#Urban blight definition windows

Beyond economic reasons, the study found that socio-cultural practices of landholding and land transfer in Ghana play an essential role in how blighted properties emerge. This study, thus, employed a qualitative method and case study approach to ascertain in-depth contextual reasons and effects for urban blight in a prime area, East Legon, Accra-Ghana. Given the differences in the property rights regimes and economic growth trajectories between the global north and south, the underlying reasons for urban blight cannot be assumed to be the same. While the underlying causes of urban blight in the context of the global north are mainly known in the literature to be population loss, economic decline, deindustrialisation and suburbanisation, there is a research gap regarding the root causes of urban blight in the global south, specifically in prime areas. Urban blight functions inversely to city development and often leads to cities’ deterioration in terms of physical beauty and functionality. More research is needed to understand the relationship, both observed and perceived, between economic and social blight in rural small towns and how these issues may be remediated through local collective action.

While social disorganization and collective efficacy theories link a range of demographic characteristics to physical and social disorder, our findings pointed only to a significant relationship between communities with a higher portion of the population who are black and multiple forms of extensive blight. Social blight, which includes behaviors that are thought to be threatening or criminal in nature, was less common but correlated moderately with economic forms of blight. Among the small towns in the study, economic blight, particularly dilapidated housing, was prevalent.

#Urban blight definition windows

We examine the historical background of blight, including its connections to urban renewal, racial bias and stereotyping, and the broken windows theory. This study explores the extent of rural blight and its relationship to community characteristics using survey results from elected officials and staff members of small towns in one southeastern state. Though the concept of blight clarifies housing and neighborhood changes in rural and small towns experiencing disinvestment and decline, the term is rarely examined outside of urban discourse. The article concludes that excessively broad state definitions of 'blight' and concepts like 'future blight' have fueled a 'tax grab' and converted TIF laws from tools for eradicating substandard housing conditions to a way for municipalities to 'pad the tax base.' To combat this effect, the article proposes various TIF law reforms, most significantly the addition of 'but for' tests that would prevent municipalities from defining an area as 'blighted' unless it is unlikely to receive private investment. It goes on to discuss the how the concept of 'blight' has shifted from a condition of substandard housing to a condition of 'sub-optimal' local economic development, in part due to intense competition among municipalities for TIFs. It traces the definition of blight in the context of state and federal urban redevelopment programs from the nineteenth century through the Progressive Era to the advent of TIF laws in the 1980s and 90s. This article examines the way municipalities have used increasingly broad interpretations of 'blight' to compete for state tax increment financing (TIFs) for economic development purposes.