houses into "color" and "white", but racial segregation was canceled in the state, so the complex became available to all the poor. A few years later, the “white” residents left the area and moved to the suburbs, and Prwitt Airow became the new ghetto in the United States. Residents did not pay for utilities, crime grew, elevators and ventilation failed, and then the sewage system, houses turned into slums, the police stopped coming to calls. In Pruitt Air, a public disaster struck.
Attempts to rectify the situation were futile, so the authorities decided to demolish one of the buildings. This happened live. A few years later, other buildings were blown up, the tenants were resettled. Today in the territory of Pruitt-Airow there are secondary and elementary schools, as well as a military academy.
Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago
One of the largest socially significant projects by the 1970s turned into another dangerous ghetto in the United States. The residential complex, named after black activist R. Taylor, was located in southern Chicago. The development involved twenty-eight of the same type of multi-storey buildings. The first residents drove into homes for the poor in 1962. Instead of the planned 11 thousand unemployed African Americans, 27 thousand moved to Robert Taylor Homes.
Every year, the situation in this ghetto in the USA was getting worse. Soon, the Robert Taylor Homes area in southern Chicago became characterized by all the typical problems of poor neighborhoods: organized crime, drug trafficking, poverty, dividing the territory with local gangs, and outbreaks of violence. One day, 28 people were killed in the ghetto in one weekend, and the turnover from the sale of drugs amounted to 45 thousand dollars daily.
In 1993, the city administration decided to clear the problem area. By 2007, more than two thousand low-rise buildings, several commercial premises and retail stores, and seven cultural sites were built on this site. Despite all efforts, the tense situation in southern Chicago remains today.
Magnolia Prajxt, New Orleans
The US ghetto was located in central New Orleans. It all started according to the standard scheme: the first part of the social housing construction project was completed in 1941, in 1955 the district was expanded to the north, adding six more additional quarters. In Magnolia (officially called CJ Pete Projects, but Magnolia was named in the everyday life of the ghetto because of the street of the same name), only blacks settled during the segregation period.
In the 1980s and 90s, funding stopped and the area fell into decay. The nearest hospital was closed, the number of crimes increased in Magnolia, and aggressive street gangs appeared. The situation was heating up, and in certain years the ghetto broke all records in the number of violence and killings. In terms of crime, the Magnolia Prajekst district could compete with entire cities with adverse conditions.
In 2005, the crushing hurricane Katrina destroyed most of the city, including the Magnolia quarters. Three years later, the remaining houses were demolished by decision of local authorities. The area was renamed Harmony Oax and began to be landscaped. Work is still ongoing. Today in Harmony Oax, not only social housing is being built, but also commercial, as well as retail stores, cultural institutions, social institutions and schools.
Detroit Michigan
Detroit is not a ghetto in the traditional sense. Once the city was the fourth largest population in the United States and the capital of the automotive industry, but since the middle of the last century, automobile giants began to experience difficulties, the oil crisis hit the economy hard, and the products of local factories could no longer compete with Japanese and European models. The plants were closed, and most of the residents left the city.
Today, most homes in Detroit are abandoned. Many owners are trying to sell property at the lowest prices, but there are no buyers. In the 1980s, up to 800 fires flared up from time to time because locals burned abandoned houses. Since 2013, the city is declared bankrupt. Most of the buildings are planned to be demolished in the near future.