No, public transportation in Philadelphia is not worse than Pittsburgh or Seattle.

Whenever someone decides to rank Philadelphia, we know one of two things is going to happen. Either we're going to be the 90 year old Oscar winner who's "finally" granted an award we always deserved, or we're going to land at the bottom. The last two years aside, Philadelphia has bottomed out in so many lists - "official" or not - it's hard not to wonder if someone has it in for us. 

When a Travel + Leisure survey called us the nation's ugliest in 2007, I had to take stock and look around. All I saw were hot, muscle-bound Italians with thick wavy hair. As far back as a high school trip to the Liberty Bell, I remember thinking that Philadelphia had some of the sexiest bros I've ever seen. Digging deeper into the survey, I noticed that other major cities in the northeast bottomed out: New York, Boston. The one thing the cities at the bottom all had in common was ethnic diversity, which says a lot more about those being surveyed than it does about the empirical attractiveness of the average Philadelphian.

But that's what these lists are all about: subjectivity. 

Delving into listed topics that should be more definable, we see more of the same. It's easy to make a case for one city, biased or not, without accounting for the innumerable variables that make every city in the U.S. inherently unique, and media outlets have made a fortune in click bait doing just that in lieu of real news.

Just last month a survey by SmartAsset ranked the public transportation in ten major American cities and Philadelphia came in 9th. In all fairness, that isn't too bad. With only ten cities on the list, not a single one in the South made the cut, unless you count D.C. And Portland, OR, often hailed as a 21st Century transportation trailblazer, didn't make it in the top 10. 

With D.C.'s Metro ranked #1, Philadelphia fell behind Oakland and Pittsburgh. I'll repeat that, Philadelphia ranked behind Pittsburgh. 

A Washingtonian wouldn't know what to call this.

But here's the problem: the factors measured included average commute times, percentage and numbers of those who use public transportation, and for some reason, the median income of those who take public transportation. The raw number of users is an irrelevant comparison when you're comparing cities the size of Pittsburgh to Philadelphia or Chicago, and how are wealthy public transportation users an indicator of a successful system, especially when comparing extremely wealthy cities like San Francisco and D.C. to economically diverse cities like Philadelphia? You can't compare BART's median income users to SEPTA's? What's average in the Bay Area is astonishingly wealthy in Philadelphia.

What was also ignored was the overall need for public transportation. D.C. Metro is clean and smooth, and expansive. But it's not a usable subway system for urban residents, many who own cars. In the suburbs, Metro trains drop commuters off in massive surface lots or garages, nowhere near neighborhoods equally as isolated. SEPTA's an old system, and because of that it employs a traditional subway that services walkable neighborhoods and regional rails that engage Victorian era streetcar suburbs. Like New York, most Philadelphians don't need cars, and many don't have them.

Ignoring the polarizing differences between car-centric metropolitan regions like D.C. and walkable cities like Philadelphia or New York is essentially claiming that public transportation is a necessary solution for cities that aren't looking for an answer. The fact that New York placed below D.C., San Francisco, and Boston proves there's something a little fishy about this survey. Even Seattle, a city that sternly rejected public transportation for so long they made a movie about it, somehow beat Philadelphia. 

But this isn't about public transportation. This is just another viral survey to plug a financial planning company, a company with no business releasing unsubstantiated junk data. Unfortunately that's what people read, and we all fell for it. I'll leave my impression up to experience. I've lived in both D.C. and Philadelphia. I can walk here. I don't need a car here. When I need to take public transportation, I can easily grab a train, subway, or trolley almost anywhere. It's fast, simple, and I can get where I'm going on foot from there. 

The northeast corridor is in a class of its own when it comes to public transportation. Not only can I get to Ardmore and walk to a restaurant, I can get to the Jersey Shore, New York, Harrisburg, or Pittsburgh with ease. The Link's one line in Seattle has only thirteen stations and it certainly won't take me to the beach. That's not to say public transportation is bad outside the Northeast Corridor, it's just new and faces an uphill battle amongst cultures that have freeways in their DNA. 

