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Houston, NYC, Chicago - all bigger than Philly, all have lower unemployment rates. Perhaps it's hard to employ more people in Philly, but not in other cities.
Also, as a region, Philly is not impressively large, and its growth rate is among the lowest for any top 20 metro.
Really? Over 1.5 million for the city. Over 6 million for the metro. Over 7 million for the CSA. That's not impressive? Huh.
[/quote] The Philly CSA is about to lose yet another spot in the rankings this year, as it gets passed by Dallas/Ft Worth. And its not just sunbelt metros growing faster than Philly - NY, Boston and DC are all growing faster than Philly's paltry 2 year growth rate of 0.87%. Within 20 years, Philly could very well be out of the top 10 when Houston and Atlanta surpass it. [/quote]
CSA? You mean that statistic that measures sprawl? Oh. Okay. Also, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta have like 5 times the land area that Philadelphia has. On top of that, Philadelphia is fighting for counties with the monster to the North, New York City. Philadelphia lost Mercer County, Ocean County and the Lehigh Valley to New York City.
Since I can't find CSA land area... here is metro land area.
Meanwhile, the Seattle CSA's growth rate is nearly as high as Atlanta's, and Seattle is the only top 20 CSA that's grown nearly 3% in the last 2 years without a warm climate or cheap housing.
Sure... but Philadelphia is an older metropolis. Name one older metropolis that is growing at a fast rate? None. Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and other Sunbelt cities are still new. They are going through their growth spurt. That growth will end eventually.
Except the whole debate is mute when you consider that the OMB has shoe horned the Philadelphia region at about 5,000 sq miles while all the cities you mentioned are allowed to sprawl at 10,000- 11,000 sq miles.
I know, the Census Bureau is out to get Philly, and Jersey City should be part of Philly's CSA.
Putting the evil Census Bureau aside, your MSA growth has been 0.90% the last two years, less than half of Boston's at 1.94%. And "slowing" DC and Atlanta have both grown over 3% over this same period, about 4x the rate of Philly. Now I know you think this is a government conspiracy, but the city of Philly itself acknowledges that Center City Philly has:
-3 million sq ft less office space than DT Seattle
-class A office rents about $4 lower than DT Seattle
Furthermore, Sea-Tac airport boards more total passengers, and more local originating passengers than PHL Int'l.
Seattle represents this country's future, Philly its past.
...and Seattle doesn't have to deal with large concentrations of poor and poverty in North Philadelphia, Camden, Chester and Wilmington like the Post-Industrial Philadelphia does.
think we've finally found some agreement, as you're acknowledging that Philly is post-industrial, and looks every bit of it, with an outdated economy that's still dragging it down as you're acknowledging
Seattle, meanwhile, is one of the leading regions taking us into the future
I know, the Census Bureau is out to get Philly, and Jersey City should be part of Philly's CSA.
You are on the right track but the wrong train.
The OMB is out to put NYC in the highest regard possible. To overinflate Gothams economic status to keep it ahead statistically of Tokyo in world economic dominace. Philadelphia just happens to be in the wrong place. It makes statistical comparison impossible as Philadelphias true economic data is wrongfully skewed.
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Seattle represents this country's future, Philly its past.
What can Seattle possibly do to top Philadelphias past?
Start a new democracy?
Start a new world order?
Win a revolution?
Build a country?
Supply in great numbers the ships,tanks,planes and ammunition that defeated Hitler and Herohito? Stave of Nazism and the Empire of the Rising Sun?
think we've finally found some agreement, as you're acknowledging that Philly is post-industrial, and looks every bit of it, with an outdated economy that's still dragging it down as you're acknowledging.
Could Philadelphia have a more lucrative economy and lower unemployment rate? Absolutely.
However, it is far from unprecedented for a city to overcome de-industrialization and perform very highly in the modern economy. As I previously suggested, the city has made enormous progress over the past 30 years. Any city that begins to reverse a 60 year-long population loss with six straight annual gains of approximately 10,000 people per year should get some credit.
Although many people seem to forget, former industrial titans Boston and New York also went through a similar deindustrialization phase, although earlier and quicker. Both cities are currently high performers in the 21st century economy. Philadelphia has very similar potential, and the groundwork that has been laid over the past couple of decades for the city to progress into prosperity once again is finally bearing fruit.
Its renaissance is only starting -- give it a little time. There's more than enough room in our nation's economy for all types of cities to find success -- both old and new.
