Urban renewal today occurs in the center of a developing city or in its proximities, given that these areas are where the most aging neighborhoods that are unadapted to current economic and social structures are located.

This type of large-scale action necessarily involves the intervention of the public administration, according to Richardson, given that improving the structures and equipment of an area is an undertaking that requires large capital outlays that will not necessarily be recovered.

The value of a property is determined, among other things, by the quality of the neighborhood, which is called the “contagion effect.” Therefore, if in an area with well-maintained houses a homeowner under-maintains theirs, they will obtain a higher return. On the contrary, if the owner maintains the condition of the building well in a deteriorated environment, the returns he will obtain from this maintenance will be much lower. (Richardson) Therefore, it will only be profitable to keep a home in good condition if the rest of the buildings maintain a good level of maintenance.

This leads to the assertion that urban renewal is only possible if the public sector assumes the cost of private contagion and replaces the functioning of the market with a mix of public and private investments. Government subsidies minimize costs for councils. Furthermore, the construction of new buildings represents an increase in tax revenue for the local administration.

Some examples of mass urban renewal have been studied in the US and Britain. Thus, in the first of these states, by the end of 1965, 1,700 urban renewal projects had been approved, evicting and displacing some 750,000 people. Starting this year the pace of renewal is accelerating. In the US, urban renewal tends to reduce the volume of low-income housing and increase the volume of high-income apartments, forcing the poor to move to more expensive housing (RICHARDSON).

In Great Britain, between 1955 and 1970, 1,153,000 buildings were demolished, although the impact was less than in the United States, especially thanks to a strong social housing policy that welcomed the evicted population, which, however, often presented serious failures when it came to serving its new inhabitants.

One of the applications that has been given to urban renewal is the readjustment of various emergency settlements, since these locations tend to be extremely precarious, since their function consists of quickly and economically providing sufficient needs to a vulnerable sector of the community.

As an example of a case of successful urbanization, we can take into account what happened in Colombia in 2009. The government of the commune of Santo Domingo Savio in Medellín was able to carry out an urban transformation by collaborating with different private companies to implement a comprehensive urbanization project that included the construction of housing, the implementation of social programs, the creation of public spaces and the improvement of infrastructure.

Urban renewal today occurs in the center of a developing city or in its proximities, given that these areas are where the most aging neighborhoods that are unadapted to current economic and social structures are located.

This type of large-scale action necessarily involves the intervention of the public administration, according to Richardson, given that improving the structures and equipment of an area is an undertaking that requires large capital outlays that will not necessarily be recovered.

The value of a property is determined, among other things, by the quality of the neighborhood, which is called the “contagion effect.” Therefore, if in an area with well-maintained houses a homeowner under-maintains theirs, they will obtain a higher return. On the contrary, if the owner maintains the condition of the building well in a deteriorated environment, the returns he will obtain from this maintenance will be much lower. (Richardson) Therefore, it will only be profitable to keep a home in good condition if the rest of the buildings maintain a good level of maintenance.

This leads to the assertion that urban renewal is only possible if the public sector assumes the cost of private contagion and replaces the functioning of the market with a mix of public and private investments. Government subsidies minimize costs for councils. Furthermore, the construction of new buildings represents an increase in tax revenue for the local administration.

Some examples of mass urban renewal have been studied in the US and Britain. Thus, in the first of these states, by the end of 1965, 1,700 urban renewal projects had been approved, evicting and displacing some 750,000 people. Starting this year the pace of renewal is accelerating. In the US, urban renewal tends to reduce the volume of low-income housing and increase the volume of high-income apartments, forcing the poor to move to more expensive housing (RICHARDSON).

In Great Britain, between 1955 and 1970, 1,153,000 buildings were demolished, although the impact was less than in the United States, especially thanks to a strong social housing policy that welcomed the evicted population, which, however, often presented serious failures when it came to serving its new inhabitants.

One of the applications that has been given to urban renewal is the readjustment of various emergency settlements, since these locations tend to be extremely precarious, since their function consists of quickly and economically providing sufficient needs to a vulnerable sector of the community.

As an example of a case of successful urbanization, we can take into account what happened in Colombia in 2009. The government of the commune of Santo Domingo Savio in Medellín was able to carry out an urban transformation by collaborating with different private companies to implement a comprehensive urbanization project that included the construction of housing, the implementation of social programs, the creation of public spaces and the improvement of infrastructure.