(See Update Below)
Today the Inquirer had a doom and gloom article that mentions how many people Philadelphia lost since 2000. It is a pretty depressing article, and similar ones could have been written in 1975, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004, etc.
It tells us about how much Philadelphia is shrinking. But, unless I am crazy, something is missing from this:
Phila.'s population shrinking, though region's is growing
The city's rate of loss was second only to New Orleans', census data show.Continuing a long-running downward trend, Philadelphia lost more residents between 2000 and 2007 than any U.S. city except hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, newly released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show.
Population in the city decreased from 1,517,550 to 1,449,634 in the seven years, a loss of nearly 68,000 people, according to Greg Harper, a demographer for the bureau.
That drop of 4.5 percent represents the largest percentage loss in population of a top-25 U.S. city between 2000 and 2007, figures show.
I don't want to pretend like losing that many people isn't a big deal, because it is. But, seriously, there is one big piece of context missing from the article, specifically:
Philadelphia population, 2006: 1,448,394
Philadelphia Population, 2007: 1,449,634
So, if the article is right, and our 2007 population is 1,449,634, Philadelphia gained 1,240 people in the last year. I don't have year by year numbers, but, I would bet this is the first time in at least 30 years that Philadelphia has not lost residents. If those numbers are right, it seems to me like a cause for celebration. Yes, overall, the numbers are bad. But, for the first time in my life, more people live in Philadelphia this year than the last.
Isn't that the story we should be talking about?
UPDATE: Too good to be true? Maybe. It looks like the numbers, released by the State Data center, have higher estimates for us for than the 2006 numbers listed above, meaning that we may have lost people after all?
Still shrinking
I hate to burst your bubble, but the Inquirer's numbers are being pulled from the State Data Center at Penn State Harrisburg, not the U.S. Census. The State Data Center's numbers show consistent, year-after-year population loss.
PDF Brief with the numbers
Recast Estimates?
Crap.
The state data center does show that, but, its not like those are independent numbers- they are numbers fed them from Census, right? I guess that means they are recasting our 2006 numbers?
The other good population number
Forty fewer homicides this year than at the same point in 2007. If we can "gain" 100 extra people from the absence of homicides in calendar year 2008, we should all be ecstatic.
housing
I can't figure out how it is that we keep loosing people and yet the price of housing is still so damned high. You'd think that population growth and housing prices would have a direct relationship. What this youse?
there are two stories
This analysis is way too simple. There are two stories going on here. The people leaving and the people coming in. There are parts of the city that are seeing great population growth and it's not just people from other parts of Philadelphia migrating. People are moving in here from the burbs and other states.
Other people are leaving, though, but I'm willing to bet that these are two pretty different populations.
We are gaining people. We're just losing more people.
We are also gaining people in certain places and losing people in certain places. Philadelphia, more than other places, is more than one City.
And, Fabricio, you're kind of wrong. You're living on South Street, brother. It's a hot neighborhood. You can buy a whole house in this city and pay a smaller mortgage for five times the space if you're willing to live somewhere else. Housing is expensive in the places people are moving into (and you live in one of them), but, on balance, space is still cheap in our fair city.
---
This Too Will Pass, for the guts in your cerebrum.
replacing Philly's lost population can't restore prosperity
I'll just quote myself:
More here from a post I wrote on this very topic.
for prosperity, we need folks to come and to stay
You posted this as a response to mine so I hope it didn't sound like I thought replacing folks would do it. What we really need is for folks to stick around after they have improved their lot and bring more people in. I've been reading Jane Jacobs lately, and she's big on this point.
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This Too Will Pass, for the guts in your cerebrum.
While creating a City where
While creating a City where people want to live--with a good quality of life, with good schools, reasonable taxation, safe streets and such may not bring back the manufacturing jobs that Ray speaks of, that does not mean that it does not have returns for all Philadelphians.
