In some regions (the Rust Belt, USA) economic restructuring has triggered a spiral of decline, which includes increasing levels of social deprivation (education, health, crime, access to services and living environment) in both deindustrialised urban areas and rural settlements once dominated by primary economic activities. ​

Detroit
  • A city in the state of Michigan, USA
  • It's declining... suffering from the effects of deindustrialisation.
  • It's in the rustbelt, an area of industrial decline in the northeast USA including Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago.
    • The once-powerful manufacturing region that stretched from the Great Lakes to the Midwest, famous for steel and car production. It fell into decline following automation, global shift and increased free trade. 
  • It was once the centre of American car manufacturing 'Motor City' 
  • It's population fell from 1.5 million in 1970 to only 680,000 by 2015 - a huge drop of over 50%
  • The average household income was about $25,000 in 2015, half the national average and more than $60,000 lower than in Santa Clara County
  • By 2014, two-third of Detroit's residents could not afford basic needs like food and fuel and the poverty rate was 38%
  • Life expectancy in parts of Detroit is just 69 years, and less than 30% of students graduate from high school
  • In 2014 Detroit had the second highest murder rate of any US city
  • Average house prices in Detroit are about $40,000 and it is estimated that in 2015 there were 30,000 abandoned homes and 70,000 other abandoned buildings
  • Detroit has severe shortages of public sector workers (teachers, nurses) because most have simply moved away to better places. 
    • Santa Clara has shortages of skilled workers, because living costs (house prices and commuting costs) are so high
  • Demand is so low in Detroit that huge areas of the city are simply abandoned. 

In terms of ethnicity in 2017:
  • 82% black, 8% white, 7% Hispanic, 1% Asian, 2% mixed
  • Detroit is dominated by Black African Americans
    • This is because they are the lowest income group left behind when other groups - generally more skilled and better educated - have migrated from Detroit as it has declined

Many industrial cities, like Detroit and Cleveland in the USA, or Newcastle and Hull in the UK, entered a spiral of decline as a result of deindustrialisation, or negative multiplier effect. Regeneration targets this. 

A spiral of decline is a hard-to-stop loss of jobs, people and tax revenues that leads to further losses and greater decline. 

​INSERT PICTURE OF SPIRAL OF DECLINE

Ethnicity refers to groups of people who share a common culture, ancestry, language and traditions, and often religion. Race is based on physical/genetic characteristics. 

Social Consequences of Inequality
Reduced:
  • Trust in people with positions of power, especially police and planners
  • Social and civic participation
  • Educational attainment and training
  • Social mobility
  • Attachment to place

Increased:
  • Segregation of different socio-economic groups, property damage and violent crime
  • Health issues: either because of lack of wealth, access to care or more deliberate lifestyle choices
  • Higher infant mortality and shorter longevity
  • Status competition, which drives less-affluent people into debt to keep up with a peer group practising a higher level of consumerism

The results are intergenerational, unless the decline is broken, by effective regeneration schemes, university education, random opportunity or sheer entrepreneurship. 

Urban Decline
In the UK, there are places like Hartlepool, a former shipbuilding and steel town in Teeside with an unemployment rate twice the national average (13%). Over a quarter of Hartlepool's high street shops are empty, showing the lack of spending power in the area. (Then the textbook goes into some stuff about the UK Rust Belt, but I'm going to write it because it doesn't seem relevant.)

Rural Decline 
Unlike urban places, rural areas do not have as many environmental issues, a lack of green space or conflicts centred on ethnicity. 
Decline centres instead on a faster ageing population, exacerbated by the out-migration of young people. 
  • Falling employment in farming and other primary sector work like mining, quarrying, fishing and forestry. 
    • Often this is the result of mechanisation, i.e. bigger, more efficient and sophisticated machines often doing the work once done by human labour. 
  • Out-migration of young people for education and then employment
  • Ageing rural populations
    • Those with an increasing percentage of over 65s, who are retired and dependent on pensions; placing high demands on public services, especially healthcare. 
  • Decline in rural services, especially post offices, banks, petrol stations and some public services. 
    • Even in those with population growth, since people increasingly drive to use services in towns
  • A shift in economic activity towards services, especially leisure and tourism, but this only benefits popular areas accessible from major towns and cities.  

West Somerset and Mid Devon​
West Somerset
  • Its population fell by about 500 to 34,400 between 2001 and 2011
  • Has the oldest age of any local council area in England, at 52, and as suffered from young people leaving
  • Has no motorways, higher education provision or rail connections, making economic development difficult
  • Despite being close to Exmoor, West Somerset has a limited amount of tourism development
  • In the 2015 IMD it ranked as the 56th most deprived local authority, high for a rural area

Mid Devon (next door):
  • Increased from 69,900 in 2001 to 77,800 between 2001 and 2011
  • Has benefited form the growth of holiday homes and in-migration of retired people; there are some commuter villages
  • Very accessible via the M5 motorway and the Great Western railway
  • Has several tourism hotspots, including the Great Western Canal and Exmoor national Park
  • Ranked 156th most deprived local authority area in the 2015 IMD. 

Whole regions may be classed as relatively unsuccessful, such as mainly rural Cornwall. 'Two countrysides' exist side by side, and place perceptions by residents are likely to vary. 
  • ​Better-connected, well-off and growing places, such as the Itchen Valley in Hampshire, contrast markedly with less well-off, remoter agricultural places such as Llansilin on the Welsh border, or places once dominated by mining. 
  • Locally, many pockets of deprivation may be 'hidden' statistically, made up of a few houses, or streets or a small estate in even the most affluent of urban fringe villages or more remote settlements.