methodwriter85 Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 It's a topic I find fascinating, and with urban renewal being a theme of "Millenium", I thought I'd share with you guys this article about the latest attempt to jumpstart the city of Wilmington, Delwaware into becoming a bustling city once again.Wilmington Pins Its Hopes on the Queen Theater Here's some background: Wilmington was your typical East Coast industrial city throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. When its industries- such as shipbuilding- started becoming obsolete, the city became less attractive to people. New industries that popped up only came to the perimeter and only supported the white-collar suburbanites. People started fleeing for the suburbs in the mid-20th century. The population peaked in 1940 at about 112k, and dropped in population until it stabilized at about 70k in 1990- that's about where it's remained. The inner-city gained a reputation for being unsafe, and with suburban malls such as the Christiana Mall, once-prosperous Market Street just got gutted. They're trying hard to revive that area. They've had varying degrees of success over the years in trying to revive the inner-city Wilmington- there have been some major blunders(like an outlet shopping center that became a dead mall), but there have been some successes, like the Delaware Theatre Company. It's been pretty fascinating to watch the progress. Anyway, I thought that since we're reading about a ficiticious urban renewal process, it'd be interesting to read about a real one in a real city.
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