Gentrification is the controversial process of affluent people moving into a historically low-income neighborhood. It is often criticized because the current residents have limited options to buy or rent equivalent housing in alternative areas at the same price. If they stay, prices for products, services, and taxes rise and existing social networks are disturbed. Gentrification is a reversal of the process of urban decay and white flight seen in most American cities during the 20th century, where residents voluntarily moved away as urban neighborhoods declined.
In Philadelphia, various neighborhoods, each with a characteristic class and ethnic makeup, are being shaken as newcomers move in. Gentrification affects minorities more harshly due to there being less options for minority families to relocate to compared to white families. The impact of gentrification has been felt most in a number of neighborhoods around Center City such as lower North Philadelphia, Francisville, Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Kensington, Fairmount, Center City West, Hawthorne, University City, Point Breeze, and Grays Ferry.
Background Philadelphia serves as an example of urban growth, decline, and regrowth along with other industrial cities of the northeastern United States, including Worcester, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; and Newark and nearby Trenton, New Jersey. Philadelphia has a longer history and arguably richer provenance than its competitor cities. It has a deepwater port and was the first capital of the United States.
Development in Philadelphia began along the Delaware, at Penn's Landing, at a spot that enjoys a close approach of the Schuylkill River two miles to the west. Near the Delaware River are the oldest neighborhoods and Independence Hall. Development continued westward to Center City, halfway between the two rivers. By convention, orientation in Philadelphia is in reference to Center City, defined by City Hall. It was completed in 1901, a symbol of the success of the city.
From the end of the Civil War through the 1920s, Philadelphia was an industrial powerhouse. Growth fueled by a deepwater port, proximity to Pennsylvania coalfields, and immigration from Europe brought success in textiles, shipbuilding, locomotives, pharmaceuticals, and even Stetson hats. That wealth paid for neighborhoods of working class, middle class, and luxury housing. The development of the various neighborhoods in the city was the product of the prevalent transportation mode when the neighborhood was developed. For example, early development of the Society Hill neighborhood was driven by the waterborne transport on the Delaware. Trolleys, elevated trains, (and subsequently subways over the same routes) helped develop neighborhoods at the turn of the twentieth century, before the automobile. Likewise, the first suburban bedroom communities developed along the Pennsylvania Railroad's Main Line. Areas then not served by mass transit were likely to be poorer, like South Philadelphia, or richer, like Chestnut Hill.
Philadelphia experienced a boom during WWII, but the city's advantages dissolved in the face of external forces. Textile industries moved to the South. Banking regulation destroyed Philadelphia as a regional banking center. Automation made the Philadelphia Stock Exchange redundant. Consolidation in retail resulted in the absorption of John Wanamaker and Strawbridge and Clothier by national firms. Decline of railroads made Baldwin Locomotive and Budd Company superfluous. Globalization took control of Smith Kline and French to the United Kingdom. And as American men stopped wearing hats, Stetson left.
Philadelphia population declined in every decade starting in 1950, until 2000. Between 2000 and 2010, the population grew a minuscule 0.6%, with growth accelerating in the following decade. Many of the newcomers choose to live in and near Center City, in neighborhoods that offer easy access to jobs and amenities. While population was rising, urban home ownership was declining, from a nation-leading 59.3 percent in 2000 to 52.2 percent in 2012. Philadelphia also ranked as one of the poorest cities in the U.S., with 26.9 percent of residents deemed poor by federal standards. Of major cities, only Detroit is poorer. As of the 2010 Census, Philadelphia was ranked as the ninth most racially segregated metro area in the U.S., with many residents living in neighborhoods where 75 percent or more of the population consisted of a single racial group.
With renewed growth, neighborhoods convenient to the new employment in the city became attractive. In 1987, the skyline changed. For the previous ninety years, no building was taller than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall. Taller buildings allowed more dense development of the Center City area. The tallest is headquarters of Comcast, headquarters of the largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world, an indication of the city's renaissance. White collar workers at companies like Comcast are ready to invest in communities that had housed less affluent people for decades.
Urban renewal since 1949 Neighborhood improvement in Philadelphia has been the result of two factors: formal government projects and informal redevelopment in the form of gentrification. From 1949 onward, redevelopment was the result of government projects including highway building, housing projects, and zoning changes, and government-sponsored projects including the development of University City, Southwest Center City and Society Hill. Each of these projects included community displacement. Opponents point to the heavy-handedness of these projects.
