Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
What has happened in the Harrisburg area in the last 3 decades?
I grew up in South Central PA (Shippensburg area) and remember it as an idyllic place with Norman Rockwell towns, beautiful mountains, and virtually no crime -- and no police presence oddly enough. I was a child then, but I think at that time Shippensburg had only one police officer, an elderly gentleman who struck fear in the hearts of no one. And later a second younger cop who was considered by the locals to be an imbecile. The State Police were the only real police force, and they were rarely seen and never needed. It was a place where union jobs were plentiful and local government worked. There was virtually no poverty and the town and countryside was clean and neat. Chambersburg had a so-called cardboard city, but compared to current poverty in Dallas, TX and Memphis, TN (both places in which I have lived) the "slums" looked downright middleclass.
I ask this because my job has given me the oppurtunity to move back to PA from Dallas, TX. I left PA when I was a teen, but over the years I have visited it regularly. I have not been impressed with the PA "progress." But just visiting it it is hard to get the complete picture. In the Shippensburg area I see beautiful old farms being bulldozed for trailer parks and cheap apartment housing.
I attended two street festivals in Harrisburg in the last few years, and they were both a joke. What ever happened to Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, etc. playing City Island?
When I was a kid I was quite impressed with Harrisburg and dreamed of escaping the quiet, sleepy surronding farm area to make my fortune there in the big city. Now it looks like a hick town to me with dissappearing union jobs and a local government that is out to lunch. It is looking more and more like a Sarah Palin pep rally waiting to happen. I understand she played Shippensburg to an enthusiastic audience during the presidental elections.
Am I crazy for even considering moving back to PA? I would love to see rolling green hills and mountains again. Some of those Pennsylvania valleys are incredibly beautiful. And the small towns are awash in Revolutionary and Colonial history. To live there would seem like paradise compared to the hot, humid concrete jungle of Dallas, TX -- and compared to the bland, boring Texas countryside, which I have to drive an hour in any direction to even see.
I would love to feast my eyes on a lush, green valley dotted with industrious German farms built before the Constitution was even written.
But I have no desire to see long-gray, god-awful, depressing winters in a rusting, collapsing industrial area with disgrutled, disenfranchised people shuffling about in sweat pants and ill fitting winter coats waiting for the next right-wing pep rally to come to town so that they can voice their undying, loyal support for the politcal ideas that are destroying their city and the life style their parents enjoyed. Last summer when I visited PA I observed a tea-party in full swing in Chambersburg.
Not that we don't have plenty of right-wing madness in TX.
I would love to hear any thoughts from Harrisburg area dwellers about Harrisburg and the surronding area. I would probably be living in Carlisle, as that would be close to my work, and I remember it as a very nice place. However, I am not sure what the offerings there (or in Hrsbg area) are in the way of upscale apartment living. I assume that I will either have to take an apartment in a "ghetto" apartment complex or try to find something in a downtown townhouse or row house. Although I suspect the college may have downtown prices pushed up.
Am I crazy for leaving a growing, major metropolitan area, with mild winters, and big city amenities for the mountains, valleys, and miserable gray winters of PA?
Harrisburg city has in the last ten years attracted a number of restaurants and nightspots and some formerly inner city neighborhoods have been redeveloped into attractive housing options for young professionals of all races.
Harrisburg is not a major league metropolitan area and does not and will not have marquee sports, shopping, and cultural features that one would find in Dallas, Houston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, etc. It does have sufficient proximity to several major league metros so you have your choice of taking in some of these events, especially if you don't need to be at work 7 am the next morning.
Central Pennsylvania remains one of the most socially and politically conservative areas anywhere near the Northeast Corridor penumbra.
The area is visually varied, both for good and ill. You can turn a corner in any southcentral PA zip code and find tasteful historic spots cheek by jowl with ticky-tack commercial strips, or run-down hovels, or modest but proud neighborhoods. Often I feel many communities put their worst face forward to the visitor or highway passer-by, especially when they are caught in traffic bottlenecks of remaining under- or mis-designed highways of 30-40 years ago.
