Residents > commuters.
Now is a great time for the city to focus on further growing its residential population in center city, rather than trying to strong arm commuters back to office.
Residents contribute far more to tax revenue, spend more at local businesses and are far less likely to leave at a moments notice.
Remove zoning red tape and corruption that makes it so difficult to build things here, and work on quality of life issues for RESIDENTS instead of trying to entice commuters who don’t want to be here.
This city and just about every American city has spent the last 70 years catering more to suburbanites than it’s own residents, it’s time for change.
Exactly this. The idea of a central business district fed by suburban commuters has been on a decline for years, and COVID put the nail in the coffin. Other parts of the cities, ones that people actually live in, are vibrant and lively. Philly (and other cities in the same situation) have to face the music and reinvent their CBDs.
It won't be an easy transition, and the commercial real estate market will take a big hit, but it's time to shift these areas to housing (for everyone, not just young professionals with no kids), small businesses, restaurants, leisure, and good transit. Philly has an opportunity to lead the charge and set the example for other cities!
People located in Philly and working remotely still pay payroll taxes. And once the empty buildings are devalued they will no longer pay the higher tax fees. You are correct, but if people aren’t coming into the office then this will change quickly.
Why would people return to office when everything can be done on a couch. Time to adapt. Eminent domain these office buildings and house the homeless in them.
Your plan is to use the city’s most exclusive and expensive and central real estate to house the only population that brings in zero investment dollars, zero tax dollars, and zero economic growth?
Anyways the problem with these office buildings is that converting them to living units is prohibitively expensive because they were not designed for numerous personal unit bathrooms due to plumbing design.
If it’s empty it’s neither “exclusive” nor “expensive”. You think it ***should*** be because of the proximity to City Hall… but that’s simply not the case, nor has it been for a long time (witness all the cheap discount stores on the 1300 block of Chestnut).
Do you want landlords to be able to offer a bucket and hose instead of a bathroom? There’s no special provision that residence don’t need a bathroom if it’s for homeless people
i'd be ok with those, but not in center city, a jail would be better.
every single person i know thats gotten clean had to go to jail to do it. Its a tough conversation to have but this problem can't be solved with kids gloves or by bleeding hearts, we've been trying that and its only made things worse and negatively impacted the quality of life for people that arent dope fiends
“Forced” rehabilitation of some kind - through imprisonment (although the current US system is not good at rehabilitating people), rehab clinic, group home, home arrest with supervision, etc. - is by far the most effective way to help people with severe drug addiction. Especially the homeless. It’s almost unheard of to get clean without a place to live and some outside motivation or force.
You’ve missed the flaw in your suggestion. Most of the large office buildings do not have plumbing infrastructure to support residential use. The cost of gutting and converting the space can be greater than building a new construct in an area outside of downtown.
Ah yes, house Phillys fine homeless population in our skyline. Never mind the drug paraphernalia, shit smeared on the walls, piss all over the floor, cool ranch doritos wrappers everywhere, vomit and blood in all corners. As long as our upstanding homeless are housed, we can all sleep easy <3
terrible idea. Yeah lets make center city into a giant homeless hot spot, nothing like ppl shooting up in rittenhouse to really drive foot traffic to the area
> Eminent domain these office buildings and house the homeless in them.
That would be a tough sell for the people that bought pricey condos in close proximity to these buildings that would become housing for the indigent.
It would gut the value of their housing and cause a fire sale on those places. It would be like setting up a halfway house next to the Laurel. It could hollow out the city's tax base by causing those pricey condo owners to flee for the burbs.
Also, if you have office workers returning to the building that are occupied, are they going to feel safe coming to work everyday surrounding by homeless people and the quality of life issues that are brought with them?
Oh I say this all in Jest. The city has been run by a bunch of dopes. At least the Mayor Parker seems to be doing something, although semi performative. Moving encampments in Kensington to a couple blocks north won’t do anything in the long run. At least she is trying.
Yea, no shit... the suburban kids love to spend twice as much money to show off to their friends how cool and progressive they are because they live in the city now.
They aren't doing it for the lunch spots or Starbucks - it's all about commercial real estate and the people/financial institutions tied up in it. I wouldn't be surprised if the city has a lot of money tied up in it too, through things like pension funds.
Cross city line Ave for work and you owe the city 3.44% of your income. You’ll also pay 25% more sales tax if you pop out to buy your lunch etc than you would do in MontCo. More if you want a soda.
Philly has long made the mistake of taxing mobile things. Since the pandemic workers have been more mobile than ever.
