In one desperately decrepit neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, a serial killer has taken the lives of six women, five of them within the last year.

Only later, as a practicing architect in the 1990s, did he begin to see these decrepit neighborhoods as a legitimate landscape for architectural experimentation.

"Rational" flipping can encourage a rejuvenation and restoration of a previously decrepit neighborhood, but rising property values can also be seen in a negative light, termed gentrification.

With shadowy political maneuvering, they have stifled the kind of public debate that could have led to a more ambitious vision for the convention center and the decrepit neighborhoods next to it.

This structure, apparently an old residence that had seen better days, was actually a most important adjunct to the decrepit neighborhood.

The last time he'd been in this decrepit neighborhood he'd been Rastafarian Peter Haile Thomas from Queens.

In 1997, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center was built on the fringe of the central business district, transforming one of Newark's most decrepit and dangerous neighborhoods.

This time of night, in this decrepit neighborhood, no one was around, only a couple of scum-bums huddled over a blazing trash can.

In New York, bedrooms are often too small, natural light almost nonexistent and neighborhoods bleak if not decrepit.

But the person returning home from a mountain cabin to a dead-end job and a burglarized apartment in a decrepit neighborhood may wonder where he or she went wrong.