>>1943559Things like the broken windows theory in sociological criminology. It's a theory that has some merits, but a lot of it is also junk. There is a lot of research into this within New York City itself and how their efforts to improve the visible atmosphere of the boroughs did have an improvement on crime rates, there is also a lot of research that suggests there is no strong cause and effect that can be found between the two as it had also failed in other cities to work.
Le Corbusier's "towers in the park" style of urban planning was also crap. As wonderful of an architect and artist he was, his planning theories were naive and generally did not work well when others implemented them. Towers in the park are exactly what major public housing developments end up looking like and functioning like. There is nothing wrong with them when done correctly, but there were a lot of problems with these planning theories that inevitably caused the rapid decline of housing projects into chaotic, violent, impoverished areas.
Stuff like ecological systems theory were also adopted by some politicians, planners and so on but it never really found widespread empirical backing and has largely been forgotten about outside of introductory university sociology courses.
There are a lot of examples out there. Like any science, theory system and philosophical field sociology is constantly evolving so lots of ideas do fall out of fashion or are credibly discredited as time goes on.
