Unlike wilderness areas that have been set aside to preserve their natural beauty or uniqueness, an urban wilderness is a phenomenon that grows from the ashes of what once was a viable community.
When governments allow profitable factories, and other businesses, to leave town for greener pastures and cheaper labor, an urban wasteland is often the result.
In an urban wasteland real estate developers build skyscrapers for wealthy newcomers, while greedy landlords evict low-income tenants so they can remodel- turning their long neglected apartments into attractive residences for those who can afford skyrocketing rents. this process is called gentrification and is happening in popular cities from New York to San Francisco.
In contrast to the soulless skyscrapers that are little more than towering monuments to our uncaring, decaying culture, and the restored old tenement buildings, that are little more than eye candy covering up the pain of those who have paid the real cost of gentrification, America's urban wastelands have a beauty all their own. And many of these areas are indeed wild. Their beauty can be found in murals and other forms of street art that adorn many of the abandoned buildings in America's urban wildernesses. There is also a painful beauty in the shuttered factories, gated storefronts, neglected old buildings, and stories told by those who have been uprooted and forced to move- often to another city where the cost of housing is more affordable.
Can you see the beauty in their stories? As the old saying goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"