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Some of you might know this but The Bronx is an extension of Manhattan and you can clearly see this in the street patterns uptown.
So with that being said The Bronx is just a bunch of neighborhoods. No true downtown or anything like that so Philadelphia is easily better overall.
Absolutely correct that The Bronx was developed as an extension of Manhattan... It was once part of "New York County". The street grid yes.... The subway lines don't cross the Bronx - they all go directly to Manhattan. Even Bronx Community College was the original campus of NYU's Engineering School - which is why it is on "University Ave." and has the nicest architecture of any CUNY campus. But that's more on the west and south ends. The east kept its former character of being part of Westchester (Westchester Square was the capital of Westchester the way White Plains is now... and the Country Club neighborhood is called that because it was the former home of Westchester Country Club).
But if the debate was about "living in" as the original poster stated - then not counting subway access into Manhattan also doesn't make sense. Most Philadelphians - nor residents of any city - live in the "downtown". They live in neighborhoods.
The thing is, it's not even cheap to live in The Bronx anymore. I'd rather pay slightly higher rent to live in a better neighborhood (though, I do like parts of The Bronx).
In the context of the debate then - which place has a larger percentage of "non good" neighborhoods. Well if you are going by crime and the built environment - I'd say (and the statistics show) in the 2000's Philly has a larger percentage of "bad" neighborhoods. Though it is relatively cheaper - real estate wise. Supply and demand determines real estate price... So that is telling.
I've seen you quote this before (I know these aren't your words) but I think it's a misleading quote. You pay Philadelphia prices for the Philadelphia experience, which is very different from the New York experience. New York could be overpriced and perhaps overrated, but anyone thinking they are going to get the same experience living in Philly as they would living in NY is going to be disappointed. Philly is a completely different town with its own vibe and that's the expectation people need to have before moving there. .
Actually, those are my own words, and I don't think you quite got the point.
By "paying New York prices for the Philadelphia experience," they're getting less than they bargained for. And for all its cultural, social and other treasures, no one would call Brooklyn even "Manhattan lite." Manhattan — which, for most outsiders, defines "the New York experience" — is sui generis and unmatched even by New York's own outer boroughs.
Given the migration patterns (mentioned in the post you replied to), a lot of Brooklynites clearly have concluded they're paying too much for what they're getting. My sentence drives that point home: You must have missed the part where I said that "they figured it would make more sense to pay Philadelphia prices for it." Brooklyn, as far as I can tell, resembles no other Northeastern city as much as it does Philadelphia. (Which is not to say that it's a close fit, but it's certainly a closer one than to Boston, Washington, Baltimore or any of New York's four other boroughs. And especially not Manhattan. Sure, it's only a subway ride away, but I can take the Acela from 30th Street and be in Manhattan as quickly as someone taking the A train from Brooklyn's farthest reaches. The Brooklynites can't afford to pay Manhattan prices, either.)
(Edited to add: And even after saying all this, I think it should also be clear that my tongue is in my cheek, at least somewhat, in describing the Brooklynites in this fashion.)
Last edited by MarketStEl; Yesterday at 09:34 PM..
Yeah it's funny because yeah if you removed City Center from Philly then everything changes. In the 70's to the 90's crime was higher in The Bronx. But since the late 90's it's not even close - Philly is way more crime ridden. It also has many more rundown areas in the 2000's. The Bronx "city center" is Manhattan though... But it seems that was removed from the parameters of the debate. Philly is cool - but like you said outside of City Center it has a lot of problems glossed over by the Philly boosters on the thread. I see it became a "hipster haven" debate rather than a totality of factors like the debate was supposed to be.
New York is safer than Philadelphia — that's a fact.
But I think lots of people, including many here, exaggerate the degree to which that affects QOL here. I'll grant that stories like the one about the one-year-old stabbed by a mentally ill person near Rittenhouse Square give one pause, but most of us go about our business from day to day undisturbed by crime.
And I'm saying this as one who was disturbed: I came close to being collateral damage when a bunch of teens who had just walked past me in the other direction on Chelten Avenue in Germantown started shooting about 30 seconds later two years ago.
Yet lots of people like living in Germantown. It's the city's most populous outlying neighborhood. A stat about it that I like to throw out is: I know of no other Philadelphia neighborhood where the median household is in the upper $30ks and 6% of the households earn more than $105k per year. (I just looked up some data on PolicyMap, and there's a block group in Germantown's northwest quadrant with an MHI of $167k next to another where it's $90k.)
Last edited by MarketStEl; Yesterday at 09:32 PM..
Reason: q
Given the migration patterns (mentioned in the post you replied to), a lot of Brooklynites clearly have concluded they're paying too much for what they're getting.
On the migration point: The top states (outside of the NYC metro) where people living in Brooklyn, NY were born.
California
Pennsylvania
Massachusetts
The top recipients of people moving from Brooklyn, NY.