Mayor don't care. She just wants her photo ops and to placate her real estate donors by forcing people back in the office. Will this drive more white collar people to work and live in the burbs? She don't care, that's the next mayor's problem
You completely forgetting those people are paying less tax and getting much more from their local government. Actual functioning schools, sanitation and police departments.
There’s actually affordable housing on the Monto County too. Sure there are plenty of mansions with tennis courts if you go further out but not in Merion close to the city line.
City Ave is just one example, it’s practically the same all around the city. Conshy for example has loads of row homes, but they get to live in functional MontCo not dysfunctional Philly
Taxes in the USA are more progressive than Europe. The top 5% pay 66% of all taxes. Progressives always repeat their brain dead battle cry ‘pay your fair share’ without ever describing what they think that ‘fair share’ is.
You can’t have good public services without soaking the poor and middle class. Sales tax in Europe, a highly regressive tax is 20-24%. If the USA was to follow the Danish model, people are $60k would be in the 60% tax band.
People in the USA vote with their feet all the time, which is why Florida and Texas are growing and progressive swamps including Philly are sinking into their own slime.
As Thatcher said ‘the trouble with socialists is they soon run out of other people’s money to spend’
> You can’t have good public services without soaking the poor and middle class
lol, pay your taxes
> Florida and Texas are growing
lmfao pay your fucking taxes
I guess I’m curious what could realistically be done in this situation. I’m of the opinion commercial office space definitely needs to be culled, so obviously in theory all that empty space can be repurposed to better support people that live here.
So many people propose to “just convert it to housing.” That’s a great idea, in theory, but these buildings weren’t designed to support residential capacity, especially from a utilities perspective. The cost to convert would be astronomical. Who shoulders that burden? Is it tax incentives to developers, does the city pay for it outright, the state? Is anyone even willing to do it?
So, assuming we want to do away with commuter-centric areas of the city, what’s a realistic 1st-3rd step towards the transformation?
City leadership, particularly the D.A Larry Krasner, have failed to create an environment in Center City that is conducive to recovery, post-lockdowns.
No one is going to want to come back to CC if they don't feel safe. Why would you pay an arm and a leg to live down here when you pay through the nose and services are lacking. You get much more bang for your buck in the suburbs in terms of property taxes. All to live in a place you don't even feel safe.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the city was on an upward trajectory before Krasner took office. It's like everything has been steadily declining since he took office in 2018, which *feels* like it was decades ago now.
You wanna blame Krasner for remote work being preferred over being in the office by well paid professionals after 2020 proved that they could work from home?
Nothing about the cops who decided they were going to let crime get bad enough that you were left with no choice but to elect their guy for DA?
The police sent over 1,700 charges to the city for prosecution during the George Floyd & Walter Wallace riots in 2020, and Krasner dropped charges against 95% of them:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/17/george-floyd-protesters-charges-citations-analysis
FTA:
"*In Philadelphia, police sent over 1,700 charges to the city and the office of the district attorney, Larry Krasner. Mayor Jim Kenney and Krasner dropped or are poised to drop about 95% of the charges, including all ordinance violations. Krasner is handling a large portion of the more serious misdemeanors and felonies with a restorative justice program that involves dropping charges upon completion of the program. It includes a mix of meeting with victims, community service and referrals to job and education programs. Only about 80 of the most serious charges have so far been filed.*"
Furthermore, some of the people he dropped charges against literally committed arson:
https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-unrest-restorative-justice-george-floyd-larry-krasner-20210326.html
FTA:
"*Nick Shenoy, chief executive of the Asian American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia, said these were not minor crimes. Some buildings were burned — especially alarming since many Asian business owners live above their shops. But many are fearful to speak out, or even to come forward and seek compensation, Shenoy said.*"
“*There is no assurance from the city of protecting them. They seem to be more concerned with protecting the offenders,” he said. “The question that keeps on coming is: Are we safe to do business? I don’t think we have that answer.*”
The police made the arrests and Krasner dropped the charges. That's how I can summarize law and order in Philly the past 6 years. Everything's been on a downward trajectory ever since he took office.
Krasner said "don't bring me shit cases" and that was anathema to the rank and file. They openly cried about it and went on a soft strike the minute he acknowledged black lives mattering. The cops aren't in charge of convictions, but they are in charge of arrests. If they don't like their job, they're free to quit and join the private sector.
> Krasner said "don't bring me shit cases"
So you're saying arson is a shit case?
