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What happened to ESL? It does look like a farming community. Were there once buildings that have since been torn down?
I don't see Camden appreciating much at all. It's been like this for a long, long time. I always wondered why the waterfront property did not have nice condos, so it's good to see those popping up. And living there just a short jaunt over the bridge, which would be nice.
However, for Camden to prosper, Philly would need to become NYC expensive. Philly is too affordable to push most people to the urban outskirts. People who leave Philly but stay in the area generally go to suburbs in NJ or PA for good schools and bigger backyards. I mean why live in Camden when you can live in Fishtown?
The way Camden looks. Also in the east coast no matter how dangerous a city/town is, it will never look like what you see in St. Louis.
The east coast is pretty urban and most of the cities are filled with row homes.
The Midwest and south are more sprawled so I'm not surprised at how ESL looks. What actually confuses me about ESL is who actually dies in a place like this? There is nothing there so who is dying and what do you have to be involved in to get shot out there?
The way Camden looks. Also in the east coast no matter how dangerous a city/town is, it will never look like what you see in St. Louis.
The east coast is pretty urban and most of the cities are filled with row homes.
The Midwest and south are more sprawled so I'm not surprised at how ESL looks. What actually confuses me about ESL is who actually dies in a place like this? There is nothing there so who is dying and what do you have to be involved in to get shot out there?
Is it ran by hustlers who aren't from the city?
St. Louis is very urban city filled with row homes, two and four family flats, and large apartment buildings. Not typical of most the Midwest or South. St. Louis was one of the densest cities in the country up until about 1970. It has lost a lot of population, but the built environment is still there. The difference is that coastal cities have been stabilized much better since the lost of manufacturing, because there was always a steady stream of immigration.
East St. Louis is not St. Louis by the way. Its a different city in a different state and was never a really urban town, outside its downtown area.
Also, what else would people be involved in to get shot? Drugs and gangs. The St. Louis Metropolitan area isn't Mayberry, its a metropolis of nearly 3 million people. Have you ever been out here?
St. Louis is very urban city filled with row homes, two and four family flats, and large apartment buildings. Not typical of most the Midwest or South. St. Louis was one of the densest cities in the country up until about 1970. It has lost a lot of population, but the built environment is still there. The difference is that coastal cities have been stabilized much better since the lost of manufacturing, because there was always a steady stream of immigration.
East St. Louis is not St. Louis by the way. Its a different city in a different state and was never a really urban town, outside its downtown area.
Also, what else would people be involved in to get shot? Drugs and gangs. The St. Louis Metropolitan area isn't Mayberry, its a metropolis of nearly 3 million people. Have you ever been out here?
You are right. It's a bad habbit of mines that I always right saint Louis instead of east saint Louis. Apologies.
Because I actually do know how dense St. Louis looks with the row homes which is rather unique for a Midwestern city.
To answer your last statement so I have not been to St. Louis but it was sarcasm because east saint Louis doesn't have anything in it which is what confuses me about the city being such a death trap.
Camden, definitely. The downtown area has really been upgraded and there are now a number of residents there, along with the Rutgers kids. The housing and entertainment areas have greatly been fixed up and the area is very transit friendly with both the PATCO (old, subway/suburban) and River (new, LRT/diesel/regional) rail lines. The great success of Philadelphia's Center City, and its tight/expensive housing, has spilled over across the river to Camden.
Camden is obviously bad, but at least it's not full of tons of empty lots with overgrowing trees into houses, houses that are half existent and not as many houses that are torched. Camden looks a lot like many other Northeastern city urban areas, like other parts of Philly and perhaps Brooklyn, except in Camden the streets and properties are obviously treated much worse and there's not a good police force. These places aren't that bad. Meanwhile, East St Louis is based more on blocks with actual houses on them, which when treated poorly, they look far worse than Camden. Also, Camden has more people living there (77k in Camden vs. 26k in East STL) , which means the crime rate is much higher in East St Louis than Camden. East St Louis and Gary I'd say are both worse than Camden, and for that reason I'd rather be in Camden for a while if you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose. I'd also say Camden, being the main focus as a city of decline, has more attention put towards it to gentrify and improve the area. Not so much as East St Louis. Also forgot to add that Camden at least has SOME for of industry/economy with the Campbell's soup company being HQ'd there, cheap labor is better than no paid labor.
Last edited by CCrest182; 06-29-2014 at 09:25 PM..
What happened to ESL? It does look like a farming community. Were there once buildings that have since been torn down?
It was formerly industrial. And to answer your second question, yes, there once were buildings there that have since been torn down. The city has declined from a population of 82,000 plus to a bit less than 27,000.
I'm actually somewhat surprised the decrease wasn't worse, ESL looks really abandoned. Declining household sizes in most cities amounts to about a 30% decrease which suggests the built density only fell by about half. I wonder how much of the current housing stock is housing projects.
Camden is in New Jersey, very close to New York City and some other very large metropolitan areas, also very close to a lot of destination spots. East St. Louis is not, the only thing it has going for it is St. Louis, other than that it's in a very rural area of the country.
A better comparison might have been Gary and East St. Louis. The whole proximity to New York City is what killed this poll.
I'd take East St. Louis, for at least a hundred reasons, the main one being that St. Louis is a hell of a lot nicer city then Philadelphia. And the climate. St. Louis doesn't have the inferiority complex of cities in the shadow of New York, and the false-pride overcompensation for it.
I can't see how they would be any worse than any other suburb of any other city, except they probably have better public transportation than most suburbs. But the cost of living would be high, since supermarket prices are always highly inflated in low-income suburbs (and, for a different reason, high-income suburbs).. And car insurance rates.
If I "had to" live across the state line from any American metropolis, it would be Covington, Kentucky.
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