Philadelphia Metro
Philadelphia - 2,379
Burlington County - 557
Montgomery County - 362
New Castle County - 290
Chester County - 251
Bucks County - 217
Camden County - 205
Gloucester County - 119
Delaware County - 77
Total: 4,457
Los Angeles Metro
Los Angeles County - 3,552
Orange County - 413
Ventura County - 71
Total: 4,036
Boston Metro
Suffolk County - 1,120
Middlesex County - 943
Bristol County - 846
Essex County - 412
Norfolk County - 320
Plymouth County - 58
Total: 3,699
Washington, DC Metro
District of Columbia - 720
Montgomery County - 380
Fairfax County - 232
Prince George's County - 228
Arlington County - 158
PWC - 101
Loudoun County - 78
Alexandria City - 74
Charles County - 36
Total: 2,007
There are more people moving from Brooklyn to the suburbs of Philly then there are moving to the DMV as a whole. To me, that indicates that the migration patterns are largely a product of people returning to their hometowns.
On the migration point: The top states (outside of the NYC metro) where people living in Brooklyn, NY were born.
California
Pennsylvania
Massachusetts
The top recipients of people moving from Brooklyn, NY.
Philadelphia Metro
Philadelphia - 2,379
Burlington County - 557
Montgomery County - 362
New Castle County - 290
Chester County - 251
Bucks County - 217
Camden County - 205
Gloucester County - 119
Delaware County - 77
Total: 4,457
Los Angeles Metro
Los Angeles County - 3,552
Orange County - 413
Ventura County - 71
Total: 4,036
Boston Metro
Suffolk County - 1,120
Middlesex County - 943
Bristol County - 846
Essex County - 412
Norfolk County - 320
Plymouth County - 58
Total: 3,699
Washington, DC Metro
District of Columbia - 720
Montgomery County - 380
Fairfax County - 232
Prince George's County - 228
Arlington County - 158
PWC - 101
Loudoun County - 78
Alexandria City - 74
Charles County - 36
Total: 2,007
There are more people moving from Brooklyn to the suburbs of Philly then there are moving to the DMV as a whole. To me, that indicates that the migration patterns are largely a product of people returning to their hometowns.
It may be, but the missing stat to help us figure out the degree to which this is true is the number of Brooklynites born in those counties (I guess we could use Pennsylvania as a whole as a stand-in, for it's quite likely that the bulk of Pennsylvanians who have moved to New York have moved from the Southeast).
It may be, but the missing stat to help us figure out the degree to which this is true is the number of Brooklynites born in those counties (I guess we could use Pennsylvania as a whole as a stand-in, for it's quite likely that the bulk of Pennsylvanians who have moved to New York have moved from the Southeast).
72% of people moving to Kings County, NY from Pennsylvania came from Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware or Chester. That probably gives us a good sense of things.
72% of people moving to Kings County, NY from Pennsylvania came from Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware or Chester. That probably gives us a good sense of things.
That buttresses my parenthetical but doesn't answer my question; we need the numbers rather than the percentages for that. Take the Pennsylvania number and multiply it by 0.72 and we get the answer.
Of course, the other reason for the high numbers of people moving in both directions is their proximity: Mercer County, NJ, is culturally within Philadelphia's orbit but economically split between the two, and I'd understood that Princeton University is where it is because it's midway between the two cities. The two CSAs abut each other; I can't think of too many other big-city CSAs that do.
And by the way, a 20 percent diminution may not be beanbag, but when you're starting from a large base, it's not so great as to dissuade someone from making the move. Some of the New Yorkers I've met who live here now didn't come from Pennsylvania prior to leaving New York for Philadelphia. NYC may be five times Philadelphia's size, but the difference in scale IMO doesn't translate to a difference in quality. You will see more people on Fifth Avenue than you will on Walnut Street, but you won't yawn walking up Walnut, either. And I'd say that we do block parties better but parades worse.
I'll grant that stories like the one about the one-year-old stabbed by a mentally ill person near Rittenhouse Square give one pause, but most of us go about our business from day to day undisturbed by crime.
And not to dismiss the seriousness of what occurred--but coincidentally, the individual responsible in that case actually came from NYC and had criminal activity there. Clearly it could have occurred in either city.
Quote:
Police found the woman's coat inside the black bag as well as other items. Based on evidence they collected, police said the woman also had a warrant out of New York City in connection to an aggravated assault that occurred a few days prior.
That buttresses my parenthetical but doesn't answer my question; we need the numbers rather than the percentages for that. Take the Pennsylvania number and multiply it by 0.72 and we get the answer.
We're not going to get that unless the Census starts publishing data on birthplace down to the county level. And even that's imperfect since a lot of people living in South Jersey were born in Pennsylvania, people living in Maryland were born in the District of Columbia, etc.
There's never going to be a perfect measure, but we can clearly see that there's a very strong correlation here between place of birth and outmigration, so I think it's reasonable to conclude that a large bulk of people moving from Brooklyn to the Philly area are natives. The birthplace data and outmigration data line up rather neatly.
The bottom line is that I would expect to see more migration from Brooklyn to Philly compared to other metros because there are more native Pennsylvanians living in Brooklyn. It's not surprising. It's the same with strong migration from Brooklyn to Los Angeles given the large number of native Californians living in Brooklyn.
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