Human Services News

From MDRC:

Perhaps more than most cities, Camden, New Jersey, has suffered from the declining fortunes of urban centers in the United States in the past half-century.

The steady exodus of middle-income residents and businesses that started in the postwar years has left the city with concentrated poverty, falling property values, a dwindling tax base, and inadequate resources to cover the city's basic costs and services.

Recently, however, Camden has been at the center of private and public redevelopment activities and reforms that seek to transform the city's landscape, create local and regional housing and employment opportunities for its residents, and position Camden to be an important participant in the region's economic development activities.

This report from the project, written by our partners at Rutgers University, focuses on the city of Camden and takes a look at the difficult challenge of fostering meaningful and effective civic engagement in a complex, state-mandated redevelopment initiative.

It describes how the redevelopment initiative has been stymied by a legacy of municipal mismanagement, a resulting mistrust of officials by residents, conflict among the various players in the city, and the political pressure of a very short timeline for redevelopment.

At the same time, Camden and its citizens can point to a few examples of positive civic engagement in the revitalization process, which may offer a framework for future progress.

For the broader field of urban development, Camden's experiences illustrate why effective civic engagement should be an important component of revitalization plans, and how ineffective or insufficient civic engagement can undermine even the best-intentioned redevelopment effort.

At the time of publication, events in Camden highlight how difficult it remains to accomplish initiatives of large magnitude.

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