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Yes, overall Philly "appears" more like NYC in that it has more old brick structures, brick rowhomes, etc. However, you can't just cherry pick SF's most wooden fisherman village area (Telegraph Hill area) to point out that it looks nothing like NYC - essentially what you did was point out that SF overall has a unique look that isn't replicated literally anywhere else. The Tenderloin/Tendernob look like parts of Manhattan/Brooklyn that simply aren't replicated in any way in Philly. Also, SF's financial district is much more similar to Manhattan with wider streets, denser canyons, wider sidewalks (and much more crowded sidewalks), more crowded trains, etc etc.
I wasn't cherry picking, I picked a residential neighborhood from each city.
There are no parts of Philly that replicate Manhattan/Brooklyn? Lol... okay
Are you positive you've been to Philly? I honestly don't think you have because you're talking out of your ass. From my experience with San Francisco, the sidewalks did not seem more crowded than in Philadelphia.
Public Transit? The trains are more crowded in San Francisco? Haha what? Subway ridership is very similar in both cities. Commuter rail lines? Maybe? Since San Francisco has 1 line and Philadelphia has 13? I'm not sure what you mean.
On the topic of aesthetics, I think everyone can agree that Philly and San Francisco both have pretty distinctly different feels from NYC. Yes, similarities can be argued for both cities (and Philly, in particuarly, shares a lot of the same architectural vernacular with New York -- it's just on a much more MASSIVE scale in the latter).
At any rate, I think it's cool how both cities have a hallmark urban form. The issue is that New York is constantly considered the end-all, be-all standard of urban, when, in fact, there are many varieties of urban that can be well done.
Even that's a questionable statement to make at best. One can make a strong argument that Center City "feels" more similar to Manhattan than San Francisco's financial district. I've been to SF's financial district. I don't see the New York "feel" that makes it so much more similar to NYC than Center City does. Even with your so called wider streets and "allegedly" more crowded sidewalks and trains(which is extremely subjective). Funny you would bring up mass transit as both Philly and NYC offer 24-hour subway service, which is something San Francisco clearly doesn't offer. When you compare the city as a whole and not nitpick, its clearly obvious that Philly has more in common with NYC than San Francisco does, especially when it comes to the look and feel of both cities.
First off, SF's financial district certainly feels more like Midtown Manhattan, and perhaps Center City with its more narrow streets feels more like Lower Manhattan. SF's financial district has higher/taller building density, which gives it that similarity edge.
But going to your point in bold, I've been comparing the whole cities here. SF's entire city is far more comparable than Philly.
Let's describe NYC in a nutshell:
Uber dense, very progressive, very cultural/ethnic melting pot, expensive, crowded, mostly white collar, excellent food scene, element of snobbery (not undue), few children and lots of 25-44 aged people, very international, huge finance and large tech component, has Brooklyn.
On this shortlist, where is SF more similar?
Density, even more progressive than NYC, cultural/ethnic melting pot, expensive, crowded, mostly white collar, excellent food scene, element of snobbery (not undue), few children and lots of single 25-44 aged people, very international, large finance and huge tech component, has Oakland.
On this shortlist, where is Philly more similar?
None.
Someone come up with a shortlist of things that make Philly more similar to NYC than SF besides having more red brick architecture.
Also, on Center City vs Financial District of SF - SF is a huge shopping hub. It has the 3rd largest Macy's, the 2nd largest Nordstrom, the 2nd largest Bloomingdale's, a Saks Men and Saks Women's, independent department stores, and every boutique in between, all adjacent to the financial district in Union Square, which most people consider "downtown". Philly's urban shopping pales in comparison to a whole host of cities in this country, and it can be argued that SF and Chicago equally vie for #2 for urban shopping, and both equally vie for #3 overall behind LA.
Going beyond Union Square, though, like in New York, you can find pretty damn good shopping almost everywhere. Lots of national/international boutiques and stores all throughout the city on commercial corridors. Philly has commercial corridors, but definitely not like in SF. This is where affluence does play a role, as well as ethnicities, for which there are more in both New York and SF than in Philly, along with far more affluence.
