FREE ESSAY ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN URBAN AREAS

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN URBAN AREAS

Economic change has helped lead America into urban crisis for the following reasons. First
of all, because urban problems are no longer confined to the inner city, but are regional
in nature. The federal government has, also, largely drawn from the urban policy arena,
thereby having cities and sates to develop their own solutions to local problems.
Furthermore, the economy of cities is no longer organized around a central business
district, but is dispersed throughout a metropolitan region. Next, the national economy
has experienced a fundamental reorganization and many cities have experienced the direct
effects of deindustrialization and disinvestments. Additionally, the fiscal crisis within
the public sector is unprecedented and has seriously negative effects for the provision
of services at all levels of government. Finally, the nature of work itself has changed
within cities as more women enter the labor market; the changing nature of work has
affected the urban family in many ways, many of which have direct ramifications for
social welfare and family policies. 
There is a great amount of inequality of income in some cities. Most of the those who
fall bellow the poverty line are African Americans and Hispanics. This is because they
are placed in low paying jobs. As more and more people immigrate into the country, there
are less and less jobs to go around. This creates a larger poverty gap. People just
coming here to America are placed in very low-income jobs. This is all they can get if
they don't speak any English. For example, here at Rider the cleaning people are all
Spanish. They don't speak any English, and their job is to be the cleaning crew. These
are the only types of jobs that these people can get most of the time, and this makes our
percentage of people who are in poverty go up. 
Another problem that is contributing to the urban crisis is the rise of single-parent
families and 'present-orientated' values. The problem here is that the divorce rate in
America is getting higher and higher, and also the amount of children being had out of
marriage is greatly increasing also. This creates one parent raising a child. The problem
here is that there is no proper care for children in this situation. The parent has too
much responsibility. They are to provide for the family, as well as adequately care for
their children. When the single parent has to go to work, to get money to pay for a place
to live, food, and clothing, there leaves no time to watch and take care of the children,
meaning children are left to take care of themselves after school is over, and this
results in a lot of problems for the communities. These children cause trouble. They are
the ones who commit most crimes in an urban environment. This is why in an urban city
there is a lot more crime. There are a lot of children left unsupervised for most of the
day and night. 
Another problem is the ethnic tensions that there are in America. There are many things
that are wrong with this. The first problem is that because of racism, people are
secluded. They are pushed to all live together, because people don't want to live next to
them. This is how a ghetto is started, and slums. All the people of low incomes live in
the same neighborhood together. They also contain the high crime rates because these are
the people who are also of single parent families and their children are left
unsupervised. Another problem with racism is that people are given lower paying jobs
because of their race, and also, they aren't able to have to same amount of experience as
other people. They don't go to as good of schools, and they then might not be able to go
to college, so they are stuck. They can only get a low paying job. This creates families
to be stuck in poverty for generations, they can never get out, unless with government
assistance of some sort. Then this makes the inner cities all full of low-income
families, and creates a poverty stricken area that cannot be fixed in any way. If there
were more integration within neighborhoods, then we wouldn't have these areas. 
Another reason why urban America is in crisis is because of the underground urban
economy. This also causes a lot of crime in urban cities. The people in these cities who
are poor, and are trying to find a way out, usually try by doing something illegal. A big
example of this is drug sale. People start selling drugs to get money. This creates a lot
of problems. The selling of illegal materials results in murders, and robberies, to
either get the drugs, pay for the drugs, or avoid getting caught selling them. Another
example of this is people stealing things, like car parts, and selling it on the black
market. All of these illegal acts always result in something that makes the cities look
worse and worse to live in. I know that when I go into Trenton I am really afraid,
because I know that there is a really high amount of crime there, and I am always
thinking that someone is going to try to shoot me for my car, rob a store that I am in,
or something else. Stereotypes of cities are easily created, and this doesn't help the
situation. 
Also, the advancement in technology has lead many people to be left without jobs. This
technology had created more unskilled labor, and putted skilled labor to a minimum.
People, who had been specialists at doing certain skilled work, are constantly being
replaced by machines that can do the same work faster and cheaper. This creates a huge
economy gap. It makes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, by giving all the
money from the profit of sales to the company owners, rather than to employees. So, the
people who were already well off, have even more money, and those people who were middle
class citizens are now jobless, and can not afford to take care of their families. The
problem here is obvious, the more jobs that are lost because people are replaced by
machines, the greater the amount of people who become in poverty. The numbers keep
increasing.