Industrial

South Camden may not normally evoke images of verdant foliage and bountiful vegetable gardens. With an assortment of industries, an incinerator, a sewage treatment plant, and toxic areas including two federal Superfund sites, the neighborhood is severely affected by pollution. Respiratory and other health ailments are widespread, and neighborhood groups have decried the environmental racism that has rendered their very air a dire health hazard.

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.

Tacony sits picturesquely on the Delaware River in Philadelphia's North East section. Like much of Philadelphia, this historically rich community is deeply rooted in the industrial boom of over a century ago. One man figures prominently in the town's history: Henry Disston, the famous industrialist and owner of Disston Saw Works, once the world's largest saw producer.

A huge electric sign in the neighborhood once proclaimed "What Chester Makes Makes Chester." These words begin the story of the former glory of a great industrial and cultural center on the Delaware River, a few miles south of Philadelphia. The documentary features the reminiscences of elderly residents who fondly recall the streets lined with shops and theaters, the factories and shipping docks by the river, and a large religious community of neighborhood churches. A sense of security and prosperity pervaded in those times, before the post-industrial economic and social changes of the 1960s.