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Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

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Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#31

Post by efbenson »

rayiner wrote: post #18
VLM wrote: post #2

A disappointing effort by Taibbi, usually does a lot better. Way too much exaggeration. Its a dying city because its population dropped about 0.3% per year. Like saying my blood pressure has dropped about 1 point due to some (minimal) exercise in the last month, therefore I'm dead. And then later on the population is now booming because of white heroin addicts moving into the city, but its also dying anyway at the sa…

> The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so As someone living in a city gutted by de-industrialization and the drug trade (Wilmington, DE), I think it's news that 40 years later, these places are still in poor shape. The usual response to concerns about technology or globalization putting people out of work is that it just frees them up to work on something better and more useful. "New jobs will rep…

Lets not forget Chester and Coatesville I don't know if every area has these sink holes or its just the NE's reliance on those lost jobs and the population density that make these places occur.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#32

Post by jseliger »

rayiner wrote: post #18
VLM wrote: post #2

A disappointing effort by Taibbi, usually does a lot better. Way too much exaggeration. Its a dying city because its population dropped about 0.3% per year. Like saying my blood pressure has dropped about 1 point due to some (minimal) exercise in the last month, therefore I'm dead. And then later on the population is now booming because of white heroin addicts moving into the city, but its also dying anyway at the sa…

> The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so As someone living in a city gutted by de-industrialization and the drug trade (Wilmington, DE), I think it's news that 40 years later, these places are still in poor shape. The usual response to concerns about technology or globalization putting people out of work is that it just frees them up to work on something better and more useful. "New jobs will rep…

As someone living in a city gutted by de-industrialization and the drug trade (Wilmington, DE), I think it's news that 40 years later, these places are still in poor shape.

Yet some places hit by these trends (Boston and Seattle come to mind) were reinvented, and others didn't; the question of why some did and others didn't is a fascinating one, and I've seen many of the arguments from urban / geographical economists like Edward Glaeser and Richard Florida.

My GF and I were actually thinking about moving to Wilmington for a job, and we can't figure out why it isn't semi-desirable even for its proximity by train to NYC and DC. There are now some new mid-rises near the train stations, but those are weirdly expensive (we got quotes of close to $2K for one bedrooms; for that kind of money, where's the competition with Brooklyn or downtown Seattle?)

The separation of the U of Delaware from Wilmington by 15 or so miles is certainly unfortunate and may help explain why Boston (innumerable universities) and Seattle (University of Washington, Seattle University) succeeded while Wilmington did not. It also started from a MUCH smaller base; the 2010 Census says that Wilmington is 70K, which is TINY and probably too small to achieve clustering effects in most industries.

If I were a civic booster type in Wilmington, I'd probably try to focus on proximity by train to DC, but the university problem means that I think the city is a lost cause.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#33

Post by mrfusion »

SyneRyder wrote: post #6

For folks wondering why this is on HN, there's some interesting info in the middle of the article about the tech the new police force are using in Camden: "There are 35 microphones planted around the city that can instantly detect the exact location of a gunshot down to a few meters (and just as instantly train cameras on escape routes)."

I wonder if they could do the same thing for the sound of breaking glass? That would probably indicate a crime or at least an accident.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#34

Post by VLM »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #14
VLM wrote: post #2

A disappointing effort by Taibbi, usually does a lot better. Way too much exaggeration. Its a dying city because its population dropped about 0.3% per year. Like saying my blood pressure has dropped about 1 point due to some (minimal) exercise in the last month, therefore I'm dead. And then later on the population is now booming because of white heroin addicts moving into the city, but its also dying anyway at the sa…

"The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so. Unfortunately its almost the spring of 2014. That's all ancient history." I understand why you view this as "old news". From that point of view, it probably is a bit disappointing. My take on the article, as someone who doesn't live in the US, was sadness that such things are still happening. That large groups of people can be effectively abandoned by civi…

"as someone who doesn't live in the US"

Ah I understand and thanks for the perspective. Locally its very well understood thanks to "if it bleeds, it leads" and infotainment in general. There's a checkbox that every single night there must be a report about violent crime in the inner city. Often a murder or shooting, but always something... Its extremely heavily propagandized.

Numerically you're far more likely to die in a car accident than get shot walking down alleys in the inner city at 2am, BUT, I checked the math and you are about 5000 times more likely to get shot in the inner city than where I live about 20 miles away. No kidding, about 5000 times.

