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Depends where in Philly. A few years ago, I was doing 3 nights per week in a high rise condo a block from Rittenhouse. My frame of reference is Boston. Walking from Rittenhouse to the office towers, the people on the street aren’t much different than walking from Back Bay to the Financial District. Recall that the Starbucks near Rittenhouse made the national news for calling the cops on two black guys in hoodies who were just sitting there minding their own business waiting to meet someone. In my experience, Center City has the same “eject the bums” thing as any other city. Business casual sitting in a Starbucks not buying anything wouldn’t draw a remark. Hoodies and not buying anything is 911 unless the hoodie had Penn on it in Rittenhouse.
I was referring to a transplanted resident's day-to-day routine of commuting from, say, Collingswood to UC or North Philly to Wilmington, hanging out on South Street or in Passyunk, shopping at Cherry Hill or KOP, etc. that involves living or working in Philly proper and the likelihood of exposure of Philly's native Black culture in particular. That's not to say there aren't happening areas that are less popular with Black people in Philly (I know Fishtown doesn't have the best reputation among Black folks, at least historically), but even then, there's usually another local demographic that's well-represented. Although we already know that the difference in the size of the transplant populations in both cities obviously plays a role here, one other factor that's at work here is the disdain that DC/PG's native Black population has toward NoVA which means they haven't really dispersed into Virginia, but NoVA also happens to be one of the most desired parts of the metro for transplants to live in. Alexandria has a decently-sized Black population along with several Black historic and cultural sites of interest, but that's about it for the closer-in parts of NoVA so that also could logically explain a transplant's lack of exposure to DC's native Black culture, especially if they also work in NoVA (or Bethesda). Although Philly natives of any race won't have the most flattering words for what lies across the city limits to the east or south, several suburbs do have large native populations in place with diversity levels not too dissimilar from Philly's (e.g., Camden, Burlington, Willingboro, Woodbury, Trenton, Chester, Upper Darby, Wilmington). Although most transplants to Philly seem to opt to live in the city proper, a fair amount of travel throughout the metro area would most likely result in a fair amount of exposure to natives and their cultural influences.
Another point worth mentioning is that even in the absence of Black people, Philly's Black cultural influence is still more palpable in the core of the city due to all of the murals that are very representative of Black Philadelphia. That was one thing I particularly liked about the city and the murals fit in well with the gritty aesthetic. And although it was only a temporary installation, "All Power to All People" was probably the dopest example of public artwork I'd read about until "Rumors of War" turned classical statuary on its head last year. Philly simply has more freedom to allow local public art to be exhibited since a huge chunk of its core doesn't belong to the federal government (now it did take the city way too long to erect a statue of a famous Black Philadelphian at City Hall, but it turned out well).
You don't find many people working for the government in posh DC neighborhoods. This is sort of an outdated stereotype. There are tons of physicians, BigLaw attorneys, PR specialists (who can make $250,000+), contractors (who can make $160,000+), etc. It's not necessarily that so many people work for the government. It's more the case that there simply aren't many people in careers that can push them above the $300,000 mark by their mid 30s.
I will post some data later when I have the chance so we can all see the income distribution once you get to the Top 25% of college educated earners.
Right, I agree with this. I agree the government stereotype is overdone, but I was trying to imply that DC's main industries (government, law, politics, consulting, etc.) really aren't going to make you rich. There will be rich partners and executives (and even certain types of physicians), but that is no different than any major city. You don't find the number of truly wealthy individuals like you would see in NYC and SF.
You don't find many people working for the government in posh DC neighborhoods. This is sort of an outdated stereotype. There are tons of physicians, BigLaw attorneys, PR specialists (who can make $250,000+), contractors (who can make $160,000+), etc. It's not necessarily that so many people work for the government. It's more the case that there simply aren't many people in careers that can push them above the $300,000 mark by their mid 30s.
I will post some data later when I have the chance so we can all see the income distribution once you get to the Top 25% of college educated earners.
This is my exact point, and how I wonder how much further the DC real estate market can climb before even a couple making 250K a year combined cannot afford a single family home in the metro.
