Steve Lopez's novel
Third and Indiana made the intersection well known. The intersection of 3rd Street and Indiana Avenue was listed as number two in a 2007 list of the city's top ten
recreational drug corners according to an article by
Philadelphia Weekly reporter Steve Volk. Other intersections in Fairhill included in the list of the top drug corners included Fifth Street and Westmoreland Street in third place, and A Street and Westmoreland Street in seventh place. It has amorphous and somewhat disputed boundaries, but is generally agreed to include the 25th police district. Usually, it is widely understood to be an area between Kensington Avenue to the east and Broad Street to the west, and between Hunting Park Avenue to the north and York Street to the south, mostly coinciding with the neighborhoods of Fairhill,
Glenwood,
Hunting Park,
Harrowgate,
Stanton,
North Central,
West Kensington,
Hartranft, and
Kensington. The term "The Badlands" was popularized in part by the novel
Third and Indiana by then
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist
Steve Lopez. The term
Badlands was first used by Lt. John Gallo, who headed the East Division Narcotics Task Force. Its use spread, with many people attempting to take credit for the moniker. It was Gallo's work along with ASAC Billy Retton that worked about a dozen long-term investigations in the 25th and 26th Police Districts that preceded "Operation Sunrise".
Ted Koppel,
Geraldo Rivera,
20/20 and
48 Hours all rode with Gallo at one time or another, and it was during this time that Gallo was able to make the name stick. At one time a center of
heavy industry, much of the Badlands' urban landscape is now characterized by vacant warehouses and tightly-packed strips of brick
row houses constructed for the working class of the neighborhood. Like most industrial cities in the eastern United States, Philadelphia suffered economic decline following the movement of industry to either the suburbs or developing countries and has suffered as a result. The Philadelphia Badlands contain a diverse mix of ethnicities.
Puerto Ricans are the largest group, but the area also contains large populations of
Black Americans,
Irish Americans, and
Dominican Americans. The area encompasses
El Centro de Oro, the heart of Philadelphia's Puerto Rican community. Although much of the area's crime stems from local neighborhood-based street gangs and the drug trade, larger, more organized gangs also operate in the area, including the
Black Mafia,
Latin Kings, and various
motorcycle gangs. The area's reputation has been countered by community activists and nonprofit organizations such as Centro Nueva Creación, which in 2010 conducted a summer children's program, "The Goodlands Photographers", aimed at helping young people photograph and display positive images of their neighborhood. ==Government and infrastructure==