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Trash pickup is TWICE a Week in heavily populated areas in North & West Philly.....That I've seen. That's one of the reasons that the Great Northeast (lol) wanted to secede. Also the street cleaning "DEFINITELY" needs to be enforced. I recall listening to Mary Mason's show in 2002 and hearing residents complain of being issued $60.00 tickets for not moving their cars on street cleaning day. Mary asked the irate callers "How the hell do you expect them to clean the curbside trash? lol Good Ol Philly.
Oops I stand corrected! It was only once a week when I lived there.
Didn't Chinatown just have that clean-up project? I honestly don't think anything of it. Maybe a few of the shops could use a good cleaning, but oh well. I don't notice any real big difference going from area to area.
INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, when I was reading about Philadelphia before I moved here, all I ever heard about was how I'd see cockroaches crawling all over the place. It has been over a month and I've yet to see one. I'm beginning to think this was, like many other things, quite the exaggeration. I know it is winter and all, so they might not be plentiful outside, but according to many they should be infesting every single apartment and home in the greater Philadelphia are at this time of year.
I get that sometimes from people who've lived in Philly 25-35 years ago or visited back then and the places they stayed were raggedy buildings in some rundown areas. Or they haven't been there at ALL, just going by what they've heard. I'm still working in the Bay Area & Oakland is not much to brag about. lol
The big ones that (usually) live outside are American Cockroaches. They are euphemistically referred to as "palmetto bugs" in parts of the South, but they're the same species. They're more active when the weather gets warm, and when it's really warm, sometimes they FLY (which is horrifying).
They are found all over the US (and world at this point), but are more active in places that get warm weather, which includes every big east coast city in the summertime.
THAT'S ANOTHER REASON WHY I CAN'T STAND ATLANTA! Those suckers are ALL over the place & people get upset there if you call them what they ARE.., "ROACHES ON STEROIDS"
THAT'S ANOTHER REASON WHY I CAN'T STAND ATLANTA! Those suckers are ALL over the place & people get upset there if you call them what they ARE.., "ROACHES ON STEROIDS"
Hahaha. I see the same nasty beasts every summer in NYC though. And I remember this on building in Philly - this old bank building on Chestnut..wait I'm just going to post a link....https://maps.google.com/maps?q=19107...3.21,,0,-12.41
where every warm night you would see huge ones just hanging out on the outside on the walls and columns!
Also: Always beware dumpsters in July, and anything that looks like a big moth flying around it..
I apologize for not reading all of this thread but 21 pages? Damn.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rotodome
Yeah, definitely. Especially if the stats also included things like age, income, profession, etc.
Both cities are growing.
I really don't think you could say NYC is growing. It's always growing, and it's always growing for the same reasons it has been for at least a decade or more now. It's just spilling out into the outer boroughs now is all.
I love when New Yorkers bring up the '70s and that famous newspaper headline "US to New York: Drop Dead" or something similar. It is so incredibly misleading. Even during the "Dark Days" of New York, people wanted to live there. Movies have been filmed there since before the 20th Century. Shows have been filmed there since the early 20th Century. Who do they think they're fooling when acting like they were on their own? They haven't been on their own since things became national instead of regional.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
It's less that Philly is "cheaper" than Boston or NYC but more that it's 20 years behind NYC and 30 years behind Boston in its renaissance. Philly lost its core industries much later than either of those cities and didn't really hit bottom until the early 90s.
That's incorrect. I've heard it mentioned a few times before and it is flat out inaccurate. Philadelphia (and the metro) lost its core industries beginning in the Panic of 1873. They would've been completely gone by the end of the Depression if it weren't for WWI and WWII. That sustained Philadelphia (and the metro's) industry for a few decades (MUCH less than until the early '90s) before the bottom eventually fell out.
Philadelphia was the workshop of the world before the Depression and especially before the Panic of 1873. Kensington alone outproduced entire cities. Philadelphia and surrounding was the most important metro when it came to manufacturing for the military during its war-time.
By the time the '90s rolled around, there were very few companies left to manufacture things.
Philadelphia is cheaper than Boston and NYC because neither city ever declined. Their neighborhoods might have but neither city ever did.
NYC and Boston merely expanded their wealthy cores. That's it. They never needed to "turn it around". There was nothing to turn around. Center City in Philadelphia at one point was pretty much dead. Tell me when exactly were Manhattan or Boston's downtown ever like that?
Boston's wealth didn't flee their city. Neither did New York's. Philadelphia, on the other hand, had a more diverse group of wealthy than any other city in the country with the exception of maybe New York. Look at West Philly, North Philly, Kensington, certain parts of Southwest, Northwest, etc etc. Even parts of South Philly and of course all over the metro. Take a look at the historic photos of the city sometime. German, Jewish, Irish, Italian, etc etc. They created their own wealthy cities inside of the city because they were discriminated against and not allowed to be a part of the Old Philadelphia Society (the societies that still exist in Boston and New York). When they were no longer discriminated against, and when "Old Philadelphia" fled the city, they either "moved up" into Center City or fled the city entirely (like they did eventually). Either that, or they went broke during the period from the Panic of 1873 to the early '90s.
