Eastwick Urban Renewal Project

Walking around Eastwick, it was surprising to see how uniformly the neighborhood had developed along class lines. I began to wonder what role urban renewal may have played in creating the socioeconomic homogeneity of the neighborhood, and how Eastwick might tie in to the larger narrative of growing inequality and class segregation in American cities.

By looking through the lens of socioeconomic class, I found that many of the prescient questions I had about Eastwick had answers rooted in the poverty, or more aptly, the lack of wealth in the community. To echo Michael Porter’s views in the underclass debate, through research, it began to emerge that the persistent problem for this poor community has been that it is poor.

Eastwick today exemplifies the national trend towards residential segregation by income. The median household income is $ 40,600, which is slightly above the Philadelphia average of $ 39,800 (Statistical Atlas, Median Household Income). Although slightly richer in median, Eastwick’s incomes do not range greatly and the neighborhood's incomes are less varied (Statistical Atlas, Mean Household Income of the Top 5%). Put differently, Eastwick is more narrowly lower/middle class than other neighborhoods.

Most Eastwick’s residents live in complexes of row public housing. This leaves residents few options with for investment in their properties, eliminating a traditional route for growing personal capital. In contrast, on one of the five blocks of single-family homes still standing in Eastwick, there are solar panels on multiple roofs and built up backyards.

While home ownership in Eastwick has increased in recent years to 63%, 32% of homeowners in Eastwick owe more than their homes are worth, indicating high interest rate, often subprime, mortgages which increasingly mark lower class communities (Pew Trust, Home Ownership in Philadelphia).

Moving away from current statistics, the divergences in the lives of the rich and poor is announced most clearly by the businesses and places of worship found in Eastwick. Each of the three strip malls contained a dollar store, either Dollar General or Dollar Tree, a discount grocer, and a fast food chain. Other businesses included a Western Union cash transfer. The denominations and teachings of the places of worship expose the class divide, a trend noted in Daniel Markovits's The Meritocracy Trap.

While high church denominations dominate upper class neighborhoods, the churches in Eastwick (marked by round pins) were African Methodist Episcopalian, Methodist, prosperity gospel, and apocalyptic in character. The messages of these churches are radically different from those taught in upper class neighborhood. For example, the End Time Harvest Church included divine healing as one of its seven core practices (End Time Harvest Church website). Founded after an 18 hour vision by its founder, the Winner Church International next door preaches liberation theology (Winner Church International Philadelphia website).

How did Eastwick come to epitomize ‘underclass’ America?

The history of urban renewal in Philadelphia reveals that it was not a natural development. Progressive politicians, in order to create the triumph of urban planning that Center City’s revitalization represents, needed to create the low-income housing developments such as Eastwick.

These annual reports, published every year from 1946 onward, give an impression of the renewal projects starkly opposite to the sentiments expressed by Eastwick residents. Contrasted with the newspaper editorials and testimonies, the reports’ hip formatting and staged photos of smiling new Eastwick residents give them an outward facing propaganda or sale brochure feel.

The local newspapers and first person accounts of Eastwick residents talk about trauma, despair, and hopeless struggle against the authorities (Philadelphia Inquirer, A Field of Weeds documentary). This difference in narrative, between City Hall and the citizens affected, sheds light on the larger political agenda of the City government.

From the 1950s onward, under the leadership of ambitious city planners and mayors, the City of Philadelphia aimed to revitalize Philadelphia’s Center City by knocking down ‘slums’ and creating a beatified downtown.

Eminent domain featured prominently in city efforts to clear land. Edmund Bacon, Executive Director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949-1970, known colloquially today as the ‘father of Modern Philadelphia’ displaced tens of thousands of low-income residents to make room for highways, scenic parks, and business districts. Communities, predominantly minority ones such as Black Bottom and the 7th Ward, were displaced. (O’Mara, Building Brainsville)

Bacon was not alone in his pro-development efforts. Post World War 2 saw a powerful grassroots movement of young Philadelphians fighting for political and social reform, which culminated in Joseph S. Clark’s election to mayor in 1951, the first Democratic mayor since 1884. Elected on an urban renewal and anti-corruption platform, Clark remarked that “two hundred and sixty eight years of lasissez-faire economics had the city in a hell of a mess” (Warner, The Private City).

It was this generations of progressives who, once entrenched in the City’s bureaucracy, pushed through plans of redevelopment continuously from 1949 to 1974. The annual reports and City Hall correspondences revealed the city planners held their positions for years, some for well over a decade (Philadelphia City Archives). By contrast the citizen protesters and community groups changed leadership and personal almost annually (Philadelphia City Archives). This may speak to the discontinuity of the archives we accessed, but may also point to the advantages institutions have over those they are supposed to serve.

The city’s conduct towards citizens reveals the partially self-serving political motivation behind Eastwick’s renewal.

The revitalization of Center City required the renewal of Eastwick. To justify the mass displacements, the City planners needed to create somewhere better for the tens of thousands of displaced poor to go. From its onset, the redevelopment of the Eastwick neighborhood was the largest urban renewal project in the U.S., intended to create homes for 60,000 people and jobs for 20,000 (McKee 547). Today, Eastwick contains only approximately 15,000 residents, yet Center City gleams.

