All this year, WHYY FM follows the stories of people who live and work around Kensington's Emerald Street | |||
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Philadelphia is full of streets like this: small blocks, lined with rowhouses, some occupied, some abandoned. Just a century ago, Kensington was one of many Philadelphia neighborhoods bustling with industry - dozens of factories made products for sale to the country's top retailers. On Emerald and York Streets, the Providence Dye Works tinted yarns and cottons quickly in hundreds of colors. But the mills couldn't keep up with economic shocks in the 1930s and technical changes after World War II and most, including Providence Dye, shut their doors. With the jobs, went the workers. In 1950, 149 thousand people lived in Kensington; over forty years, that number dropped by more than a third. Citywide, Philadelphia shrunk from two million people in 1950 to 1.4 million today. What's left behind are the brick and mortar remnants of Philly's industrial age. The Providence Dye Works burned after a month-long series of arsons.
Listen to the "Emerald Street" series for personal stories from the war on blight. You'll meet neighborhood gardeners and small business owners, activists and scientists, police and street hockey players, Mayor John Street and anti-blight campaigners from cities around the U.S. You'll hear the plans which have worked--and which haven't--to heal neighborhoods like this one. You'll learn how the City "redlined" racial and ethnic groups into some areas and out of others in the 1950's, crippling integration efforts and priming the "white flight" to come. By one estimate, Philadelphia's 60,000 vacant lots and abandoned buildings fill an area larger than its downtown. What takes their place? This project made possible through support from the Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation
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Some Kensingtonians feel trapped by drugs and crime--and expect nothing else soon. Others see hope for change and keep alive dreams for what's next.