Cities like Philadelphia and New York shouldn't be on these lists, they should be the litmus that defines them.

The Rise and Fall of the Chipotle Cult

In the end, one of two things happens to a cult: followers get bored and find another, or everyone dies. In the case of Chipotle's, the state of California got a litigious case of Montezuma's Revenge. 

It's hard to say how it happened. After successfully dodging several outbreaks in 2008 and 2009, a slew of E. coli and Salmonella cases crippled the burrito chain through the second half of 2015, particularly on the west coast. Stock plummeted from over an astonishing $700 a share to barely $400 in January. 

Public relations officials convinced the public that suppliers were to blame. The company apologized and began handing out free food to lure diners back to short lines that once circled city blocks. Then, just as it seemed they were regaining some business - and customers began to forget about all the shit - they did it again. Free food is great, but in this scenario, it just reminded customers of the reason you had to give out free food to begin with. 

Chipotle's business model was always unique, and it's spawned a string of similar setups that have redefined fast food. Traditional fast food isn't suffering, at least not enough to change the game, but before Chipotle there weren't many fast food options that offered quality food at a reasonable price. For a few dollars more than a value meal at a dumpy chain, you get tasty food that claims to be healthy in a decent atmosphere. 

Chains like BurgerFi and local eateries like Rice + Mix and Mirabella Meatball Company offer you the same base-plus-toppings, have-it-your-way options on everything from a burger to Bibimbap. And of course, Qdoba, Jack in the Box's take on burritos, began as a carbon copy of Chipotle.

But Chipotle clung to its core and refused to evolve and branch out. Their menu is neat and clean, it's simple, but consumers grow tired of the same thing. Qdoba began offering melted queso, smothered burritos, and nachos. Sometimes referred to as "The Soup Nazi" of Mexican cuisine, Chipotle won't deviate from their core offerings. They have the ingredients to make nachos - chips, beans, cheese, and meat - but you're not getting them in one bowl unless you know someone, or make a fuss and get an eye rolls. 

Customer service is strange to say the least. It's polite, weirdly polite, if you don't fall out of line. Extremely chipper and seemingly help for, "indoctrinating" is the best word that comes to mind. But it's also two-faced. Their employees have a very visible and active presence on social media. Ask for a full salsa cup or extra guac and you might find yourself the butt of a ruthless Tweet, #chipotleprobz #thisiswhyyourefat.

#chipotleprobz indeed. Maybe consumers got tired of an outbreak too many, and maybe Chipotle reminded them of that one too many times. Or maybe a brief reprieve allowed the Cult of Chipotle to realize their basic burritos are just, basic. Customers are fickle, and the Millennials that flocked there don't like reading their complaints BuzzFeed. Customers like change and cozy booths. When the seats at McDonald's are more comfortable than stools designed to get you in and out as quickly is possible, a little case of diarrhea is all it takes to get people wondering what the hell they're waiting in line for. 

University City's Academic Turf War

As University City continues to redefine the city's skyline, one of its most lackluster additions might also be one of its most divisive. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's New College House spans the 3300 block of Chestnut Street. Instead of building up, the space-saving alternative that Drexel has recently embraced, New College House drones dully through a former lawn as if to deliberately divide the Ivy League university from Drexel to the north.

Whether that was the building's intent, Dr. Amy Gutman, Penn President, might be the only one who knows for sure. It's a fair assumption considering the former lawn's central position between both campuses. Once enjoyed by both Penn and Drexel students, New College House could have been doubled in height to save half of the lawn. Instead it builds a wall against Drexel's massive expansion pushing into Chestnut.  

It looks as though a high-priced academic turf war is taking place on what now houses Philadelphia's most expensive real estate, with Penn's conservatively low-rise, brick-and-mortar bumping up against Drexel's sky scraping, modern delights.   

