Well you know I disagree with that. The only "environment" that counts is the people who surround you, and that just gets us back to... who lives there. The arguments of liberals on this are so circular. They'll always say that there are so many "bad examples" in the inner city... but who's setting those "bad examples"?
Yes, but in Britain for example, their inner-city shitholes are filled with trashy whites. They refer to them as townies, NEDs, chavs, etc.
There are many reasons for the state of american cities. Most all of them have to do with big government.
1) Welfare: It's a bad idea for government bureaucrats to pay people to not work. You can't weed out the bums from the needy when you don't even know them like the rest of the community does. When charity was handled by volunteer groups back in the day, their primary focus was instilling virtues of thrift, sobriety, and hard work, and integrating them back into productive society. Government bureaucrats have every incentive to
not do that; reducing the numbers of the poor reduces the perceived need for their services. And besides that, when you give someone a check for being unemployed, it's only for being unemployed in the above-ground economy. They can still sell drugs while collecting their checks.
For more on this, I highly recommend the book
The Tragedy of American Compassion. It's a detailed account of how charity used to work in america, and what happened to change it for the worse.
2) Public housing: aka, criminal breeding facilities. You effectively segregate people from the greater society, and cram them into concrete bunkers. They are cut off from learning good habits from productive people, and see only the bad habits of those around them.
3) The war on drugs: It creates a teriffic opportunity for people to earn money without working hard. Arrests also stain people's resumes if they want to gain productive employment.
4) Minimum wage laws, payroll taxes, inflation: The first two serve to restrict entry-level employment, which is necessary to move up. Inflation is a stealth flat tax which hurts working people and benefits people with appreciating assets. It also changes the time preferences of people; they tend to persue short-sighted endeavors rather than think long-term.
5) Property taxes and other tax incentives: Keeping your property looking nice means you pay higher taxes. Thus we see land in the middle of cities that should be prime real estate, laying unused, or being used as parking lots. Other tax incentives reward shitty disposeable 1-story buildings. Looking at aerial views of modern american cities, you'd think it was america that got bombed into smithereens in WWII instead of Germany.
6) Post-WWII government policy: After WWII, the attitude of local, state, and federal governments towards road building and development changed. Neighborhoods that were poor but cohesive were pushed out by government road builders to built superhighways. This ruined the urban environment and then provided a great way to escape, for those who could afford it. Those who couldn't, well...you see the same issue with public housing, poor people isolated from the more successful people in society.
Other government policies: Government has made car ownership nearly mandatory, hurting the poor. They mandate low-density development, and they forbid mixed-use zoning (apartments on top of retail, which used to be common), thus increasing the cost of housing. Try and find people crying for the need for affordable housing or public housing before the 30's, you won't find it.
It's really a fascinating topic, if you want to read more check out
Suburban Nation or
Geography of Nowhere. Yeah, some of it was left-ish, but I was really suprised to see how much of it was a rant against government, particularly centralized government.
