I thought this article was interesting in relation to all forms of "urban renewal".
Throughout the history of American gangs, the strong ties between the gangs and their communities have always been apparent. Despite the negative image that gangs have given certain communities and the stereotypes they have given to certain races, the gangs themselves have always shown an element of neighborhood or ethnic pride. They saw themselves as the defenders of their communities and rarely engaged in conflict with police as they realized it was both bad for the community and bad for business...
Between 1995 and 2001, many cities across the country began to demolish high-rise housing projects as part of large-scale community revitalization plans. These actions displaced thousands who called these buildings home. As Baltimore’s Flag House Projects, Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes, and other high-rise projects throughout the country fell to the ground, the gangsters who defended these ‘hoods were forced to relocate to other areas and largely abandon their sense of community pride. The sense of displacement is reflected in the music of Tyree Colion, a gangster rapper who grew up in the high-rises of Baltimore, who asks “Do you ever think of back in the day when you repped for your building and you wasn’t in a gang?” (Colion - 2008)
During the same time period, migration because of work, family and sometimes even law enforcement pressure planted the seeds of nationally known gangs in areas of the United States that previously had little or no exposure to them. In Baltimore, the Edmondson Avenue Boys also became known as the Red Rag Crew and Edmondson Avenue Bloods and, not too many years later, the rival Poplar Grove gang largely transformed into the Eight-Trey Crips. Although the Gerson Park Kingsmen continued to defend their Las Vegas turf, their main rival was now the Rolling 60 Crips, who had esteblished themselves with the arrival of older Rolling 60 members who had left Los Angeles. The Sureno Tortilla Flats gang appeared in Oklahoma City in a violent effort to expand their drug trafficking business while Cincinnati’s Vine and 12th ‘hood faced a growing threat from members of the Vice Lords and Gangster Disciples who had migrated east from their home bases in Chicago. And while these new national identities brought strength to those gangs that conformed, they also pushed many of the hoods and varrios who sought to keep their traditional community ties to the point of extinction. Nationally known titles like Crip, Blood and Sureno spread like a cancer and many smaller, neighborhood-based gangs were warned to “get down or lay down”. Their size, strength, and reputation for violence caused many community-based gangs to conform, take on a hybrid identity, or simply disappear. And while many of these homegrown gangs have been successful in maintaining their original identity, more often than not it has been at a very high and bloody price.
All across the United States, veteran gang members and veteran cops alike confirm that today’s gang members are different than the gang members of the past. They tend to be younger and less schooled in the customs and traditions of their gangs. Older gangsters are quick to complain about the lack of loyalty, lack of respect and overall recklessness of the younger generation. Police officers have noticed a different mind-set in today’s gangsters. The gangsters they interact with today no longer look at themselves as defenders of turf, but often as a group of criminals from different parts of town who try weakly to hold on to a collective identity as they commit their crimes (Morales). They no longer protect the neighborhood, they prey on it. They don’t see their neighbors, they see only customers, victims and targets. And without the sense of pride that comes from belonging to a hood or varrio with generations of history and tradition, the new-breed gangsters of today seek to build their own, independent reputations through random violence, widespread crime, and a willingness to attack or kill police officers...
http://www.corrections.com/news/article/25687-the-fall-of-the-neighborhood-gang?utm_source=CCNN_ezine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CCNN_ezine_2010sep22 
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