In many developed countries, social analysts claim the big cities fall, decline or crisis. The paper presents only a fragment of that issue, on a background of big industrial cities in the North and Midwest of the United States and through the prism of the contemporary urbanization processes that deals with the restructurization of the mode of production. Big industrial cities, in particular their inner cities, are beyond the main stream of these processes. The symptoms of theirs ‘declined’ physical structure and evidence of social disorganization are particularly visible due to the economic disparities. The viewpoint of urban decline in the paper is the sequence of changes fostered by the urbanization and its current developments, viz. the suburbanization, the cities sprawl, and the social effects as urban inequalities, racial differentiation and poverty zones. The advance of urbanization processes in the postindu striai societies is to regard as lesson. In conclusion, the paper suggests that bearing in mind phenomenons ongoing in the high developed country, one can foresee (although moderately) the future of the Polish cities too, where the processes of restructuring the production have been already started, so the restructuring the space would follow the widespread patterns. Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę.