'Fleeing' Philadelphia (Pittsburgh, Penn: low income, crime, how much)

[StuckPA]

A report's come out and apparently Philly's population has dropped to 6th in the rankings where it used to be 5. Just as I thought,people are either being killed or getting out. Second only to New Orleans where it took a hurricane to wipe half the people out...

MyFox Philadelphia | Census: More People Fleeing Philadelphia (http://www.myfoxphilly.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=6953808&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1 - broken link)

[Duderino]

Originally Posted by StuckPA

A report's come out and apparently Philly's population has dropped to 6th in the rankings where it used to be 5. Just as I thought,people are either being killed or getting out. Second only to New Orleans where it took a hurricane to wipe half the people out...

MyFox Philadelphia | Census: More People Fleeing Philadelphia (http://www.myfoxphilly.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=6953808&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1 - broken link)

I don't think this comes as much of a surprise to anyone. However, as always, there are different ways to interpret statistics, and here are a couple of my qualms:

1.) This is just a Census Bureau estimate. It will be hard to make any real conclusions about Philadelphia's population trends until 2010 census data is released.

2.) It shows a 7-year trend (2000-2007), and a lot can happen in 7 years. Although it shows an estimate of about 68,000 people having left the city, it does not indicate any sort of distribution of time during which these people left. Thus, the rate of population loss could have reversed by the end of the seven years while the overall estimated trend suggests otherwise.

[FindingZen]

I don't doubt that Philly has lost residents... but I believe that the drop to the 6th largest city is more due to the rise of Phoenix (pun intended) whose square mileage rivals sprawled-out LA.

[BPP1999]

Yes, this is old news, I think, but this article hit the Inquirer today. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone, though I'm sure some will revel in this article and boast of how much they hate Philadelphia and how the city deserves to continue shrinking.

We all know the problems: taxes too high, poor performing education, and crime escalading. It would be nice if the Inquirer spent more time offering solutions to these problems instead of just pointing them out. It would also be nice if city residents stopped voting for self-centered dirtbags and started demanding more from their leaders.

[akorosdc]

The cities that are growing are the same sprawling Sunbelt cities that have been for years. No surprise there.

What I found interesting was not that people are leaving, but that it's slowed down in the most recent year (especially given the title).

[bryson662001]

I got the impression from that article that they thought the people leaving the city were also leaving the metro in search of job opportunities for less educated and low income. In other words the people that Philly can afford to lose. There really is no advantage to having a huge population within the cities boundrys, as one can see by looking at "small" cities like San Francisco or Boston, as long as the metro, which is the "real" city is healthy. There seem to be more "large " cities like Detroit and L.A. and Phoenix that are having problems.

[BPP1999]

Yes but we shouldn't sugarcoat anything. Philadelphia is shrinking, and it shouldn't be. It should be growing. Maybe it doesn't need to have 2m residents like it did in 1950, but it should be growing nevertheless. I do wonder, though, what would happen if both Philadelphia and PA experienced a rate of growth closer to the national average. So many people here seem to hate what little growth we have now, with people in the city thinking that the more tall buildings Philadelphia has the worse it becomes. In the suburbs, you have people pissing and moaning about sprawl. So I wonder exactly how we can grow and at the same time make people happy.

[StuckPA]

To be honest,Philadelphia seems like a city that should never have become a city. It was probably farmland like the rest of PA and tried to become white collar somehow but doesn't seem to be cutting it like most cities in the country. To this day all PA is is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia bookending with West Virginia in between

[FindingZen]

Originally Posted by StuckPA

To be honest,Philadelphia seems like a city that should never have become a city. It was probably farmland like the rest of PA and tried to become white collar somehow but doesn't seem to be cutting it like most cities in the country. To this day all PA is is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia bookending with West Virginia in between

With all due respect, Philadelphia was the first capital of the United States. Whatever passed for white collar was here at the begininng. Whether Philly is currently "cutting it" is a matter of opinion or perspective, on which we will surely continue to have constructive debates on this forum.

And, for the record, I believe it was James Carville, from whom I'm told I live "spitting distance" away from these days, who said the (in)famous quote:
"Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle".

Not that I don't have anything but respect for any Alabamans or West Virginians.

[rainrock]

Originally Posted by Duderino

Thus, the rate of population loss could have reversed by the end of the seven years while the overall estimated trend suggests otherwise.

Rino the report mentions that the population has slowed considerably in the last 3 years around 3,000 people per year in the past few years. Thats a pittance when you are talking a city of 1.5 M


Stuck must feel like a kid on Christmas morning after a report like this comes out.