If The Panic of 1873 never happened, and certainly if the Depression never happened, Philadelphia would still be the global capital of the US. Not Boston, who had much less of everything than Philadelphia and merely held onto it, and not New York (who benefited from the fact that their economy was more about wealth and fame than production). Neither Boston nor New York were ever even remotely close to as industrial as Philadelphia was. That is why neither declined the way Philadelphia did. That is why they are more expensive. Philadelphia had everything New York did at one point, and Philadelphia had it first. It just had less of it, which made it much easier for a city like New York and for other cities in other parts of the US to basically poach it from Philadelphia. Obviously parts of New York were very industrial but the biggest part of their economy was not production, not the way it was in Philadelphia. Not even close.
When it comes to what actually makes a city great, Philadelphia is still number one in the country. People are just now starting to realize and appreciate it.... or at the very least being forced to begrudgingly accept it.
DC wouldn't even be in this conversation if Philadelphia hadn't been hit so hard by Yellow Fever. You're welcome for the CDC, by the way, rest of the country.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee
Boston: Way more schools than Philly (i.e., "the City that Learns"). It's also strong in finance, law and tech and has a lot of old money.
NYC: Russian heiresses are buying $66 million condos in Manhattan, so it should be pretty obvious why it's more expensive than Philly. Six-figure salary is standard issue.
DC: Much stronger economy. Six-figure salaries are standard issue. There's also a lot of independent wealth and foreign investment in the city. You will see more Sothebys real estate signs there than you will in Philly.
Boston doesn't have more schools than Philadelphia. Its schools have just been more heavily invested in. Not to mention the fact that many Philadelphia colleges and Universities were absorbed into larger Philadelphia ones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drive carephilly
Philadelphia was a city of 2.1 million that only has 1.5 million. We can absorb a lot of people before we start to run out of room. Across the metro we could probably absorb an additional 1 million people without having to build a single house on a farm field. Big sections of Delaware County and Camden County used to be far more densely populated than they are now. The same goes for places like Wilmington and Trenton.
I'd say more like 2 to 3 million easily but yeah, I completely agree.
By the way, since people wanted to compare Philadelphia and NYC, I would like to offer some perspective on something I feel gets lost in the conversation too often.
People always like to mention how Philadelphia only had a bit over 120,000 people during its last Pre-Consolidation Census. I would like to remind those people that Philadelphia was only 2.07 square miles at that point. That's right... there were over 60,000 people per square mile in Philadelphia in 1850.
I apologize for not reading all of this thread but 21 pages? Damn.
I really don't think you could say NYC is growing. It's always growing, and it's always growing for the same reasons it has been for at least a decade or more now. It's just spilling out into the outer boroughs now is all.
Not sure I follow.
NYC had a few censuses where it did lose population, but for the last three it's grown. And Philly turned the corner and is now growing as well. Not sure why it was a controversial statement just to say that both cities are growing now.
Not sure I follow.
NYC had a few censuses where it did lose population, but for the last three it's grown. And Philly turned the corner and is now growing as well. Not sure why it was a controversial statement just to say that both cities are growing now.
No, it didn't. Sure, it had two completely separated censuses where it lost a very tiny fraction of its total population but it's never really not grown. It's inaccurate to claim that it ever really stopped growing.
Not just for the last three censuses. For all of them except two. From 1712 to 1960, not once did New York lose population. From 1900 to 2010 alone, it gained almost 5 million people. The most New York has ever lost was a little over 800,000 from almost 7.9 million to a bit under 7.1 million. The only reason New York even showed population losses in those two separated (as in, not back to back) censuses was probably because mostly native New Yorkers were leaving the city quicker than the many, many people with money and transplants were moving to it.
That's why it's a controversial statement. It gives New York credit as being a city that struggled when in reality, New York has had everything going for it since before the Depression. It may not have translated to all of the people in the city but it's still the reality of the situation.
No, it didn't. Sure, it had two completely separated censuses where it lost a very tiny fraction of its total population but it's never really not grown. It's inaccurate to claim that it ever really stopped growing.
Not just for the last three censuses. For all of them except two. From 1712 to 1960, not once did New York lose population. From 1900 to 2010 alone, it gained almost 5 million people. The most New York has ever lost was a little over 800,000 from almost 7.9 million to a bit under 7.1 million. The only reason New York even showed population losses in those two separated (as in, not back to back) censuses was probably because mostly native New Yorkers were leaving the city quicker than the many, many people with money and transplants were moving to it.
That's why it's a controversial statement. It gives New York credit as being a city that struggled when in reality, New York has had everything going for it since before the Depression. It may not have translated to all of the people in the city but it's still the reality of the situation.
Wow, I think you read waay too much into the four words "Both cities are growing." It's a simple quantitative observation, nothing more.
Everything is not a provocation to fight, you know?
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