Additionally, nightlife in SF is far superior. Hotels are more varied, with more at the high end, more boutiques, and several grand dame independents still in operation with ties to larger flags (as most NYC grand dames are as well).
Contrasting, while Philly is a great city no doubt, it is a more blue collar, white/black city that is very inexpensive and has a lot of gentrifying and economic changing to do to get to where SF, let alone NYC are. It just doesn't feel like NYC and even the people are different. New Yorkers are from everywhere, many of them there to work for a time in their life before moving to burbs or elsewhere (down South or CA, etc). Philly just has a different set of people, overall, living and working in it. SF's set and working demographic is very similar to New York's. Typically highly ambitious, type A's from all over. Lots of young singles, even though NYC and SF are both "older" than Philly and most other cities by median age, it's only for lack of children and college-aged.
Additional research regarding why SF sidewalks are more crowded than Philly's
Highlights on why:
SF is generally much denser, both building and population, than Philly
SF has more office space and more retail than Philly, and both are more concentrated than in Philly
Higher transit use, both in sheer numbers and definitely by %
Higher/more concentrated tourism
Here are the numbers:
Density
Density wise refer to SSP as there have been threads there discussing this - Philly just doesn't have lots of people over 50,000 ppsm (only about 30,000 total), which I find to be the threshold of the density required to get lots of people consistently on the sidewalks...here's a good breakdown of the 3 most dense cities in America, Philly not being one of them:
No denying that overall, there are more people living > 20,000 ppsm in Philly than in SF (similar reasons as Chicago); it is a larger city. But most people in Philly live between 10-30K ppsm. 41% of SF's residents live above 30,000 ppsm. Almost none live below 20,000 ppsm. Avg density is brought down to 17-18K because so much of SF is either parkland, mountain top, or abandoned shipyard.
Most of SF's 78.4 million SF (including UC) is in and around downtown making it substantially larger and more concentrated than Philadelphia's downtown.
Transit Use
SF:
HRT - 418,100 avg weekday riders
LRT - 214,300
Commuter Rail - 51,300 (only Caltrain, excludes about 3 other smaller systems serving remainder of Bay)
Trolley Bus - 192,900
Bus - 312,400 (excluding North Bay, E Bay, and Peninsula agencies that service SF)
Other - 22,000
Total - 1,211,000 (city population of 837,000)
Philly:
HRT - 326,300
LRT - 107,300
Commuter Rail - 127,100
Trolley Bus - 18,000
Bus - 522,500
Other - 5,300
Total - 1,106,500 (city population of 1,553,000)
We could look at track mileage and individual station use to get a sense of how crowded trains are. I would imagine that virtually every transit system in SF is more crowded than in Philly. It's actually a notable problem that SF's transit is most certainly not sufficient for its population or density. Only 2 HRT and 2 LRT stations serve the financial district. Buses run every 5 minutes, but stop at every block. They are usually very very crowded.
According to the Census (ACS), Philadelphia has slightly more car-free households with 32.6%, while SF is down at 31.4% (37.9% in DC, 56.5% in NYC, and 27.9% in Chicago).
Tourism
SF:
Hotel rooms in city -
Quote:
Hotel rooms in San Francisco (city/county limits): 33,642 (as of September 2012).
According to PKF Consulting there are 215 Hotels in San Francisco.
Approximately 20,000 of these rooms are within walking distance of the Moscone Center.
Visitor spending reached the highest ever in 2013, with more than $9.38 billion spent in local businesses (up 2.3% from 2012).
San Francisco's top 10 feeder markets include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Sacramento and San Francisco Bay Area (outside of SF).
While that source says that there are over 4 million annual international visitors, the official count from from the ITA is 1.7 million, #6 in the country with a 5% marketshare. According to this site, the number was 2.9 million, also 6th in the country, both behind NYC, Miami, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, and the ITA counting Newark separately and throwing Honolulu in before SF, whereas other list substitutes Honolulu for Orlando and throws SF in ahead of Honolulu. SF beats out Chicago, DC, and Boston.
