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- Council Can Give the SRC the Money to NOT Privatize the System
- Predatory Payday Lending Bill Flies Out of Cramped PA House Committee
- Let the Games Begin: PA Senate Announces Details of Budget Proposal
- Good News on PA Revenue But Don’t Count Your Blessings Just Yet
- Defeat Corbett
- Set off without a Paddle: Unpacking the School District’s Disaster Capitalism
Philadelphia's Population Problem
Submitted by nextamericancity on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 11:55am.
Last week, the Census Bureau released its population estimates for the country’s top 25 cities. Philadelphia is still holding on to its spot as the 6th most populous city — but one has to wonder for how long. Out of the 25 largest cities, Philadelphia is one of only four cities — along with Detroit, Memphis and Baltimore — that has lost population since the 2000 census. In the past eight years, Philadelphia has lost more than 70,000 people, or roughly 4 percent of its population — a faster rate of population loss than any other American city.
There are myriad excuses for why Philadelphia continues to lose people in this post-racial golden era for urbanity. You could say it’s an old city and all the growth in cities these days is in the sprawling Southwest. Tell that to New York City, which gained 53,000 people in one year. Or Boston, which has added 20,000 people in the past eight years.
You could complain that Philadelphia just happens to be in Pennsylvania which as a state has one of the highest proportions of elderly people, who happen to dying off. But what about the thousands of young people that graduate every year from the 92 colleges in the Philadelphia area?
A high crime rate, a beleaguered education system and unceasing fiscal crises provide other excuses for why so many people have left Philadelphia. To counter these problems, however, the city has provided little incentive for people to stay or move here.
While cities lose residents at roughly the same rates, their changes in population are largely related to their ability to attract new residents. Philadelphia has yet develop a comprehensive plan to keep its population levels stable; more astonishingly, it has few plans for growth. As the mayor has wisely created holistic offices, such as the Office of Sustainability, he needs to develop an office or affiliated non-profit focused on the city’s strategic growth.
This city was built for 2 million people, and it can replenish its population to that number if it believes that population growth is the top priority for the city. And it should be: when Philadelphia has more people, it will have the tax base it needs to fix its schools and keep its libraries open; when Philadelphia grows its population, our vacant lots and abandoned buildings won’t be breeding grounds for crime; as a larger city, Philadelphia’s infrastructure, from transit to trash, will run more efficiently at a greater scale.
An organization dedicated to the city’s intentional growth must encourage a diverse new population with as diverse set of tools. First and foremost, Philadelphia must retain many more of the students that reside here for four years — and then leave. The percentage of Philadelphians with college degrees is shockingly only 21 percent. The city has done a miserable job of retaining the more than 100,000 students living in the city. Most universities offer programs that postpone interest accrual on loans while students are enrolled in school; the city should develop a program so that students can postpone interest accrual if they live in Philadelphia for at least three years. A program like this not only builds these young people’s wealth, but will allow them to build larger bonds with the city, will make Philadelphia schools more attractive to students, and encourage them to stay here after those three post-graduate years.
The business community has been focused on attracting large corporations to move headquarters here — an unlikely scenario as Philadelphia is sandwiched between D.C. and New York. Instead, small businesses must be encouraged to grow by hiring the best talent possible. Small grants for relocation assistance will allow local Philadelphia companies to gather new talent here and compete with larger corporations in larger cities.
The city must next capitalize on its strong immigrant communities as many cities depend upon immigrants to boost their population numbers. Our local philanthropic community and the Mayor’s Commission on African and Caribbean Immigrant affairs is deeply interested in ways of engaging new immigrants and they should work together to provide these immigrants with the services they need — language and microfinance programs — so that they can encourage family members and friends to help build their community.
There are other exciting ways to encourage growth, but the most essential one is to coordinate all the city’s agencies and top partners to jointly gear their activities toward attracting more people. Rather than rely upon the tired methods of attracting growth, such as tax abatements or corporate incentives, offices as disparate as Fairmount Park and the Transportation Department need to re-examine how their work can create a better, more attractive quality of life in Philadelphia. By redirecting their energies toward building a quality of life that will attract more people to live here, these government entities will be thinking not just of short-term goals, but of the future. That kind of forward thinking is the only way this city will regain the density and prosperity of its past.
- Diana Lind
Editor in Chief of Next American City magazine
Photo by Tony the Misfit
Shrinking Family Size Cuts Population
Saying that Philadelphia that Philadelphia was built for two million people is not true. The homes in Philadelphia, however, were built with the assumption that family size would be considerably larger than it is today. The City Planning Commission has found, for example, that there are more housing units today than there were in 1950: it's just that many fewer people live in the average housing unit.
When I was growing up across the street from Kemble Park, there generally six people in our household--father, mother, and four children. For a couple of years, there nine people in our household--father, mother, four children, and one cousin of my mother and her two children.
Our next door neighbors to the north generally had six people in their household, father, mother, three children, and the father's father.
Their next door neighbors to the north had six people in their household--father, mother, three children, and the mother's younger brother.
On the entire block, I remember just one female headed family, and just one male headed family without a spouse or significant other present. The norm was that marriage preceded childbearing, and that relatives without spouses would be invited to live with a family with spouses. In the days before the sexual revolution, it was widely assumed that personal privacy for unmarried people was less valuable than the easy ability to share in family life.
What New York and Boston have that Philadelphia does not are large and growing immigrant communities with large families and an emphasis on family life reminscent of the 1950's and early 1960's.
