The recession of the early 1990s drew widespread attention to rising poverty and fiscal distress in inner-ring suburbs, and the next downturn will doubtless revive fears that suburbia could endure the same fate as the inner city. The authors challenge conventional urban theory, which explains suburban decline primarily in terms of who moves in and who moves out, by drawing on the literatures concerning the circulation of capital in the built environment. They present a case study analyzing the systematic withdrawal of capital from neighborhoods southeast of Philadelphia, where suburban decline has been dubbed the “Camden Syndrome.” Multivariate analysis of mortgage lending decisions between 1993 and 1998 is used to test the hypothesis that suburban decline cannot be explained solely in terms of the supposed deficiencies of new residents.
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