Is there a solution to erase poor urban areas?

Growing up in the suburbs with no violence and in a quiet community I can’t even imagine what it is like growing up in a ghetto with all kinds of problems like violence, poverty and unemployment. As Moynihan describes his “tangle” of problems I picture it was a spider web where everything is connected to everything else and these problems or lines of webs are structured properly and they are durable and last through anything. The “tangle” web catches and holds its victims just like a spider web would, and it holds them almost like glue. Those who land in these ghettos, or webs, find it extremely difficult to get out of it and it swallows them up. Those who try to get rid of the tangle of problems, or webs, find it hard to wash them away. Just like a spider web withstanding the rain, the tangle of the ghetto creates a durable structure that does not go away easily. It is incredible to think people believe that we can “just solve poverty”. The link between the social problems is too strong to “just solve poverty”. A link between unemployment and out of wedlock births is there which in turn affects the unemployment cycle again because job opportunities may be lost because of kids. Unemployment may also affect violence many turn to drug dealing to provide for their family which then leads to violence with other drug dealers. The “tangle” that Moynihan talks about is a unique thing and the more it’s thought about the more complex this tangle seems to be.

The real question to this though, is can we fix this and rid cities of the ghetto altogether? It we can learn to understand it perhaps we can apply a plan to correct the problem. In the chapter I covered there seems to be a solution according to Moynihan and that was large scale intervention by big institutions such as the government. Through programs that are special to areas of poverty and ridding areas of section 8 and redeveloping certain plots of land Moynihan believe that this may get rid of the urban ghetto. But this concentration of people would get displace and even Sampson points out that maybe this “solution” redistributes poverty. The way I see it is that when these concentration effects are corrected and housing town down will there be enough housing for all that there was before and can they afford it? The destruction of high rise housing or redevelopment of land was pointed out in chapter 5. Once all the property is full and also if it is unaffordable, then where is the urban poor families to go? This will either make other ghettos worse or even create more in different areas. In the next chapter the broken window theory is looked at and tested. With this theory it links disorder with violence and with broken windows comes a sense of disorder and thus violence. But does this theory and practice actually work? The way I see this is that crime won’t stop simply because all windows are intact and graffiti scrubbed away. There is no possible way to completely eliminate crime and violence. Just like there may not be a way to stop and fix the ghettos and their tangle of problems. Perhaps we can relieve pressure on these problems but they will never go away. Ghettos and the poor urban areas and their problems like unemployment, violence and family disruptions are durable meaning they exist through change. However you look at these issues in our cities, one thing is clear and that is they last through good times and bad times. The economic boom of the 90s saw little change in the ghettos other than the fact that incarceration rates in these areas and others went up. Perhaps there is a correlation between good economic times and high incarceration rates. Also both unemployment rates and incarceration rates were linked in poor urban areas at this time. But back to the dramatic change and gentrification that took place in the 1990s and 2000s and how the ghettos never changed. With incarceration rates up and different types of numbers to tell us that poverty is getting better o getting worse one this is clear about all of this and that is that the ghetto will remain as such. It is a durable construct by man, as one man gave the cycle a push by getting all the right parts together and created it and only with tremendous effort can we make it stop. Can the cycle really be stopped though? Is it possible to cure these cities of disease of ghettos? With the ghettos withstanding both time and change I find it hard to believe that they won’t be around in the foreseeable future.