Philadelphia is physically the smallest county in Pennsylvania. It is the county with by far the largest number of miles of roads. There is little land to build on compared with suburban and rural areas.
Certainly more jobs and greater educational opportunities would help the many, many unemployed or underemployed Philadelphians, and attract more people to our city.
But we have to recognize that, whatever useful innovations the future may bring, the small physical size of our city, the lack of much vacant or underdeveloped land, and the longstanding national trend towards smaller family size, all impact significantly on our population and prospects for population growth.
Mark, you make an argument why population is not the be-all
but not why Philly's growth is slower than other cities in its class which are also built out, also already dense. We have hundreds of acres where population loss is easily measured not in smaller families but in an increasing density of abdonned houses and empty NTI lots, long vacant factories. Other cities not only attract immigrants but often recycle these vestiges of the industiral past faster. Why is Philly different than other large cities?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
We've talked about this recently
But basically it boils down to the fact that Philadelphia does not attract and hold on to immigrants in the wider sense like other cities. Any by wider sense, I mean both people from developing countries who come to build their version of the American Dream and also people who pass through Philadelphia in pursuit of an education and don't find life-sustaining opportunities here.
One answer is that Philadelphia is significantly worse at being welcoming to folks from foreign shores looking to lay down roots - which is doubtful. There are bigots everywhere.
Another is that Philadelphia fails in competing with other cities as a place to lay down roots and make a go of it - either because the schools suck and its not considered a good place to raise a family, or because its a bad place to start business or find economic opportunity. I suspect we all agree on this later idea but differ on which part is easy to fix first - making it good place to make a living or good place to raise kids.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Progressive Population Policy
Hey can someone figure out how raising Philadelphia's taxes can help solve this problem? That seems to be this board's answer to most of our city's problems.
Snarkiness aside, it is important to factor in the Philadelphia Metro Area into any population conversation. For Example, even though Philly is behind Phoenix is population, Phoenix's city limits are absolutely huge and this distorts the city's population figures. The Philly metro area is #5, with Houston in close pursuit. Phoenix is #12. And, importantly, the metro area population has been growing, not shrinking, albeit at a slower rate than many other areas.
I grew up in Philly and the changes to the city over the past 10-15 years have been astonishing. So many more areas of the city are livable--vibrant, even--than before. I am surprised that population is not growing, but population decline is starting to level off, as a previous YPP post showed.
Philly has many problems--crime, taxes, corruption--but the biggest problem is geography. Being between NYC and DC saps away tons of talent and business. Why do Penn students leave Philly when they graduate? Because they get great jobs in NYC or DC. I don't know how to fix this, as there is no way we can catch up with these two cities in terms of premier job opportunities.
The bottom line is that Philly, despite being a great town, is a second tier city, and that is why is it not a more attractive place to move. Philly needs a "thing." It used to be manufacturing. What now?
This is key
We've all seen this, but still the places where this is happening still don't compensate for the places where people can't leave fast enough from. Places like Belmont and Nicetown. Again its dated information but here's where people are leaving Philly from the fastest. Its clearly not all smaller family size as Rep. Cohen suggests.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Coordinating Departments
This administration has been maligned for appearing too preoccupied with novel command and control mechanisms, matrix model decisionmaking that appears to blur lines of authority and a fawning--almost myopic--appreciation for performance management and systems analysis and other managerial exotica.
Yet one of the adages of the managing director has been that she would rather spend more time on a good, long-lasting policy solution than appear decisive and roll out some short term palliative. I tell people who want to see 40,000 cars pulled off the streets in the first 6 months that what this administration has proposed is nothing short of the the most dramatic social reengineering program this city has ever seen. The time horizon on this is epoch--we should feel gratified to see improvements of 2-3 percent in graduation rates, crime reduction, job growth, carbon footprint reductions, and population growth in the next 10 years.
To Diana Lind's comments about departments reassessing their roles in boosting the attractiveness and liveability of Philadelphia, I can say from personal experience that this is one salient where the administration has urged multi-departmental concentration. Broad organizing blueprints like GreenPlan and Greenworks help guide Fairmount Park's efforts to revitalize neighborhoods, improve the mental and physical health of residents, boost property taxes, and clean our air and water. And while we don't see our park assets as the exclusive draw for folks looking to relocate in Philadelphia, our open space amenities can be a significant determinant. Fairmount Park and the the new Department of Parks and Recreation have codified our roles as fostering a positive business climate, (see the DPR mission and vision statement) https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/372/images/Philadelphia_DPR_Guidin...) in addition to providing necessary services for our at risk youth and elderly populations.
Staying focused on the Mayor's five key policy areas may seem a daunting task, especially when crises seem to interdict long range planning. Fairmount Park and the new Department of Parks and Recreation understand the vital role we play in making Philadelphia safe, livable and competitive. We also understand that to do more than react to the social problems that plague Philadelphia, we need to get uniformity of vision and functional integration across many city departments. And this takes time.
Population Problem
The idea that started this discussion -- that Philly's pop is plummeting and the city is withering away -- is very likely invalid. The city's population churn probably turned net positive a few years ago, and the Census Bureau may finally capture it this year. (See our report http://by.ly/kuw7) Phila in fact has held on among the most populous U.S. cities far longer than many others (only three of the Top 10 cities a century ago are still on the list - NYC, Chicago and Philly). So looking ahead to this shift, it's time to discuss what it means. This growth almost certainly WAS driven by immigration. What has the city and community really done about it?