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Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,731,947 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by magicoz
I'm sorry, was my last post politically incorrect? I was COMPLIMENTING the fine folks of Lawnside...
It's a totally different situation. Lawnside is a small town. Camden is a city which, for all of it's additional problems, suffered from the result of corruption for decades, until they got lucky & Gwendolyn Faison became mayor.
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.
As southbound pointed out, big difference between Camden and Lawnside just in terms of scale alone. However, one thing that has greatly prevented Lawnside from sliding further is the fact they are tied into Haddon Heights High School. You can move to Lawnside and your kids are going to be educated at a good school. It's this fact that keeps people attracted to Lawnside.
Additionally, it wasn't "well meaning liberals like JFK". Public housing has existed in Camden since the 1920's (see post #13 in this thread for a link to the history of public housing in Camden). It's purpose was to provide housing for people to work at the factories in town as the city itself had woefully insufficient housing to handle the amount of workers needed. They built off the Yorkship Village model that was built in 1918 to provide workers housing for the shipyard employees. This section of the city is now called Fairview. The experiment was a failure, but Camden public housing was not a result of the LBJ Great Society initiatives as many later "projects" were. There are some of these buildings in Camden to be sure, but the city had already been on the decline when they were built.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey
Look what there doing in Parts of blighted St. Louis , this could happen in Camden with a push...
The thing you and others keep missing is that these "urban renewals" are happening in places where the urban part is the regions core. Camden is not the regions core, never has been, never will be. That distinction belongs to Philadelphia. In most of the areas where these types of renewals happen, the urban core is also the employment center. The situation is a little different in North Jersey where there is enough population to consider places like Jersey City and Newark region "cores", those areas also support a lot of jobs based in the actual city.
Camden's largest employer is Campbell's Soup which has just a handful more people then the second largest employer, the City of Camden (which has 1,200). After that it's Cooper Hospital, the DRPA, L-3 Communciations (a defense subcontractor), Lady of Lourdes Hospital, RU-Camden, the State of NJ and Susquehanna Bank Center which is mainly seasonal.
I don't think people quite grasp the differences in population. Camden has 77k residents, about the same as Cherry Hill and only about 10k more then Gloucester Twp. Newark has 273k, Jersey City, 240k, Paterson has 149k. Heck there are MORE people in Toms River and Hamilton Township then there are in Camden.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,731,947 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT
As southbound pointed out, big difference between Camden and Lawnside just in terms of scale alone. However, one thing that has greatly prevented Lawnside from sliding further is the fact they are tied into Haddon Heights High School. You can move to Lawnside and your kids are going to be educated at a good school. It's this fact that keeps people attracted to Lawnside.
Additionally, it wasn't "well meaning liberals like JFK". Public housing has existed in Camden since the 1920's (see post #13 in this thread for a link to the history of public housing in Camden). It's purpose was to provide housing for people to work at the factories in town as the city itself had woefully insufficient housing to handle the amount of workers needed. They built off the Yorkship Village model that was built in 1918 to provide workers housing for the shipyard employees. This section of the city is now called Fairview. The experiment was a failure, but Camden public housing was not a result of the LBJ Great Society initiatives as many later "projects" were. There are some of these buildings in Camden to be sure, but the city had already been on the decline when they were built.
The thing you and others keep missing is that these "urban renewals" are happening in places where the urban part is the regions core. Camden is not the regions core, never has been, never will be. That distinction belongs to Philadelphia. In most of the areas where these types of renewals happen, the urban core is also the employment center. The situation is a little different in North Jersey where there is enough population to consider places like Jersey City and Newark region "cores", those areas also support a lot of jobs based in the actual city.
Camden's largest employer is Campbell's Soup which has just a handful more people then the second largest employer, the City of Camden (which has 1,200). After that it's Cooper Hospital, the DRPA, L-3 Communciations (a defense subcontractor), Lady of Lourdes Hospital, RU-Camden, the State of NJ and Susquehanna Bank Center which is mainly seasonal.
