Toronto vs Philadelphia vs Baltimore vs Nashville vs Charlotte vs St. Louis

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by cpomp

I do think the tide is changing for Philadelphia though. The amount of large projects proposed and/or under construction is quite impressive, especially when looking at the city 20 years ago. There are even possible office towers under consideration, rare for Philadelphia.

The bones are in place and Philadelphia is perfectly poised to take off, its the general crappy city leadership that is the detriment at this point. Philadelphia has every quality you need in a world class city, however, being considered world class is sadly not the priority for many council members in the democratic machine.

But, 1 domino did fall in the recent primary. Slow but steady process....

We have no idea how that person will perform since they had to go through machine politics to even get on the ballot. I'm not expecting much, tbh.

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by NDFan

Reasons Philly hasn't done better includes a particular bad and corrupt city leadership (not only are they corrupt, but they have been highly incompetent historically, so basically has to be done fighting the city the entire time) and extremely strong and aggressive unions (although these are breaking somewhat due to changes at the national level). With changes at the national level helping Philly in recent years, it should get closer to what it is capable of.

Regarding office towers being under consideration as rare, there haven't been a large amount of office towers built at any given time since the late 1980s/early 1990s.

No, unions are not breaking in Phila. Where did you get that notion? lol.

You don't know anything about eastern University City if you believe what's happened there, wrt contruction, hasn't been transformative. Most of what's there now has gone up in the last 5 years or so.

Schuykill Yards will up the bar even more.

[wy307]

Originally Posted by wxurbanite

Thanks for making these threads, OP! I'm new-ish to my city (Pittsburgh) and have been looking to explore all the nearby cities on long weekends. I've crossed off Philly, DC, Richmond, Louisville, and Cincinnati thus far. I should be making it to Toronto on labor day weekend. Keep the posts/reports coming!

Nice! Pittsburgh is an awesome city. How did you like Richmond and DC?