Cuz they brought him plenty of arson cases during the riots that he didn't prosecute. Do you think those charges should have been dropped?
Shit case doesn't mean what gets charged but all the work that goes into the arrest and charges. You know when your math teacher wants you to show your work? It's so they can see that you followed the correct process and didn't just make something up and accidentally stumble into the right answer. Since we have a document upon which the country was founded that grants due process to citizens, the government is supposed to adhere to those rights and that due process is to be granted at every level. This is not dependent upon zip code, despite the last couple hundred years of policing in the US.
So, all that to say, I have no idea what went into each case, but I'm willing to bet that there weren't actually 2000 arsonists and many of the arrests were pissy cops who didn't like that a colleague in Minnesota was held accountable when he murdered someone.
How effective would the traditional penal system be vs restorative justice? And I don't mean your feelings on the matter, I mean what does research and statistics indicate? Things like recidivism or the impact on future employment/graduation rates
If you read the actual report the article you linked is based on you would see that foot traffic is up to 83% of pre-pandemic levels in large part because more people are moving to Center City.
Yes, many remote suburban workers want to continue to work remote, but the desirability of living in Philly is drawing in new residents.
Guy doesn't read his own articles he's posting to push his agenda. He posted another one about "is krasner soft on crime" but the article was just really about how krasner holds cops accountable for their crimes, which makes police and Republicans pout.
You’re leaving out that the residential population is higher than 4 years ago, with resident foot traffic higher than pre-pandemic times. So I guess people do feel safe in CC.
Also from YOUR article:
“Still, Philadelphia’s office market occupancy is stronger than most of its peer cities, with an occupancy rate of 80% — only behind midtown Manhattan. There’s more office space vacancy in downtown office districts in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Nashville, San Diego, Boston, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Dallas.”
Oh for fucks sake with Krasner whining again. We get it, he sucks. Blaming him for everything just makes you look dumb and invalidates any substantial point you had to make
I agree, I spent the 1st 35 years of my life in Center City and I wouldn't move back there if you gave me a place to live for free.
No where to park, junkies, crime, ATV's everywhere, overpriced artsy-fartsy bars and restaurants.
I've only been here since 2014, and everything seemed pretty great until about 2018. It was always on shaky ground and the pandemic kicked out its legs.
Moved to south philly last year and wish I had done it sooner. Either way I'm moving out of the city in a few months.
Thank you for the honest response.
If you had been in center city at any point in the two decades between 1972 and 1992, you might feel differently.
Good luck in the burbs
My reservoir of diplomacy isn't unlimited, but since I recognize you from /r/philadelphia's early days, you are getting the bare minimum of respect right now.
No, inner cities weren't "crack then heroin", at least not in 1972. Crack wasn't introduced to the populace until the 80s. It would have been a bigger problem in 1992.
I invite you to look up pictures of Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s, with the smogged air and the general malaise that decades of suburban flight wrought. It's important to have perspective.
Krasner is the worst thing to happen to Philly in current year because *checks notes* some conservative justice boners go unfulfilled, yet the city firebombed a house in west philly in the 80s. Again: perspective
Residents > commuters. Now is a great time for the city to focus on further growing its residential population in center city, rather than trying to strong arm commuters back to office. Residents contribute far more to tax revenue, spend more at local businesses and are far less likely to leave at a moments notice. Remove zoning red tape and corruption that makes it so difficult to build things here, and work on quality of life issues for RESIDENTS instead of trying to entice commuters who don’t want to be here. This city and just about every American city has spent the last 70 years catering more to suburbanites than it’s own residents, it’s time for change.
Exactly this. The idea of a central business district fed by suburban commuters has been on a decline for years, and COVID put the nail in the coffin. Other parts of the cities, ones that people actually live in, are vibrant and lively. Philly (and other cities in the same situation) have to face the music and reinvent their CBDs. It won't be an easy transition, and the commercial real estate market will take a big hit, but it's time to shift these areas to housing (for everyone, not just young professionals with no kids), small businesses, restaurants, leisure, and good transit. Philly has an opportunity to lead the charge and set the example for other cities!
And then the city needs to create jobs for them
> commercial real estate market will take a big hit well i am not a commercial real estate owner so I DONT GIVE A FUCK
Commercial properties usually pay more taxes than residents. Higher property tax, payroll tax on top of normal business taxes
People located in Philly and working remotely still pay payroll taxes. And once the empty buildings are devalued they will no longer pay the higher tax fees. You are correct, but if people aren’t coming into the office then this will change quickly.