First, while the loss of manufacturing may have been the death kneel to many rust belt cities from 1960-1990, we have to realize that those manufacturing jobs are most likely not coming back to Philadelphia anyway! That is because the cost of production is high, the cost of running a facility is high, etc. Large research, service and IT companies, however, that hire lots of people will locate in a city with a good quality of life. Philadelphia needs to make itself more attractive to those businesses and their employees. Yes. I said it. Philadelphia needs to be an attractive place to live and work. Recall the Towers Perrin situation of a few years ago. They are a large consulting firm that employ many people here in Center City. They wanted to move to Camden to save money on overhead. Their employees, however, (particularly their young professionals) protested. They wanted to be downtown. Towers Perrin stayed put. That doesn't mean Philadelphia is perfect. But, compared to Camden . . .
Second, most reasonable Philadelphians want to live in such a place. I don't think it is out-of-bounds to demand that we start looking at why folks are leaving as a recipe to fix what ails Philadelphia. In doing that, maybe more Philadelphians will stay.
Simply saying stopping population loss is not a return to prosperity is elementary and ignores the "how do we get their" portion of the discussion. Also, it does not take into account the fact that in the process we may just get a nicer place to live.
All I am asking...
is why is US census' ranking of population the only gauge we use to measure our city's health? You don't need to wait for that ranking to come out to see that we're in trouble. But if you did, you might focus on all of your energy on getting new people to move here or stay here or whatever. And that's great. But it ignores the fact that if you paid the people who live here today family-sustaining wages for the work they do (or give out better jobs), you would help solve the over-arching problem equally well (if not better) of lowered city revenues etc.
It isn't the only gauge, but
It isn't the only gauge, but in my view it indicates the end result of all of the other gauges . . . like over 350 homicides in a year, like 50% of our students not graduating from high school, etc. You are correct in pointing out that this isn't 1950s Philadelphia, but 21st Century Philadelphia that is situated in a global economy.
When you say "if you paid the people who live here today family-sustaining wages for the work they do (or give out better jobs)", who do you mean by "you." Obviously, not me. Who can do these things on a local level? By what authority? It just cannot be done. How can we get our hands around this?
Also, related to lower city revenues, if we can retain and attract middle class folks, then we are really only adding more folks to pay for the city services we enjoy today.
Below you compare Philadelphia to LA, New York, Chicago and Boston. Those are not good comparisions. LA, New York and Chicago are world cities with a much different economies than Philadelphia. People want to live and work in these cities. I don't believe they are losing population either. They are also global migration centers. They may have lower poverty rates, but that correlates to their status as world cities and regional economic centers.
Philadelphia, on the other hand, does not have status as a global or regional economic center. When I say regional, I don't mean the Delaware Valley. For instance, Chicago is the "big show" for the mid-West. LA is the "big show" for California (which on its own is a huge economy). NY is the "big show" for almost the entire world. Philadelphia's economy and, as a result, the work of its lowest skilled and/or educated citizens are affected by this geographic misfortune.
Boston, in addition to being a second tier city is also a state capital and thus, by its very nature, will have a higher educated and higher paid workforce. Similarly, due to its large IT and educational sector it is a migration point for high skilled workers.
Philadelphia can learn a lot from places like LA, Chicago, New York and Boston(probably more from Boston). But, for the most part, it will have to forge its own path. We do not have the geographic fortune of being a global and regional economic centers, let alone a large state capital. But, we are a center of medical research and higher education. We have to work hard to continue to improve our quality of life so business will move here. We have to incubate new businesses. We have to open our doors to migration (including global). And, we have to provide the people already here the opportunities to become employed (or be employable)--that means making our educational system work for everyone. It is not coincidence that the lack of a quality public school system is a driving factor in people leaving the City.
Like I said earlier, I agree with you that Philadelphia is no longer in the 1950s--but sometimes the Philadelphia we speak of still resembles that. I can be a big nativist (as defined by our discussions here on YPP and not in terms of the bad characterization), but in order to provide the opportunities you speak of, Philadelphia has to continue to transform itself into a true global city.
I agree, Phoenix is not a good comparision. They can add population through annexing.
too hands off
You are clasically Philadelphian Gaetano (and I share this tendency and mean this in the nicest possible way) in thinking we can do everything and thinking we can do nothing.
