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Lol I'm from Philadelphia (not just a suburb on the Main Line like yourself). Maybe things seem peachy riding in on the R5.
It's my favorite city but even I will admit that the city is in bad shape compared to its peers (like San Francisco and Boston). For every successful neighborhood like Bella Vista, there is a Strawberry Mansion rotting away. Take the El to K&A and tell me things are in "good shape." There are simply no equivalent areas like these in SF, NYC, or Boston anymore. Maybe open your eyes and ears next time you find yourself riding the El or the 23.
If your point is that Boston and SF do not have the level of blight/grit of Philadephia than say that. I agree with that point.
But you didnt. Your original statement said other than Center City and Chestnut Hill Philadelphia is in Bad Shape which is a lie or a mistruth. Its a bad statement, suck it up and admit you were wrong.
Look I have to deal with these elitist windbags from Boston and SF, thats torture enough. Dont need a homeslice piling on as well
I think you should do stand-up comedy. You made a completely absurd claim that sounds like something out of North Korea or something (there is a vast conspiracy between the Census Bureau, the State of NJ, all the municipalities in Mercer County, the U.S. Judiciary and other assorted federal, state and local agencies to randomly "switch" a U.S. county from one metro area to the other because some dude wants his spouse to get a pay raise).
You would also have to rig the commuting totals (basically pay tens of thousands of people to aimlessly drive cars and ride trains daily), you would have to have thousands of homes bought by some shadow agency, and billions in new developments would have to be built strictly for the purposes of maintaining the vast conspiracy.
Oh, and your source- you "forgot". Yeah, that's the ticket. Maybe it's little green men.
I suspect you're actually a SF or Boston homer, because you are making Philly look absolutely ridiculous right now. Heck, I heard a rumor that Philly County is being annexed to the Bay Area CSA, because Philly residents want a pay raise. It's in the works for 2020. Just wait until you see the commuting stats to Silicon Valley from South Philly!
actually they are not false - will look to grab the articles - also MarketStreetEl is actually a former writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer as an FYI and pretty well versed on the matter
Mercer today is part of the Federal Planning jurisdiction for the Philadelphia region and not the NYC one because the feds believed it makes more logical and connected sense to include as part of Philly and not NYC for planning and infrastructure purposes actually. They specifically positioned that the commuter rates and census designation misrepresent the logical association.
It really does not matter as the connection is there and in real life the census line does not impact anyones life (well except the Fed employees that get the NYC associated pay increase)
regardless Trento does not make or break the urban comparisons - looking back it was on size and GDP - of which I do believe Philly based on the criteria likely gets short changed moreso than most MSAs and CSAs due to the county cut lines so the GDP is probably a little lite but mostly immaterial
I spent half my youth in Bucks County a stones throw from Trenton so feel fairly well versed on the connection for what its worth
oddly I just did a google image search of Trenton Urbanity - the third image is Philadelphia, sort of ironic
Trenton is actually pretty urban for a smaller city
That's putting it mildly, for certain values of "urban."
I'm currently mentoring a kid who grew up there in one of the meaner parts of town. He's currently a journalism major at South Dakota State University, a school he chose precisely because it was about as far as he could get environment-wise from Trenton.
He had some very good people at The Trentonian who took him under his wing, but aside from that, he has little positive to say about the city.
I went up to his sendoff party at an Italian restaurant about a block or two south of the Capitol, somewhere off North State Street. Downtown Trenton was pretty much dead when I got there around 5:30 p.m.
