The following is a guest post from Joseph Russell (@thegreengrass):
There’s been a lot of talk about gentrification lately. NPR ran a piece in January about its benefits to neighborhood residents. Solomon Jones published an article on AxisPhilly about its alienation of longtime residents in suddenly hot neighborhoods. Whatever your thoughts about it are, it’s a sensitive and complex topic with many points of view. But what hasn’t been discussed as much is what happens in its absence. I’d like to explore not what gentrification is doing for Camden, but rather what that the lack thereof is not doing for the city.
Something that always strikes me about Camden is just how dark the city’s streets are outside of its main thoroughfares. Cooper Street, Broadway, and Haddon Avenue are at least moderately lit, albeit with old-school, unsettling sodium vapor lighting. But once you make even one turn off one of these streets, the lights cease to exist. Whether they’ve been vandalized or have simply burned out, they’ve plunged the city into darkness that can only lead to worse. This absence of light is so unmistakable that you can even see it from the PATCO train heading eastward toward Ferry Avenue. It’s only when you cross over Route 130 on the train that you see street lights in Collingswood’s neighborhoods. The city’s residents have fought long and hard for change, but it has been scarcely forthcoming. They’ve reached out to the city and PSE&G, and yet no one can figure out how to illuminate the streets, an act which will undoubtedly make residents feel safer, even if it’s just a little but. The most good that’s come of their campaigning has been to get the lights turned on in a park. While that is certainly a remarkable feat, it is a small step in the long walk toward getting the lights turned back on.
Another issue I came across was discovered while biking around the city one recent afternoon. What I found out that day in Camden was just how bad some of its major streets are, even in the downtown core. It’s no secret that the streetscape can be barren, with empty lots strewn about where buildings should be. But the very pavement of the city’s main streets themselves ache under the weight of neglect. Market Street and Federal Street, county roads both, feature cracked, aging surfaces so pockmarked with holes, wear at the curbs and around manhole covers, and are extremely unpleasant to either ride a bike or drive a car over. Haddon Avenue, also a county road leading one from downtown through Parkside and off to Collingswood, has a stony pavement that probably hasn’t been given attention in a long time. There aren’t just potholes caused by the harsh weather. These are streets that look to have not been paved in decades, their cracks long and their bumps excruciating. If they have been paved at all recently, the county has done an embarrassingly poor job in keeping them up.
This brings me back to the idea of gentrification. What’s evident to me after watching Philadelphia neighborhoods like Northern Liberties, Fishtown, and Kensington become popular destinations is that few people, be they even local officials, seem to pay much attention to a neighborhood’s nuts and bolts issues until wealthy residents move in. What exactly are the city, PSE&G, and Camden County waiting for to put the lights back on and pave the streets? I understand fully that the city takes in little in the way of tax money, but is it not the job of the power company and the county to maintain their assets, regardless of the socioeconomic status of the local residents? Or is it alright to ignore impoverished neighborhoods until wealthier residents move in? Where exactly are their priorities and why are they such? Does a city have to gentrify before basics needs are met?
There’s been such a push lately to sell the city to outsiders, as was the case at the Cooper’s Ferry annual meeting a few months back. Businessmen and local politicians tried their best to convince everyone that Camden is a city ascendant. But I wonder to myself, even if all of these people are trying to lure in outside people and their money, how we can they move the city forward if its basic infrastructural needs aren’t being met by those whose jobs it is to do so? How can you convince a builder to put up office space when the street in front of it yawns with cavernous holes? How can a businessperson decide to bring their workers into the city when at night a blanket of darkness falls all around them? Where is the curb appeal, so obvious to real estate agents in suburban cities, so necessary to revitalize a downtown core that desperately needs it, but so lacking in Camden? And, arguably most importantly, how can you signal to city residents that the city is worth fighting for if you can’t even get the lights turned on?
These are the things I wonder every time an article is published declaring the city “open for business”, and these are the issues that have to be addressed before that can ever really be true.