Carlisle is a community that seems to be somewhat more balanced between the U.S. Army bird-colonel-and-up influence and the hourly-worker-at-monster-warehouse set. Dickinson College and Dickinson School of Law somewhat moderate the political conservatism that remains ever-present in the area. It's far from being a liberal haven like, say, Burlington VT or Ithaca NY, but it will be incrementally less reflexively right-wing than, say, Chambersburg or Shippensburg.
South and east of Blue Mountain, PA is much more prosperous than north and west. While deindustrialization continues, it's not fair to categorize southeast and southcentral PA with the same brush as the steel mill towns in the Mon and Beaver Valleys. This section of PA maintains relative prosperity compared to the state and the nation, and is not a "rusting, collapsing industrial area" - we are decades into a white collar service industry transition.
The greater Harrisburg area lost a load of professional jobs in the last few decades. The area has suffered from a massive 'brain drain' where students go to college out of state never to return, and professionals laid off from closing/down-sizing companies relocate to find work and survive. The Pollyanna Patriot trumpets the addition of low paying service jobs, or any job growth for that matter, but the situation is far from promising. A recent Forbes list (it was linked somewhere here) counted the area as having (relatively) lower unemployment, but indicated it was the only major metro on the list to be experiencing decreasing wages.
Harrisburg city has become a playground for what I call Hayseed Hipsters: folks who see the city as an up-and-coming outpost of Brooklyn style cultcha. Like groups gathering to smash a piano in the name of Art These are the bright young things whose personal situations allow them to stay in their familiar zone of comfort (maybe moving across the river), and be close enough to major metros to indulge themselves with variety as the mood takes them. Some monied developers from outside have moved in to profit from the Harrisburg scene, and the HHs view the presence of outside investment as proof of their 100% no doubt genuine hipsterism. Probably harmless: they're contributing taxes and they don't have to drive home from the bars
The greater Harrisburg area lost a load of professional jobs in the last few decades. The area has suffered from a massive 'brain drain' where students go to college out of state never to return, and professionals laid off from closing/down-sizing companies relocate to find work and survive. The Pollyanna Patriot trumpets the addition of low paying service jobs, or any job growth for that matter, but the situation is far from promising. A recent Forbes list (it was linked somewhere here) counted the area as having (relatively) lower unemployment, but indicated it was the only major metro on the list to be experiencing decreasing wages.
Harrisburg city has become a playground for what I call Hayseed Hipsters: folks who see the city as an up-and-coming outpost of Brooklyn style cultcha. Like groups gathering to smash a piano in the name of Art These are the bright young things whose personal situations allow them to stay in their familiar zone of comfort (maybe moving across the river), and be close enough to major metros to indulge themselves with variety as the mood takes them. Some monied developers from outside have moved in to profit from the Harrisburg scene, and the HHs view the presence of outside investment as proof of their 100% no doubt genuine hipsterism. Probably harmless: they're contributing taxes and they don't have to drive home from the bars
Are you talking about me? The scenesters in Harrisburg aren't as snobby as you make them out to be. Much more down to the Earth than the real hipsters in Philly, NY, etc. The brain drain is certainly true but I think that has begun to reverse. The very fact that Harrisburg has these "Hayseed Hipsters" as you call them is kind of admitting that.
BTW, Forbes lists can be taken with a grain of salt. Other lists have the Harrisburg metro being one of the best places to raise a family, best value and other nonsense. In reality if it works for you -- good. If it doesn't then move. Domestic migration continues to be positive (including international migration), the economy is in fact doing quite well despite the struggles throughout the rest of the country.
What has happened in the Harrisburg area in the last 3 decades?
I grew up in South Central PA (Shippensburg area) and remember it as an idyllic place with Norman Rockwell towns, beautiful mountains, and virtually no crime -- and no police presence oddly enough. I was a child then, but I think at that time Shippensburg had only one police officer, an elderly gentleman who struck fear in the hearts of no one. And later a second younger cop who was considered by the locals to be an imbecile. The State Police were the only real police force, and they were rarely seen and never needed. It was a place where union jobs were plentiful and local government worked. There was virtually no poverty and the town and countryside was clean and neat. Chambersburg had a so-called cardboard city, but compared to current poverty in Dallas, TX and Memphis, TN (both places in which I have lived) the "slums" looked downright middleclass.
