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Posted Apr 20, 2021, 7:52 PM
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Midrise
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 1,551
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PurpleWhiteOut
I couldn't disagree more. To me this project is like the UC city Center City expansion equivalent for the riverwards. Expecting everyone to commute into Center City only will overwhelm infrastructure, while this allows some Fishtowners a close commute or a "reverse commute" from Center City to Fishtown. Having large employers in the riverwards between this project and the proposed office tower in No Libs allows further neighborhoods like Harrowgate and Kensington to become more attractive. If all large office space is exclusive to CC, eventually commute distance specifically to CC will greatly limit which neighborhoods can revitalize. Remember every neighborhood used to have large employers in them (is factories) once upon a time.
Bedroom communities are inherently more unstable than a live/work/play neighborhood because there are less bonds tying residents to the area.
Plus a business looking for a younger workforce plus cheap waterfront amenities might not attract the same kind of industry as high rise office space in CC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
Exactly. A neighborhood can't have a vital commercial strip if there aren't varied users at varied times. Not every neighborhood needs an office district per se but every neighborhood needs employers of some sort who pull people in when residents are leaving (to work for the day).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skintreesnail
Yeah, I agree with this. It just seems like a city in general should be more distributed and not so centralized. This would allow more people to live/work and play all in one area, as well as spread transit destinations out a little more. Philadelphia is pretty well setup to accomplish something like this with its current transit system. It's easy to at least envision some working nodes in other areas of the city. A Delaware waterfront with access to the El and light rail would be a great opportunity for this. North Philadelphia station is another huge opportunity with Regional Rail/Amtrak and BSL access.
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These last few comments call to mind one of my favorite passages from Jane Jacobs' "The Death & Life of Great American Cities."
Excerpt:
Rittenhouse Square, the success, possesses a diverse rim and diverse neighborhood hinterland. Immediately on its edges it has in sequence, as this is written, an art club with restaurant and galleries, a music school, an Army office building, an apartment house, a club, an old apothecary shop, a Navy office building which used to be a hotel, apartments, a church, a parochial school, apartments, a public-library branch, apartments, a vacant site where town houses have been torn down for prospective apartments, a cultural society, apartments, a vacant site where a town house is planned, another town house, apartments. Immediately beyond the rim, in the streets leading off at right angles and in the next streets parallel to the park sides, is an abundance of shops and services of all sorts with old houses or newer apartments above, mingled with a variety of offices.
Does anything about this physical arrangement of the neighborhood affect the park physically? Yes. This mixture of uses of buildings directly produces for the park a mixture of users who enter and leave the park at different times. They use the park at different times from one another because their daily schedules differ. The park thus possesses an intricate sequence of uses and users.
Joseph Guess, a Philadelphia newspaperman who lives at Rittenhouse Square and has amused himself by watching its ballet, says it has this sequence: "First, a few early-bird walkers who live beside the park take brisk strolls. They are shortly joined, and followed, by residents who cross the park on their way to work out of the district. Next come people from outside the district, crossing the park on their way to work within the neighborhood. Soon after these people have left the square the er- rand-goers start to come through, many of them lingering, and in mid-morning mothers and small children come in, along with an increasing number of shoppers. Before noon the mothers and children leave, but the square's population continues to grow because of employees on their lunch hour and also because of people coming from elsewhere to lunch at the art club and the other restaurants around. In the afternoon mothers and children turn up again, the shoppers and errand-goers linger longer, and school children eventually add themselves in. In the later after- noon the mothers have left but the homeward-bound workers come through—first those leaving the neighborhood, and then those returning to it. Some of these linger. From then on into the evening the square gets many young people on dates, some who are dining out nearby, some who live nearby, some who seem to come just because of the nice combination of liveliness and leisure. All through the day, there is a sprinkling of old peo- ple with time on their hands, some people who are indigent, and various unidentified idlers."
In short, Rittenhouse Square is busy fairly continuously for the same basic reasons that a lively sidewalk is used continuously: because of functional physical diversity among adjacent uses, and hence diversity among users and their schedules.
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Philadelphia Industrial & Commercial Heritage
A public Facebook group to promote appreciation of Greater Philadelphia's industrial and commercial history and advocate for historic preservation and adaptive re-use.
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