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For the record, there's a reason why Bostonians have an unfortunate reputation for being classist and elitist.
Most Bostonians are as sweet as pie, but as evidenced in this thread, God forbid some Bostonians cross paths with someone who's down on their luck, and doesn't have a Medical Degree from Harvard, or pulling in some major venture capital. They obviously aren't of any use to us and can't be expected to produce any intellectual property to capitalize on.
What a sad lens in which to view fellow humanity.
It's really one of the most trying things about people here, unfortunately. I wish I could say it's just an online thing, but you see it in real life pretty regularly.
If Baltimore was included in this list I would group it with DC despite those cites being very different. Baltimore has more in common with DC than the other 3 cites. Both cites are predominantly black, both are just below the mason-dixon line, both are in/border Maryland, both share the same airport, both played a huge role in the civil war.
If Baltimore was included in this list I would group it with DC despite those cites being very different. Baltimore has more in common with DC than the other 3 cites. Both cites are predominantly black, both are just below the mason-dixon line, both are in/border Maryland, both share the same airport, both played a huge role in the civil war.
Baltimore and DC are not alike. Baltimore has more in common with Philly than DC.
I think that is part of the fun. Really, all four are distinct cities and have enough dissimilarities to push an argument on why they are not a pairing. This is not like trying to pair San Diego, LA, Portland and Seattle. It is quite subjective and you have to make some leaps.
I am personally surprised to see Boston/NYC and Philadelphia/D.C. having any votes, as they are the least likely pairing from my perspective.
Edit: Also, I invite you to read up a bit more re: Philadelphia’s shift in the last decade or two. Much of the city may still have urban decay and crime, however every year the city gets a little safer and neighborhoods are really turning around. There are many appealing neighborhoods outside of Center City, and I don’t think speculating that most of Philadelphia “is never going to gentrify†is fair or accurate. Digression over; I just had to clear that up.
Agreed. Philly isnt as bad as bad times DC or NYC and look at them now.
Also DC is more gentrified than Boston IMO. Lower poverty rate, more robust middle class higher median HHI, MUCH more modern and functional outward facing amenities/technology, many more places to socialize.
If Baltimore was included in this list I would group it with DC despite those cites being very different. Baltimore has more in common with DC than the other 3 cites. Both cites are predominantly black, both are just below the mason-dixon line, both are in/border Maryland, both share the same airport, both played a huge role in the civil war.
Baltimore shares a lot with Philly and Boston. not so much DC and definitely not NYC.
I don't see how you can possibly pair them since they're so dissimilar. DC is like nothing else in the country. Ditto NYC. Philly has a vibrant Center City but most of the place is a ghetto that is never going to gentrify. Boston is gentrifying so quickly that there won't be poor people outside of the housing projects in another 25 to 30 years.
When were you last here?
What I see going on around me says otherwise.
Philadelphia is also an outlier among these four in a different way: it's long been a slow-growth metropolis. The core city came late to the rejuvenation party and is still playing catchup.
Many here consider that slow growth a feature, not a bug: It means that while the city may not really boom when times are good, neither does it bust when they're bad. Some have referred to the metro Philadelphia economy as a "Goldilocks economy" - not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
The Wave, as I call it, is now spilling over into neighborhoods I never thought it would -- and other locals still think, as you do, that it never will. When I see new construction west of 52d Street in West Philly, near North Philadelphia Station, and in Strawberry Mansion, I know something's up.
What I and a lot of others around here hope is that we get gentrification right here - that is, we renew neighborhoods in such a way that many of the residents now there benefit from it too, whether they remain or leave.
I invite you to take a stroll under the convention center tonight. Out the northwest exit of Reading Terminal Market and through the gaultlet of homeless people with the stench of urine. Or try to use a sidewalk ATM machine on the northeast corner of Comcast Center at night with all the homeless people across the street. That's the tourist epicenter and commerce epicenter of Philly.
Not sure how thats a contradiction. Im saying DC has a lower poverty rate and higher median HHI than Boston. It has also seen more rapid physical and cultural change than Boston over the last 20 years.
If Baltimore was included in this list I would group it with DC despite those cites being very different. Baltimore has more in common with DC than the other 3 cites. Both cites are predominantly black, both are just below the mason-dixon line, both are in/border Maryland, both share the same airport, both played a huge role in the civil war.
DC went from "Chocolate City" to "White Chocolate City" within the last decade; African-Americans no longer make up a majority of the national capital's population. They now account for about the same share of the total - around 45 percent - that they do in Philadelphia.
That IMO is a sign of just how much DC has gentrified since the 1980s.
This Harvardian occasionally misses Boston but finds Philadelphia much more congenial and even exciting now.
Nonetheless, I voted for pairing Boston with Philly and DC with New York. Here's why:
In several areas - historical significance and preservation of that history, role in the country's founding, arts and culture, architectural character, role of education and medicine in the metropolitan economy, and increasingly even the place technology occupies in them (though Philly still has quite a ways to go before it plays in Boston's league) - Boston and Philadelphia map onto each other quite closely. They also map closely in their historic insularity (Boston: "Why should I travel when I'm already here?" Philadelphia, according to a Bostonian: "In Philadelphia, they ask of a man, Who were his parents?") and the way their bluebloods defined the municipal character (even though it's more than 50 years old now, I still recommend that new arrivals to Philly from Boston read Digby Baltzell's Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, a comparative study of the two cities' upper classes by a noted University of Pennsylvania sociologist who himself came from his city's upper crust).
While New York and Philadelphia are more closely intertwined economically than any two other East Coast metropolises save Baltimore* and Washington, New York and DC, despite their differences, also have several similarities that make them good candidates for pairing with each other. Both are cities on the make in ways neither Boston nor Philadelphia are. Both are important players on the world stage in ways the other two are not (and Washington attracts a whole cadre of self-important p***ks to it because of its role on the world stage; said p***ks confuse its status as the capital of the world's most powerful nation for its being the most important city in the world [edited to add: and they think that status rubs off on them and makes them the most important people in the world]). And both are awash in money; so is Boston, but Philly not as much. Oh, and New York and DC also are alike in that their residents consider their uniqueness within the United States grounds for the rest of the country to grovel before them in awe. That some of us refuse to do so baffles them. Bostonians also don't lack for arrogance, though, while if anything, Philadelphians are polar opposites.
*Had Baltimore been included in this round-robin tournament, I would have voted to pair it with Philadelphia instead. Both cities are grittier (hell, we have a sports mascot named Gritty that looks like your worst nightmare but has captured both the hearts of Philadelphians, even non-hockey fans, and has taken the country by storm too) and more blue-collar in character than the other three; both also fell harder when the bottom fell out from under U.S. cities from the 1960s to the 1980s. The difference now is that Philadelphia has definitely boarded the urban gravy train while Baltimore is still reading the map to find out where the station is.
One more word about Gritty: His attitude was pure Philadelphia blue-collar from the beginning, when just about the next thing he Tweeted after introducing himself with "It me." was this in response to a taunt from the Pittsburgh Penguins' mascot: "Sleep with one eye open tonight, bird."
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