Philly does not make the Top 15 list in the country.
Philly:
Quote:
· 8,924 hotel rooms within a 15-minute walk of the Pennsylvania Convention Center
· 10,500 hotel rooms in Center City
· 30,000 hotel rooms in the region
The numbers in the Philadelphia region are also significant: tourism has a $9 billion economic impact annually, and accounts for 88,000 jobs, 52,000 of them in Philadelphia proper.
If you want big brand name hotels, SF has 'em. Nearly all of them. It also has the most famous/original Fairmont, the Palace Hotel (now flagged with Starwood, with a room almost identical to the tea room at the Plaza in NYC), the St. Francis (now flagged with Westin/Starwood), the Mark Hopkins (flagged with Intercontinental now), the Sir Francis Drake (mid-tier, Kimpton flag), and a whole host of other well-known established "large" hotels still in operation. It is also the home of Kimpton, so Kimpton has a ton of hotels in the city, and along with NYC, Chicago, NOLA, and LA it is certainly a "boutique" and "independent" city. You can look at the hotel selection in SF, and the rates, to see where it stacks up. Philly doesn't have nearly as many upscale flags, big/large famous independents, or boutique hotels. It also doesn't have the number of hostels SF has. Overall it may have a similar number of rooms, though I have yet to be able to find any indicator they are all in city limits, let alone around Center City. I recently stayed in Center City, and saw the selection. It's not as breathtaking as one would find in SF, Boston, Miami, or let alone LA or NYC.
Additionally, there are a number of pod hotels that have become popular in NYC that are opening up in SF. Yotel being one (though i don't really consider them a "pod" style room in the way that Pod 51/Pod 36 are...they call their rooms "cabins", and for anyone in NYC or traveling there - it is near The Out, is far superior, adjacent to MiMa).
So overall, in SF's 46 sq mi, the city packs significantly higher density, higher transit use, significantly more office space, debatable whether there are more tourists, but certainly millions more international tourists, similar amount of hotel rooms, though there's no telling if Philly's number is a little more spread out since the city has 132 sq mi (distance to convention center seems to yield a much higher number for SF), etc etc.
If you want to further add to street vibe, nobody in their right mind would even argue that Center City or surrounding neighborhoods compete with SF's Union Square or neighborhoods. Center City shopping is replicated throughout the city of SF, and THEN there's Union Square on top of it all. This creates a more noticeable street vibe.
RE: street vibe, there's also nightlife, SF is a surpriser, and is dense with pretty crazy nightlife. It's why "bridge and tunnel" is also popularly used in the city, as the crowds really swarm at night, all over the city. There are clubs and bar scenes of all types. Which is why it's ranked highly on all of the nightlife lists:
Going off of this, just looking at lists of Best Cities to be Single, SF always makes top 10, even made #1 this year as reported by the Huffington Post. Manhattan was #2, followed by Washington DC, then Boston, Seattle, and Philly in that order, going off of % of single people.
We could go into restaurant density, bar density, etc.
Anyway, I digress. Appearances or not, SF functions a lot more like NYC than Philadelphia does. All across the board. Neither city is close to any sort of level that NYC is on, but SF definitely is noticeably closer than Philly.
*On Philly having 24 hour subway service - so? Many larger global cities don't even have 24 hour heavy rail service. Also, despite 24 hour service and more useful/extensive routes within the city, FEWER PEOPLE USE SEPTA HRT THAN BART. SF voters have chosen to expand the system's reach, not extend its hours (it has been 24 hours before). In fact, BART's extension to San Jose is nearly complete. So again, another indicator that when looking at metros and spheres of influence, it's STUPID to consider San Jose completely separate from SF when SF's heavy rail and commuter rail connects both, and the friggin 49ers now play in SJ and are still called the SF 49ers. The 2 cities share news stations and employment bases.
First off, SF's financial district certainly feels more like Midtown Manhattan, and perhaps Center City with its more narrow streets feels more like Lower Manhattan. SF's financial district has higher/taller building density, which gives it that similarity edge.
