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New book offers look at Camden's decline and renewal
Archived article from Nov 7, 2005
By Jen Miller
Many American cities were devastated when industry and residents left urban areas after World War II in favor of the suburbs. Perhaps no city in the nation suffered more than Camden, which is in the midst of a sustained state-directed recovery effort.
A new book by a Camden historian combines in-depth analysis of the profound structural issues confronting urban America with the personal stories of Camden’s present and past residents, resulting in the first comprehensive overview of this New Jersey city’s struggle to grow, as well as the challenges facing post-industrial areas nationwide.
In “Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), Howard Gillette challenges the popular perception that poor citizens create their own situation and offers a strategy for revitalization within a regional context.
Politics, economic restructuring and racial bias have played roles in every post-industrial city, and Camden illustrates the complexity of this problem, says Gillette, who teaches courses in urban and public history on the Camden campus, where he also directs the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities.
“Camden is a city compromised by the loss of its industrial base,” Gillette says. In the 1960s alone, Camden’s manufacturing base declined by 48 percent. In that same time, 28,000 residents left the city, most in favor of the suburbs where jobs for skilled workers migrated.
In 1971, riots erupted in Camden, which further accelerated “white flight,” and by the end of the 1970s, Gillette writes, “two features stood out: Camden could no longer be considered a manufacturing center, nor was it a predominantly white working-class city.”
The level of crime in the city was also over-inflated through gossip and the media: The book cites one headline from a mid-1970s Courier-Post article that proclaimed “East Camden: From Dream to Nightmare.” “It sealed the city’s reputation as an undesirable place,” Gillette says. “From there, it was not difficult to denigrate the people left behind and burdened with the legacy of disinvestment as the cause of their own misfortune.”
While Camden has made some strides toward revitalization, Gillette says, a complete rebirth for the city will not happen until surrounding suburbs share the responsibility of bringing Camden back through what he calls “thinking regionally.”
This means more than building out from Camden’s already strong university and hospital areas and moving a few middle-class citizens into the city. It also means enforcing New Jersey’s fair share housing laws that mandate suburbs provide affordable housing; making such housing readily available to Camden residents; making public transportation to jobs in the suburbs accessible to Camden residents; and starting neighborhood-based rebuilding projects that will enrich the lives of residents instead of moving them out of their neighborhoods to make room for a more affluent middle class, as proposed in the Cramer Hill section of Camden.
“You can’t build a city on the backs of those who have suffered for 30 years,” he says. “You need to enrich their lives to enrich the city.”
While Gillette believes that revitalization of Camden will benefit southern New Jersey and the region, he points to barriers that keep those areas, especially the Jersey suburbs, from helping, mainly a ‘not in my backyard’ attitude.
“Politicians are afraid of what people think when Camden residents move to the suburbs,” he says. “It’s not fair for people of Camden to be thrown out of their homes, and it’s not fair for the suburbs to say they can’t come here.”
Gillette spent seven years on the book. Research wasn’t easy, as many of the records that historians rely on, such as internal memos, had been destroyed or never saved. Instead, he worked with newspaper archives and interviewed people who have lived through the city’s decline.
Ultimately, Gillette believes that a rebirth for Camden would benefit both the city and its suburbs. “You can’t have a region with a rotten core,” he says. The dilemmas facing Camden will be addressed at a conference, “Camden: Past, Present, Future,” to be held on the Camden campus Nov. 18.
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