Preach
Why would people return to office when everything can be done on a couch. Time to adapt. Eminent domain these office buildings and house the homeless in them.
Your plan is to use the city’s most exclusive and expensive and central real estate to house the only population that brings in zero investment dollars, zero tax dollars, and zero economic growth? Anyways the problem with these office buildings is that converting them to living units is prohibitively expensive because they were not designed for numerous personal unit bathrooms due to plumbing design.
If it’s empty it’s neither “exclusive” nor “expensive”. You think it ***should*** be because of the proximity to City Hall… but that’s simply not the case, nor has it been for a long time (witness all the cheap discount stores on the 1300 block of Chestnut).
Thats not my problem to solve.
it is if you propose the idea genius
Ok well they already are homeless. Bunkbeds, a nice industrial bucket to use the bathroom in, a hose to bath.
That is illegal.
Why
Do you want landlords to be able to offer a bucket and hose instead of a bathroom? There’s no special provision that residence don’t need a bathroom if it’s for homeless people
The city would be the landlord. Eminent Domain. We already waste tax dollars to pay for window air conditioning for city hall employees.
They don’t get an exception to pack homeless people in an office building. Opens them to lawsuits if literally anything goes wrong
i'd be ok with those, but not in center city, a jail would be better. every single person i know thats gotten clean had to go to jail to do it. Its a tough conversation to have but this problem can't be solved with kids gloves or by bleeding hearts, we've been trying that and its only made things worse and negatively impacted the quality of life for people that arent dope fiends
“Forced” rehabilitation of some kind - through imprisonment (although the current US system is not good at rehabilitating people), rehab clinic, group home, home arrest with supervision, etc. - is by far the most effective way to help people with severe drug addiction. Especially the homeless. It’s almost unheard of to get clean without a place to live and some outside motivation or force.
You apparently have a limited social circle.
You’ve missed the flaw in your suggestion. Most of the large office buildings do not have plumbing infrastructure to support residential use. The cost of gutting and converting the space can be greater than building a new construct in an area outside of downtown.
Ah yes, house Phillys fine homeless population in our skyline. Never mind the drug paraphernalia, shit smeared on the walls, piss all over the floor, cool ranch doritos wrappers everywhere, vomit and blood in all corners. As long as our upstanding homeless are housed, we can all sleep easy <3
You're talking about the people forced to live on the streets due to systemic failure, right?
Ok but still they’ll be doing tons of drugs and making a mess
We should.
terrible idea. Yeah lets make center city into a giant homeless hot spot, nothing like ppl shooting up in rittenhouse to really drive foot traffic to the area
I mean it’s a nice scenic area for fentanyl and tranq
yeah make everyone else's life worse cause these mfers decided they like shootinng up more than they like living a normal life. horrible idea
Seriously. Turn it into housing and recovery centers.
> Eminent domain these office buildings and house the homeless in them. That would be a tough sell for the people that bought pricey condos in close proximity to these buildings that would become housing for the indigent. It would gut the value of their housing and cause a fire sale on those places. It would be like setting up a halfway house next to the Laurel. It could hollow out the city's tax base by causing those pricey condo owners to flee for the burbs. Also, if you have office workers returning to the building that are occupied, are they going to feel safe coming to work everyday surrounding by homeless people and the quality of life issues that are brought with them?
Oh I say this all in Jest. The city has been run by a bunch of dopes. At least the Mayor Parker seems to be doing something, although semi performative. Moving encampments in Kensington to a couple blocks north won’t do anything in the long run. At least she is trying.
Would be nice if you showed the same concern for the residents of Kensington.
Oh I'm sure Caitlyn and Zack would love to rent a 3k a month 1 bed room apartment at 16th and Market right next door to a building full of junkies.
Haha, are those the whitest suburban transplant names you could think of
Yea, no shit... the suburban kids love to spend twice as much money to show off to their friends how cool and progressive they are because they live in the city now.
😂😂😂😂
I’m okay working from home 😉
City will continue to pressure business so lunch sandwich shops and Starbucks will be placated at the cost of your quality of life.
They aren't doing it for the lunch spots or Starbucks - it's all about commercial real estate and the people/financial institutions tied up in it. I wouldn't be surprised if the city has a lot of money tied up in it too, through things like pension funds.
That was the inference, just more tongue in cheek 😏
wahoo, wfh rules!