I ask this because my job has given me the oppurtunity to move back to PA from Dallas, TX. I left PA when I was a teen, but over the years I have visited it regularly. I have not been impressed with the PA "progress." But just visiting it it is hard to get the complete picture. In the Shippensburg area I see beautiful old farms being bulldozed for trailer parks and cheap apartment housing.
I attended two street festivals in Harrisburg in the last few years, and they were both a joke. What ever happened to Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, etc. playing City Island?
When I was a kid I was quite impressed with Harrisburg and dreamed of escaping the quiet, sleepy surronding farm area to make my fortune there in the big city. Now it looks like a hick town to me with dissappearing union jobs and a local government that is out to lunch. It is looking more and more like a Sarah Palin pep rally waiting to happen. I understand she played Shippensburg to an enthusiastic audience during the presidental elections.
Am I crazy for even considering moving back to PA? I would love to see rolling green hills and mountains again. Some of those Pennsylvania valleys are incredibly beautiful. And the small towns are awash in Revolutionary and Colonial history. To live there would seem like paradise compared to the hot, humid concrete jungle of Dallas, TX -- and compared to the bland, boring Texas countryside, which I have to drive an hour in any direction to even see.
I would love to feast my eyes on a lush, green valley dotted with industrious German farms built before the Constitution was even written.
But I have no desire to see long-gray, god-awful, depressing winters in a rusting, collapsing industrial area with disgrutled, disenfranchised people shuffling about in sweat pants and ill fitting winter coats waiting for the next right-wing pep rally to come to town so that they can voice their undying, loyal support for the politcal ideas that are destroying their city and the life style their parents enjoyed. Last summer when I visited PA I observed a tea-party in full swing in Chambersburg.
Not that we don't have plenty of right-wing madness in TX.
I would love to hear any thoughts from Harrisburg area dwellers about Harrisburg and the surronding area. I would probably be living in Carlisle, as that would be close to my work, and I remember it as a very nice place. However, I am not sure what the offerings there (or in Hrsbg area) are in the way of upscale apartment living. I assume that I will either have to take an apartment in a "ghetto" apartment complex or try to find something in a downtown townhouse or row house. Although I suspect the college may have downtown prices pushed up.
Am I crazy for leaving a growing, major metropolitan area, with mild winters, and big city amenities for the mountains, valleys, and miserable gray winters of PA?
I'm a bit confused by your post. So your liberal but dream of the day when this area was much more conservative? You admire the small town qualities but worried that it hasn't become "big city" enough?
Harrisburg peaked at nearly 40 murders per year in the late 1960's. I'd hardly say the area was idyllic and free of crime.
Anyway, the city itself has come a long way. There are vibrant, historic neighborhoods with young people, old retired liberals and then some very diverse areas that struggle with a lot of crime. The suburbs have changed too. Camp Hill, noted for being conservative and lily white, is changing. Some of the other older suburbs are declining as some of the poor in Harrisburg moves out. Outside of the older suburbs it's Anytown USA with every type of chain store you can imagine (okay, except some of the stuff only the large metros have). The Carlisle area is still pretty stuffy and conservative, IMO. Mostly because even many of the people moving there are just old retired military families. On the east shore Hershey has become very diverse and we can't forget Dauphin county voted for Obama last year.
I don't think you'll be too disappointed, honestly. You are coming from Dallas. If you are really a liberal you will love being so close to Washington, Baltimore, Philly and New York.
Sounds like your hung up on the right wing pollitics... The liberal ideas is what happen to Harrisburg. You only get out of it what you put into it.
Reading back over my post I can see how you got that impression. However, I can't find a way to go back and edit it now that it's posted. I typed that up quickly and see now that it should have been about half that length and less overtly political.
No, I am not hung up on right wing pollitics. However, I do find in-your-face conservativism to be a quality of life negative.
