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Schuylkill River is a larger part of Philly than the Delaware River is in terms of having amenities, things to do, and being a fundamental part of the landscape. In New York's case, there is also the East River to contend with (which really isn't a river, but...), but that is harder to make the case that one river is more vital to New York than the other. The Potomac River is important for DC, but doesn't have the same industrial traffic compared with the Delaware or Hudson. Charles, I know less about.
Schuylkill River is a larger part of Philly than the Delaware River is in terms of having amenities, things to do, and being a fundamental part of the landscape.
I disagree. The Schuylkill has the nicer running paths, the Schuylkill Banks Park is the nicest park amenity of the two in the city, and the schuylkill is used for the city's rowing and boating events like the Charles is in Boston. However, nobody goes to the schuylkill river to go out for the night. The Delaware river waterfront is completely different. Spruce Harbor Park alone trumps pretty much anything else going on along the Schuylkill. The Delaware river watefront has a casino, an aquarium, a battleship, other historical boats to tour, beer gardens, arcades, a roller rink, multiple recreational piers like cherry st. and race st. piers, and popular nightclubs like cavanaugh's river deck and morgan's pier.
One of the major underlying problems with both rivers is I-95 and I-76 cut off the city grid from the riverfront. Until the Schuylkill Yards takes shape and the railyards are covered, there isn't that much space to build large scale developments. The Delaware has space but is cut off by the extra wide I-95. Next year, a large cap and new park is going to be constructed on top of 11 acres of I-95. It's a project that is fully funded and will connect the city grid back to the riverfront.
New Delaware Riverfront park:
The planned future possibilities of capping the railyard on the Schuylkill:
^ pieces of this are under construction already including a new park with baby Redwoods from California and the fully renovation and reskinning of the Bulletin Building which is already 100% pre-leased office space. The double promenade pedstrain bridges are probably a good ways away ha.
Here's a low quality gif I made of fireworks over the Schuylkill on July 4th: https://imgur.com/Tv3lbBH
Based on that "recreation on the river combined with urban amenities along it" criterion, I chose the Delaware, though I think that upon further reflection, I could - or maybe even should - have chosen the Potomac.
The Hudson and East rivers in New York have a much greater amount of urban amenities that draw on their presence than any of the others surveyed, but neither of them have much in the way of recreational activities going on in them in the same general space. The Hudson gets recreational upstream from New York City.
The Charles in Boston has IMO more recreation going on in it than any of the others, especially in the basin formed by filling in most of its Back Bay, but the principal urban amenity along it is a park, just like with the Schuylkill in Philadelphia. The park ain't beanbag, but it does crowd out some other urban amenities that might be located along its banks, like riverfront promenades or office/residential developments.
The Potomac and the Delaware strike me as having the best balance between the two, and like the Hudson, the Delaware is also a working river (but given that most New York seaport traffic has shifted into New York Harbor and along the New Jersey shore to the south, the Hudson works less than it used to). In Washington, you have National Harbor; in Philadelphia, condo towers and a growing number of townhouse developments on former piers. That's in addition to parks and promenades along both the Potomac and the Delaware.
Based on that "recreation on the river combined with urban amenities along it" criterion, I chose the Delaware, though I think that upon further reflection, I could - or maybe even should - have chosen the Potomac.
The Hudson and East rivers in New York have a much greater amount of urban amenities that draw on their presence than any of the others surveyed, but neither of them have much in the way of recreational activities going on in them in the same general space. The Hudson gets recreational upstream from New York City.
The Charles in Boston has IMO more recreation going on in it than any of the others, especially in the basin formed by filling in most of its Back Bay, but the principal urban amenity along it is a park, just like with the Schuylkill in Philadelphia. The park ain't beanbag, but it does crowd out some other urban amenities that might be located along its banks, like riverfront promenades or office/residential developments.
The Potomac and the Delaware strike me as having the best balance between the two, and like the Hudson, the Delaware is also a working river (but given that most New York seaport traffic has shifted into New York Harbor and along the New Jersey shore to the south, the Hudson works less than it used to). In Washington, you have National Harbor; in Philadelphia, condo towers and a growing number of townhouse developments on former piers. That's in addition to parks and promenades along both the Potomac and the Delaware.
The National Harbor feels so cheap and contrived to me. It's a shame because it had great potential. It just has a very tacky feel to it. Maybe a little more real estate??? I don't blame them for building it up the way they did, but for me personally, it doesn't have an authentic feel, which takes away from it.
The National Harbor feels so cheap and contrived to me. It's a shame because it had great potential. It just has a very tacky feel to it. Maybe a little more real estate??? I don't blame them for building it up the way they did, but for me personally, it doesn't have an authentic feel, which takes away from it.
That's a pitfall common to many Instant Urbanist developments.
Mainly because they were designed to be complete entities just about from the get-go rather than frameworks on which others could build.
I'm also following myself up to note another class of urban amenity that one finds on the Delaware and Potomac more than along the Hudson or Charles:
Riverside restaurants and pubs.
Here I'd say Philly and DC (mainly in Southwest) are just about tied. All of Philly's are located on the Delaware, and they're intermixed with condos, enclosed restaurants, marinas and piers-turned-parks.
In terms of the quality of the transformation, I'd even say that Philly's done the best job of adapting fragments of its working riverfront to new and different uses, especially along what our planners call "the Central Delaware" - the stretch between the Packer Avenue and Tioga Marine Terminals that includes Penn's Landing.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Originally Posted by personone
The National Harbor feels so cheap and contrived to me. It's a shame because it had great potential. It just has a very tacky feel to it. Maybe a little more real estate??? I don't blame them for building it up the way they did, but for me personally, it doesn't have an authentic feel, which takes away from it.
The Potomac itself has about 4 waterfronts, and National Harbor isn’t in the District. Georgetown, Wharf, and then Anacostia’s waterfront’s are the premier ones along with Alexandria. NH is simply an entertainment district and hotel district for tourists.
Regarding Philadelphia, I think the Schuylkill River frames the city better than the Delaware. This will only become more so as University City (on the left bank of the photo below), continues to explode with growth.
It’s also the more beautiful of the two rivers, imo, more closely resembling the way the Charles River lends charm as it wends its way between Boston and Cambridge:
(my pix)
I would think so: Downtown Philadelphia is actually on the Schuykill, not the Delaware
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