Whether an architectural rivalry truly exists in University City is anyone's guess, but Drexel is gearing up to change the way we think of the American campus. Drexel's departure from their aging brutalism with a modern, and ironically soothing interpretation of the same style, has been a welcome change for a campus consistently ranked amongst the nation's ugliest. Drexel may not be competing with Penn, but with its own past. For decades its orange brick and harsh lines sidled up to the classical curves and lush lawns of Penn's campus, traditional tokens synonymous with the Ivy League. 

We've gotten a sneak-peak of what's to come from Drexel in the last few years, but the transformation officially began today with Drexel President John Fry's announcement that Brandywine Realty Trust will be heading up an ambitious project to house a growing student population in an integrated and urban fashion. 

Dubbed Schuylkill Yards, Drexel's expansion will tap into the underutilized space surrounding 30th Street Station, blending updated incarnations of existing infrastructure with modern infill. Taking a page from the city's most innovative endeavor, the Navy Yard, a development that borrows heavily from the workplace philosophies throughout the Silicon Valley, Drexel isn't just expanding their university up and out, they're fostering an environment for innovation. 

The term "mixed-use" is thrown around so often it's almost meaningless, and often leaves us with parking podiums and empty storefronts. Where it's worked most in Philadelphia has been in University City, specifically amongst Drexel's recent developments. Walking along Chestnut Street, it's very apparent that there's a college somewhere in the mix, but at its heart, it's the city. Walnut Street, on the other hand, clearly belongs to Penn. To walk Walnut is to walk through the heart of a campus. 

Drexel's plan is smart. Its absence of collegiate isolation doesn't just attract retail to its mixed use element, but it's inviting technology firms, medical labs, and a student experience integrated with neighboring colleges, even the city's school district. 

Penn will always have a place alongside the historic greats - Harvard, Princeton, and Yale - but the relevance of that position is changing. As tuition costs soar, prospective students are taking a closer look at their postgraduate opportunities and what employers are looking for. Law firms and traditional employers still eye the Ivy League for buttoned up recruits, but for more innovative corporations like Google, Apple, even our own Comcast, it's quickly becoming less about where you went and more about what you did there. Playing a role in that place has become a huge component of a successful education, an integrated component that Penn hasn't grasped or is too arrogant to admit. 

In the 1990s, graduates who didn't land their ideal career simply went back to school and Van Wildered it through degree after degree, and twenty years later, many of them are finally paying off their loans. With today's cost of education, that luxury is gone, but universities like Drexel are replacing it with another. Students are now analyzing what it takes to land their backup jobs, and looking for educations that either place them in positions before they graduate or teach them how to create their own. 

As Penn continues to dominate as the region's premier, traditional education, Drexel is charging into the future of academia, a future where students are not merely offered an education, but also trained on the realities of a postgraduate world and what it takes to own it. Drexel is giving their students a place to grow after they graduate right here in Philadelphia. 

Penn's turning out doctors and lawyers, but Drexel is graduating students who will invent the next Google or Tesla. If a turf war is unfolding in University City, Drexel is winning by not merely carbon copying what worked for Penn once upon a time, but by building better to create what works for the future. 

The Little Building that Could

Right now, FMC is redefining the University City skyline and Comcast is building the nation's tallest skyscraper outside Chicago or New York. Starwoods is filling a hole at 15th and Chestnut with a Bladerunner-esque W Hotel and NREA is gambling on Market East with East Market. But the most important development taking place in Center City right now is on a little corner most residents have forgotten and fewer have bothered to visit. 

I've lived across the street from the historic Big Brother Big Sisters building for about eight years now, and I've watched anti-developers bulldoze building after building, and I really thought that the BBBS building would be next. Aside from the grandiose buildings demolished for the Convention Center's expansion, most of the damage has been in the way of abandoned, one-story warehouses - no great loss - but typically replaced by more surface parking. 

If you think the Gallery was a bad idea, just walk up to 13th and Vine.

As drab as it looks in renderings, Marriott's AC Hotel capping to the BBBS building is a welcome addition to my neighborhood.