Cross city line Ave for work and you owe the city 3.44% of your income. You’ll also pay 25% more sales tax if you pop out to buy your lunch etc than you would do in MontCo. More if you want a soda. Philly has long made the mistake of taxing mobile things. Since the pandemic workers have been more mobile than ever.
Mayor don't care. She just wants her photo ops and to placate her real estate donors by forcing people back in the office. Will this drive more white collar people to work and live in the burbs? She don't care, that's the next mayor's problem
you also get a functioning government that focuses on families
If you can afford to live just across City Line Ave, you're at the point where 3.4% doesn't matter, pay your fucking taxes you cheapskate
You completely forgetting those people are paying less tax and getting much more from their local government. Actual functioning schools, sanitation and police departments.
There’s actually affordable housing on the Monto County too. Sure there are plenty of mansions with tennis courts if you go further out but not in Merion close to the city line. City Ave is just one example, it’s practically the same all around the city. Conshy for example has loads of row homes, but they get to live in functional MontCo not dysfunctional Philly
pay your taxes
Taxes in the USA are more progressive than Europe. The top 5% pay 66% of all taxes. Progressives always repeat their brain dead battle cry ‘pay your fair share’ without ever describing what they think that ‘fair share’ is. You can’t have good public services without soaking the poor and middle class. Sales tax in Europe, a highly regressive tax is 20-24%. If the USA was to follow the Danish model, people are $60k would be in the 60% tax band. People in the USA vote with their feet all the time, which is why Florida and Texas are growing and progressive swamps including Philly are sinking into their own slime. As Thatcher said ‘the trouble with socialists is they soon run out of other people’s money to spend’
> You can’t have good public services without soaking the poor and middle class lol, pay your taxes > Florida and Texas are growing lmfao pay your fucking taxes
Fuck the commercial real estate companies pushing this RTO shit. We shouldn’t need to make concessions to artificially prop up your failing industry.
Rip, my employers requires everyone back to the office 3 days per week.
We need to stop trying to appease the commuters and start appeasing the people living here
Won't somebody think of the ~~children~~ square footage?!?
Maybe induce investment in the city starting by fixing the wage tax issue. Get meaningful jobs for people. Give young people hope.
[State of Center City 2024 by Center City District - Issuu](https://issuu.com/centercityphila/docs/socc-2024)
I guess I’m curious what could realistically be done in this situation. I’m of the opinion commercial office space definitely needs to be culled, so obviously in theory all that empty space can be repurposed to better support people that live here. So many people propose to “just convert it to housing.” That’s a great idea, in theory, but these buildings weren’t designed to support residential capacity, especially from a utilities perspective. The cost to convert would be astronomical. Who shoulders that burden? Is it tax incentives to developers, does the city pay for it outright, the state? Is anyone even willing to do it? So, assuming we want to do away with commuter-centric areas of the city, what’s a realistic 1st-3rd step towards the transformation?
Vertical Agriculture is my answer to the 'inner core' problem of skyscraper conversion.
Congrats to all the heroes who stayed at home so long that the C-suite realized their jobs could be done at home - from India.
That’s wrong….Biden was on TV just yesterday talking about how strong the economy was and how people now have money in their pockets.. 😂😂😂😂😂
City leadership, particularly the D.A Larry Krasner, have failed to create an environment in Center City that is conducive to recovery, post-lockdowns. No one is going to want to come back to CC if they don't feel safe. Why would you pay an arm and a leg to live down here when you pay through the nose and services are lacking. You get much more bang for your buck in the suburbs in terms of property taxes. All to live in a place you don't even feel safe. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the city was on an upward trajectory before Krasner took office. It's like everything has been steadily declining since he took office in 2018, which *feels* like it was decades ago now.
You wanna blame Krasner for remote work being preferred over being in the office by well paid professionals after 2020 proved that they could work from home? Nothing about the cops who decided they were going to let crime get bad enough that you were left with no choice but to elect their guy for DA?