On this point:
I don't mean you, I mean our city, state and federally elected officials. As has been referenced on the the other thread on the self-sufficiency standard, there are policy decisions that can be made to grow wages. No one has the "authority" per se, but just as teh federal government came up with a plan to lure people to the burbs in the 50's, there can be an effort to reinvigorate urban economies today. As I have written innumerable times, Philadelphia has not logical economic development plan to peak of in the past. Avenue of the Arts was an attempt, as was NTI. No one is really sure what Nutter's attempt will be. But hopefully grander and more global than what we have had.
You hit the nail on the head in identifying pharmaceuticals and health care as major growth industries here: what integrated, large-scale investment has been made to leverage these assets using public dollars with an eye on growing median wages? We could be emphasizing chemistry in middle and high schools, building partnerships with local colleges so that no pharmaceutical company ever has to hire a non-Philadelphian. In fact, rather than offering 10-year tax abatements to homeowners, we could offer an incentive for companies to hire Philadelphians first--but to do that we'd need to have a better trained work force.
Loves and not loves
Love the idea of tapping into the pharmaceuticals for fiscal and curriculum help for Bio-Chem high school. Brilliant idea.
Much less love for passing by NTI with any sense of praise and not acknowledging that NTI also wasted a whole lot of tax dollars (well bond dollars that will eventually be repaid as tax dollars) that could have been harnessed in a more focused way. Illegal misdirection of funds inside the RDA that were by law supposed to go specifically for land consolidation and weren't are why the RDA is going through top to bottom forensic auditing currently.
Too many district councilpeople used NTI too often as a grab bag for players in their district that had nothing to do with organically spurring housing development or jobs, nothing to do with planned redevelopment. NTI bond money got used on a lot of "hey favored church / community group / ward leader, I bet you would like a charter school / senior center / small housing development and I can't directly give you money to buy votes but if you want land just ask". Even on the good stuff, we got cost overruns on demolition, some swanky new PHA projects where there used some of the cities worst tower-block housing projects but still a net loss in affordable units. Brewerytown got Westrum and some housing speculation but no new grocery store and many neighborhoods saw lots and lots of grassy fields with wooden fences around them with the district councilperson's name on a sign on the fence.
I'd rather have Nutter achieve his goal of halving the drop-out rate and reducing homicides as he promised at inauguration than another NTI. Rapid introduction of PhillyStat, rewriting the building code and zoning code, prison reform and doing even more with prison reentry are more what I'm looking for. Schools, a reduction in homicides, and the sense that when you call the city about a problem in the neighborhood or a city agency that your case will in fact be followed up and tracked, that you get a number for your complaint to follow up with. Thats a plenty for city government to actually get done. We'll see how successful they are.
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
soapboxes
i know soapboxes are aplenty here, but who said anything about another NTI?
The goals Nutter has set out to achieve are a lot to get done in a moribund public-policy city, but stating and/or achieving those goals is not quite the same as an over-arching economic development plan geared toward addressing Philadelphia's deindustrialization and coming up with a plan for a successful and sustainable new economy.
And I guess I challenge you Sean, and others, who have said that his kind of economic development planning is beyond the realm of a muninicipal government to explain why. That sounds like received wisdom rather than something fact-based---especially when you look at other cities, including our own neighbor in the west, Pittsburgh.
The people leaving Philadelphia the fastest
are the black working/middle class, or so it would seem.
At least according to these old Planning Commission maps. I have not had a chance to check Dan's Policy Map site yet.
It makes sense at a basic level that in a city like Philly as opposed to whites who opt for Catholic schools more often (in general terms), those who feel the pressure from bad public schools most directly and feel the brunt of crime and violence most severely, and who have expanded housing options outside the city that were unavailable a generation ago are now fleeing the fastest.
David J. Dent is an often cited writer who has written about the national trend. Another book is the one below.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Uj-aqw8IhWcC&pg=PA364&lpg=PA364&dq=new+...
