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Nice pics. So does Philly have alot of neighborhoods that have single family detached homes or is that just the NW side???
Philly overall is over 60% rowhomes I believe but there are mostly twins and singles in neighborhoods in NW Philly like you said-especially Chestnut Hill, Andorra and Mount Airy with Germantown/East Falls/Roxborough more 50/50. Parts of West Philly like Overbrook Farms/Estates and Wynnefield are mostly large single homes. Also there are plenty of singles and twins in The Northeast as well. Center City, North Philly, South Philly, SW Philly and The Riverwards are nearly all rowhomes although varying styles abound.
One thing that favors Philly over Detroit is how it's less cut up by freeways especially around downtown. Center City in Philly has a pretty continuous relationship with South Philadelphia and the Vine Street expressway isn't great, but it has at least one clear passageway going up to Fairmount Park/Philadelphia Museum of Art. Detroit seems to have boxed in downtown from all sides and then does so again with Midtown and some other adjacent parts of the city.
Just curious, but are there any plans in either city to sort of "cap" portions of these freeways to connect the neighborhoods on either sides of them and have parks or development over the expressways? It'd likely be cheaper than something like the Big Dig in Boston (capping iinstead of getting rid of an elevated expressway and then having to dig and cap) and would probably go a ways in making both places more pleasant. It could particularly great for Detroit in making downtown and midtown better connected.
Not really for Detroit. In fact, they're planning on widening I-94 through Midtown. I suppose they could add caps over the expansion, but there hasn't been much said about it.
There have been visions to cap Fisher Freeway (I-75 between Downtown and Midtown), but nothing official.
MDOT is considering the idea of turning 375 into an at-grade boulevard. It's not a lot, but it'd at least connect Lafayette Park to Downtown.
Philadelphia has a bigger footprint and includes more counties across more states than Detroit, and far more wealth city and metro. Ive been to Detroit and suburbs there are indeed very nice wealthy areas, but as a whole the Philly metro definitely wins, and there has been an influx of increased wealth across many of the counties outside of Philly, Chester and Montgomery Counties flirting with the top 25 wealthiest counties in the nation recently, I see Chester county continuing to inch closer to the 15/20 mark over the next decade or so.
The metro foot print infrastructure (not talking about population) isn't much different in size from each other as I go to both metros on a weekly basis. While Philly has Camden,NJ - city pop. 77,344(linked by the Ben Franlkin Bridge over the Delaware River) and Wilmington -city pop. 70,851 the Detroit Metro area includes Windsor, Canada -city pop. 210,891 (linked by the Ambassador Bridge and underwater tunnels) and Ann Arbor -city pop. 114,925. The terminals at Detroit's airport (especially Midfield) are much larger than Philly's. Detroit may lack row houses but Philly lacks the classic pre 1950's skyscrapers.
Detroit when it had more intact while at it's peak. You can one of the street car lines running along Woodward Avenue. Keep in mind Philly hasn't lost as much population and housing stock.
Nice pics. So does Philly have alot of neighborhoods that have single family detached homes or is that just the NW side???
Mainly just the Northwest Section. However, there are some in the Northeast, some in the Southwest, some in the far sections of West Philadelphia along the City Avenue corridor, and some in the very northern sections of the city in the Oak Lane districts
Just curious, but are there any plans in either city to sort of "cap" portions of these freeways to connect the neighborhoods on either sides of them and have parks or development over the expressways? It'd likely be cheaper than something like the Big Dig in Boston (capping iinstead of getting rid of an elevated expressway and then having to dig and cap) and would probably go a ways in making both places more pleasant. It could particularly great for Detroit in making downtown and midtown better connected.
There have been serious talks for years now to cap the Vine Street expressway north of Philly with a park, and a possible line Rail Line. A good portion of I-95 will be capped first though to reconnect Center City with the Delaware River waterfront.
There have been serious talks for years now to cap the Vine Street expressway north of Philly with a park, and a possible line Rail Line. A good portion of I-95 will be capped first though to reconnect Center City with the Delaware River waterfront.
That's great news. I hope they do a variety of things rather than just a park. Have you read about the cap liner they built in Columbus, Ohio? Instead of a full cap over a freeway, it was just widening one of the crossings over the freeway. The big difference though is that with that widening there was also installation of retail space on both sides of the crossing. Even the modest, low-rise buildings lining the crossing had a significant impact on the freeway noise for people making the crossing and the placement of the shops made a continuous retail corridor that connected both sides of the crossing--all done at far less expense than a full cap. I've also seen some projects with elevated highways in Taipei and Tokyo where there were large sort of mini-malls built right underneath the highways and it acted more or less as a vibrant meeting point for both sides of the neighborhood that the highway cut through.
Summersm343, I checked it your right. Philly has 19 and Detroit has 13 built pre 1950. Outside of NYC and Chicago that's pretty good compared to other cities around the country.
Wasn't there a height limit for a while in Philly? More of those probably would have been taller without it.
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