Shortly after Mayor Richardson Dilworth resigned to run for governor and was succeeded by City Council President and Democratic party functionary Jim Tate, the Evening Bulletin (the original Evening Bulletin) did a profile of Tate.
Accompanied by photos of the Mayor riding the subway to work (sound familiar?), the article portrayed Tate as everyman Philadelphia, taking the subway to work from the North Philadelphia rowhome that was just blocks away from where he grew up. This was in stark contrast to the patrician Dilworth who demonstrated his dedication to urban revitalization by moving from his Chestnut Hill home to a house he built on Washington Square (whose most recent owner paid a mere $1.75m in 2001). In fact, one person said of Tate in the Bulletin story, "no fancy home on Washington Square for that guy."
That quote seems to indicate that the rift between Center City and the surrounding neighborhoods has been going on since at least that long and probably dates back to the Consolidaton of the City in 1854 (I'll be in my cold, cold grave before I recognize those scoundrels from Southwark!) Such a rift seems to have existed even before the city became as racially segregated as it would become in the 60s and 70s and is now. Even today, some residents in predominantly white areas in the lower Northeast may think that there is such a rift.
To many in the neighborhoods, Center City is either the overachieving, good-looking, popular sibling who always seems to get most of the parents' (city government's) love and attention or the drunken, wayward, slacker firstborn who still seems to get all of the love and attention. Poor Kensington, Northern Liberties, Mt. Airy and Pennsport are the hardworking kids who get good grades, stay out of trouble and are pretty indepedent but would still like to borrow the car every once in a while. To complete this tortured analogy, parts of Northeast Philly are the kids who come into the family later on after it's revealed that Dad had a little indiscretion a few months before he met mom. They should get some attention, but of course they'll never get as much as the other kids.
But does this still hold up in 2007? The revival of Center City, from wayward firstborn to popular, successful and dominant in the 1990s, led many to charge that Mayor Rendell spent all of his time and energy on improving that section at the expense of other neighborhoods - a charge that, according to A Prayer for the City, Rendell always felt was unfair. When John Street took over in 2000, he wanted to be known as "the neighborhood mayor" and worked hard to make sweeping changes in the city's most underprivileged neighborhoods by towing abandoned cars and commencing "Neighborhood Transformation." Eight years later, many of these places are undoubtedly better off but most still have a looong way to go.
Meanwhile, many working class neighborhoods, not quite blighted or abandoned enough to qualify for "transformation" but also not close enough to tourists and big business to merit or to be able to afford "special services districts" end up feeling completely ignored.
Today's episode of Issues Forums attempts to take on that perception of a division between Center City and the Neighborhoods. What can other neighborhoods learn from Center City's successes? Can the steps taken to revitalize Center City be used throughout the city to achieve similar results? If not, what can these neighborhoods do, using market forces in the case of the stronger places or help from the government in very struggling areas, to cause their own "transformations?"
For our blog readers, what part of the city do you live in? Do you get a sense that there's still a CC vs. Neighborhoods attitude in the city? Do people still feel like too much attention is paid to and too many resources spent in Center City? Or has the rift shifted from geographically-based to class-based? Do the very rich and the very poor get all of the "help" from city government at the expense of the middle? What can the city do to make it, not "easy," but "just a little bit easier" for those in the middle?
This is a tough one, folks. Let us know what you think.
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