Downtown lost nearly a third of its residents, and North Charleston lost nearly a quarter of the people who lived there. By 2000, that number had dwindled to 4,740. City leaders have said they want to revitalize the East End. Just because the East End is losing people doesn't mean a revitalization can't happen, said City Planning Director Ann Beckman. Families are smaller than they used to be, but they're using more space, so you have fewer people in the same amount of space.
Nobody wants to admit it, but revitalization means change.
It doesn't mean going back to the way it was before. Downtown Charleston between Brooks Street and the Elk River had 1,426 residents in 2000, compared with 2,122 in 1990. In North Charleston, nearly a quarter of the residents left the area west of Sissonville Drive to the city limits. The flat parts of the West Side also lost hundreds of people. Linda Brown has lived on Central Avenue for about 30 years.