The Real Braddock PA
Decatur Metro | February 13, 2011Of course, life doesn’t always take place at sunrise or sunset, and very rarely is it accompanied by a hushed voice-over.
The struggling Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania has become a superstar in recent years thanks to its mayor, John Fetterman’s “Park Slope ethos” approach to reviving its dwindling population of just over 2,000 residents and dilapidated homes. Elevated through social media, countless newspaper profiles and even a high profile ad-campaign have thrown the town into the national spotlight.
Fetterman became a hero of community advocates, initiating youth programs, buying up abandoned homes and starting organic gardens amidst the town’s crumbling structures. And as with any hero, the real story often gets lost. But in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Sue Halprin – who just happens to be the wife of Bill McKibben – raises the veil, revealing the many complexities of a town struggling to just get by and its mayor who is testing out many of the most in-vogue methods of reviving cities in the new American “frontier.”
A very worthwhile read.
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Very good article . Thanks for pointing it out . Of special interest to me because much of my family is from Pittsburgh. My grandfather worked in the Braddock mill – probably from the late 1930’s thru the 1950’s.
Still much to do to bring that area back to life. No surprise that there are conflicting ideas about the best path for renewal.
Thanks for posting the article. I was born across the river from Braddock, in Duquesne. I remember when the mills were in full swing, when the skies were lit up every night with the most amazing colors and it was a sign of progress and prosperity. My parents moved us out of my grandparents’ home when I was in grade school to a neighborhood of blue-collar workers less than 10 miles away, living the American dream, owning their own homes, kids getting a decent education – even college if we had the grades. The mills shut down when I was away at school and everything changed in the blink of an eye. No jobs, no healthcare, guys doing odd jobs to support their families, women in line at food banks to feed their kids. Anyone who could move out and find work left town, those who remained were on welfare or retired folks whose homes were paid for and worth nothing on the market. The area has slowly been coming back, reinventing itself as Braddock is trying to do. I wish them all the luck in the world.
It strikes me that Braddock is not that different from the abandoned cluster home developments which now dot the suburbs of the Sunbelt. Both are products of bubble economies (although the post-war economic bubble lasted so long that it is usually referred to as a “boom” not a bubble) which have gone away. As with every bubble, there is now a bunch of stuff left that no one has a use.
We should all keep in mind that It’s good to try and make communities more “livable”, attract the creative class, ect., but all such efforts pale in effect to macro economic, political and social forces. It is usually events and trends far beyond the control of a single community which ultimately determines its fate. There are numerous once-thriving cities now buried in the desert or covered by vegetation.