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What their building isn't for attracting outside wealth. What they are building is for the residents of Camden, just less of them. When I said strict standards, there were a lot of requirements for being allowed to live in these modern low income housing developments. Their belief is that they can help the people who want/need it while eliminating large portions of the criminal and gang element. The problem for Camden is that these properties and developments still will not generate any real tax base. I suppose the hope is that if they clear out enough, they can start to attract regular development.
If you ask me what all of these troubled cities have in common, the answer would be that they were some of the leading experiments in high density low income public housing. At first it worked, but as soon as the people who lived there became upwardly mobile they were forced to leave. This is what happened in Camden, as I detailed in another post. The people who were left became trapped and permanently stuck on government support.
The fact is, Camden has been Camden and having the same issues for generations. From the most bleeding heart liberals to the staunchest conservatives nothing has changed. Everything that has been tried has failed miserably and the state continues to pour millions upon millions into Camden to no avail. I don't know what the solution is, but none of the ideas tried over the past 40 or 50 years have met with success and they range from redevelopment to declaring martial law to clean up the streets.
If we assume that good communities are good communities because the people who live there invest into making it good and take pride in their town, then the key to Camden is engendering that same feeling the investment. How do you get the majority of people to give a crap especially when they almost have no skin in the game?
How do you exclude the fact that those cities were all centers of industry?
That's the problem with this thinking. These places are cities, not just communities. Camden used to have 100,000+ people. That's not a community. Every single one of those places has lost everything that used to sustain it, especially Chester. How did places like Pittsburgh rebound? By changing and becoming more healthy as a city. Same with all of the other places seeing revitalization in PA.
You're fixated on what's happening with low-income housing, and as I pointed out.. no I don't like to see people screwed over like that but at the same time.. you can't sustain a city of 70,000+ people, without much of a tax base, in this day and age without making it sound economically and in other ways. It'd be one thing if you were talking about a place like Upper Darby that has 80,000+ people in an area a little bit smaller than Camden yet sustains itself just fine but you're talking about an actual city.
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Originally Posted by soug
I do think you have a point here. In other states, almost all cities have large swaths of suburban areas officially within the city. But in NJ, the "city" is literally just that, the small downtown area within a larger conurbation. Bringing in a mix of communities (both physical neighborhoods and cultural/ethnic/religious communities) under one government could be part of the solution to restoring our cities.
NJ seems to have a lot of places where cities are right near each bigger ones or townships are right near cities.
For example, Camden and Gloucester City, or Gloucester City and Gloucester Township or Burlington Township and Burlington city. Almost every city in certain counties seems to have a township right near it with the exact same name as the city.
I do think you have a point here. In other states, almost all cities have large swaths of suburban areas officially within the city. But in NJ, the "city" is literally just that, the small downtown area within a larger conurbation. Bringing in a mix of communities (both physical neighborhoods and cultural/ethnic/religious communities) under one government could be part of the solution to restoring our cities.
Alternatively, if that consolidation were to entail a unified school district, it could exacerbate the problem by scaring families over to neighboring Burlington/Gloucester Counties.
Last edited by ElijahAstin; 01-24-2012 at 09:14 PM..
Alternatively, if that consolidation were to entail a unified school district, it could exacerbate the problem by scaring families over to neighboring Burlington/Gloucester Counties.
That's definitely a possibility, but I personally don't buy the idea that it would ultimately hurt schools in the rest of Camden County. Maryland has county-wide school districts, and each county has a mix of great, good, average, and bad high schools that is similar to what we find in NJ, just with less administration.
It is also worth noting that Maryland has some of the best schools in the country, but as I just said, I think that has to do less with unified vs separate school districts than it does with well-educated and well-off families as a support system. On the other hand, Maryland also doesn't have as many true urban areas as NJ (besides Baltimore, and no Bethesda and Silver Spring don't count).
That's definitely a possibility, but I personally don't buy the idea that it would ultimately hurt schools in the rest of Camden County. Maryland has county-wide school districts, and each county has a mix of great, good, average, and bad high schools that is similar to what we find in NJ, just with less administration.
It is also worth noting that Maryland has some of the best schools in the country, but as I just said, I think that has to do less with unified vs separate school districts than it does with well-educated and well-off families as a support system. On the other hand, Maryland also doesn't have as many true urban areas as NJ (besides Baltimore, and no Bethesda and Silver Spring don't count).