DC has a VERY distinctive "Black accent". Other cities may have a more distinctive "City accent" but for Black accents DC is right at the top of distinction with New Orleans, Memphis, and Baltimore. I could be in Istanbul or Tokyo and make out a "Black DC accent" from a mile away. More distinct than LA which I can't tell much difference from the Bay, or GA vs the Carolinas which all blur in similarly, or Midwest cities which mostly sound the same.
I'd have to disagree with that a bit. For one, the SC/GA Lowcountry Geechee accent is one of the most distinct Black accents in the whole country. Also native Atlanta accents are pretty distinct, especially compared to any in NC.
Of course you'll see Black people all over DC including natives, but due to the unique status of the city as the nation's capital, the civic heart of the city is dominated by federal institutions. The last place I'd tell a first-time visitor to go to get a taste of authentic local culture is downtown/the National Mall (although Stan's is an exception). SW DC, although the city's smallest quadrant, was ground zero for urban renewal in the U.S. and its Black (and Jewish) population was basically swept away; today it feels more like Inner Harbor East or Arlington. Adams Morgan draws a pretty diverse crowd but isn't particularly Black.
What I'm saying is that it's not all that unbelievable to me that a non-Black transplant to DC from another part of the country could have a more or less normal routine that didn't involve exposure to heavy doses of local Black culture. IMO that would be a wee bit harder to do in Philly comparatively speaking.
DC and Philly feel the same here IMO. No difference. You're a little more likely to end up driving through black neighborhoods in Philly-particularly blighted ones. But not really visiting them.
Im pretty sure the data you are presenting is from 2010 which is over 10 years old.
Philadelphia has seen a major influx of immigrants since these numbers were released to be fair. I shared a NYT article in a previous post highlighting how strong the immigrant population is in Philadelphia.
Things DC does well - Public transit, White Collar jobs/economy, Government, Beautification, Modern Highway systems, TOD development with strong regional planning collaboration.
Things DC does not do so well - Traffic, no clear identity because it is so transient, expensive COL (500k housing budget goes very little), so so arts scene for a city of its size, look alike suburbs.
Things Philadelphia does well - Arts community, commuter rail transit, diversified economy with a mix of blue union and white collar jobs, Character, history Identity and culture, Quaint and historic suburbs.
Things Philadelphia does not do so well - Modern highways, TOD development to take advantage of its large suburban transit system, A little gritty in the city (I mean that is our Flyers Mascot), rough around the edges attitude, economy could be a bit stronger (although the biotech/pharmaceuticals and finance industries are growing strongly).
IMO: DC, PHL and BOS are all about the same caliber and have advantages and disadvantages all around for certain categories. Philadelphia is no slouch and neither is DC.
I am curious to see how the DC real estate market though can continue to increase without repercussions, it is starting to exceed the NYC market in some regards for how expensive it is becoming.
Commuter/regional rail is part of "public transit," and let's not forget that the Washington Metro is a Second Subway era hybrid system that is one part urban circulator and two parts suburban commuter system.
What Philadelphia has yet to do — but signs point to things heading in this direction — is turn its extensive electrified regional rail network into a true S-Bahn/RER-style system like those of Berlin and Paris, with frequent headways on all lines. SEPTA's latest strategic plan, "SEPTA Forward," has this as one of its stated goals for the next 20 or so years.
A couple of other things to consider in evaluating public transit in each metropolis:
Bus service. Even though the status-conscious look down their noses at buses, they remain the workhorses of public transit in every American city, including these two. In Washington, the buses and the rapid transit system are (or were, last time I visited) run as quasi-separate systems, with fare policies that seemed to me to discourage rather than encourage use of bus routes as feeders to the Metro, even where the routes and stations were designed for that purpose. (Since I haven't used both services since the advent of SmarTrip, I can't say whether this is still the case; I suspect it isn't anymore. But I'd still say SEPTA does a better job of integrating the bus and rapid transit systems and fares in city and suburbs than WMATA and the agencies that provide bus service in the suburbs (Washington doesn't have a single region-wide transit agency in the way that Southeastern Pennsylvania or South Jersey do; most of the suburban counties started running their own bus systems back when WMATA Metrobus operations were far worse than they are now).
