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Originally Posted by City Wide
What figures are you basing your statement about housing costs on? In doing a brief look all I could find is costs for metro areas based on 2019 and only Houston was slightly lower than Philly, their prices went down while ours went up, and that might have been because of the large scale flooding in Houston. Although prices in Philly have consistently gone up in the 40 years I've lived here, its been my understanding that one of Philly's strengths has been its availability to offer low cost housing along with top end housing and everything in the middle.
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The South has traditionally been cheaper than the Northeast and the West Coast due to the South being a mostly agricultural region of the country. Texas has something that PA doesn't really have: a massive glut of land. Half of the land is arable while the other half is mostly desert. If Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio wanted to build more mid and high rises the same way as cities in the East Coast and in the Midwest have done, they could've done so.
But land is so cheap and plentiful down in TX and much of the South, that it makes more sense to build a lot of single family homes down there cheaply and at a small profit as opposed to building single family homes in the cities and suburbs of NYC, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and Philly, where land has already been developed and there's already stringent zoning and codes for development. I'd love to know where you get the figures stating that there's higher quality of life and living in Miami/South Florida outside of South Beach/Downtown, Atlanta, and Dallas as opposed to Philly.
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Originally Posted by City Wide
I just have a very difficult time imagining someone deciding to move to one of those 4 southern cities you mentioned largely based on housing costs, even if they are all cheaper than Philly. People largely follow jobs and family to other areas of the country, not housing costs.
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Dude, where have you been? Have you been hiding under a rock or have you been abducted by extraterrestrials from outer space or something? According to the latest census estimates, the Midwest has suffered the most with low population growth, followed closely by the Northeast. With the exception of DC and Boston, there's negative growth in NY, VT and CT, stagnant growth in NJ and PA, and even reduced growth in MD and VA.
Ditto for IL, as the population growth there over there has declined over there due to not just the quality of life, but also in the case of Chicago, violence, subpar schools, high sales taxes, other associated taxes, and corruption. MI and OH are still stagnant, with small growth pockets in Grand Rapids and Columbus while Detroit and Cleveland continues to decline.
The number one reason why people leave the Midwest and the East Coast for places like Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Houston, and Dallas and nowadays, even cities like Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte, San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Raleigh is because of not just lower costs, but the jobs are there in those cities, whether you want to believe it or not. There's a reason why GSK went to Raleigh, Nissan set up it's American HQ in Nashville, Toyota moved it's American HQ from CA to TX, Mack trucks moved from Allentown to Greensboro and Sunoco went to Dallas and it's not just the good old Southern food and the BBQ.
It just so happens the the lower taxes are attracting companies from the Midwest and the East Coast whether you like it or not. Personally I would've loved to have seen Mack still based in Allentown and Sunoco deserved to be in Philadelphia over Dallas, but when you have high business taxes in Philly and PA, and these companies want to make more profit, competition and productivity are the only things big business think about and if the jurisdictions cannot lower business taxes and enforce a healthier business climate, companies see no need to stay, and they have every right to move out of the places they're located if they're not profitable nor productive even if the company was based over here for a long time for over 100+ years as in the case of Sunoco.
I've tried to beat the drum of attracting as well as retaining companies here for x number of years and Philadelphia had lost a lot of major businesses since the last decade. I'm not going to name the companies here because I've said it so many times and I don't want to repeat myself like a broken record here. And I wouldn't be surprised that Philly will sustain negative population growth annually. From 2010 to 2020, Philly recorded growth since 2007, but nowadays, I won't be surprised if Philly started losing some of it's gains and there may be a myriad of reasons why (underperforming schools, aging population, people under 40 moving out of the city after starting families, and nowadays, COVID-19). Is it fair to say that Philly may be declining? No, but it is what it is, and Philadelphia, suffice to say, has lost some of it's steam because it's just not as competitive as I thought it was.
It hung in there in the 2000s but once the 2010s came, it slipped in the city rankings as cities like Phoenix and San Antonio (soon) surpassed Philadelphia, while the metro areas of Atlanta, Miami, Houston, and Dallas added more people with double digit growth while the Philly metro area sputters with some growth here and there but overall it's far cry compared to those metro areas, which is why it looks like Philly will fall off the top ten rankings for cities in 10 to 20 years. It will hang in there, but as long as those cities and metro areas start growing and Philly continues to sputter in growth for 10 to 20 years, don't say I told you so, but Philly will be less relevant the way it was since the colonial times, when it was a world-class city all the way to much of the 20th century.
