All We Need is a Slice of Philly

I haven't been blogging lately because I spent several days last week at a family reunion in Philadelphia. I had a great visit and my only regret is that I couldn't have brought a slice of that city home to plant somewhere in Detroit. To be sure Philadelphia has problems similar to ours -- crime, poverty, and racial tensions. But in spite of those ills, the city has a vibrancy and a glow that excites and reminds you why people will tolerate considerable adversity to live in a big city.

I went to downtown Philly Saturday morning and was struck by the number of people on the streets at 11 a.m. People were scrambling everywhere, running errands, shopping, visiting museums and historical sites. I walked through a few neighborhoods in Central City and enjoyed the narrow, intimate streets and row housing. People were walking dogs, jogging, and stopping in the neighborhood hardware store and coffee shops. Bicycles and motor scooters were common, and parked everywhere.

I know that there are many contrasts between Detroit and Philadelphia that make them very different cities. Philadelphia is the cradle of American democracy and early colonial life and so much of that history is still evident. Unlike Detroit, it was a city that was built and grew before the automobile, so it still has miles of narrow brick streets. When Philly was already urbane and refined for the time, Detroit was still a frontier town, a military outpost. Detroit didn't become an urbanized boom town until the late 19th century and soon after the automobile was beginning to influence the design of streets, road and highways.

Once a city of 2.1 million residents, Philadelphia is now a city of 1.4 million, with still a slight trickle of population loss. Detroit has lost half its population in the past 50 years -- 1.8 million to roughly 900,000 people, and still losing population rapidlly. The key of course to population size isn't so much how many people live in your city, but what is the socioeconomic quality of that population. On that note, Philly's population is decidely more upscale with a lower unemployment rate. Its workforce is more professional and academic than Detroit's. The geographic size of the two cities is virtually the same -- both about 130 square miles. But Philadelphia has a half million more residents, thus less open space created by housing abandonment. Row houses in Philadelphia's gentrified neighborhoods sell in the $300,000+ range.

But perhaps the most significant distinction between the two cities is their racial demographic. With 53 percent of its 1.4 million residents being white, Philadelphia is still a majority white city. With a population of 900,000 which is 85 percent black, Detroit is virtually a black city. I make this point regretfully but necessarily because the reality in our society today is that a white population will bring more wealth and a stronger tax base to a city in addition to demanding better schools, public safety and general services for their tax dollar. I am not suggesting a "let's get whites back here" strategy for Detroit. I am simply making the point that Detroit's road to recovery is going to be filled with huge potholes if we can't find ways to make living in Detroit closer to what it's like living in the better areas of cities like Philadelphia.