Thesis: Arden Jordan

Community-Building as Neighborhood Preservation: A Case Study of Cedar Park in Postwar West Philadelphia

This thesis explores community-led efforts in Cedar Park, a West Philadelphia neighborhood, to ‘stabilize’ the community in the wake of white flight, between 1960 and 1990. Two community groups—Cedar Park Neighbors, a neighborhood civic association, and the Movement for a New Society, a radical pacifist group—applied varied volunteer efforts to stabilize and revitalize Cedar Park. These included: housing rehabilitation and related education, the establishment of a community land trust, a block association to improve community safety, and a food co-op and market to address food insecurity. While contemporaneous urban renewal efforts in Philadelphia were pursuing preservation through regulation, Cedar Park Neighbors and Movement for a New Society realized preservation through these alternative means. By focusing on community-building and tending to the social, economic, and physical challenges of the neighborhood, these groups helped maintain both its social and physical fabric. During this time, Cedar Park shifted from a primarily white neighborhood to a racially diverse community. This thesis explores the lines between neighborhood ‘stabilization,’ discrimination, and—later—gentrification.