blight

Kensington may be Philadelphia's quintessential post-industrial neighborhood. Once a teeming textile hub of the city and indeed the region, Kensington's wealth and quality of life declined in the 1950s and 1960s as factories moved elsewhere. While the neighborhood has developed a reputation as one of Philadelphia's most neglected areas, residents tell of a different Kensington. Recently, the neighborhood has also been experiencing something of a rebirth. The Cardinal Bevilacqua Community Center epitomizes this trend.

Fair Hill: To Badlands and Back Again the history of a 300-year-old Quaker cemetery in North Philadelphia on Germantown Avenue. Deeded to local residents by Quakerism founder George Fox in the 1700s, the burial ground is the resting place of many of women and men who were active in the Underground Railroad. Philadelphians such as feminist and abolitionist Lucretia Mott and abolitionist Robert Purvis are buried here.

Lancaster Avenue in Ardmore, Pennsylvania is a picturesque street of small family-owned shops, the heart of the community and a historic district in this village on the west side of Philadelphia. Some businesses on the avenue have been in local families for several generations, and residents say that the community has an intimate, small-town feel that they love. But in 2004, Lower Merion Township approved the Ardmore Redevelopment Plan.

In 2004, much of the stable, working class community of Cramer Hill in Camden, New Jersey was slated to be bulldozed. The City Planning Board had authorized $1 billion redevelopment plan that would have demolished 1,200 homes under eminent domain law. Although parts of the Cramer Hill waterfront had fallen into disrepair, residents say that their charming neighborhood on the Delaware River had a vitality that the City failed to recognize. An isolated neighborhood adjacent to a marina, Cramer Hill's forested shores are a unique natural sanctuary.

The Taking of Bodine is a harrowing glimpse into one of the darker episodes of Philadelphia's urban revitalization saga. In 2002 and 2003, residents of the multi-ethnic Norris Square/West Kensington neighborhood received notices that their homes would be repossessed by the city under the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, a redevelopment plan. Blight criteria included "economically or socially undesirable land use," allowing developers to make requests to the city repossess land belonging to long-time residents.

Many older Camden residents have fond memories of a healthier, safer, more vibrant city and can trace its tranformation from a bustling center of industry after World War II to the present. "It was a beautiful place," says Reverend Heyward Wiggins III. "Such a beautiful place to grow up."