Here's an idea. Go to your car and drive to the nearest Philadelphia street you can find. If you happen to be in Philadelphia already, bingo, start there. Now systematically drive on every street, down every block in the entire city. According to the city Department of Streets website you'd end up driving "2,180 miles of city streets, 35 miles of Fairmount Park roads, and 360 miles of state highways" for a total of 2,575 miles.
While you're on your road trip, take the time to observe everything. What do the houses look like? How does one neighborhood transition to another? Are there sections of the city that seem to be zoned for uses that would be more appropriate somewhere else? What condition is the infrastructure itself in and how does that differ by neighborhood? How many people are out and about, walking around?
It would help if you could do it all in a few months so that your picture of the city is taken during one time period. If you do this, you may be the only person in this city to have an idea of what the entire city actually looks like right now.
Neat idea, eh? Well, a columnist named Bill McGraw at the Detroit Free Press did exactly that in his city. After exploring each and every block of the Motor City, he returned to a number of areas for a closer look:
When I completed the journey, I went back out and re-explored a number of areas, and was joined by a team of Free Press photographers, videographers, designers, artists, editors and others.
I wasn't a stranger. I have covered Detroit for 35 years and lived in it or next to it for virtually my entire life. In some respects, Detroit was worse than I thought. In other respects, it was better.
After seeing this, I'm struck by the question, does anyone really know what the whole city of Philadelphia looks like right now? Is it as good/bad as any of us think it is?
In one of the columns for the multi-part series, McGraw describes a distressed neighborhood in Detroit with words that could just as easily be used for any of Philadelphia's worst off or any of a number of failed-state third-world countries:
Neighborhoods exist seemingly outside of the establishment's consciousness, held together by longtime residents who refuse to give up and are helped by grassroots efforts to keep them going. But all the while they face the harsh reality of a municipal infrastructure crippled by too little money, too few human resources and too large an area to oversee.
So, do we have any Philly newspaper columnists that would up to this challenge? I'm sure there are a few that you wouldn't mind nominating for a several month sabbatical. Sound off in the comments.
The Introduction to the series, which includes links to each part and to the supplemental video and photos can be found here. I've been reading through the series for a good chunk of the afternoon and even without ever having been to Detroit, I find them completely fascinating. If you have time, give it a look.
(via the 13th Floor, Governing Magazine's blog.)