The most striking and also most upsetting thing about the South Bronx burnout is that the initial gears for decay were turned deliberately. Wallace speaks about “planned shrinkage” – a development strategy akin to amputation without providing proper hospital care.

Basically if a neighborhood was deemed blighted beyond repair (and the definition of “beyond repair” is arbitrary), it would slowly but essentially be limited from the municipal networks that provided services like patrolling police, sanitation, fire departments, etc.Things that seem nonessential in an immediate sense, but in a long term view are hugely important. The strategy was condoned as a way to reduce the use of tax money in areas that were deemed to be disproportionately draining of them. The problem with this outlook is that it doesn’t consider the antecedent causes of the area’s current state, or the aftereffects of changing a large contributing factor to a neighborhood. No one got the concept of roots, of networks, of the infinite potential for intangible relationships with tangible manifestations. This is another reiteration of one of Root Shock’s most important lessons: don’t assume things are black and white, realize that relationships between people, places, and things are extremely multifarious – and if we cannot determine the range and type of power that exists between each of these relationships how can we determine the effects of breaking up these relationships? It stands to reason the effects of such breakages are going to have multifarious consequences, some of which will be out of our control. Finite policy changes, without built-in flexibility, are assuming only one outcome in a variable universe.

The decay of the South Bronx stands out as an important case study for future urban planning. A pattern is already starting to emerge: from the New York Times, a recent story about the gentrification of the South Bronx says, “An analysis of three ZIP codes along the southern Concourse shows that from 2000 to 2010 the non-Hispanic white population, though still small, rose by 17.5 percent: to 3,055 from 2,600. The 2010 census was the first in four decades in which that population did not decrease.” We have to be careful history does not repeat itself; that we look at impoverished areas with a more intelligent, analytic eye – with an aim to treat and cure rather than excise.