Urban renewal basically means the removal and replacement of slums and urban environments in a state of severe dilapidation and their replacement with modern architecture and amenities. Urban renewal was a phrase first used widely in the 1960s, in response to the condition of large areas of urban America, notably the ghetto neighborhoods. The original intention was a social benefit, as much as a property-related exercise. In practice the expression was used more as a rhetorical concept than a fact, and the initial concept faded as 're-development' took over, a very different, commercial rather than social approach to the issues of urban slums.