It's not a matter of success or lack thereof. I don't see Camden and Philly's economies or residential real estate market as linked whereas I think North Philly and Center City clearly are. I haven't seen anyone post any real evidence of links between Camden and Philly. The development happening in Camden now is not a function of what's going on in Philadelphia's economy but a function of some good natural resources and extreme levels of tax incentives by the NEW JERSEY state and local government and other coalitions to give enormous incentives to get pre-existing (New Jersey) companies to relocate down the road in Camden. I think the exact same thing would be happening if Camden was a post-industrial, divested NJ city hundreds of miles from here with some waterfront land.
What's happening in North Philly is a function of KOZ zones, local governmental and non-governmental actors, and in no small part, the gentrification in Center City causing more affordable areas in North Philly to be attractive to business and residents from other parts of Philadelphia. I don't think geographic proximity alone makes a satellite city. I think Camden and Philly function pretty independently. I could see more overlap between their industries and economies and residential real estate markets one day, but I don't see it now.
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Originally Posted by hammersklavier
Actually, Camden seems to be about as linked to Center City as North Philly is. The two move in the same ways at the same times. They share the same history of heavily industrial economies, deindustrialization, ghettoization and abandonment, and now finally getting hot at the same time as one another. Just as Cherry Hill and King of Prussia are economic mirrors of one another, Philly and Camden could not be more economically interdependent. You can't claim that City B is a satellite city of City A only when it's doing well; if the two places are in the same city region and doing poorly at the same time for the same reasons then the one is still the satellite city of the other.
Bingo. Jersey City is following the same trajectory as the parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx marginal to Manhattan (Red Hook, LIC, South Bronx, etc), which have one after another heated up in the last decade. Newark is following the same trajectory as the more distant parts of Brooklyn and Queens (Jamaica in particular). Just so, Camden is following the same trajectory as lower North Philly.
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