Operating and safety culture. In these arenas, WMATA has had to play a huge game of catch-up. I've already noted how WMATA's ****-poor bus service led several of the suburban counties to set up their own local bus systems, which remain in operation even after WMATA has brought bus service up to a decent standard. And the 2009 Takoma wreck on the Red Line exposed all the termites in the woodwork on the rail side: aging technology that hadn't been maintained well, a lax safety culture (number of passengers who have died as a result of incidents [collisions, derailments, smoke-filled cars] on WMATA Metrorail from opening in 1976 to the present: 14; number of passengers who have died as a result of similar incidents on SEPTA's rapid-transit and light metro lines from the Market Street Subway-Elevated's opening in 1907 until the present: five) backed up by a CYA attitude among the workers and their supervisors, lax or nonexistent oversight of safety regulations and vehicle inspections (here's what I wrote in 2016 after SEPTA pulled all of its newest Regional Rail cars out of service after inspection crews found a cracked stabilizer beam on one of them). The Takoma crash led to a crash repair program on Metrorail that has taken care of the maintenance backlog, but it seems that even with the Federal Transit Administration now providing safety oversight, the system still isn't run with a safety-first attitude. For all its faults, SEPTA does very well in that regard, and it's also done a better job of keeping its aging lines in a state of good repair or at least serviceable on an inadequate maintenance and repair budget that only got boosted within the last six years.
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Originally Posted by the resident09
The data is from 2019.
MSAs by Foreign Born Population, Entered 2010 or Later as a Percentage of Foreign Born Population:
Again even since 2010 DC's metro has added more than double Philadelphia's.
We won't turn this into a pissing match however. Philly beats DC in a number of categories, more urban downtown, skyline, and food.
Anyone with two eyes IMO would be able to dispute you if not refute your claims completely in at least the categories I've boldfaced if not all three of those.
The District of Columbia's height limit means that (a) the District itself really doesn't have a skyline, at least not by US standards (b) what passes for a skyline in Greater Washington is still both smaller than Philadelphia's and pushed to its fringes, in particular Roslyn. I'm not arguing that DC should scrap the height limit in order to pursue a more typically American skyline; the limits preserve the views of the monumental core and dominance of the Capitol and Washington Monument. But aside from that 555-foot-tall obelisk, there are no other buildings in the Washington area that are even as tall as the 491-foot-high City Hall Tower, which has been dwarfed by at least six office towers and two residential ones, with two more about to join those two, in the years since the "gentlemen's agreement" that kept buildings below the height of William Penn's hat atop City Hall Tower was broken in 1987. And I seriously doubt that anyone is going to build a tower as tall as the one that broke that agreement, the 746-foot-tall One Liberty Place, let alone the city's first supertall, the 1,121-foot-tall Comcast Technology Center (the tallest US skyscraper outside of New York or Chicago), or its 946-foot-tall predecessor, the Comcast Center.
When I sang in the Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus, we traveled to Washington in 2009 to perform a joint concert with the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington in a church on (I think it was) G Street NW downtown, not far from the National Press Building. I remember exiting the church on a Saturday evening and walking down a completely empty G Street. Not even our principal office canyon, Market Street west of City Hall, is that empty at night anymore thanks to residential development along it, and a mere two blocks south, aiaong Walnut, one can find people out strolling past shops and restaurants mixed in with both office and residential towers (though increasingly, they're all residential on this street) up until midnight and beyond (pre-COVID). It's next to impossible to come up with a uniform standard for determining what constitutes "downtown" and what doesn't — in DC, one possible definition could encompass everything from Eastern Market southeast of the Capitol to Dupont Circle to its northwest — but if one were to use one common metric, number of people living within a two-mile radius of the city hall, Philadelphia's downtown population easily outpaces Washington's. Most urban data reports I've seen say that Philadelphia has the third-largest downtown residential population in the country, behind only New York and Chicago.