To be fair to the City government, from a progressive liberal perspective Eastwick in 1950 clearly fit the bill of ‘blighted.’ Eastwick before development was, to use Mayor Clark’s words, a laissez-faire hell of a mess. The swamp was dotted with garbage fires, junk yards, and poor constructed shacks (McKee, Liberal Ends, 548). In this regard, the renewal did markedly improve the residential habitation in Eastwick, but at the cost of the racially integrated community that had existed prior to renewal.

Besides appearing ‘blighted’, Eastwick was the largest chunk of undeveloped land within Philadelphia City limits, providing open land for authorities to build on. Within Eastwick existed one of the few racially integrated suburbs outside the City of Philadelphia. The median family income varied greatly, with the shacks near the Darby creek being extremely poor, while a thriving middle class developed up on the main commercial Boulevards of the town. Former residents cheerfully remember the corner beer garden, ‘druggist,’ the basketball courts where you could find yourself a boyfriend, and other neighborhood hangouts (Field of Weeds documentary).

In our readings, we saw white working class racial resentment prevented political unity along class lines (Barber, Latino City). The interracial political action of the Eastwick residents, notably the creation of the Eastwick Political Action Committee, stands in exception to this national phenomenon (McKee, Liberal Ends through Illiberal Means). Why did these remarkable political movements fail?

It did not succeed for the same reason the voices of residents was not heard at each step of the renewal process; Eastwick's poor community did not have the political or economic clout to effectively advocate in City Hall. Progressive sympathies engendered sympathy for the poor displaced by the revitalization of the downtown, but rarely did this sympathy translate to a willingness to work with or listen to the demands of poor citizens.

To illustrate the importance of class in this situation, an example from Center City. When the City tried to eliminate Society Hill or Northern Liberties' view of the waterfront by building a raised I-95, the wealthier citizens of these neighborhoods were able to get the project moved to ground level.

 The progressive, liberal city government was also not afraid to violate civil liberties, using force when necessary:

“In an act that demonstrated the emotional intensity of the conflict, one woman wrote to Tate threatening “to bomb and bomb and bomb again until somebody is killed” unless council “got some sense” regarding Eastwick. The FBI matched her handwriting to one of the protest postcards and hauled her away to the psychiatric ward of Philadelphia General Hospital.” (McKee 556)

To preserve the racially integrated nature of Eastwick, they placed strict racial quotas on residents entering the new Eastwick developments, something clearly illegal under the Civil Right Act (McKee 561).

City Planners and the Korman Corporation used their centralized bureaucracy and continuity of command to great effect against the disparate attempts of Eastwick citizens to advocate for their own interests. 

Throughout the entire process, resident demands were surprisingly consistent. Before renewal, during it, and even today, the issues voiced by residents are environmental, the lack of infrastructure, mainly sewers, and improvement of services. Consistently, these requests were ‘considered’ and ‘noted’ by city officials and the Korman corporation, but the results are hard to determine (Philadelphia City Archives).

Testimonials from the residents of the new rowhouses suggest that the sewers were never adequately provisioned for or built for the environment, as there were descriptions of sewage filling basements and sewer rats coming through the pipes into basements (A Field of Weeds documentary).

None of the fill efforts accounted for the deeper problems faced by the developments. Watching the land developers drive plyons into the site plan for row homes, one resident recalls watching the crews sink multiple pylons into the same spot before reaching bedrock (A Field of Weeds). Since construction, the row homes have been slowly sinking into the marsh, and flooding has become particularly destructive and frequent in the last decade. It is around this issue that the current residents of Eastwick are organizing, creating the Eastwick Friends and Neighbors Coalition (Eastwick in the Middle: Organizing for Environmental Justice documentary).

The consistent demands of Eastwick residents, when juxtaposed with the city’s authoritarian methods, call into question the seemingly altruistic statements made by City officials about improving the lives of poor citizens.

Much of the proposed development has yet to occur, in part due to the recognition of Eastwick’s environmental problems the HUD studies garnered. Vast swathes of Eastwick remain uninhabited fields of weeds. This is partially because of the City’s tactic of demolishing homes within days of residents leaving. 

Lack of access to quality education continues to be one of the leading factors driving inequality of outcomes in America, particularly along racial lines (Badger, Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys).

When we look at the redevelopment of Eastwick through the lens of class, the suffering of Eastwick residences and the decisions of the city government begin to make sense. Linking the urban renewal projects to the present's urban inequality allows us to understand how this pernicious 21st century development came to be.

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-      “Red Influence in Eastwick Plan Charges by Foes,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 13, 1957, 5. Although the woman was released from Philadelphia General a week later, she also lost her job at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The Tribune reported that “her friends say that she was NOT mentally unbalanced, only frustrated and angered because so many of her friends and relatives were losing their homes as a result of the Redevelopment Authority’s plan.” Peters, “Elmwood Is My Beat,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 31, 1957, clipping in EPAC Records, Acc. 870, Box 21, Urban Archives; Peters, “Elmwood Is My Beat,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 10, 1957, 8

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