I don't think people quite grasp the differences in population. Camden has 77k residents, about the same as Cherry Hill and only about 10k more then Gloucester Twp. Newark has 273k, Jersey City, 240k, Paterson has 149k. Heck there are MORE people in Toms River and Hamilton Township then there are in Camden.
This is all true.
Going back to Lawnside, the town has a core of families who have been rooted there since the 19th century.
I had friends whose parents grew up in Camden & I've heard about what it was like when it was nice. By the time that my family moved to the area in 1964, Camden had turned into a slum with the exception of Fairview & Cramer Hill. I've heard plan after plan to "fix" Camden. I don't think that I'll live long enough to see it. It will be a long, slow, slog.
If we just built a ski-lift over the river, to get people from Philly to Camden, it would fix everything
Given the state of some Philly neighborhoods that are in otherwise close proximity to Center City, I'm not sure that will really do the trick. Though, it would be interesing. Maybe instead of a ski lift, they could use ziplines. Then at least once it failed miserably, it would still be a touristy thing to do, lol.
As southbound pointed out, big difference between Camden and Lawnside just in terms of scale alone. However, one thing that has greatly prevented Lawnside from sliding further is the fact they are tied into Haddon Heights High School. You can move to Lawnside and your kids are going to be educated at a good school. It's this fact that keeps people attracted to Lawnside.
Additionally, it wasn't "well meaning liberals like JFK". Public housing has existed in Camden since the 1920's (see post #13 in this thread for a link to the history of public housing in Camden). It's purpose was to provide housing for people to work at the factories in town as the city itself had woefully insufficient housing to handle the amount of workers needed. They built off the Yorkship Village model that was built in 1918 to provide workers housing for the shipyard employees. This section of the city is now called Fairview. The experiment was a failure, but Camden public housing was not a result of the LBJ Great Society initiatives as many later "projects" were. There are some of these buildings in Camden to be sure, but the city had already been on the decline when they were built.
The thing you and others keep missing is that these "urban renewals" are happening in places where the urban part is the regions core. Camden is not the regions core, never has been, never will be. That distinction belongs to Philadelphia. In most of the areas where these types of renewals happen, the urban core is also the employment center. The situation is a little different in North Jersey where there is enough population to consider places like Jersey City and Newark region "cores", those areas also support a lot of jobs based in the actual city.
Camden's largest employer is Campbell's Soup which has just a handful more people then the second largest employer, the City of Camden (which has 1,200). After that it's Cooper Hospital, the DRPA, L-3 Communciations (a defense subcontractor), Lady of Lourdes Hospital, RU-Camden, the State of NJ and Susquehanna Bank Center which is mainly seasonal.
I don't think people quite grasp the differences in population. Camden has 77k residents, about the same as Cherry Hill and only about 10k more then Gloucester Twp. Newark has 273k, Jersey City, 240k, Paterson has 149k. Heck there are MORE people in Toms River and Hamilton Township then there are in Camden.
I really wouldn't call building "FAIRVIEW" a bad thing,it was one of the best neighborhoods in the whole city of Camden."FAIRVIEW" was the place to live in CAMDEN.It started to go down hill in the 90's!It's a disgrace today,it looks like South Camden in the late 60's,early 70's now!Everyone took care of their property,schools were good & no drug dealers on the corners!If you wanted to buy drugs,you knew where to go,the other neighborhoods,Morgan Village was known for that,if you lived in FAIRVIEW,you never wanted to cross that bridge!!Then the dealers gradually came into that town,people sold their houses & moved away.All the trash moved in,got the low income housing & so forth,schools went down hill,S.J.O.A closed up,now it's a charter school.If FAIRVIEW was still like it was in the 70's or 80's,I'd still live there!Faison was one of the worst Mayors in Camden,can't remember the last good one FAIRVIEW had that wasn't corrupt!Even some of the Camden cops that I grew up with really don't care either,most of them are close to retirement now.
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