On food, I'm willing to give Washington points for ethnic diversity over Philadelphia, but Philadelphia's food scene has generally vaulted into the top ranks of American cities over the past 10-20 years. I've been to Eastern Market, and it's quite good, but the Reading Terminal Market is a notch or two above it in number of merchants and patronage. (Full disclosure: I was one of 16 regular RTM shoppers who were featured in a marketing campaign the market ran around 2010,) I've seen lists where Philadelphia ranks above Washington and vice versa, and it's interesting to note what U.S. News readers have to say about whether or not the two belong on its list of 15 best foodie cities (neither of them do now) — as of the day I accessed the page (today), 74 percent say Philly should be on it while only 56 percent say Washington should. And there's a good bit of cross-pollination going on between the two cities. One of Washington's best sandwich shops was founded by Philadelphians who gave the sandwiches there names of Philly streets and landmarks, and Philly restaruantainer Stephen Starr runs one of the city's more highly regarded recent high-end arrivals, Le Diplomat. On the other hand, one now finds outlets of both District Taco and Founding Farmers, both well-regarded DC eateries, in Philadelphia as well: both of these are in our answer to Tysons, King of Prussia, and District Taco has a Center City outpost as well. I'd say that overall, the food scenes in Washington and Philadelphia are very closely matched.
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Originally Posted by KodeBlue
Boston, NYC and DC are insanely expensive; Philly will be there too one day.
I sure as Hell hope that day never comes, and I think that most people concerned with housing affordability should hope the same.
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Originally Posted by KodeBlue
The DC accent doesn't jump out at you, but they have one. Even words like "Eric," DC sounds different than somewhere like Baltimore. DC is heavier on the "Ur/Er" than we are. To be honest, Philly's accent black accent isn't as distinct one might think unless, like DC, you know what to listen out for.
I'd say that local lexicography marks Philadelphia's Black community more than accent does.
"Jawn," the all-purpose pronoun used to refer to just about anything ("Go to the jawn and get me some jawn to put on this jawn" is a grammatically correct Philadelphia sentence), is a word I first heard used among Black Philadelphians. Whether or not my impression is accurate, it has been adopted throughout the city and region.
OTOH, I've yet to hear a white Philadelphian put an extra "-ton" on the first word in the name of Hunting Park Avenue. I hear Black Philadelphians do this all the time.
I'd say that local lexicography marks Philadelphia's Black community more than accent does.
"Jawn," the all-purpose pronoun used to refer to just about anything ("Go to the jawn and get me some jawn to put on this jawn" is a grammatically correct Philadelphia sentence), is a word I first heard used among Black Philadelphians. Whether or not my impression is accurate, it has been adopted throughout the city and region.
OTOH, I've yet to hear a white Philadelphian put an extra "-ton" on the first word in the name of Hunting Park Avenue. I hear Black Philadelphians do this all the time.
Definitely native to Black Philly. "That jawn lowkey littington"
More of a joke to add "ington" to stuff from what Ive heard and been told directly. It's just fun. But i definitely recognize it as Black (young) Philly. Maybe it comes from something more serious you describe.
example? I've been in Maryland or near DC for a while and it has never jumped out to me, at all. Def not up there with NOLA Houston LA Baltimore.
To me, it's very obvious when you meet a native Black Washingtonian. It sounds southern but distinct from stereotypical Southern accents, as well as distinct from Baltimore accents. That "urr" sound is a dead giveaway and probably the most distinctive part of it. The slang is distinct as well.
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Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade
Definitely native to Black Philly. "That jawn lowkey littington"
More of a joke to add "ington" to stuff from what Ive heard and been told directly. It's just fun. But i definitely recognize it as Black (young) Philly. Maybe it comes from something more serious you describe.
Never knew that was a Philly thing. We say this in Jersey and I've heard New Yorkers say this too.
I mean... this is my main point. The DC black accent isn't very distinct. Event the main indicator is something shared with Baltimore, Marylanf (and even South Jersey). There is some sort of accent but it not nearly as uniform and common as Bmore or LA. And the tone of speech/attitude isn't as noticeable as NYC or Boston to me.
Like Nola I think "babyyy" ...Houston I think "H-tahn, dahn" ...LA I think "core (care)
but Urric is all over Maryland not just DC at all. and you will hear it in South Jersey/Delaware. Philly's black of accent also isn't very distinct.
It's not just the accent. It's combination of the accent and the slang together which is a totally different conversation. DC has way more slang than any other city except for Oakland. There are countless YouTube videos supporting this. How did you live in Suitland and not come across any of this. I'm perplexed by some of you cats who are oblivious to sh*t right in your face. You are the same guy that said DC wasn't dangerous.
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