Editing Deindustrialization (section)

== Legacy ==

Deindustrialization's legacy remains visible throughout Philadelphia. Vacant lots mark where factories once stood. Neighborhoods that housed industrial workers remain, though diminished and impoverished. The population loss that accompanied industrial decline reduced the city from over two million residents in 1950 to under 1.5 million by 2000. The fiscal stress caused by declining population and employment constrained city services and investment. The social problems concentrated in former industrial neighborhoods—poverty, crime, addiction—persist as challenges. Philadelphia's modern identity as a city of universities and hospitals, of gentrifying neighborhoods and struggling ones, of inequality and ongoing transformation, reflects the long aftermath of industrial decline.<ref name="adams"/>

Yet Philadelphia has also adapted in ways that other deindustrialized cities have not. Center City's revival, the growth of educational and medical institutions, the city's cultural assets, and its location in the northeastern corridor have attracted investment and population in recent decades. Former industrial buildings have been converted to apartments, offices, and creative spaces. Young professionals have moved to neighborhoods their parents' generation fled. Philadelphia remains a work in progress, dealing with deindustrialization's legacy while attempting to build a post-industrial future. The transformation is incomplete, and many residents remain excluded from the new economy, but the city has not simply declined—it has changed.<ref name="sugrue"/>