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.
Manhattan is done? Washington Heights, Inwood and all of Harlem must've really cleaned up since I've seen them last. Even parts of Hells Kitchen on the west side and the LES are very dirty and grimy in appearance. In fact, Manhattan still has a national poverty rate over 20%! Quite sad, in the borough of billionaires.
Brooklyn is almost done huh? Yeah, that nearly 30% population of people living below the national poverty line is no concern at all, especially in a city as expensive as New York.
Queens has many parts that are years from gentrification and of course The Bronx is the poorest county and Congressional District in The United States. Staten Island is mostly suburban but has it's parts that are just plain ugly.
It must be nice to look at your city through such lenses. You seem like a transplant enamored with your new city, but believe me NYC still has a dirty and dark side.
Nothing to be ashamed of, Philadelphia and parts of the East Coast were the "workshops of the world". I'd say many neighborhoods are doing quite well considering entire industries were swept out from under their feet.
^^And yes, all those pictures are in the city limits of Philadelphia.
he/she probably means cleaned up as in barely no empty lots or bombed out buildings.
but i agree with your post as well but thats not what he/she means.
If Philadelphia were "prettier," then much more of it would have gentrified by now. Then people would be complaining about the good ole' days, hipster invasion, yuppification, etc. It's nearly impossible to have a city with large areas full of well-manicured brownstones, tree-lined streets, and easy-peasy subway access that's 100% "authentic." Just like it's nearly impossible to have a hot chick that no other guys hit on.
well gentrification is already spreading in philly. But its not as quick as other cities. I hear by temple its gentrifying pretty quick though.
I agree that Brooklyn also has plenty of bad areas, and yes, Brownsville/ENY is the worst neighborhood in NYC, but, still, there's no comparison with North Philly.
North Philly, (and parts of West/SW Philly) are much worse than Brownsville/ENY, IMO. Much higher crime, horrible abandonment everywhere (very little vacant anything in Brownsville/ENY), super low property values, etc.
So, yeah, Brooklyn has lots of bad too, but much less (proportionally) than Philly, and the bad areas in Brooklyn aren't nearly as bad as Philly.
i stay in both places. philly ghettos have a more bombed out look, but as far as crime its all the same to me. the same stuff i see in brownsville i see it in philly. In philly its not like theirs a warzone going on. You dont immediately see people killing eachother when you go to philly. The north side of philly is just the bad side of the city just as south bronx, eastern bk, southern queens are the bad sides of nyc.
Philly.... its not the most aesthetically pleasing city in the northeast, not even close to NYC nor Boston.
This is a misnomer. Regarding aesthetics I would put the Chestnut Hill/Mount Airy neighborhoods of Philadelphia with the best of anything NYC/Boston has to offer. Area is spectacularly set along the Wissahickon Gorge where elevation rises to 500 ft and you have 200 ft drops down to the Wissahickon Creek.In fact Money Magazine ranked Chestnut Hill as the 2nd best urban neighborhood in the USA behind Beverly Hills. Overall I would agree that Philly is more gritty and has a slower pace of gentrification than either NYC or Boston though.
Here is an article regarding the middle & upper class of NYC moving to Philadelphia in significant numbers, approximately 4,000-5,000 per year since 2005. With high speed regional rail on the horizon it will be a 30 minute commute between NYC/Philly, bodes well for the future population of Philadelphia.
You've seen us(NY-Delphians) on playgrounds in Chestnut Hill and West Mount Airy, all in black, clutching espressos, waxing ecstatically about how "cheap!" and "pretty!" everything is here, while our Ramones-clad little ones run around giddily. We may look and sound insufferable, but the truth is, we're stunned. Everything is so much nicer—the houses, the people, the landscape—that it can take months for post-traumatic effects to wane.
“We could only afford to live in Queens—why the hell would we move to Queens? For Indian food?” “Who cares about the Met, off-Broadway and the new ‘It’ restaurant if you can’t afford it, especially with young kids?”
Now, the responses to moving to Philadelphia: “We got a five-bedroom house with a yard and a pool for less than our cruddy apartment!” “Brooklyn says it’s diverse, but neighborhood by neighborhood, it’s not. In our neighborhood in Mount Airy, there are black kids, white kids, mixed kids, lesbian couples, mixed couples—it’s nirvana!” “We can do our work anywhere, so long as we’re within spitting distance of New York and D.C.—why the hell didn’t we come here earlier?”
This is a misnomer. Regarding aesthetics I would put the Chestnut Hill/Mount Airy neighborhoods of Philadelphia with the best of anything NYC/Boston has to offer. Area is spectacularly set along the Wissahickon Gorge where elevation rises to 500 ft and you have 200 ft drops down to the Wissahickon Creek.In fact Money Magazine ranked Chestnut Hill as the 2nd best urban neighborhood in the USA behind Beverly Hills. Overall I would agree that Philly is more gritty and has a slower pace of gentrification than either NYC or Boston though.
Here is an article regarding the middle & upper class of NYC moving to Philadelphia in significant numbers, approximately 4,000-5,000 per year since 2005. With high speed regional rail on the horizon it will be a 30 minute commute between NYC/Philly, bodes well for the future population of Philadelphia.
You've seen us(NY-Delphians) on playgrounds in Chestnut Hill and West Mount Airy, all in black, clutching espressos, waxing ecstatically about how "cheap!" and "pretty!" everything is here, while our Ramones-clad little ones run around giddily. We may look and sound insufferable, but the truth is, we're stunned. Everything is so much nicer—the houses, the people, the landscape—that it can take months for post-traumatic effects to wane.
“We could only afford to live in Queens—why the hell would we move to Queens? For Indian food?†“Who cares about the Met, off-Broadway and the new ‘It’ restaurant if you can’t afford it, especially with young kids?â€
Now, the responses to moving to Philadelphia: “We got a five-bedroom house with a yard and a pool for less than our cruddy apartment!†“Brooklyn says it’s diverse, but neighborhood by neighborhood, it’s not. In our neighborhood in Mount Airy, there are black kids, white kids, mixed kids, lesbian couples, mixed couples—it’s nirvana!†“We can do our work anywhere, so long as we’re within spitting distance of New York and D.C.—why the hell didn’t we come here earlier?â€
Though it's not like Brooklyn is emptying out anytime soon. It's a pretty small pool of people moving from Brooklyn to Philly and there are steady number of people still pouring into Brooklyn from elsewhere. It is a shame that people are getting priced out of Brooklyn though--also, I think Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill are much more the exception rather than the rule in terms of integration, right? Philadelphia seemed to have some pretty strong delineations between neighborhoods and groups.
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.