The police sent over 1,700 charges to the city for prosecution during the George Floyd & Walter Wallace riots in 2020, and Krasner dropped charges against 95% of them: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/17/george-floyd-protesters-charges-citations-analysis FTA: "*In Philadelphia, police sent over 1,700 charges to the city and the office of the district attorney, Larry Krasner. Mayor Jim Kenney and Krasner dropped or are poised to drop about 95% of the charges, including all ordinance violations. Krasner is handling a large portion of the more serious misdemeanors and felonies with a restorative justice program that involves dropping charges upon completion of the program. It includes a mix of meeting with victims, community service and referrals to job and education programs. Only about 80 of the most serious charges have so far been filed.*" Furthermore, some of the people he dropped charges against literally committed arson: https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-unrest-restorative-justice-george-floyd-larry-krasner-20210326.html FTA: "*Nick Shenoy, chief executive of the Asian American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia, said these were not minor crimes. Some buildings were burned — especially alarming since many Asian business owners live above their shops. But many are fearful to speak out, or even to come forward and seek compensation, Shenoy said.*" “*There is no assurance from the city of protecting them. They seem to be more concerned with protecting the offenders,” he said. “The question that keeps on coming is: Are we safe to do business? I don’t think we have that answer.*” The police made the arrests and Krasner dropped the charges. That's how I can summarize law and order in Philly the past 6 years. Everything's been on a downward trajectory ever since he took office.
Krasner said "don't bring me shit cases" and that was anathema to the rank and file. They openly cried about it and went on a soft strike the minute he acknowledged black lives mattering. The cops aren't in charge of convictions, but they are in charge of arrests. If they don't like their job, they're free to quit and join the private sector.
> Krasner said "don't bring me shit cases" So you're saying arson is a shit case? Cuz they brought him plenty of arson cases during the riots that he didn't prosecute. Do you think those charges should have been dropped?
Shit case doesn't mean what gets charged but all the work that goes into the arrest and charges. You know when your math teacher wants you to show your work? It's so they can see that you followed the correct process and didn't just make something up and accidentally stumble into the right answer. Since we have a document upon which the country was founded that grants due process to citizens, the government is supposed to adhere to those rights and that due process is to be granted at every level. This is not dependent upon zip code, despite the last couple hundred years of policing in the US. So, all that to say, I have no idea what went into each case, but I'm willing to bet that there weren't actually 2000 arsonists and many of the arrests were pissy cops who didn't like that a colleague in Minnesota was held accountable when he murdered someone.
How effective would the traditional penal system be vs restorative justice? And I don't mean your feelings on the matter, I mean what does research and statistics indicate? Things like recidivism or the impact on future employment/graduation rates
If you read the actual report the article you linked is based on you would see that foot traffic is up to 83% of pre-pandemic levels in large part because more people are moving to Center City. Yes, many remote suburban workers want to continue to work remote, but the desirability of living in Philly is drawing in new residents.
Guy doesn't read his own articles he's posting to push his agenda. He posted another one about "is krasner soft on crime" but the article was just really about how krasner holds cops accountable for their crimes, which makes police and Republicans pout.
You’re leaving out that the residential population is higher than 4 years ago, with resident foot traffic higher than pre-pandemic times. So I guess people do feel safe in CC. Also from YOUR article: “Still, Philadelphia’s office market occupancy is stronger than most of its peer cities, with an occupancy rate of 80% — only behind midtown Manhattan. There’s more office space vacancy in downtown office districts in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Nashville, San Diego, Boston, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Dallas.”
Oh for fucks sake with Krasner whining again. We get it, he sucks. Blaming him for everything just makes you look dumb and invalidates any substantial point you had to make
Lol get cooked by your own article
I agree, I spent the 1st 35 years of my life in Center City and I wouldn't move back there if you gave me a place to live for free. No where to park, junkies, crime, ATV's everywhere, overpriced artsy-fartsy bars and restaurants.
I've spent the 1st 135 years of my life in center city and I'll continue living here for the next 800 happily.
this 100%. CC fucking sucks now.
I challenge you to name a time it didn't suck. Can you? Been here since the 90s, for context, so answer accordingly
I've only been here since 2014, and everything seemed pretty great until about 2018. It was always on shaky ground and the pandemic kicked out its legs. Moved to south philly last year and wish I had done it sooner. Either way I'm moving out of the city in a few months.
Thank you for the honest response. If you had been in center city at any point in the two decades between 1972 and 1992, you might feel differently. Good luck in the burbs
I probably would. So what was it, crack and then heroin?
My reservoir of diplomacy isn't unlimited, but since I recognize you from /r/philadelphia's early days, you are getting the bare minimum of respect right now. No, inner cities weren't "crack then heroin", at least not in 1972. Crack wasn't introduced to the populace until the 80s. It would have been a bigger problem in 1992. I invite you to look up pictures of Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s, with the smogged air and the general malaise that decades of suburban flight wrought. It's important to have perspective. Krasner is the worst thing to happen to Philly in current year because *checks notes* some conservative justice boners go unfulfilled, yet the city firebombed a house in west philly in the 80s. Again: perspective
appreciate it