Isolation, deterioration, demolition, migration, disempowerment are all terms that could easily have described the conditions facing the residents of East Deutschtown and Spring Garden in the last decades of the 20th century. Community organizations in those neighborhoods had to adapt to issues of property devaluation, loss of population, economic decline and uncertainty. Here were two of the North Side’s oldest and most historic neighborhoods struggling to see light at the end of the tunnel, not a dark dead-end.

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It was the organization of a new community-based organization at the beginning of the 21st century that combined the common efforts of these neighborhoods to set the stage for a brighter future. The Community Alliance of Spring Garden and East Deutschtown 

(CA-SGED) emerged with a positive view of the future. This view encompassed investment, development, and community preservation. This view seeks to move their neighborhood from one of the North Side “neighborhoods in the wings” in the recent North Side drama of development to a place on center stage. Here is a community determined to recognize its history and to embrace it future.