Urban decay is when parts of the city become run down and undesirable to live in. It causes economic (money), social (people) and environmental (our surroundings) problems. Examples of urban decay are -

• Slum housing - with outside toilets, overcrowding, no hot water or central heating
• Many buildings have been poorly built and now have leaking roofs, draughty windows and crumbling stonework
• Empty buildings are vandalised; gap sites where buildings have been knocked down turn into derelict land
• As the factories and housing have been in the same areas air, noise and water pollution have been common

There have been a number of schemes to reduce the problems of urban decay. They have had mixed success.

Comprehensive Redevelopment

This is when you knock down all the buildings and start from scratch. It was felt to be needed in some places as the problems were so bad. In Kingston and the Gorbals in Glasgow, for example, the old tenements were knocked down and replaced by new flats and multi-storey high rise buildings.

Unfortunately, many of the new buildings were poorly built and have also been knocked down. This approach has also been criticised as it destroyed the social fabric of the area - people no longer knew their neighbours and they were moved away from their friends and relations.

High rise flats built when older tenements were knocked down

Urban Regeneration

Another idea was to renovate the existing housing and improve the environment and economy. In Glasgow this involved

• New roofs
• Rewiring the houses and fitting central heating
• Fitting double glazing
• Secure entry-phone systems on tenement closes
• The outsides of tenements were cleaned by sand-blasting
• Combining two small flats into a larger one
• Improving the environment by landscaping
• Building or improving the social facilities such as clubs and medical centres
• Encouraging new business and industry to set up in the areas with grants and loans

This has proved more popular as people have been able to stay in their own area.