Race, Housing, And The Soul Of Suburbia Summary

The idea of equality for all people, regardless of their race, is instilled in the American society of today. Unfortunately, this idea has not always been present, which ultimately has caused many issues for America’s society in the past. As discussed in the book Our Town: Race, Housing, and the Soul of Suburbia, David L. Kirp focuses on the inequality that was found between the low-income blacks and the middle class whites in a South Jersey town, Mount Laurel. At the time, the whites had a goal of running the blacks out of the town by making the costs of housing expensive enough where blacks could not afford it. This lead to unequal treatment for the blacks who lived in Mount Laurel compared to the whites when it came to housing opportunities.

For starters, the the downfall of Camden played a huge role in the rise of the suburbs. The demise of Camden had two contributing factors, which involved the Ben Franklin Bridge and city leaders spending money in all the wrong places. The Ben Franklin Bridge was built with the intentions of boosting Camden’s economy by allowing the city and suburbs the opportunity to come closer together. Unfortunately, the bridge did the exact opposite. The Ben Franklin Bridge ended up creating a bypass from Philadelphia through Camden, right into the area of the suburbs. Everyone became independent of the city and what it had to offer, and just looked to the more advanced city of Philadelphia. Ultimately, the Ben Franklin Bridge ended up hurting Camden’s economy, which added to its spiraling downfall. Secondly, the political leaders were trying to shape Camden into a place it was never going to be. With Philadelphia right across the river, that city had a very large impact in shaping many of the Camden city leader’s decisions. Therefore, when Camden was facing some hardships, a blue print was proposed by Mayor Pierce to try to remake the entire city within the next generation. This involved tearing old buildings down, destroying homes, and then building the city completely new. They were attempting to build a shopping mall to compete with the local town of Cherry Hill, high rise apartment complexes, a marina, an Olympic sized pool, etc. The purpose was to create a “City within a City” to drawl people in like Philadelphia. Sadly, the city leaders were not mindful of where all the money was going and they ended up loosing it all to useless construction and the teardown of the old city. During the time of construction, “Some seventeen hundred families saw their houses destroyed during the 1960s, about one Camden family in fifteen,” (pg.