Within the last few weeks, another old warehouse bit the dust. Unfortunately, a very cute apartment building went with it, and as far as I know, there are no plans for the site but more parking, apparent in the fact that the rubble was paved over in a day. It's amazing how long it takes for a potentially iconic piece of architecture to receive approval, yet how fast and inconspicuously another can be flattened. 

The problem with this area is one that enables itself. Surface lot owners are lowly taxed and make bank off their lack of overhead. They occasionally pay for a minimum wage parking attendant, and barely maintain the asphalt. The rest is profit. The only time something gets developed around here is when something else gets torn down.

I've seen single buildings razed for no more than three parking spaces. The demolition is justified as a way to "clear the land" for speculative development, but if the property ever goes on the market, it goes on the market for twice its value because the profit margin on surface parking is so high. It's literally cheaper to demolish a building in this neighborhood and start from scratch than it is to build on a "cleared lot" advertised as "developable land." 

What's most unnerving is how the cycle perpetuates itself. Surface parking on its own isn't a demand, but parking always will be, garaged or otherwise, because people are friggin' lazy. But surface parking scars the urban landscape and makes it undesirable for development. Over time, as surface parking grows, the reason to park there disappears. 

My hometown of Harrisonburg, VA learned the hard way. With two large garages perfectly situated north and west, "downtown" was primed for a renaissance in the 1980s. People - the laziest people - didn't like walking two blocks, and parking "development" inched closer and closer to Court Square until every reason to ever go downtown was demolished. Twenty years later, and in a city with 1.5M more residents, I find myself living in the the middle of the exact same situation. 

There isn't a single block of Center City real estate that doesn't have surface parking on it, yet we continue to allow it to chip away at our urban fabric. Had the historic Gimbels Department Store not been demolished for speculative development, it's hard to imagine real estate so close to City Hall would be so hard to unload. Even abandoned, that handsome piece of architecture would put more feet on to the cement than the Disney Hole provides in parking.

I'd rather walk by this - abandoned - than another surface lot.

My neighborhood - roughly bound by Broad, 11th, Market, and Vine - was Ground Zero for decades of civic redevelopment projects. Boxed in by the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the Vine Street Expressway, Market East Station, and the Gallery, it's become the bilge water for the city's bad ideas. The Convention Center has finally proven itself great for the region, but that isn't so great for its neighbors. 

While City Planners and NIMBYs continued to argue over minute details elsewhere, an entire neighborhood has been almost exterminated. 

I wish we still sidled up to some of the lofty warehouses that were here before the first leg of the PCC. If we were ever a part of Callowhill, that was the time. As it stands, we should be an extension of the Loft District, but Callowhill's neighborhood organization wants nothing to do with us. Who can blame them? Fighting surface lots is a Sisyphean task. At best we're under the PCDC, not the most progressive group. 

But we are a neighborhood and a place Philadelphians call home. Marriott's AC Hotel might not bring more residents, but it adds to our sense of purpose. Our most impressive addition in the last twenty years has been the Hampton Inn, and while it's far from the best, its guests helped open the QQ Mart, run by one of the sweetest families you'll ever meet. 

Philadelphia is doing great right now. It's hard to look at projects at 19th and Chestnut or 12th and Walnut without asking, "shouldn't we expect more?" But up at 13th and Vine - shoehorned between a highway and a massive project that should have come with its own parking - we don't have that luxury. We're begging for the developmental and architectural scraps, all in the hopes that it may someday bring more people, and eventually something better. The fact that anyone is talking about Marriott's AC Hotel means this lost corner of Center City - a corner a few blocks from City Hall - is relevant once again. 

I have one of the best views of the city from my third floor bedroom window: the skyline atop the historic Big Brothers Big Sisters buildings. But despite my view and comparatively cheap rent, I'd trade it in a second for foot traffic and a brick wall filled with neighbors.  

Would Bart live there?