The other part which probably isn't understood outside the country is even in the north, we segregate extremely heavily. Its extremely unusual other than maybe student dorms to ever see a mixed ethnicity neighborhood. Note I'm making a correct factual observation not a value judgment. The value judgement comes up when you can take a wild guess about what the TV news editors decide to report about neighborhoods of certain ethnic groups. As you can probably guess the "national sacrifice zones" are absolutely not populated by members of the dominate ethnic group, if you know what I mean, and the people in charge pretty much like it that way (again, an observation of their behavior, NOT an agreement with their behavior)

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#35

Post by RankingMember »

JimWillTri wrote: post #19

Camden was a shithole even in the early '70s. My great grandmother was robbed, beaten, tied up and left for dead on the floor of her tenement looking apartment. She was found alive a few days later.

Woah. I'm not questioning the authenticity of your story, but do you have a news article about that? That's a crazy thing to have happen to you anywhere and I'd be curious where exactly in Camden it occurred.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#36

Post by rayiner »

VLM wrote: post #29
rayiner wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so As someone living in a city gutted by de-industrialization and the drug trade (Wilmington, DE), I think it's news that 40 years later, these places are still in poor shape. The usual response to concerns about technology or globalization putting people out of work is that it just frees them up to work on something better and more useful. "New jobs will rep…

The problem with "fully a quarter" is WRT Chicago they're talking about a metro area, Skokie and Romeoville, maybe Lake Geneva, heck maybe Milwaukee... I'm talking about actually in the city, walk to work, urban renewal stuff, not suburb a long commute away. Like the north side of Milwaukee or south side of Chicago. Not say, Chenequa (which is a rather wealthy suburb of Milwaukee, more or less, but is technically par…

The idea of urban renewal is getting people to move back from the suburbs into core cities or satellite cities. Your contention was that this is ridiculous, because for "99% of the population" their urban living options are places like Camden, not NYC or SF. My point is that 25% of the population lives in metro areas where moving to the core city or a satellite city would not mean moving to a place anything like Camden. This is particularly true for places like New York or Chicago (combined, almost 10% of the whole U.S. population), where you can live in a little satellite town with a walkable, urban, downtown area, and commute to work in the core city on METRA/Metro North/LIRR/NJT.

Re: school statistics. Chicago also has 90% low-income in the school district, but there are tons of middle class people in the city. A lot of the gap is filled by parochial schools. For example, Chicago has ~400,000 school aged kids enrolled in CPS, 87% of which are low-income. But it has ~615,000 school-aged kids. There are 30,000 kids enrolled in Catholic schools alone.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#37

Post by jzwinck »

maxerickson wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so As someone living in a city gutted by de-industrialization and the drug trade (Wilmington, DE), I think it's news that 40 years later, these places are still in poor shape. The usual response to concerns about technology or globalization putting people out of work is that it just frees them up to work on something better and more useful. "New jobs will rep…

The violent crime rate 5 miles outside of Detroit (Livonia, others) is lower than Manhattan or the Bronx.

What does it mean to compare Livonia to the Bronx? I've lived near both and don't see any similarity between the places you mentioned.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#39

Post by larrys »

RankingMember wrote: post #35
JimWillTri wrote: post #19

Camden was a shithole even in the early '70s. My great grandmother was robbed, beaten, tied up and left for dead on the floor of her tenement looking apartment. She was found alive a few days later.

Woah. I'm not questioning the authenticity of your story, but do you have a news article about that? That's a crazy thing to have happen to you anywhere and I'd be curious where exactly in Camden it occurred.

Can't verify the parent story but can verify that Camden was a stinkhole in the early 70's.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#40

Post by maxerickson »

jzwinck wrote: post #37
maxerickson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The violent crime rate 5 miles outside of Detroit (Livonia, others) is lower than Manhattan or the Bronx.

What does it mean to compare Livonia to the Bronx? I've lived near both and don't see any similarity between the places you mentioned.

The point is roughly that the metro area of New York isn't whole lot safer than the metro area of Detroit.

Parts of each are safer than parts of both and so on, and the comparison of the consolidated units probably doesn't tell us much.

Edit: A different way of putting it would be to say that Wayne County is a better thing to compare to Chicago.

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