You make a good point, "You only get out of it what you put into it." However, sometimes we get out of it what other people put into it. And if what other people are putting into it is not conducive to a quality life that can be an issue.
This isn't a forum for political debate so I hesitate to open this can of worms and apologize for doing so, but I fail to see how liberalism is causing de-industrialization and falling wages, as another poster has noted.
I'm a bit confused by your post. So your liberal but dream of the day when this area was much more conservative?
I apologize for the confusion. Yes, I am a liberal. No, I dream of a day when PA was largely unionized, had effective minimum wage laws, affordable higher education, and because of those LIBERAL ideas had a population that was upwardly mobile and a middle class that was growing. All built on an industrial base that provided a healthy tax base for the infrastructure and was protected from foreign bottom feeders by intelligent tariff laws. That is the liberalism that made the PA of my childhood idyllic.
Yes, PA was very conservative socially during those years. But it also had a healthy toleration for eccentricity and was open to political debate and compromise. My parents were deeply religious people who were appalled by the 1960s youth generation, but they never compromised on their notion of social responsiblity and social justice. Those kind of conservatives were indeed the people that made PA great. Where are they today?
Quote:
You admire the small town qualities but worried that it hasn't become "big city" enough?
Not really. I have reached a point in my life that the fact that a big name act is not playing every weekend in my burg no longer bothers me. I think that the best situation would be small town qualities close enough to urban qualities that both are accessable. Harrisburg at the time I was growing up in PA seemed to have some big city qualities that I suspect have been on the wane. But perhaps it was my limited point of view. My point of view was mostly as a kid in the back seat of the family car looking out the back window at the night sky lit up by the capitol dome as we headed west over the river and thinking what a great metropolis it was. That and the hotdog stands on the streets. And there was a mall or shopping center downtown I think, but for the life of me I don't remember what it was called.
Quote:
I don't think you'll be too disappointed, honestly. You are coming from Dallas. If you are really a liberal you will love being so close to Washington, Baltimore, Philly and New York.
Being close to DC, Baltimore, and Philly would be a definant plus. But NYC would be a bit of a drive. And yes, I am really a liberal. Not sure why one needs to be a liberal to love being within driving distance of an inner-city Jazz dive or a state-of-the-art 100,000 seat sporting venue, but nevertheless those things would be great.
When I was a kid I was quite impressed with Harrisburg and dreamed of escaping the quiet, sleepy surronding farm area to make my fortune there in the big city. Now it looks like a hick town to me with dissappearing union jobs and a local government that is out to lunch. It is looking more and more like a Sarah Palin pep rally waiting to happen. I understand she played Shippensburg to an enthusiastic audience during the presidental elections.
Your problem is that you never had an accurate impression of Harrisburg. Sort of like when you return to elementary school and the hallways seem too narrow and ceilings seem too low. Harrisburg was never a big city. Yet, your child mind thought it was. Since you have lived in a larger city in Texas, your impression of Harrisburg has been adjusted---like the elementary school. Harrisburg has actually been evolving into a rather hip place compared to the past.
As for bands playing City Island, that's not a reflection of Harrisburg, but a reflection of how different the music industry is today. Even Pittsburgh often misses out on being a concert stop these days---and it's metro population is in the millions that is known for being music lovers.
With Dallas having the fourth largest population in the country, you'll find yourself in a difficult position if you compare most places to Dallas.
The scenesters in Harrisburg aren't as snobby as you make them out to be.
I can assure you they are not as hipper-than-thou as the scenesters in Dallas.
Quote:
The brain drain is certainly true but I think that has begun to reverse.
I wish Texas had a brain to drain. Dallas did get its village idiot back last year. Which come to think of it seems like the opposite of brain drain.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
These are the bright young things whose personal situations allow them to stay in their familiar zone of comfort (maybe moving across the river), and be close enough to major metros to indulge themselves with variety as the mood takes them. Some monied developers from outside have moved in to profit from the Harrisburg scene, and the HHs view the presence of outside investment as proof of their 100% no doubt genuine hipsterism. Probably harmless: they're contributing taxes and they don't have to drive home from the bars 