The latest renderings for Bart Blatstein's yet-to-be named Broad & Washington project are in, and let's just say, there's a lot going on. Somewhere between the vision of a madman and an 11th grade shop class project, at least Broad & Washington gives us more to talk about than his (next) strip-mall proposed for Columbus Boulevard. 

jayfar at PhiladelphiaSpeaks.com managed to dig up a twelve year old article that sheds a little light on Bart Blatstein's motivations, how the Piazza happened, and why he clings to the outdated ideas he knows too well. As it turns out, the Piazza wasn't so much a fluke as it was divine intervention from three other professionals who know a little more about urban spaces than the man who made a fortune paving over the waterfront. 

Back then, Inga Saffron suggested Blatstein read Suburban Nation, a book that both defines what makes a city walkable, and why people would want to walk there. He was also introduced to Tom McDonald, an architect and builder who suggested he consult the firm of Erdy-McHenry. McDonald offered his professional opinion and a sketch for a more urban-friendly project, one that would ultimately become the Piazza. 

Blatstein admits that his ego almost kept him from meeting with McDonald. It's not hard to imagine what Northern Liberties would feel like today without the Piazza, just take a look at the South Philadelphia Acme. But Blatstein reluctantly returned to McDonald's sketch and - frustrating as it was for him - found it to be too good of an idea to pass up. 

He hired Erdy-McHenry to design the buildings surrounding the Piazza, and their neo-brutalist apartment blocks put Philadelphia back on the architectural map. 

But old habits die hard, especially when fueled by an unchecked ego. In 2003, when Blatstein was trying to stray from formulaic shopping centers, he admitted his new ideas were "Disneyesque," his own word that perfectly describes his plans for Broad & Washington. When Blatstein treads into urbanism without consultation, his ideas attempt to blend the comforts of suburbia with the appearance of a city. He's reaching for an ideal that many developers would love to master, but one without precedent. 

He's actually onto something. A lot of New Philadelphians were raised in the suburbs, and they'd love to have city life with the lazy creature comforts of their parents' cul de sac. But suburbia simply can't exist within a true urban landscape. What makes one comfortable or convenient will always come at the cost of a comfort or convenience of the other. What defines urban and suburban make combining the two like bumping magnets together on the same side. You end up with this "Disneyesque" idea for Broad & Washington.

The tower itself, designed by Cope Linder, is astonishing in its sheer size, especially for a corner so far from the city's tallest, most massive skyscrapers. It will stand out, but it's size is a welcome addition to a block we now consider Center City, and the building doesn't look half bad. It may even encourage more dense, urban development on the suburbanized blocks of Broad between South and Washington. 

The superblock is relatively simple and conventional: big box retailers capped with a parking garage and apartments. You can find dozens of carbon copies from Beijing to Houston. But things get wacky on the roof. 

I get it, what do you do with that much unused space on top of a parking garage? Well, you could Google a few ideas or just look across the river at Cira Green. But Blatstein resurrected his tiny-town idea from the defunct Provence Casino plans at the Inquirer Building. 

The problem with the tiny-town idea is that Broad & Washington isn't Las Vegas, Hollywood, or Orlando. It's a dense, urban neighborhood with a lot of feet...on the ground. His elevated, outdoor shopping concourse is an asymmetrical cluster of shops and restaurants, mostly fortressed off by towers rendering any potential wow-factor from its elevation pointless. 

What views are offered don't even face the skyline. Who's going to go to Broad & Washington to eat at a Chili's that might - maybe - face Point Breeze? Aside from tourists, most urbanites shop at stores they see from the street. Can you imagine how depressing this place will be in the winter, two years in when the only retail left is a Santander bank and an Auntie Anne's? This begs the even more quizzical question: who's going to want to live in the apartments on top of these shops? It basically looks like an outlet mall. 

Urbex Instagrammers are going to love this place in ten years. 