Let's focus on Center City and the hand-grab of other nice neighborhoods and continue to ignore the vast ghettos within Philadelphia for another 73 pages, all-the-while trying to convince people that it's better than Seattle which doesn't have anyplace as rundown on the same scale as Philly and it's neighbor, Camden, within its entire metro area (or within the entire Pacific Northwest, for that matter).
Nothing constitutes a great city like trash and crime and blight!
To be fair though, Philly has the potential to be absolutely gorgeous on the same level as Paris if only it were to recover its many blighted neighborhoods. So yes, Philly has the potential to be greater and more beautiful (especially architecturally) than Seattle. But as of now, Seattle is the better city to live in whereas Philly is in need of some deep cleaning and restoring. It's a shame because so many of its neighborhoods that are "ghetto" and blighted contain wonderful architecture.
The unfortunate truth is that the best way to turn Philly around would be for gentrification to kick out the existing population of said neighborhoods.
Yeah, Seattle is more desirable than most of its metro (exceptions being some affluent parts of the Eastside). Philly is less desirable than its metro. Just more reasons to prefer Seattle to Philly.
They've had (government) job posting up for a long time in the Yuma area... problem is they paid less than half of what Austin, San Antonio, etc were paying. That perplexed me until I saw the unemployment. They probably figure with 25% of people out of work there's someone who wants to stay in the area and will take a 50%+ cut in pay to do it.
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Sure... but Philadelphia is an older metropolis. Name one older metropolis that is growing at a fast rate? None. Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and other Sunbelt cities are still new. They are going through their growth spurt. That growth will end eventually.
Raleigh comes to mind. It's old, at least by American standards, although not quite as old as Boston, NYC, or Philadelphia. Not that I'd call Houston that young either, it's been around since 1836-7. For that mater, is Seattle really that young settled in the 1850s? I mean, it's much younger than Philadelphia, but then Philadelphia is a young city as well. London's been around so long nobody even knows what London means. What's 330 years compared to ~2,000? Really that different than Houston's 176 or Seattle's 160?
If a really old city like London can grow 11.6% between the 2001 and 2011 counts, it seems to invalidate the premise that Philadelphia can't grow because it's "old."
Let's focus on Center City and the hand-grab of other nice neighborhoods and continue to ignore the vast ghettos within Philadelphia for another 73 pages, all-the-while trying to convince people that it's better than Seattle which doesn't have anyplace as rundown on the same scale as Philly and it's neighbor, Camden, within its entire metro area (or within the entire Pacific Northwest, for that matter).
Nothing constitutes a great city like trash and crime and blight!
Some people will downplay the extremely challenged and blighted areas of Philadelphia -- you're right -- but no one one has said that Philadelphia is a utopia.
Any reasonable person would agree that the Philly absolutely needs to attract much more revitalization and investment in its outer neighborhoods.
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Originally Posted by GatsbyGatz
To be fair though, Philly has the potential to be absolutely gorgeous on the same level as Paris if only it were to recover its many blighted neighborhoods. So yes, Philly has the potential to be greater and more beautiful (especially architecturally) than Seattle. But as of now, Seattle is the better city to live in whereas Philly is in need of some deep cleaning and restoring. It's a shame because so many of its neighborhoods that are "ghetto" and blighted contain wonderful architecture.
The unfortunate truth is that the best way to turn Philly around would be for gentrification to kick out the existing population of said neighborhoods.
I completely disagree -- gentrification only displaces issues of poverty for another place/municipality to deal with. That's far too common in this country, and it solves nothing.
It's more about developing an economy where the rising tide can lift all ships. The people who constitute the poorest population in Philadelphia simply do not have the skills to currently participate in today's economy. Obviously this keeps things like the poverty and unemployment rates institutionally high, because a 35 year-old person without even a high school education won't exactly be qualified to work in the city's latest tech startup. Training programs that develop new skills or encourage entrepreneurship are what is sorely needed so that more people aren't precluded from prosperity.
Thankfully, there is a fast-growing niche of socially driven companies/causes in Philly (the strength of which is demonstrated by the city winning one of Bloomberg Philanthropies Top 5 prizes out of hundreds of contestants: The Daily Pennsylvanian :: Wharton helps Philadelphia win $1 million).
This sector is definitely having a positive mpact on the whole city. Again, the resources and potential is there -- it all just has to come together.
Last edited by Duderino; 03-24-2013 at 02:45 PM..
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