Cherry Hill and the city of Camden are both part of Camden County. They are roughly six miles apart in distance. However, the socioeconomic history, infrastructure and public service provision in each location are remarkably different.
In her book “Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities,” Professor Jessica Trounstine discusses a few of these differences. For example, while Camden has two superfund toxic waste sites, Cherry Hill has zero. The Cherry Hill Public Library offers ample resources for the town’s residents, whereas Camden’s own main library was shut down in 2011 due to budget cuts.
Was this always the case?
Camden was once an economically prosperous city, with businesses like Campbell Soup, New York Shipbuilding, and RCA Victor producing a multitude of job opportunities and inducing population growth. In fact, by 1930, Camden had over 118,000 residents. Meanwhile, in 1940, Cherry Hill was considered an economically weak agricultural town with a population of around 6,000 residents. But things took a turn later in the mid-20th century.
It is impossible to attribute the decline of Camden’s prosperity to a single underlying reason, but an important factor was suburbanization. During the 1950s, suburbanization was on the rise, prompting predominantly white, wealthy families in Camden to leave the city in pursuit of larger single-family homes in Cherry Hill. Camden thus faced a declining tax base and decreased property values as its population decreased.
Trounstine discusses how Cherry Hill homeowners utilized zoning restrictions that prohibited low to moderate-income housing, thereby producing racial homogeneity. As a result, Trounstine writes, “a greater share of segregation [occurred] between Cherry Hill and Camden than within them.”
Additionally, the introduction of the Cherry Hill Mall in 1961 had a negative impact on Camden as well. Specifically, the mall took away customers and investment that could have otherwise gone towards small businesses in downtown Camden. Howard Gillette emphasizes this idea in his book “Camden after the Fall,” describing the opening of the mall as a “sensation” that drove the economic transition of Cherry Hill and its “conversion from country to suburb.” The mall was instrumental in the increase of Cherry Hill’s property value by around 146.7 million dollars in just 15 years, but came at Camden’s expense.
Camden and Cherry Hill’s history is just a single example of how interconnected the activities of neighboring communities can be. Only by acknowledging this history can we get a better understanding of what produces long-term regional inequality.