Not that any of this matters. He's back in Atlantic City trying to resuscitate a town Donald Trump didn't even want. He might be just the man for that job, too. Atlantic City's quasi-urban outlet village is exactly where Blatstein's brain goes to when he tries to be urban on his own. Tiny-towns and faux shopping villages fly in destination cities and tourist traps, not because they're particularly good ideas, but because the vast majority of those walking the streets simply don't care about the quality of life in those places. 

Back at home he needs to adopt a bit of humility and accept the fact that he's a developer, not an architect or urban planner, and open himself up to insightful collaboration. As a man renovating his own private residence at one of the city's most urban addresses - Rittenhouse Square - he needs to ask himself of every project, "Would I live there?" 

If the answer's "no," it's probably a bad idea. 

And my guess is Bart Blatstein, even a poor Bart Blatstein, wouldn't want to live upstairs from a Modell's on top of a parking garage. 

Marketplace Design Center

With the Schuylkill River transforming into "Downtown Philadelphia" before our eyes, PMC Property Group planning to transform the Marketplace Design Center into a 22 story office and residential complex. If you're not sure where that is, look for the whale mural facing the river. 

Given Cira Centre, One Riverside, and CHoP's Schuylkill Avenue expansion, it isn't the most ambitious design. On its own, it's not bad. But pictured from another angle, one from the south in which the PECO Building would be in view, that's an awful lot of black paneling and dark windows. Paired with the river's emerging crystalline skyline, Market Street might feel like Happy Hour on the Death Star. 

That's not to say a break wouldn't be bad. 

Every new building blooming from the banks of the Schuylkill looks like a shard of quartz. Handsome buildings on their own, but grouped together they look like the Starfleet Academy. Currently complemented by the Art Deco 30th Street Station and IRS Headuarters, even PECO's foreboding facade, they could use a bit more to dull the monotony, and 2400 Chestnut isn't cutting it.

In fact, giving the boomtown the riverfront is becoming, it might be time for 2400 Chestnut to think about skinning its facade in something a little more interesting. Flanked by soon-to-be Darth Vadar's condo and my pipe dream that Mandeville Place will ever return, 2400 Chestnut is the riverfront's lone pimple. It might soon be time to OxyCute it. 

Why are we still talking about Bart Blatstein?

At the height of the building boom, Bart Blatstein, the developer behind the Piazza at Schmidt's, was lauded by locals as a pioneering visionary. His quasi-public plaza in the not-quite-there-yet Northern Liberties was seen as a daring and risky move, and Erdy-McHenry's architecture cradled that. Philadelphia's press and bloggers couldn't get enough of Blatstein.

He was the man that was going to reinvent the city, the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.

His company, Tower Investments, has managed to make a name for itself. The former State Office Building on North Broad was renovated and rebranded Tower Place, and several of Tower's other projects handsomely compliment the Piazza. 

For years, Blatstein taunted the press with his next move. He got his hands on the Inquirer Building and proposed the Provence Casino. He snagged the long vacant corner of Broad and Washington where he pitched twin towers and a shopping complex. He partnered in a deal for the Delaware Station to convert the industrial relic into a massive event space. 

Then he set his sights on Atlantic City, began renovating the Pier Shops at Caesars, and it seemed he had abandoned Philadelphia and anyone who gave a shit about his portfolio of unused properties. 

But the truth is, he never left. Whenever we thought he was gone, he'd find himself an unintended voice in a story involving local development. Just two weeks ago he told BizJournal's Natalie Kostelni, "It's time" for North Broad Street, yet half of his vested interest in the Avenue sits vacant. Maria Panaritis dedicated an entire article to the man dubbing him a risk taker, opening exclusively with a love letter to the man's private Rittenhouse mansion.

Meanwhile, developers like National Real Estate Advisors are moving mountains on East Market. Brandywine is redefining the University City skyline with a renowned architecture firm's skyscraper. Liberty Property Trust is partnered in building the tallest building between New York and Chicago. 