I may be dating myself but as someone who got into hip-hop in the hey day of "Strong Island" its not exactly a newsflash. On a personal note I live next to an A.M.E. church and Sunday morning is the one time of the week where parking is impossible because so many parishioners come from places like Yeadon and Springfield in DelCo, Cheltenham in MontCo, South Jersey. Theres a lot of interesting writing out there about the various cultural impacts of an increasing geographic and class divide within black America roughly between those who fall into those fleeing to the burbs and those who can't afford to. Its a noticeable change if somewhat unexpected result of the end of red-lining and overt housing discrimination.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
And this tells the story
Population loss, in Philadelphia as elsewhere, is almost totally a function of average household size. Larger middle-class and blue-collar families are leaving the city and being replaced by singles, childless couples, or families with one or two children (instead of 3-5).
This leads to an increase in property values in many parts of the city (especially those formerly occupied by middle-class families). Total wages see an uptick as more people at the top of the spectrum pull away from the median. For some cities, this would be a good omen: more tax revenue, lower demand on services. But it's also a signal that the public school system for middle-class families, white and black, is a disaster.
Which is one those complicating factors
and one of the things that sometimes makes me cringe about some flavors of "anti-gentrification". Like are sub-48K (see other thread) families with kids filling in for what were roughly the same economic bracket back in the hey day of manufacturing really the "bad guys" for years of cuts at a federal level for affordable housing and failing schools? Aren't they as much potential allies as "enemies" to to be castigated - usually by young singles passing through the city in the short term but always willing to criticize those with longer term investments in the city and the neighborhoods than themselves. Always a touchy subject but clearly there is "treading water" investment in what have been historically middle class and lower middle class neighborhoods and there are neighborhood "changes" that act more like a light switch and to be frank the lack of a line drawn there sometimes drives me personally a little nuts.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
A few things. I still am
A few things. I still am kind of irritated by that article, if only because it says what we all know: that Philly has lost a ton of people. But, we are also a huge City, so, why wouldn't you do it as a percent? I am not saying we look great if you do, but as a share of our size, we haven't lost as many people as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc. And, if you look at the loss from 06 to 07, our loss was smaller than places such as the ones above, but also a bunch of diverse places such as Memphis, TN, Long Beach, CA and a whole bunch of other places that probably aren't as doom and gloom.
And, of course, the trend is pretty clear:
You could look at that and say that over the past 7 years, Philadelphia had made tremendous progress in stopping the slide of its population...
Why does it matter (a la, Ray?)? Because no one wants to be in a shrinking City, period. We love Philly, we want it to be growing and vibrant. But, of course you are right that there are bigger issues at play, like income per family/ per capita, whatever, the number of people in poverty, educational attainment, etc.
Tim, I don't think it is as simple as household size. The average household in Philly is larger than it was five years ago.
Philly Avg Household Size:
2002 2.45
2004 2.44
2005 2.49
2006 2.52
There are other issues to look at, as well: In general, if you go by the tax returns of people leaving, they are richer than the tax returns of the people coming in. Some of that may be family size stuff (so, per capita incomes are lower), but, I don't think that explains it all. Of the top ten counties with migration in and out of Philly, there are only two where the people coming in had more more money than the people going out- Delaware County and Manhattan. The rest- including the rest of our suburbs and Brooklyn- have people with lower incomes coming in than people leaving.
of course
Population size arguments have always rubbed me the wrong way as for me they harken back to a generation of Philadelphians who when they talked about population loss were really talking about white population loss.
But yeah of course population loss is important to watch, but it is really unfair to compare east coast cities like Philly to west coast sprawlers like Phoenix.
As I have pointed out before, if you really want to compare apples to apples, look at Philly's rate of poverty compared to LA or Chicago or NY or Boston, and you can see a place where we are truly a loser (and thus need to figure out how to catch up).
The popuation loss seems to be in...
the neighborhoods that the City tends to ignore.
Look at this huge Parkway renovation that the folks in Logan Square/Spring Garden/Fairmount are getting.
Where is the money to spruce up FDR Park? How about improving street lighting and adding a police mini-station in Frankford or near Berks and Broad? Instead of $17M on the Parkway, why not $1M in badly needed upgrades on 17 different city parks out in the neighborhoods? What about bike lanes in neighborhoods other than the ones closest to Center City and along the Schuylkill?