Only after about 2000, as the population of the city began to grow again, did gentrification become substantial. There is little evidence that the informal development of gentrification drove substantial amounts of community displacement. In a recent study, the Pew Research Center defined gentrification in Philadelphia as a neighborhood that had an average income 80% of the median in 2000 and higher than average in 2014. It wrote, “gentrification is a relatively small part of the recent story of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods.”
Neighborhoods
University City and Mantua
In 1872, the University of Pennsylvania moved to the west of the Schuylkill River, a mile and a half west of Center City, an area known as West Philadelphia. Drexel University constructed its main building nearby at 32nd and Chestnut Streets in 1889. This northern part of West Philadelphia is Powellton Village and Mantua. The northeast border is Mantua Avenue, the first street west of the Schuylkill River, the bank of the river being taken up by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and more recently, the Schuylkill Expressway.
By the late 1880s, Mantua was a predominantly white, working-class neighborhood. In the 1940s, however, "white flight" occurred due to many factors including redlining, deindustrialization, and suburbanization. As in many other areas of Philadelphia, "white flight" resulted in Mantua becoming a primarily African-American neighborhood. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had declined, and was the site of the 1978 MOVE shootout. In 2014, the median household income was less than $17,000, more than half of Mantua residents lived below the poverty line, and 96% percent of Mantua's children under five lived in poverty. Improving Mantua has become a priority for city leaders, as the neighborhood has been plagued with violence and many blighted properties. In 2008, the Mantua Tower, a public housing project, was demolished. The Tower will be replaced with low density public housing.
The area to the south and west was developed by the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). The campus experienced growth after World War II as a result of the GI Bill. The site of the Philadelphia Almshouse, later named the Philadelphia General Hospital, became the campus of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in 1974. The area occupied by Drexel, Penn, and CHOP is known as University City. Other participants in this development included Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, Presbyterian Hospital (Philadelphia), and Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine working together to build the University City Science Center.
Development of University City was the result of both government policy and economic drivers. Land for new facilities was relatively cheap. Developers built housing to accommodate student housing. In so doing, existing residents were pushed out. The areas to the west and northwest of University City remain blighted.
Penn's first significant but controversial expansion into the community was done with the aid of the federal slum clearance program. The Housing Act of 1949 allowed Penn to rebuild West Philadelphia under the Slum Clearance and Community Development and Redevelopment program.. An exact number of the people displaced isn't known, but figures range from 5,000 – 10,000. Soon after that, the West Philadelphia Corporation, consisting of Penn, Drexel University, An earlier Housing Act would give the institutions generous grants to building academic centers, and soon enough, West Philadelphia became Urban Renewal Areas 3, 4, and 5. Area 3 consisted mainly of the Black Bottom neighborhood, and while described by newspapers as "20 devastated acres of rundown bars and garages and warehouses," it was still home to hundreds of families who soon found themselves without a home.
In retrospect, early federal attempts at urban redevelopment were destined to fail. According to the annual business review from Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research, 800,000 units of public housing have been erected; however, according to a research from Harvard University, Title I and III under the program were later discredited generally for not solving the housing problem and yet, fostered a worse form of slum in high-density projects. University City did not include public housing projects, unlike Hawthorne in South Philadelphia.
In the 1990s, opposite to Philadelphia, however, University City experienced a significant move-ins. According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, up till 2014, well-educated white millennials took up 40% of the population within University City, Philadelphia.. Besides, University City median house prices rose from $110,000 to $350,000 from 2000 to 2006. Furthermore, its average household income increased steadily from $30,000 to $50,000 from the 1990s to 2010s.
In spring 2015, Brookings Institution led a group of ten Penn institutions to enhance the city's inter-connectivity under program Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking. As part of Penn's effort to have the university integrated into West Philadelphia, Penn has sponsored a program to make their staff and faculty residents of nearby neighborhoods. The university had instituted the Home Ownership Incentive Program that provided $3,000 per year for seven years or $15,000 up front for housing expenses to employees who purchased homes in University City. The only restriction was that the employees must live in the house for seven years. The employees who already owned a home in the designated area could get up to $7,500 in matching funds toward exterior home improvements. The program has changed recently in that it only covers $7500 in a no-interest or forgivable loan. A program has been in effect since 1965, when it created the Guaranteed Mortgage Program, which offers an option to finance 120 percent of the cost for a property needing rehabilitation. Over the last 30 years, staff, faculty and young professionals have been buying homes further and further west, southwest and northwest raising the collective property values of those neighborhoods.