But going to your point in bold, I've been comparing the whole cities here. SF's entire city is far more comparable than Philly.
Let's describe NYC in a nutshell:
Uber dense, very progressive, very cultural/ethnic melting pot, expensive, crowded, mostly white collar, excellent food scene, element of snobbery (not undue), few children and lots of 25-44 aged people, very international, huge finance and large tech component, has Brooklyn.
On this shortlist, where is SF more similar?
Density, even more progressive than NYC, cultural/ethnic melting pot, expensive, crowded, mostly white collar, excellent food scene, element of snobbery (not undue), few children and lots of single 25-44 aged people, very international, large finance and huge tech component, has Oakland.
On this shortlist, where is Philly more similar?
None.
Someone come up with a shortlist of things that make Philly more similar to NYC than SF besides having more red brick architecture.
Also, on Center City vs Financial District of SF - SF is a huge shopping hub. It has the 3rd largest Macy's, the 2nd largest Nordstrom, the 2nd largest Bloomingdale's, a Saks Men and Saks Women's, independent department stores, and every boutique in between, all adjacent to the financial district in Union Square, which most people consider "downtown". Philly's urban shopping pales in comparison to a whole host of cities in this country, and it can be argued that SF and Chicago equally vie for #2 for urban shopping, and both equally vie for #3 overall behind LA.
Going beyond Union Square, though, like in New York, you can find pretty damn good shopping almost everywhere. Lots of national/international boutiques and stores all throughout the city on commercial corridors. Philly has commercial corridors, but definitely not like in SF. This is where affluence does play a role, as well as ethnicities, for which there are more in both New York and SF than in Philly, along with far more affluence.
Additionally, nightlife in SF is far superior. Hotels are more varied, with more at the high end, more boutiques, and several grand dame independents still in operation with ties to larger flags (as most NYC grand dames are as well).
Contrasting, while Philly is a great city no doubt, it is a more blue collar, white/black city that is very inexpensive and has a lot of gentrifying and economic changing to do to get to where SF, let alone NYC are. It just doesn't feel like NYC and even the people are different. New Yorkers are from everywhere, many of them there to work for a time in their life before moving to burbs or elsewhere (down South or CA, etc). Philly just has a different set of people, overall, living and working in it. SF's set and working demographic is very similar to New York's. Typically highly ambitious, type A's from all over. Lots of young singles, even though NYC and SF are both "older" than Philly and most other cities by median age, it's only for lack of children and college-aged.
It sounds like you described Manhattan in a nutshell. The is no city in the US that comes close to the scale, amenities, diversity, energy and internationally connected feeling of NYC. However if you were*FORCED to pick a city in the US that is most similar to NYC (the entire 5 boroughs not just Manhattan) overall then it would be Philadelphia (Although there are certainly differences between Philly and NYC). Philadelphia is the most similar to NYC when you consider all of the similar architecture, urban fabric, demographics, accents, people, relationship with New Jersey, overlap, vibe etc between the two cities. This not a surprise due to the two northeastern cities being so close in distance and also being relatively the same age. With that said, I think LA is the closest to NYC as far amenities, glamour and international connected feel. Chicago has the second largest and best skyline after NYC and is the second largest traditionally urban city after NYC but outside of that, Chicago feels very different from NYC due to its midwestern*tangibles*and it being a much younger city. San Francisco feels very different from NYC too.
Additional research regarding why SF sidewalks are more crowded than Philly's...
I won't rebut your post point-by-point, but I just wanted to bring up a couple of counter-points:
1. SF is obviously more of an international tourist destination than Philly. That's obvious, and no one is debating that point. This also brings a lot more money into the city, which is reflected in the hotel/shopping industries for SF. Philadelphia, though, deserves credit for beginning to re-emerge as a top destination for domestic and international tourists. Specificially, I don't know where you've gotten your numbers (which seem outdated), but Philly is now 13th in international visitation among US cities, according the the Dept. of Commerce
Most impressive is that, within 12 years, it has gone from the 21st to 13th most visited city in the US. That's some serious momentum, and the city's marketing has gotten much better (in addition to offerings), which leads to my next point.
