In the News
For city and Pa., no dramatic changes
Jeremy Nowak
Philadelphia Inquirer, Op-Ed, January 3, 2006
The 30th Street Station is a good place to think about our region. It's our central nervous system. One of America's busiest stations, it moved four million people in and out of Philadelphia in 2005.
Take the train north and in 90 minutes you're in New York, the financial capital of the world. A 90-minute ride south takes you to Washington, the world's political capital. In 20 minutes, you are at an airport with global connections that moved a record 30 million passengers last year.
Walk 15 minutes west and you are in a world-class university and medical center. Walk east and in 15 minutes you dine, shop or reside in one of America's best downtowns.
Jump on the elevated train to West Philadelphia or Kensington or take a subway or bus north or south and you get a different view. Neighborhoods shift quickly, from stable and growing to those in persistent decline.
Drive onto the interstate east to New Jersey, south to Delaware, or west or north to the Pennsylvania suburbs and other images emerge. They are not uniform images by any means, but a patchwork of older towns, established suburbs and new developments.
Our region is the contradictory sum total of these excursions and the patterns of growth they exhibit.
Philly's downtown renaissance has drawn national attention. Data on housing permits, residential growth, and real estate values are strong. Even commercial real estate absorption shows surprisingly stable numbers.
Population growth in the region remains slow, and near-term job growth prospects are mostly positive. The risk of a downward price shift in our real estate market is less than in places that have been hotter than ours during the past decade.
We are the Treasury bond of regions - nothing too dramatic up or down.
Bucks, Chester, and Montgomery Counties are growing; together with Delaware County, they are driving much of the state's economy, with 20 percent of Pennsylvania's population and close to 30 percent of its personal income. In a state where 25 percent of counties reached their demographic height before 1950, the Philly suburbs are a politically decisive force.
What about Philadelphia's neighborhoods? The past year brought some of the best real estate news in decades, and not just downtown. Some of the oldest sections of the city in North, South, and West Philadelphia are doing well.
Some of this change is dictated by demography: empty nesters, students, young people without children, and immigrants. But these new entrants have not been enough to drive aggregate population trends. Population projections since the 2000 census show a net loss of residents from Philadelphia. A five-decade trend continues.
It is hard to imagine Philadelphia growth until the "basics" are more firmly addressed.
In 2005, the city's murder rate continued a three-year retreat from our lowest level in decades. Public-school test scores improved but are far from competitive. Our undergraduate-degree levels are too low, as too many out-of-town students leave after graduation and too many Philly students don't complete their college education. Despite another small reduction, our tax rates inhibit growth.
You can comb through 2005 and find good regional news; it depends on what you are looking for and where you look. There are great stories about our life-sciences sector, the hospitality industry, housing starts, venture-capital investments, suburban growth, new skyscrapers, rebuilt public housing, and model urban schools.
You can also roam the streets of Philadelphia and many inner-ring suburbs and industrial towns and find too many people for whom the past seems better than the future, too many struggling businesses not replaced by start-ups, too many families without equity, and too many young adults without labor-market prospects. And sitting in the middle of this all are large vacant tracts, including a large supply of obsolete rowhouses built for a different era.
Both representations of the region exist in plentiful supply. Our best citizens understand the importance of linking these narratives before spatial and economic isolation become impenetrable and we lose the capacity for civic action and familiarity. Much is being done to do just that, but we have only scratched the surface. It is ultimately inefficient to be globally connected while being so locally disconnected.
This was a good year for thinking about the region's future. There were economic and social data to warm the hearts of both optimists and pessimists among us. We could also see the continued decentralization of growth and population as well as the emergence of a recentralized urban identity well positioned to become an early 21st-century success story.
We will know much more in the next few years.
Jeremy Nowak is president and chief executive officer of the Reinvestment Fund (http://www.trfund.com/) and board chair of Mastery Charter School and Alex's Lemonade Stand.