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There are good ways of bringing things to peoples attention & then there bad ways. We prefer to go about it different besides blogging which is to respectfully approach those in whose job it is and do it in a kind respectful way without pointing fingers as much as at times I have to bite my tongue. I was also at the meeting it seems to me that what the city is working to do is bring more jobs and businesses into the city nothing wrong with that. The city has programs for the businesses that are already in Camden. I predict there will be great things coming to Camden. After so many years of waiting and waiting all I can say is it’s about time someone stepped up to the plate. I hope I can see great progress in the next 4 years so my grandchildren can see the progress and stay in Camden to be a part of it. I hope my grandchildren when they grow up will want to still live in camden and raise their own families in Camden. The city has already started putting lights in neighborhoods just for your information.
You seem to have a nice idea of how things may need to be done. Try taking the approach I mentioned. Trust me I was young like you once a long long time ago..lol when we had to write letters to the editors instead if we were lucky they would get published. If you were offended my apologies.
Thanks for the apologies, but it’s no problem. I was just horrified that I came off as bashing a place I really want to see do well. I can definitely understand what you’re saying. I actually did reach out to Camden County and PSE&G about the issues I wrote about in this essay shortly before I wrote it. PSE&G asked me to tell them specific locations, and I responded by saying it was a citywide issue, to which they never replied back. When I wrote to Camden County asking if they were going to repave the streets I mentioned, gave me a list of other, suburban county roads they were going to repave.
One of the issues here is that I’m not a city resident. I’m merely a passionate advocate for the city whenever I can be. As such, no elected official is going to listen to me. They pay attention when their constituents make noise, but no one really cares about someone standing up for someone else in another town, which is unfortunate. So it ends up that emailing people, tweeting about issues to an engaged audience, and writing essays and articles is basically all I can do.
You were at the Cooper’s Ferry meeting, is that the one you mean? If you got a sense that things are moving in the right direction, I’m really very glad to hear that. I couldn’t attend and could only read about it after the fact. I’m very glad to hear they’re making progress on the lights, thanks for letting me know. And I really hope your grandchildren can find Camden to be a city they love and want to stay in too.
It’s easy for Joseph to bash Camden. Hey Joseph besides writing a little blog & getting high what else have you done with your life. I have lived here all 50 years of my life. Back in my day when I was your age if we had a problem with someone we would come to them face to face & not on twitter like you do.
Hey Miguel. I’m not sure you could have misinterpreted what I wrote any more than you apparently have. I’m not “bashing Camden”. If I’m “bashing” anyone, it’s the public and private institutions who’ve fallen behind on maintaining their assets and neighborhoods in the city. I’m calling them out for letting Camden rot while skirting their duties to keep the lights on and the streets paved, because they’d never treat other towns in South Jersey that way. I’m attempting to bring up important questions about the socioeconomic status of a city in regards to how it’s treated by institutions.
Let me say it as plainly as I can. I want Camden and its people (like you, I assume) to succeed as much as it and they possibly can, and I’m attempting to work form outside the city to call people out on their neglect and mistreatment of the city from every angle I can. Read the other things I’ve written and tell me if you think I “bash” Camden.
http://danley.rutgers.edu/2013/12/18/community-voice-a-view-from-the-suburbs/
http://danley.rutgers.edu/2014/01/08/community-voice-suburban-perspective/
Take it easy on the guy. If you read his stuff, you’ll see he isn’t actually bashing Camden and certainly not its residents. He’s asking tough questions of both the elected officials, and yes at times residents, of Camden and of those at either the county level or in the surrounding suburbs throughout the county or even the state level.
It’s easy for you to understand Camden because you’re from there. It’s not as easy for somebody like him who is from a completely different background and has to learn by researching and exploring. The fact is that it’s very good to have people like him who come from a different background but don’t simplify things or fall back on stereotypes or copouts like many from suburban backgrounds tend to do. He’s speaking to people from his background as one of them, and that’s exactly what is needed for those people to listen. I completely understand why you don’t like somebody who you see as a “Johnny come lately” being the one to talk about your city or your community but if more people both in your city and outside of it ask those same questions that you both ask, and stop just going along with how things are, then that’s how you enact some real change on a regional level.
Personally I wish that the community I’m from had an outside voice like his that shines a spotlight on everybody and everything involved with the problems or issues in a community, including the people outside of that community who affect it. Instead we have people who talk about how we should redo our entire already genuinely urban and historical street layout and add bike lanes so that they can pass through faster and easier on their bikes while we continue to slash funding for things like education, and we have the suburban communities outside of us completely ignoring the role they play in our crime and in the drug trade.