Camden is a typical Rustbelt city; even without the usual Dem corruption, when the jobs leave the best & brightest follow (leaving gibsmedats and illegals).
I remember taking the wife and kids to Camden on two occasions: when a new aquarium was opened there, and to visit the battleship New Jersey. The aquarium wasn’t impressive compared to one a bit closer on Coney Island (which has beluga whales); the battleship was great, but you drove through a lot of abandoned areas to get there. Both makework projects were put there to stimulate the economy, and both failed. Newark NJ does the same stuff, but consumers aren’t biting.
It wasn’t your typical slum (dangerously crawling with gibsmedats); it was more like a museum of how the gibsmedats used to live. We didn’t see many people there at all.
I was born in Camden sixty-nine years ago. From that day on, I never saw a reason to go back.
I don't have any sense of the local dynamics, but one would think that distressed waterfront property just across from Center City Philadelphia would have redevelopment potential. Of course, I live in Gentrification Central (D.C.), so I tend to see the brighter side of things.
You just gave me an idea for a Plymouth Plantation kind of tourist attraction where tourists experience simulated carjackings. rapes and murders while the actors speak in the original dialect. Probably appeal to the GTA generation.