The population loss map from 2000 is roughly the same as it is now. You are seeing a lot of the exodus occur in Northeast Philadelphia. As most of you on YPP say "good riddance" and are welcome to see them leave. Most of that loss is being offset with gains in West Philadelphia thanks to expanding gentrification, Center City and South Philadelphia, and gentrification occurring in north Fishtown and lower Kensington.
For those Northeast residents who left, they took their wage tax money with them when they split. Why do we now have a 25% population of residents who are considered at the poverty line or below it?
The population loss is frustrating, but the bigger goal should not be the population count, but to figure out how to improve the numbers of middle-class who generate most of the tax base in the city.
this...
...is why no one pays attention to you:
Wait a minute
EC made two highly salient points. To wit...
* $17 million for the Parkway is all well and good, but the same money could be better directed at smaller projects in areas which are actively losing population, as opposed to CC which is gaining it.
* Raw numbers don't tell the whole story. If you lose, say, 10,000 people who earn $X/yr, but gain 7,500 people making $2X/yr, you've actually had a net gain for the city in tax revenues, rather than a net loss.
-Z
Perception is everything
Perhaps the City should take a hard look at who is leaving NOW, not those who have already left... and figure out the root cause(s).
Economically speaking, we have a small mix of incentives for wanting to move in the City. Transit is one of the more convincing features, and that seems to have worked out well for those who have recently moved here who don't have children.
Dare I suggest, the whole crux of most of our issues are in some way attached to our public schools?
3 reasons
I've said for years that middle class families move out of Philadelphia for some combination of 3 reasons:
* taxes
* crime
* public schools
Given that middle class families are the economic backbone of Philadelphia- or, at least, have been in the past and need to be in the future- Philadelphia's economic prospects depend strongly on how well it addresses these three reasons that people move out.
-Z
I was unclear
I'm thinking macro loss, over the last half-century, not so much population changes in this decade. We're not likely to be a city of 2 million again because we're not likely to have big families again. I think in this decade, household size and population have both stabilized.
Immigration is the difference
So why do other cities like NYC and Boston attract more immigrants and more of ours skip to the suburbs? Why did the guy who owns the restaurant I had a celebration at on Saturday move from a beloved taco truck on the Penn campus to a better than expected authentic little Mexican BYO in Upper Darby and not say Baltimore Ave. closer in to his loyal clientel? Could it be theCity of Philadlephia's permiting structure? Could it be he thinks his kids will not get a good or safe public education? Could it be in some part the tax structure, not just as some insist that they are "high" but that they are complicated to deal with and don't translate to good services? Is it some combination of all of them?
I tend to go for the "all of the above" option which is why I push the idea that tackling the non-tax cut part of the problem for small start-up businesses in this town is a progressive issue that should interest everyone, along with as always - schools, schools, schools.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
A couple little things
Maybe not as overarching as you would like but . . .
Zoning - move to form based zoning with a heavy emphasis on mixed use along transit corridors. Specifically Philly has serious problems with availability of fresh, affordable food in the neighborhoods - lack of "real" grocery stores. In other cities grocery stores are lured into building in urban areas by setting the grocery store at ground level, some parking just above and residential development just above that. Its the residential stacking that makes the floor space needed for modern supermarkets make sense to make sense economically in a city - or so the folks who build grocery stores complain. Philly's current zoning makes this kind of development next to impossible. Philly needs to change this, specifically along transit heavy corridors in parts of the city that are most underserved. Its the type of construction where you deal with cars and large retail footprints but you keep the retail street level and pedestrian and transit friendly.
No its a not a solution to global economic shifts and deindustrialization but its an example of how the city is dropping the ball on a grand scale in terms of pumping economic activity into the neighborhoods.
Property taxes - Currently the city marks down the taxes on abandonned industrial land and old factories and warehouses, even commercial storefronts, making sitting on industrial land or commercial buildings a haven for speculators. We should stop that. Taxes should stay the same whether the building is being used or not, whether the storefront is used or not. If anything we should keep those commercial and industrial taxes high and give credits against those that also contribute to the BPT and wage taxes. I'm not an expert on the legalities of the uniformity clause and do not claim to be but I know that both Harrisburgh and Pittsburgh have tried some partial form fo land-use taxation to stem investment in no longer used industrial and commercial sites.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.