Well, I have lived in ghettos for most of my life. I live in a ghetto called Park Slope, Brooklyn, by choice. My roots run deep in my ghetto neighborhood, with my family first settling there over one hundred years ago. I personally think there are qualities ghettos have that often far surpass more gentile areas. In one of the oldest American ghettos, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I see many fixed gear bicycles. When I go to my local watering hole, you will sometimes see one or two NJS-ish bikes chained right outside a working matzo factory across the street. They give out free hot matzo straight from the oven on some nights, something I doubt you will find outside of a ghetto. Same goes for Williamsburg, one of Brooklyn's historic ghettos, on any given weekend afternoon you can blindly spit and hit a fixie riding hipster. New York City's best known ghettos are hot beds for fixed gear culture. Many well known fixed gear stores, like Trackstar and King Kog, are located in these ghettos. Maybe it is because hipsters like good music and bagels, I can't say for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s6919.html