I asked a few people there about Chambersburg, a well-known Italian enclave south of downtown, and was told that it wasn't what it once was.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the satellite core cities in the Philadelphia region are all in worse shape than Philadelphia itself, Wilmington partly excepted. (The banks and what's left of Du Pont keep that city afloat, but it has a bunch of rough neighborhoods on either side of the downtown, just to its east and west. And the best efforts of the city fathers to jump-start a live/work/play downtown notwithstanding, downtown Wilmington is also pretty much moribund after 5. Maybe what's happened on the Christina riverfront might slowly change things.)
hope this one isn't deleted; just a construction update for Boston;
proposed/ or approved but, currently held up
1. Midwood Investment/Bromfield Street diagonally across from Millenium Tower likely to seek in range of 625-740 feet.
2. Equity Residential North Station/a.k.a. Garden Garage/Boston Garden Tower 4 was 46 stories; proposal now sits @ 44 stories 447 feet (after 2 height reductions)
^^^This project is going to be approved - unfortunately, it's looking like it may occur after yet another height reduction (the 3rd). The once planned +540 foot tower may need to be renamed Stubby Garden Tower 4 to go along with the other 3 medium height towers, but will form a decent shoulder infill where the skyline meets the Zakim Bridge.
4. BACK BAY STATION probably will be two 380~500 foot towers.
5. South Bay Tower; hopeful we will see a tower make an impact at this site in the next 5-10 years; (perhaps during a phase that sees many 180~260 foot appartment buildings in Roxbury, Fenway, Jamaica Plain, etc)...
approved, under-construction, topped, +/- cladding or completed;
1. 111 Federal Street/Winthrop Garage 740-780 feet (BRA gave tacit approval for "very tall..." currently weighing multiple redevelopment proposals)
4. Copley Place Tower 52 stories 625~650 feet (w/ mechanical screen, in early construction phase)
5. SOUTH STATION 41 stories 621~650 feet (has BRA approval w/ many question marks regarding the timetable and track expansion)
6. Government Center (cylindrical) office tower 38 stories 528 feet + mechanical screen/crown spire (has BRA approval to reach 600 feet. screen/spire could top at that height or go slightly over.
Location: Watching half my country turn into Gilead
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the satellite core cities in the Philadelphia region are all in worse shape than Philadelphia itself, Wilmington partly excepted. (The banks and what's left of Du Pont keep that city afloat, but it has a bunch of rough neighborhoods on either side of the downtown, just to its east and west. And the best efforts of the city fathers to jump-start a live/work/play downtown notwithstanding, downtown Wilmington is also pretty much moribund after 5. Maybe what's happened on the Christina riverfront might slowly change things.)
This is actually a great assessment of Philadelphia's satellite cities, which are noticeably more crime-ridden and blighted than Philly these days. Indeed, every single one of Philly's major satellite cities (Camden, Chester, Trenton, Atlantic City, Vineland and Wilmington) has serious crime issues in their cores; even some smaller cities in the immediate and adjacent region (Coatesville, Darby, York, Harrisburg) have issues. It's a sad state of affairs, though as you mentioned, Wilmington is somewhat bailed out by being a financial capital and the hub for an entire state. And the riverfront is definitely a success, though downtown, despite all of the ongoing renovation and construction, isn't there yet. Definitely dead after 5 barring a special event, but noticeably livelier during work hours than it has been--so progress.
I can see an argument for SF- it has the most densely built up and active core and the greater bay area is a huge contiguous urban area
and one for Philly- it's a very big, dense city city. In some ways it feels like the 3rd largest traditional urban big city after NYC and Chicago.
But, I can't really see one for Boston even though it is basically in the same general tier as the other two. It doesn't really have the inner core of SF's NE quadrant or the contiguous big city feel of Philly with the high rise structural density of city center and the miles upon miles of urban residential areas.
Somewhat counterintuitively, I can see an argument for Boston/Cambridge/Somerville/Chelsea/Brookline feeling more like a cohesive urban city core than SF which is sort of isolated on the peninsula. You can't walk from Oakland to SF in the same way. Not sure if I can come up with a metric to rank Bos above Philly, except maybe more active regional destination zones outside the center city core (Harvard Square, Central Square, Coolidge Corner). Boston is wealthier/safer than Philly, so you tend to find more retail amenities throughout the urban core.
I think Boston’s argument is the North End. Nothing in SF or Philly quite like it.
Granted most of the city doesn’t look like the North End.
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