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I was referring to natural decline due to the death of the elderly, who currently comprise a disproportionate number of metro Pittsburghers relative to the national average.
Philadelphia... big gap...Detroit...St. Louis / Pittsburgh...Cleveland.
The Philadelphia metro is by far the largest of that group and has the highest concentration of "things" that most would define as cosmopolitan and bourgeois culture.
I think all of these metros have a lot of understated wealth (Detroit for sure), but if we are looking at the big picture, there is no argument against Philadelphia as number 1, and that isn't changing.
Philadelphia and Detroit share the commonality where the majority of the wealth is actually in the burbs rather than the city, but what separates Philadelphia from Detroit is its size, more robust/diverse economy, Northeastern corridor location, a much more developed downtown/university district, and higher amounts of wealth and investment in the region.
Detroit is a majority black city. Philadelphia is not. That's one major thing that separates them.
Once upon a time(1950) Detroit had nearly 2 million people at the same time that Philadelphia had slightly more than 2 million people. So there was likely much more commonality between the two back then.
Today Detroit is considerably smaller at 660,000 and is continuing to lose population. Philadelphia, today, is 1.578 million and has seen gains, though small, for about decade.
Much of the overall population decline is attributable to low rates of immigration and natural population decline (the number of births being less than the amount of deaths).
If you look at net domestic migration alone, even though it's negative for the Pittsburgh area, it's not really any more negative than any older, established metropolitan area in the Northeast or Midwest.
Net domestic migration is outward from just about every one of the 50 largest US metropolitan areas, save for those in the Sunbelt (Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston, D/FW, San Diego - but NOT LA.)
Immigration from abroad has kept most of the non-Sunbelt ones buoyant.
What are natural demographics and why is no other major city suffering from them so terribly?
Large portions of what are today 45-70 year olds left in the 70s and 80s To start families. Now their kids are of Childbearing age and not in Pittsburgh.
Because I thini Philadelphia is much more like Detroit and Pittsburgh than it is like Washongton or Boston.
You could argue this either way - and the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program did just that when it produced a report on the state of the city, its economy and finances in the 1990s. The authors of that report coined a term they thought captured the split personality of the city:
You could argue this either way - and the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program did just that when it produced a report on the state of the city, its economy and finances in the 1990s. The authors of that report coined a term they thought captured the split personality of the city:
"Bostroit."
That sounds about right. Culturally this is clearly the case, which is more or less what I'm asking about. Philadelphia may indeed be more bourgeois and socially aware than, say, Cleveland. But to compare it in this way to Boston or Washington seems absurd.
That sounds about right. Culturally this is clearly the case, which is more or less what I'm asking about. Philadelphia may indeed be more bourgeois and socially aware than, say, Cleveland. But to compare it in this way to Boston or Washington seems absurd.
Philadelphia is MUCH closer to Boston than it is to any other city in the country.
Because I thini Philadelphia is much more like Detroit and Pittsburgh than it is like Washongton or Boston.
If we are comparing metro regions, wouldn't it be a wash either way?? Philadelphia as a city is certainly far less cosmo / bougie than DC and Boston, but when you expand to a metro level, I think its pretty even, at least between Boston and Philadelphia. DC might have more of the "bougie" stuff going on.
I think Pittsburgh is too small of a metro to really compare to Philadelphia though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ForeignCrunch
That sounds about right. Culturally this is clearly the case, which is more or less what I'm asking about. Philadelphia may indeed be more bourgeois and socially aware than, say, Cleveland. But to compare it in this way to Boston or Washington seems absurd.
Again, at a metro level, I find Boston and Philadelphia to be very similar. Both have a similar sized economy and similar economic stats, both are very old and historic metros with a lot of old money / understated wealth. I find the vibe between suburban Boston and suburban Philadelphia to be near identical in many aspects.
DC I could see an argument for the "bougie" vibe, but if we are comparing metros, Philadelphia's metro peers are Boston, DC, Atlanta, Dallas, etc.
Detroit is the next tier down, and Pittsburgh is arguably a tier below Detroit.
I am confused as to why people have a hard time placing the Philadelphia METRO AREA (I emphasize) with the other big dogs? It performs just as it should for a metro of 6+M people.
Last edited by cpomp; 08-20-2019 at 06:56 AM..
Reason: edit.
That sounds about right. Culturally this is clearly the case, which is more or less what I'm asking about. Philadelphia may indeed be more bourgeois and socially aware than, say, Cleveland. But to compare it in this way to Boston or Washington seems absurd.
It's kind of apples-to-oranges in all cases, though. It's certainly not outside of the realm of reasonable comparison to Cleveland, Boston or DC, particularly the latter two given its metro tier.
But Cleveland is still much smaller than Philly, and while certainly making great strides, still has further to go relative to revitalization and reinvestment as compared to Philly.
That being said, Philly's revitalization and reinvestment itself is still definitely a work-in-progress and it's also twice as large relative to Boston and DC proper. It has an ever-thriving urban core and periphery neighborhoods in and around Center City/University City, but where the city under-performs is its outer-neighborhoods (with the notable exception of Northwest and parts of Northeast Philly). It's the classic "donut" scenario of economic performance.
Boston, and especially DC, are two examples of what you might call "boutique" cities, in that they're demographically exclusive, involving a perfect storm of their relatively small land area, very high barriers to development/growth (they're both very "built out" cities) and out-sized influence of major knowledge institutions (academia and government, respectively).
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