Philadelphia Badlands

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The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Badlands -- boundaried by the Delaware River to the east, Philadelphia's Northern Liberties section and the area of Temple University to its south, Philadelphia's Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill sections to its west, and Philadelphia's Wissinoming, Oxford Circle and Olney sections to its north -- are Philadelphia's previously heavily industrialized areas which nosedived as such starting from the early 1970s onward as a direct result of a combination of unfair U.S. foreign trade policies and Philadelphia political corruption. Having once been a thriving, teeming industrial mecca all throughout, which in turn made Philadelphia one of the greatest, most prosperous cities in the world, by the early 1980s -- especially hastened by the deregulatory policies of the Reagan administration -- the entirety of this very sizeable portion of Philadelphia looked no different than bombed out Beirut. With legitimate employment of a blue collar nature having all but vanished, and crime quickly rising up in its place, by the early 1990s it simply became referred to as "The Badlands" by the Philadelphia Police and others. Featured on ABC's "Nightline" hosted by Ted Koppel, and often made reference to in CBS's "Cold Case," it is perhaps one of the most desperate slum areas on the face of the planet today. And disgracefully it's perpetuated as such for dark economy sake (crime profit kickbacks) by corrupt local and state politicians in combination with a totally indifferent federal government.

Its sections consist of Fishtown plus the entirety of Kensington, the entirety of North Philadelphia from Temple University north- and eastward, a sizeable portion of Germantown, all of Juniata, and all of Frankford. Its leading crime in terms of what generates the most profitability) lists illegal drug trafficking first and foremost, illegal arms dealing, auto theft operations, slumlandlordism, prostitution and human trafficking in this regard, loan sharking, and numbers racketeering. And in 2008 a large Delaware River waterfront gambling casino to be called "SugarHouse" is going to be rising up there to make that part of the city all the worse.