This week, the South Jersey Chamber of Commerce held an event titled #ChooseCamden that featured a who’s-who of South Jersey politics, but nary a resident or person of color in sight. The Courier-Post’s Phaedra Trethan covered the event, including the announcement that Camden’s minor league baseball stadium would be demolished. She also captured extensive comments from South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross about his vision for Camden:  

 

 

Norcross imagined a Camden “where every section of the city would be redeveloped.”

Current city homeowners, Norcross said, will sell their homes as property values rise, building their own wealth and moving to the suburbs. 

“I think you’re going to see a complete redevelopment of the city of Camden,” he continued. “The historic areas of Camden, around Cooper (University Hospital) and Rutgers will remain, but I think you’ll see largely the rest of the city will be redeveloped and new housing built. 

“I think Camden in 10 or 15 years will almost virtually be a brand-new city, newly constructed almost in its entirety, whether it’s industrial, residential or commercial.”

He added that it was the responsibility of business and industry leaders to provide not only jobs for Camden residents, but also training, apprenticeships and mentors to prepare for those jobs.

There’s a lot can be said about this (the gentrification hot takes write themselves), but I want to write a little about how to avoid what I view as the biggest potential mistake that can be made when investing in a city like Camden, and present a different vision for development. 

That biggest mistake is to imagine that cities needs to be remade in the image of the suburbs, with everything “newly constructed”, oriented around home-owners, and led by business and industry leaders. Quite simply, that’s not what makes cities work, and at a fundamental level, it doesn’t solve the difficult issues of American cities that revolve around discrimination, segregation and exclusion. 

As Dr. George Galster writes of Detroit, suburbs were built on the model of ever increasing new housing. That new housing and development attracted wealthy families. But in New Jersey and across much of the United States, such suburban housing also came with restrictions that made it difficult (and in some cases, illegal) for people of color to move as well. The result was a sorting in which the prosperity of new communities was built on the exclusion of both the poor and people of color specifically. The New Neighbors, a documentary on Pennsauken, gets to the dynamic and is well worth the watch. 

That intersects in multiple ways with New Jersey’s economy. At a basic level, New Jersey has a cities problem, which is that it is so segregated, and disinvestment in cities has been so ubiquitous, that the cities are not seeing the same type of reinvestment and gains seen in other parts of the country. So while Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and beyond see large gains, Paterson, Camden and Newark are still struggling (though this story isn’t universal, NJ cities have made some progress, and other cities still struggle with segregation and poverty). Firms increasingly want dynamic, urban locations to take advantage of proximity and workforce, and employees want the lifestyle benefits of less commuting and more social/cultural amenities. New Jersey’s poor history of segregation and disinvestment makes that a difficult ask. 

The default model in Camden seems instead to be a type of suburban development overlaying urban communities. At its worst, Camden redevelopment over the year has specifically catered to suburbanites — with attractions such as the failed baseball stadium, the aquarium, and a music venue that attracts a host of country performances. The focus on new build, the downtown, and corporate jobs from the surrounding region (too-often with parking lots, and gated-communities) fetishizes the same model of suburban development. There’s signs of things being different this time around. Some development, like the bustling Hispanic businesses on Federal Street, are organic. Others, like Cooper’s Ferry’s Connecting the Lots initiative, come with more political support. But too often, the model in Camden seems to be attracting suburbanites while ignoring what makes cities unique and valuable to the economy. If Camden is seen as a “deficit” — or, as Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno called it, a “mud flat” — then the existing city (and its residents) are likely to be replaced. That is central to the combination of “new build” and the idea that Camden residents will make money off their houses and “move to the suburbs”. 

It won’t work. For a host of reasons. One is that new build is cities is a dicey proposition — it prices out the type of innovative, small, local businesses that make cities fun to live in. But it also won’t work because of the intersection of costs and discrimination in the suburbs. Too often, when people of color move to a new community en mass, suburbanites leave.

There needs to be a different vision for redevelopment in Camden to avoid the mistakes of the past (failed attempts to attract suburbanites), and to avoid potential displacement in the future. And that vision needs to start by focusing on inclusivity. That starts with really basic principles of urban space: 1) making walkable spaces that are used by community members rather than isolated spaces to make suburbanites feel “safely” isolated from Camden residents 2) it means intentionally supporting small, local businesses rather than focusing resources on attracting new businesses that specifically cater to suburbanites 3) it means improving public institutions and public transit that is open to all rather than privatized transit such as the buses open only to employees of local firms or Rutgers students 4) it means politicians empowering communities to negotiate these things (through CBAs) with corporations who are inherently conservative and catering to a suburban employee base 5) it means seeing Camden residents and businesses not as charity cases to be given resources/jobs by “white knight” corporations, but as integral to the effort to modernize New Jersey’s cities. 

I want to touch a little on this last point, and why it is so important. If New Jersey’s cities are going to see the type of renaissance seen in other places, it is going to be because they retain cultural character. If people want chain restaurants with big parking lots they already have the suburbs. But, the nature of development is that the moment it appears a community has buying power, new businesses will attempt to crowd out existing businesses. New residents, unaware that local business exists, will spend at new businesses specifically targeting their resources. 

The result is too often that the very local businesses that create attractive communities with local culture (and provide entry-level jobs for residents!) are crowded out of the market because there is economic segregation at the point of growth. 

Camden’s success will hinge not on “new development”, corporations or office parks. It will hinge on the ability to desegregate economic systems to create an integrated residential and commercial community. New build, and new segregation, just leads to the same social struggles.