While NREA, Brandywine, and Liberty are faceless entities, perhaps it's a man the press is enamored with. Eric Bumenfeld is a similar developer who garners similar attention, but he's hardly a celebrity in the local press. Carl Dranoff, though he's never done anything exceptionally daring or reinvented the wheel, is consistently building and clearly loves working more than attention. 

As someone who made one good move and a few decent ones over the past decade, why do we still care so much about Bart Blatstein? Like someone who just won the lottery, Bart Blatstein can't seem to focus his attention on one purchase, project, or investment. He sprays a sense of capitalistic ADHD across the Jerseyvania Triangle in disordered chaos, that is until he wants to grab a headline. 

Unlike Blumenfeld or Dranoff, and certainly straying from the formality of NREA, Brandywine, and Liberty; Blatstein has become Philadelphia's Donald Trump. Wherever there's a reporter, he's there to tell us what we want to hear: Broad and Washington will be amazing, the Inquirer Building will reinvent North Broad, and that abandoned power station on the Delaware River will be the East Coast's Coachella. 

He's a showman through and through, and it's beginning to look like the one thing he did smashingly perfect - the Piazza - was nothing but a fluke. 

But it wasn't a fluke nor was it that risky. There are a few pieces of Blatstein's portfolio that strategically lack a photograph on his company's website, namely River View and Columbus Crossing, that prove he isn't the urban trailblazer that brought feet back to the sidewalks of Philadelphia.

Neither an indie developer who rewrote urbanism nor one who altruistically saved a piece of North Broad modernism, Blatstein is a calculated businessman who bankrolled projects like the Piazza by first solidifying Columbus Boulevard as a piss-poor suburban wasteland by making strip-malls the new South Philly normal. 

With Blumenfeld bringing the Divine Lorraine back to life and Dranoff keeping urbanism tight, why is Blatstein still the press's Man of the Hour?

Like so many other charismatic moneymen, years of reveals for "the next Piazza" have been nothing more than a dog and pony show. Flashy renderings of towers flanking Broad and Washington and defunct plans for a casino atop the Inquirer Building serve to both distract and divide the public while the media, knowing how easy it is to jingle a set of keys in front of its readers, is his worthy partner. 

Past the pomp and soundbites, he's up to his old tricks. It was recently announced that Blatstein has proposed another strip-mall at Columbus Boulevard and Washington Avenue, a car-centric project that will put the kibosh on the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation's plans to replicate the success of the Schuylkill Banks on the eastern shores of the city. 

Unfortunately for Blatstein, his proposal was almost universally panned. Drexel University's Harris Steinberg called it "a regression." Jason Bock, who helped Blatstein plan the damn thing, even said, "it's going to be an urban development that's going to look like a suburban development."

These aren't words many Philadelphians this side of the New Millennium really want to hear. Given Bock's comments and Blatstein's vision, it would seem that the man who invented the American Piazza doesn't necessarily get urbanism or the New Philadelphians who largely make up his market. Inga Saffron was even more blunt on Facebook, posting, "Guess Bart Blatstein has given up on that new urbanist stuff."

While it's true that the Piazza may never have happened without Columbus Crossing or River View, that doesn't mean either had to happen, and certainly doesn't mean either should happen again. The success of the Piazza and Tower Place have proven that urbanism isn't risky. In fact, it's exactly what Philadelphia wants right now. 

But old habits die hard.

Strip-malls are cheap cash cows, at least for now. If another one on Columbus Boulevard can fund the transformation of Broad and Washington, I'll take it. But with so many other developers truly embracing Philadelphia's urban roots, why is the man who built one good thing once upon a time still the public's go-to guy when the latest thing he's released is so uninspired and architecturally irresponsible? 

We don't need to make any assumptions when it comes to Bart Blatstein and his attitude towards the better city we'd all like to have. Take his own words on the Delaware River Trail, 
"In spirit, I am for the river trail. In reality, it would be sold for a fraction of the market value of the property."

That's no architectural superhero, and not a Philadelphian we should be idolizing.