While one of the few bright spots in Philly and PA is that the Latino and Asian populations have increased rapidly, especially in the eastern part of the state for Latinos, while the black percentage has grown, albeit slowly, while the white percentage has declined, and I'm assuming because many people have moved away from PA into booming areas in the South or where it's currently booming. Had the Latino and Asian populations not grown in PA, we would've been in the same boat as NY, CA, VT and IL as far as states with declining populations.
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Originally Posted by City Wide
Re gentrification, I'm of two minds about it; but the problem I see in saying there's something wrong with it in general is just look at the areas where that's taken place, and tell me where those 'new' people should have, could have moved to if those now gentrified areas hadn't been available to them. Also, where would City revenue be without the huge increase in its real estate tax base, and I would guess these 'new comers' also bought increased wage tax and sales tax. And those are only the direct factors, there's probably lots of indirect benefits as well.
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I don't have a problem with the 'new people" moving to Philly. I'd rather see those "new people" via immigration, as that's how cities really grow as in the case of Miami, Houston, Dallas, and Houston and the reason why Philly became a Top 5 city because of immigrants as opposed to domestic migrants. There's a reason why Millionaire's Row on North Broad St became the way it was because many of the ruling families moved out to the Main Line while first the Jews, then Blacks moved into North Philly. Nowadays, North Philly is going through a sort of renaissance which is needed because there was a glut of vacant land and abandoned houses that there needed to be something to be built.
The real problem isn't the 'new people' moving in, but the 'old people' being forced out via gentrification. I'd hate to see Italian South Philly devoid of Italians, Polish Port Richmond being less Polish, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans being displaced out of El Barrio, and black being forced out of North and West Philly due to rising costs.
I'm of the old school but not from Philly but from NYC and neighborhoods have always been associated by ethnic groups. Even nowadays with biracials and multiracials, there's a reason why Harlem and Bed-Stuy are still associated with Blacks even though many outsiders that come to those areas aren't from the neighborhood let alone the state and Bensonhurst and Canarsie has changed from being predominately Italian to almost half Chinese, and even Polish Greenpoint, Greek Astoria, and Irish Woodside has changed to becoming less Polish, Greek, and Irish. The only constant in NYC seems to be Jews in Midwood and Borough Park. The Jews seem to be the only
Is it a bummer to see people leave those neighborhoods, ABSOLUTELY because those ethnic groups gave those areas a lot of flavor, and gentrification just gives those areas less flavor, even though I like the high-rises that are being built in Brooklyn, I'd still hate to see a lot of old timers leave. That's just me being old school New York and Philadelphia and I still hope the hot dog and the cheesesteak reign supreme in NYC and Philly as opposed to the taco and avocado toast, but that's another story.
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Originally Posted by City Wide
Philly in its biggest supporters most wild dreams, it will never become another SF. It's land area is 46 sq.miles and Philly's is 148 sq.miles. Can you describe what your idea living situation desire is and what you think it should cost and what type of job you think should be able to afford you those desires?
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Speaking of NYC, gentrifiers are even going to the South Bronx. I saw a bunch of proposals for Mott Haven and the recent proposals call for mid to high rises for that area. It would've been near impossible to even think that the South Bronx, and especially Mott Haven would have steel and glass highrises in the 2000s and much of the 2010s outside of project buildings. Now, it's almost going to be a reality for the Bronx!
Brooklyn already has highrises in it's downtown, and Long Island City has a working skyline comparable to Manhattan's skyline. All of this would've been unbelievable had you lived in NYC from the 1980s to much of the 2010s.
The only reason why Philly won't be SF is due to Philly's land mass, but even though, prices are spiking in Philly. I'd still love to see the affordability that attracted me to Philly in the 2000s, but unfortunately, nothing lasts forever, and if the economy improves (which I doubt but I could be wrong), Philly's quality of life could be the same as SF and Boston.
There's jewels of housing in Germantown and Mount Airy that could be gentrified if there was better access to mass transit, but then again, I'd hate to see the middle class be pushed out to Upper Dublin and Springfield Township because of gentrifiers. I'm not against development and revitalization, I'm against gentrification only because it pushes out the locals in favor of more affluent people. I'd rather see the most affluent folks within Center City and University City than through much of South Philly and most of North Philly, which is why I'm always in support of taller proposals within this city (residential or commercial) as opposed to the squat ones that always seem to get built here.
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