Pennsauken, New Jersey

Pennsauken is one of the "First Suburbs"; one of the first residential areas directly outside of southern Jersey's metropolis Camden (itself a satellite of Philly) that lured young newly returning veterans and their wives and babies out from the bustling city and into plots with backyards and picket fences.

The suburbs were a white creation for white people. Over time, the black middle class gained enough prestige and money to move out of the cities, and into the closest ring of suburbs, of which Pennsauken counts. The fabled "First Suburbs" began to see white-flight, a phenomena where white families move to further rings of suburbia once a black family buys a home on their block. Sadly, a fact of life in this country is that an incorporated township with a population that is less than half white loses home value from before minorities moved in.

Concerned white citizens in Pennsauken, upset by their white neighbors leaving the area, started to hold meetings with their black and Asian neighbors in an effort to create a multi culturally inviting town, and, through advertisements and other initiatives, have grown and raised their home values back to their pre-flight numbers.

Also, they've lured white home buyers back, becoming one of the very few townships that experienced white-flight and then reversed it.

I think it's pretty cool that when progressive citizens watch their neighbors act short-sighted, they go out of their way to make their neighborhood into the open minded place they felt it was.