Philadelphia's Blight Fight Working

Buoyed by an improved residential real estate market, Mayor John Street's multimillion-dollar effort to reduce neighborhood blight in city neighborhoods has surpassed many of its goals halfway into the five-year program. In all, 5,507 houses and apartments for low-income residents have been built or renovated.

"Others see problems. In her new book, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It, Mindy Fullilove, a Columbia University clinical psychiatry professor, says urban renewal programs, such as the one in Philadelphia, leave psychological scars on displaced residents."