Editing Deindustrialization (section)

== Impact on Neighborhoods ==

Deindustrialization devastated working-class neighborhoods across Philadelphia. Kensington, the center of textile manufacturing, saw unemployment soar as mills closed. North Philadelphia, which had housed workers in various industries, declined as jobs disappeared. The industrial waterfront along the Delaware, once crowded with shipyards and factories, emptied of productive activity. Population fell as those who could leave sought opportunity elsewhere; those who remained were often those with fewest options. The neighborhoods that had been created by industrial employment became repositories of concentrated poverty as economic function disappeared while people remained.<ref name="sugrue">{{cite book |last=Sugrue |first=Thomas J. |title=The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit |year=1996 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton}}</ref>

The physical legacy of deindustrialization included abandoned factories, vacant lots, and deteriorating housing. Buildings that had once hummed with productive activity stood empty, too large and specialized for easy conversion to other uses. Some were eventually demolished; others remained as eyesores and hazards. Housing that had served working families lost value as employment disappeared. Absent investment, the housing stock deteriorated. Some neighborhoods experienced near-total abandonment; others limped along with diminished populations and decaying infrastructure. The industrial city that had been built over a century took decades to unmake, but the process was relentless.<ref name="adams"/>