An area at or near the city centre with dilapidated housing, derelict land, and declining industry (also called the twilight zone, or zone of downward transition). Langlois and Kitchen (2001) Urb. Studs 38, 1 use a general deprivation index to locate deprivation in central Montreal (but note that it isn’t confined to the inner city). W. J. Wilson (1996) asserts that the decline of US inner cities reflects deindustrialization, combined with the suburbanization of a small number of middle-class African Americans. ‘Following the restructuring process which swept away the traditional manufacturing economy of the inner city twenty-five years ago, new industries are transforming these former postindustrial landscapes. These creative, technology-intensive industries include Internet services, computer graphics and imaging, and video game production, and are integral to the production of the “new inner city” of the 21st century’ (T. A. Hutton 2008).