A county-wide consolidation certainly wouldn't have to hurt public school quality. A lot of reasons these districts fail is that rightly or wrongly, those with the means to relocate (but not to afford private schooling) will often just move rather than "take a chance." The biggest problem would probably be an outpouring of white/middle-class flight, especially if the consolidation included bussing a la PG County (Maryland doesn't always get it right).
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In the '60s the feds ordered bussing in Philadelphia & Camden County. It never happened in either. No one wanted it in Philly & the issue was resolved with the use of magnet schools. In Camden County the issue was resolved when the feds found out that each town was a separate district & they did not have the authority to demand cross district bussing.
In the 60s the feds ordered bussing in Philadelphia & Camden County. It never happenedin either. No one wanted it in Philly & the issue was resolved with the use of magnet schools. In Camden County the issue was resolved when the feds found out that each town was a separate district & they did not have the authority to demand cross district bussing.
This is true, but if Camden County were consolidated into one large district, it would be very vulnerable to a federal lawsuit if school placement continued to operate on a strict neighborhood basis. While bussing across districts has been ruled unconstitutional, bussing within districts has been ordered quite frequently if there is sufficient evidence to suggest de facto segregation.
Of course, like Pennsylvania, New Jersey is big on local government, so I don't have a feeling Camden County's cluster of cities, boroughs, and townships will be disappearing anytime soon, however administratively inefficient and redundant it may be.
How do you exclude the fact that those cities were all centers of industry?
I don't exclude it, I very much understand what the history of Camden was. My father was raised there. My grandmother worked at Campbell's during WW2 and then at Lady of Lourdes in the maternity unit. My grandfather worked at his uncles furniture store before WW2 and then when he returned he worked at the New York shipyard.
The problem is those jobs and others like them don't exist anymore and even when they did, the people who became succesful through them tended to leave Camden for the suburbs.
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That's the problem with this thinking. These places are cities, not just communities. Camden used to have 100,000+ people. That's not a community. Every single one of those places has lost everything that used to sustain it, especially Chester. How did places like Pittsburgh rebound? By changing and becoming more healthy as a city. Same with all of the other places seeing revitalization in PA.
The difference with Pittsburgh is that it IS a city and it's regions employment center. Camden was always secondary to Philly, even in its heyday. What Camden used to offer was things like movie theaters and department stores that weren't available anywhere else unless you crossed the bridge. Once those amenities sprang up in the suburbs, there was no reason to go to Camden. Philly and Pittsburgh are VERY different situations then places like Camden and Chester.
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You're fixated on what's happening with low-income housing, and as I pointed out.. no I don't like to see people screwed over like that but at the same time.. you can't sustain a city of 70,000+ people, without much of a tax base, in this day and age without making it sound economically and in other ways. It'd be one thing if you were talking about a place like Upper Darby that has 80,000+ people in an area a little bit smaller than Camden yet sustains itself just fine but you're talking about an actual city.
I'm "fixated" on low income housing, because that is the grand experiment that led to the death of Camden. As the industries grew up and the demand for labor increased, Camden simply didn't have the housing stock to keep up with the workers, there were sections of the city where most houses were still wooden shanties. What they did was bulldoze huge sections of the city and create low-income or factory sponsored housing. Basically, concentrate the poor people in high density housing to feed the industry. As individual families profited from the jobs and gained wealth, they were forced out of these housing projects in Camden. Where did they go? There wasn't much non-public housing in Camden available, so they fled to the new suburban communties right across the border.
When the industry died off, the money left and what Camden ended up with was massive public housing projects full of poor, non-mobile people with no jobs. The death begins. Similar programs were done in Philly and many other cities with similar impact. Camden was actually a national leader on this type of development that has so miserably failed.
The reason why Camden has become hell on earth is simple. Well-meaning liberals like JFK imposed welfare apartments on Camden and so many other cities in the name of desegregation. What our society SHOULD have done 50 years ago was provide economic incentives for "model" African Americans to move to good honest houses. Lawnside (but NOT surrounding places like Clementon) is a good example of this.
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Originally Posted by magicoz
The reason why Camden has become hell on earth is simple. Well-meaning liberals like JFK imposed welfare apartments on Camden and so many other cities in the name of desegregation. What our society SHOULD have done 50 years ago was provide economic incentives for "model" African Americans to move to good honest houses. Lawnside (but NOT surrounding places like Clementon) is a good example of this.
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