3. Streetlife is incredibly subjective and difficult to measure. Both SF and Philly actually have very similar density. SF, I understand, receives more daily visitors, but any gap between the the two is miniscule compared to the massive gulf in comparison to NY. The idea that either compares to Manhattan streetlife overall is just laughable, so this is an irrelevant point for this thread.
4. Corporate presence is something else that is admittedly lacking in Philly proper, although the metro region has a respectable amount of high-ranking HQs and growing startups (http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2014/facts-and-figures.html). Again, though, on the matter of scale, neither city can compare to corporate behemoth that is NYC.
would say that stations (esp the three on bart along market from Powell to the embarkadaro) are probably more busy than say any three subway stops in Philly) but also remember that city hall in philly probably has more riders than any single station in SF with the subway surface trollys, MFL, BSL and suburban station handling around 55K RR riders per day as part of the underground station complex)
Not to mention that 30th street is the 3rd busiest rail station complex in the US after NYC Penn and NYC Grand Central.
SF is more dense in the core Philly is actually more dense in the core 49 sq miles
I can see similarities for both - visually Philly probably moreso. SF has some denser sidewalk congestion esp around union sq. Their DTs (FIDI or Market West for Philly) feel pretty close based on my experience. (albeit SF larger but not really more compact based on my experience)
SF has more tourists no doubt but they are not lacking in Philly either.
Last edited by kidphilly; 08-23-2014 at 09:13 AM..
Hmm, because the west coast handles trade with Asia and all it must be much less trade overall than the E Coast?
There is no denying that LA/Long Beach is *by far* the largest port in the country, and it is all one contiguous port. There are whole suspension bridges to fill islandSss dominated by dozens of post-panamax cranes. Nothing comes close, either on paper, or just plain visually.
Similarly, the Port of Oakland handles far more container traffic than all by 2 E Coast ports. It visually appears much larger, has far more ships (and large Post-Panamax ships too) at its berths at any given time, more cranes, more basins, etc. Similarly, Ports of Seattle AND Tacoma.
All of the west coast ports are quite large. There's also a reason that SoCal is the largest warehouse/distribution center in the country, by far. There's also a reason for all of those insanely busy railroads connecting the west coast to the rest of the country (for anyone who has ever driven cross country and noticed immense trains crossing the plains and the deserts typically coming East).
You should re-read what that exchange was. I specifically bold'd far busier, because having the ports on the West Coast ports and those on the East Coast, all in aggregate, should trigger someone to look into the methodology of how that's being measured. This should make intuitive sense since you're good enough to specify container traffic for one of your examples. There are a lot of ways traffic or level of activity that ports can be ranked and a measurement that has the West Coast ports being far busier than East Coast ports should come under some scrutiny since the shipping costs are cheapest, the last miles are the most expensive, and there is a significantly larger population the East Coast ports would be serving than the West Coast ports.
I don't see how anything you've said conflicts with that.
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It sounds like you described Manhattan in a nutshell. The is no city in the US that comes close to the scale, amenities, diversity, energy and internationally connected feeling of NYC. However if you were*FORCED to pick a city in the US that is most similar to NYC (the entire 5 boroughs not just Manhattan) overall then it would be Philadelphia (Although there are certainly differences between Philly and NYC). Philadelphia is the most similar to NYC when you consider all of the similar architecture, urban fabric, demographics, accents, people, relationship with New Jersey, overlap, vibe etc between the two cities. This not a surprise due to the two northeastern cities being so close in distance and also being relatively the same age. With that said, I think LA is the closest to NYC as far amenities, glamour and international connected feel. Chicago has the second largest and best skyline after NYC and is the second largest traditionally urban city after NYC but outside of that, Chicago feels very different from NYC due to its midwestern*tangibles*and it being a much younger city. San Francisco feels very different from NYC too.
