On Tuesday, the Daily News ran a set of stories (1, 2) about the city's plans for transit-oriented development around Broad and Erie. Effectively, the city has decided that with Temple constantly building on Broad (especially Temple Hospital/Med School here), with the Erie station on the subway in constant use, with a number of bus lines, with Germantown Ave hitting the intersection, the neighborhoods surrounding the intersection can really be strengthened in a big way:

A plan scheduled to be released in the coming weeks calls for transit, commercial and housing redevelopment in an area that extends in a half-mile radius from the intersection.

The area stretches from 10th Street to 20th Street, and from Allegheny to Hunting Park avenues.

"We did a market study . . . and there is actually pretty good market demand for 10 new sit-down restaurants," said David Fecteau, community planner for North Philadelphia.

For me, an article like this, that actually details a smart, overarching plan for some neighborhoods in our city, really stood out. Why? Because notwithstanding the hugely important election of a progressive District Attorney, city and state politics and policies over the last 12 months have really... sucked.

About one year ago, as the Phillies and Obama were marching towards their fall heroics, the Mayor started cutting budgets, and rumblings started coming from library head Siobhan Reardon about her plans for cuts from the system she managed. Those rumblings soon morphed into the 'close libraries' plan. And so, the next two months were spent in a fierce battle, with the neighborhood forums and Mayoral intransigence. The library saga only ended well after with a miraculous, New Years Eve injunction from a courageous judge.

Then we had the budget forums and the tax hike kabuki dance with the Mayor and City Council, ending with the worst of all tax solutions- an increase in the sales tax, and an accounting trick for the pension plans. The sales tax plan was stupid from the beginning, relying on the GOP in Harrisburg, and has therefore been constantly delayed, been used as a vehicle to crush organized labor, and has been shadowed by doomsday announcement after doomsday announcement from the Mayor.

Forget whether the impending plan of doom is a charade or not (as Ben notes, the specific plan has to be, even if the overarching reality of a lack of money isn't). The important takeaway for me is that the guy the city pinned its hopes on has basically spent an entire year in total crisis mode. (And that is with labor negotiations that still seem likely to lead to a strike, with trash piling up and City Hall unstaffed.) Meanwhile, many of the top policy people on the Mayor's staff- Wendell Pritchett, Andy Altman, Marc Alan Hughes and more- have already left, leaving a lot of people to wonder what exactly is going on in City Hall.

Much of the above, or at least the circumstances that led to much of it, is not the Mayor's fault. He is the Mayor of a poor city during a huge economic downturn. Every single Mayor in this situation would be largely screwed. But, whether you think he has done well or whether he has failed, the bottom line is that the last year has appeared to be devoid of an overall, far-thinking vision for the future, and filled with images of shuttered libraries and rec centers, laid off policemen, and the court system grinding to a halt.

All of that is why reading the articles about something smart- transit oriented development in a really important neighborhood- was such a breath of fresh air. We have 6 more years of Michael Nutter as Mayor. Here is to hoping that they bring a lot more positive developments like the plans for Broad and Erie, and a lot less of what we have lived through for the past year.

So the article about SEPTA's new General Manager is worth reading here.

Top lines:

• The new GM rides the R3 ever day.
• He wants to make customer service and cleanliness a priority.
• Plans to extend peak service some to ease overcrowding.
• Beyond that, a new smart-card fare system is top goal.

Sounds pretty good...but I want more!

For those of you who haven't noticed, philly.com posted a revised homepage over the weekend. It'll be interesting to see what people think of it. MDC

This will be a tiny post, but I wanted to flag two items: one story and one resource.

First, the Inquirer's pair of articles (here and here) on the real estate picture in the city. Despite a slowdown in year-over-year sales, the residential market seems to be pretty brisk -- and continues to push prices beyond the "old" borders of Center City (e.g. south of Washington west of Broad or north of Girard east of it).

There are all sorts of things you can say about this development, from transfer and property taxes to the changing shape of neighborhoods and the workforce. But I was struck by this assessment (which I neither endorse nor disdain) of the future picture for real estate development in Philly, by Kevin Gillen, an economic forecaster and Wharton fellow:

Philadelphia's housing has less of a high-price problem and more of a "low-income, low-quality and high-cost" problem, he said. The city's low-income population occupies old, depreciated housing stock that's very costly to replace or maintain.

"We are a city with Baltimore houses, St. Louis house prices, and Cleveland incomes, but New York costs, Boston taxes, and San Francisco regulations."