Six (or five, but who’s counting?) years into a new millennium and a serious and comprehensive plan for reinventing the city and its economy has yet to emerge (a booming real estate market, due in larger part to national economic forces, does not alone constitute a plan).

Whatever your position on tax reform or development or the other issues du jour, I think I can safely say that nothing that has been characterized as a solution to our city’s woes is enough to turn the tide on bigger troubles..

2006, however, is a new year. That's why we need YOU to generate new ideas!

Click read more below to learn why.

We all have to do something different this year if we are going to make Philadelphia an even better place to live. The first sign that change is afoot has come in the form of the cover of the first Philadelphia Weekly of the New Year.

Gwen Schaffer, our city’s most thorough political reporter, did it again with an examination of the growing gap between Philadelphia’s rich and pretty much everyone else.

I think it’s really important that everyone read Gwen’s piece, so click here to do that.
Ok- done? Great.

So, as you will have read yourself, Gwen’s piece is chock full of data that proves something that I talked about in a piece (check that out here) last month: wages for middle-income Philadelphians have fallen sharply in the past 40 years.

Today, there are more people in the bottom few wage percentiles than in the middle. Further, the gap between richest and the poorest is something like ten times bigger than it was in the 60’s.The result is that even though condo development and skyrocketing real estate prices in the city’s trendier neighborhoods have been good for the city’s economy, they aren’t enough to overcome the volume of problems wrought by an economy still reeling from the loss of its industrial core.

Schaffer’s piece examines the impact of this 800 pound gorilla that has been unacknowledged in the room with recent media hypsters (“from the people who brought you NYC’s sixth borough…”). Gwen details how bad poverty is in this city and what a lack of comprehensive city services and affordable housing means for our communities.

This is the kind of coverage I have come to expect from Philadelphia Weekly and the decision to feature this as the front page, first 2006 story sends a strong signal. I think that PW is ready to roll up its sleeves, leave behind the hype and help our city figure out how to sustain growth that is equitable.

However, Schaffer’s piece, in a thoroughly more journalistic style than a blogger like I would employ, is much more prescriptive than solution-oriented. The article did not examine the few proposals, like tax reform, city lending reform, gaming, or a city wage increase that have been proposed as wage-generators by the city’s ruling class.

The article also did not report on other economic development solutions, like an investment in education, infrastructure, healthcare, worker centers, etc. that have been used in other cities to promote equitable growth.

Despite that, the piece did identify economic development practitioners and academics who you don’t hear much of in the Inky and DN, who were all united in their belief that real estate price increases, restaurants and media attention are nothing more than new bells and whistles on the same old Philadelphia economy.

This meeting of the minds in print as well as the well documented lack of new and strategic economic development ideas from our esteemed City Council (save a few members-- you know who you are) should serve as a reminder to all of us of the importance of forums like this as incubators for new public policy ideas

The question, of course, has been posed before, what impact can one blog have?

I think in 2005 we saw that this forum HAS had an impact as elected officials, city administrators, members of the media, the non-profit community, business leaders and owners as well as tons of newly empowered citizens HAVE been reading and have been thinking about how to make our city a better place for the long-term.

So, in 2006, I propose that we kick things up a notch and get serious about pitching new ideas to generate wage growth. If you have an idea to make the city better that is something within the control of the city’s legislative or executive branches, write a post identifying:
-your idea
-who the could implement your idea
-how much it would cost.
-define the quality of the jobs that would be created, as well as the number (this number might include direct job creation and indirect, i.e. more jobs created in response to the first set of jobs created).
- Who will benefit from this idea? Will all Philadelphians benefit?

After a number of different people have posted their ideas following the format above, and a discussion of them has occurred, we can maybe e amongst us for the top two or three and send that over to the Mayor and Council.

It might not work, and maybe it’s idealistic of me to suggest trying, but this is Young Philly Politics and we sure don’t have anything to lose.

Rather than further describing the criteria, let me give you an example that will also serve as the first idea. My idea is to use an expansion of public transit in the city as a way to create. I’ll write this up in a separate post which you can find here.

And, let the challenge begin!