Philadelphia 2035 (York, Austin, Penn: calibration, insurance, loft)

[Oh2Me]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

I like the design of the buildings currently going up in Center City West







and that's not including the Riverwalk towers and 2222 Market which completed pretty recently.

Those are gorgeous! Thank you for posting @thedirtypirate

[thedirtypirate]

Originally Posted by Oh2Me

Those are gorgeous! Thank you for posting @thedirtypirate

no problem and really that's just the tip of the iceberg with a lot of other smaller projects happening.
I also saw this posted this morning: https://twitter.com/jblumgart/status...89720335392770

Work is about to get under way for the office building at 21st and Arch



What's even more impressive imo is that there's way more going on, on the other side of the river in University City.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

no problem and really that's just the tip of the iceberg with a lot of other smaller projects happening.

Work is about to get under way for the office building at 21st and Arch

What's even more impressive imo is that there's way more going on, on the other side of the river in University City.

Exciting stuff. I also hope the retail spaces in these projects fill up with restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc. It will truly enliven Western Market & JFK.

The popular food hall Urban Space is opening soon in the Bulletin Building, which is a good start for the edge of U City.

[thedirtypirate]

Originally Posted by cpomp

Exciting stuff. I also hope the retail spaces in these projects fill up with restaurants, bars, coffee shops, etc. It will truly enliven Western Market & JFK.

The popular food hall Urban Space is opening soon in the Bulletin Building, which is a good start for the edge of U City.

True, you currently have to walk down to Rittenhouse to have more restaurant options. If there's one thing I'm never worried about in Philly though, it's new places to eat.

Vetri's new pizza place in the Comcast Center should be a solid addition to JFK.

After years of work, Philly releases final plan to increase the city’s tree canopy

As a major surprise to no one.. it took years of community input and study to figure out.. wait for it.. we should plant more trees! There's little to zero value in asking people with zero expertise on a given subject for their input on the subject.

[Muinteoir]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

As a major surprise to no one.. it took years of community input and study to figure out.. wait for it.. we should plant more trees! There's little to zero value in asking people with zero expertise on a given subject for their input on the subject.

Hahaha. No, I'd rather my neighborhood bake in an uninhibited urban heat island effect. I am glad that there are plans to move this forward. 30% cover seems a bit low, but I guess we've gotta start somewhere.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Muinteoir

Hahaha. No, I'd rather my neighborhood bake in an uninhibited urban heat island effect. I am glad that there are plans to move this forward. 30% cover seems a bit low, but I guess we've gotta start somewhere.

It is indeed a start, but we should at the very least aim to emulate Washington, DC.

This report notes that the city had a tree canopy of 50 percent in 1950, and it has fallen to 38 percent now. The much more modest goal that city has set is to get it back up to 40 percent.

And it appears DC has made, um, concrete progress towards that goal: when I wrote this column for the print mag on TreePhilly in 2018, its canopy stood at 35 percent.

I wonder what our tree canopy is right now? Both the Plan Philly article and my own cite the 20 percent figure from 2018. And even then, TreePhilly had set that 30 percent citywide goal. So maybe thedirtypirate's shrug is warranted.

Edited to add: There is, however, a "but" to this argument. Here it is: DC's residential neighborhoods aren't as densely built as ours are. By this I mean that the dwelling units — even the rowhouses — sit on lots larger than those you find in most of this city. Rowhouses of roughly the same age as many of ours in DC have small front yards, yards big enough to plant a tree in. You find that here only in the city's outlying neighborhoods in Southwest, West, Northwest and Northeast Philadelphia. Most of North and South Philadelphia were developed earlier with houses on lots so small they barely have backyards, let alone front ones. That leaves you with only one option for increasing the tree canopy: Dig holes in the sidewalk and plant trees in them. That will require buy-in from the neighbors, and if you read my column, you will learn what those neighbors often object to.

I got an object lesson in this when I went down to a forum on Baltimore's future at Morgan State University ~2013 (a professor there asked me to serve as the respondent to the panelists).

One of the panelists represented a Baltimore nonprofit that sought to do what TreePhilly seeks to do here (and the city has now formally endorsed). That person described their attempt to plant trees on an East Baltimore rowhouse block that in appearance resembles one of those Philly rowhouse blocks (save for the absence of overhead utility lines, an aesthetic bugbear of mine that we really can't afford to fix because of the enormous cost of putting all those transmission lines underground).

They had identified the sites where they were going to plant the trees and even dug the tree pits. But when they showed up on a Saturday with the trees, angry residents had already showed up to greet them. They raised the very objections I described in my column. The would-be Johnny Appleseeds beat a retreat. The lesson they took away from that confrontation: "Do your due diligence before planning an intervention."

[thedirtypirate]

^I remember reading about something similar in Detroit where residents started to pull the trees out of the ground after they were planted. That's why I cringe when people try to make it a racially motivated topic like "oh white people get the nice tree shaded streets". Uh.. you have to actually want the trees.. But I think education of why trees are important and explaining the benefits of tree coverage comes into play and is an important aspect of the planting. Explain how the new trees being planted will have soft roots that don't push through the sidewalk. That eventually it will create shade and reduce your A/C bill.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

^I remember reading about something similar in Detroit where residents started to pull the trees out of the ground after they were planted. That's why I cringe when people try to make it a racially motivated topic like "oh white people get the nice tree shaded streets". Uh.. you have to actually want the trees.. But I think education of why trees are important and explaining the benefits of tree coverage comes into play and is an important aspect of the planting. Explain how the new trees being planted will have soft roots that don't push through the sidewalk. That eventually it will create shade and reduce your A/C bill.

Also disappointing how lazy and inconsiderate some people are.
Maintaining a tree is somehow a burden... And so is picking up loose trash when out for a walk...

Either way, great news that the tree conversion is gaining momentum.

[thedirtypirate]

As posted else where, the Schuylkill Ave. Research Building got it's building permit and is about to take off. Should look pretty cool with the gold fins on it



The city, and region as a whole at this point, needs to figure out a way to move beyond just biotech and eds & meds. I really don't know what it will take to become more of a center of finance once again. There's obviously major players scattered through the suburbs, but there needs to be more a regional push together to secure more of a position.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

As posted else where, the Schuylkill Ave. Research Building got it's building permit and is about to take off. Should look pretty cool with the gold fins on it



The city, and region as a whole at this point, needs to figure out a way to move beyond just biotech and eds & meds. I really don't know what it will take to become more of a center of finance once again. There's obviously major players scattered through the suburbs, but there needs to be more a regional push together to secure more of a position.

Too bad BlackRock relocation to Philadelphia (back in 2008) fell through. Having Vanguard & BlackRock in the city/region would have been a huge boost for finance.

Beyond the wishful thinking, I'm not sure how the city could tackle that topic? But I believe the Progressive pack would disagree that Philadelphia needs more white collar jobs #taxtherich!...

Separately, there has been some good legal action in the city this year. Several AMLAW100 firms expanding into the Philadelphia market.

An example... https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/n...-troutman.html