Jason Hackworth, a professor of planning and geography at the University of Toronto., has been examining the change in rust-belt cities. Specifically, he has been looking into “demolition only” policies that have cleared more land than during the entire urban renewal period.

“[…] demolition-only is not the progressive effort to rebuild struggling cities it is being billed as. It represents a collapse of policy imagination, public resources, and serious concern for the underlying causes of blight. Whatever the intent of its proponents, the past 40 years have seen extensive house demolition in the region, and it has not spontaneously generated revival—it has just removed a large number of houses.”