Some of these cities have had immense gentrification (San Francisco, Seattle) -- and are now mostly for the rich, like European cities, where the lower-income people can't afford the city and have to live in boring suburbs and have long commutes. That's not necessarily preferable.

Here the numbers of affluent people who are revitalizing center city just can't compensate for the huge, 50-year long exodus of the middle class to the suburbs & elsewhere. Many of the jobs left too. What happened here happened in Detroit to an even greater degree. The cities at the top are located in regions that are doing really well, and this region is growing much more slowly. So it's like a zero-sum game where the suburbs have benefited at the expense of the city instead of along with it.

It's complicated. If anyone wants to really understand the dynamics here, I recommend reading Adams, et al, Restructuring the Philadelphia Region: Metropolitan Divisions and Inequality (Temple Press 2008).

An interesting study of Philadelphia immigration trends gives some insight:

The study, which was presented last fall at the Free Library shows that four of the cities above which reduced the gap in income were cities with the largest foreign born populations. They were Chicago, San Francisco, DC and Boston. In addition, the study specifically named Seattle and Atlanta as cities with more recent spikes in immigration. Meanwhile Philadelphia since the 1970s has dropped off the top 10 list. While it still draws plenty of immigrants - indeed immigrants are the sole reason Philly staves off population decline - its percentage of recent immigrants is much slower than that of other cities.

Here's further evidence of how immigrants are another critical factor in the broadening gap between city and suburbs.

YPP-Immigration Trends 10001

YPP-Immigration Trend 20001

Philadelphia - for all its qualities - is squandering a great opportunity to capitalize on a rich immigrant population. We can see this in the fact that Councilman Kenney couldn't convince enough of his colleagues to support a city immigration office a few years back. Or in the fact that Mayor Nutter is the first mayor to adopt a language access policy (though few steps have been taken to actually implement it effectively).

And there are more backward steps that Philadelphia is taking, like participation in the federal "Secure Communities" program which expands the relationship between local police and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, whose primary responsibility is deportation and detention of immigrants. Those kinds of programs just make Philly less immigrant friendly.

Over the years, Chinatown as the city's oldest immigrant neighborhood has suffered numerous attempts to diminish the quality of life there. It still lacks a rec center, public health clinic and local public school (although AAU did establish the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School in 2005). Chinatown's children have to walk more than a mile to McCall Elementary. I realize it's not the only neighborhood to lack services but it could be one of the few neighborhoods to have so few public services while still fighting development projects like a highway, convention center, stadium, federal prison, and lately a casino.

In particular the casino project revealed just how poorly City planners view Chinatown. For example, as Chinatown fought the placement of a casino next to its borders, a Market East revitalization plan supported by the City Planning Commission all but reduced Chinatown to a side thought. In addition to the vision of a casino along Market Street, the plan promoted the idea of having a monster bus depot along Filbert Street in the midst of Chinatown. The NY planning firm hired by the City Planning Commission promoted the expansion of the Reading Terminal Market and then scolded Chinatown for not finding ways to get more involved in the Reading Terminal. Baffling.

So I would say that Philly's decline has a lot to do with its past and current treatment of vibrant immigrant communities. Other cities celebrate and do what they can to invest in these communities. Philly is just giving excuses for people to seek fortunes and roots elsewhere - to its own detriment.