Where do you see philly in 20 years (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh: real estate, 2015)

[AbdiKony]

I saw a interesting post on the DC forum.To the people here, what do you think

Philadelphia, especially the neighborhoods outside of center city.
Delco
Montco
Bucks

will be like in 20 years?

[rainrock]

Center City/University City going to be awesome. West,North,SW Philly roots are deep and its going to stay pretty much the same. If you are pulling for gentrification here I dont see it happening. Northeast? Decline .

Northwest uptick.

Delco transition should slow down as decline struggles to reach the towns with single family homes.

Chester ,Montgomery and Bucks will continue to be the 3 wealthiest counties in PA.

[1ondoner]

This was in the news last week

Slow-growing metro Philly falls to No. 7 nationally

More people left Philadelphia for elsewhere in the country than moved in last year. Had it not been for a high number of births, and an influx of immigrants, the city's population would have fallen, the data showed.

Philadelphia gains population despite challenges

PA population change by county
Census data: Population change by county | Philly

More people are moving to the South. Interestingly, before moving to Philly, I had Dallas-Fort Worth high up on my list. And I think lower COL and warmer weather is driving many to the South.

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by AbdiKony

I saw a interesting post on the DC forum.To the people here, what do you think

Philadelphia, especially the neighborhoods outside of center city.
Delco
Montco
Bucks

will be like in 20 years?

20 years ? Who knows? No one really predicted the gentrification/surgence in, say, Fishtown in the 90s for instance.

[PhilliesPhan2013]

I am very optimistic about what life in Philly will be like! For sure, the area around 30th Street Station will be very lively! As a 20 year old Millennial, I want to stay in Philly after I finish college.

[Flyers Girl]

I would point you to the Philly 2035 thread: Philadelphia 2035

[thedirtypirate]

I honestly am coming around to the idea of building another pipeline. Texas companies want to come here. The port redevelopment is underway and will add another set of blue collar jobs. The Life Sciences industry that is driving the downtown growth will most likely continue to expand in UCity and the Navy Yard. Comcast is trying with all their might to attract start ups and other tech companies to surround them in center city.

Then of course is the real accelerator sitting in the wings. Reducing the business income and wage taxes, the two biggest killers of Philadelphia. I seriously do have hope that the property tax uniformity reforms will have seriously good consequences for our city. We shall see what happens to the current Bill in Harrisburg.

Outside of economics, it's all about the schools, schools, schools. I like Kenney's focus to rebuild the community centers, playgrounds, firehouse headquarters, and police academy. Too much is falling apart.

It is going to take more time but I do believe the city is headed in a healthy direction. As noted by what 1ondoner posted, due to the aging demographics and negative domestic migration the population for our region is going to be pretty slow. What can we say? White people that make the majority of our population just are not having babies like our Hispanic counterparts in Texas and the south. However, that doesn't mean the region can't fix up the bruised up areas that too long have been neglected.

[1ondoner]

It's interesting to note that Chicago is experiencing a decline in population although the city is much more vibrant, open and cheaper COL than Philly.



I want to postulate again that the changes in demographics are because of the brutal winters we've had in the last few years because most of the migration is to the South.

[PhillyPhan95]

I'm not worried that Philly is growing relatively slowly compared to other regions as I believe we have more quality growth happening. Between 2000 and 2014 Philly had the second largest percentage of growth among young people with college degrees, second only to San Diego. Philly doesn't tend to do well in %change comparisons because its already much larger than most places. We experienced a lot of out-migration, but many of the people leaving are not as educated as the people that are replacing them. The lastest figures show Philadelphia remaining a popular place for immigrants, which IMO is always a good thing.

The foundations here are very solid and I can imagine over the years Philly will become an increasingly attractive place to do business. I believe in the future more employers will want to be near an educated workforce in cities that have excellent regional rail access, which are things that Philly exceeds in. I truly believe the high cost of building rail lines these days in addition to the cookie-cutter nature of western suburbs will prevent cities like Houston from growing as strongly later in the 21st century. Young people want to be able to walk places nowadays and want to rent or longer before they move into homes. This is a good sign for our multifamily market as I frankly don't see that trend going away any time soon in an increasingly mobile world. Since we are good at attracting young educated people, when they grow up they're likely going to want to stay in the region at least, and hopefully more so in the city, further fueling single family infill construction that has been booming recently. As thedirtypirate said, schools are absolutely key for keeping young people in the city when they want to start a family. If I were a parent, there's only a few schools in the city I would be comfortable sending my children too (e.g Penn Alexander for K-8 and Central or Masterman for high school).

Also, with rents likely to continue rising in space-constrained NYC, Boston, and DC, Philly will become more and more attractive for companies looking to open East Coast offices in a big city. If we ever build true high speed rail along the NEC, look for Philadelphia to become an even more popular place to relocate for firms priced out of other East Coast CBD markets. We really do offer a lot for comparatively lower prices. Fortunately, it seems that there is finally enough support from the business community and the state and city governments to lower wage taxes while raising commercial real estate taxes to make the city more business-friendly. It's really a no-brainer change now that the proposal does not allow the real estate tax raise to apply to residential properties - that's how most cities (save Detroit) do it. As the other "Phan" mentioned, I expect the area around 30th Street and the rail yards to be developed into something quite extraordinary.

As for blue-collar job growth, Philadelphia stands to gain A LOT from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreeement. I can tell you it's no coincidence that the Delaware River was dredged to 45 feet to accommodate bigger ships, that Philadelphia Port is looking to expand, that Philadelphia airport is looking to expand (because the NYC airports are approaching air traffic capacity), that natural gas proponents want to build a new pipeline to make Philadelphia an energy hub, and that the TPP is being negotiated after Chinese investors have decided to construct a "New Panama Canal" that the U.S. won't have control over. That's why Philadelphia was identified as an emerging global logistics hub. Philadelphia is centrally located on and has rail/highway access to the ever-growing northeast megalopolis in addition to rail/highway connections to growing inland markets like the Lehigh Valley (which is a growing distribution hub in of itself, where Amazon is experimenting with supply chain methods), the Harrisburg-Lancaster-York triangle, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and Pittsburgh.

Overall, people should be optimistic about the city and region's future. I certainly am. It appears that we've weathered the storm of deindustrialization in the U.S. and are poised to shift to an economy based on innovation, education, and professional services. Philadelphia has been a bastion of stability in the 20th and now 21st century, never growing as fast during booms and never falling as far during busts. Philadelphia has very quietly positioned itself for some solid years ahead. It's unique and authentic, and I think its best days are still ahead of it.

[cpomp]

The Washington Post had a very snotty article about the DC area surpassing Philadelphia by a few thousand people, as if we should be crying about that.

20 years, in short, the city as a whole will improve slowly unless there are some changes to the government which could expedite the improvement.

And I think the burbs will be more or less the same, which is already great. Chester County and Montgomery County will only continue to get wealthier, Delaware and Bucks will see towns near the city border struggle, and towns further into the counties flourish.

At this point, I think South Jersey is the areas biggest dead weight factor, so we will see how that changes over the next few decades.