Is Old City Lost?

With NREA's East Market steadily demolishing the Snellenberg stump for its exciting mixed use project, and the Gallery at Market East booting tenants for its upcoming renovation, urbania is rolling towards Old City for a 7-10 split.

But what about Old City? At the height of the building boom, riding the coattails of Sex and the City, this neighborhood was the "it" place to live, work, and be seen. Once Philadelphia's "downtown," Old City was ripe with the walkups, warehouses, and refined urban grit that defined the American City.

With our collective attention transitioning its fix towards neighborhoods like Midtown Village, Market East, and University City; Old City is starting to feel like a has-been. It's Sex and the City, and Philadelphia is busy binge-watching Friends on Netflix.

Please, stop. We're done. Friends is on Netflix. We want to know how to get Monica's apartment on a caterer's salary, not splurge on a pair of Manolos for a night Bleu Martini. McGlinchey's and flannel are back. 

"So it's a show about three hookers and their mom?" -Brian Griffin, on Sex and the City.

Despite the fact that Old City was once the hub of Philadelphia's commerce and industry, it is now one of those neighborhoods on the fringe of our city's core. And like many of those neighborhoods - Society Hill, Fitler Square, Logan Square - it comes with its own built-in identity crisis.

While Midtown Village and Market East are focused on enhancing the "downtown" experience with mixed used projects, some of the largest since Liberty Place redefined our skyline, Old City seems stuck in the 90s. Or at best, it's focused on competing as if it were plunked down in Northern Liberties or Passyunk Square.

Unlike Society Hill, or at least unlike what Society Hill has become, Old City has never been a next-door-neighbor neighborhood. It is the city's last vestige of our oldest urbanism. It was mixed use 300 years before mixed use was cool.

This isn't Center City thinking.

But with several row-homes under construction on the 200 blocks of Arch and Race, Old City's rigid desire to embrace a quaintness it never had may soon come back to bite it in the ass. When is the last time a single-family row-home was built in Old City? Aside from Elfreth's Alley, the Betsy Ross House may be its last notable example. 

Investing in residential land in a neighborhood that is primarily condo may be both a wise and poor investment. If Center City continues to grow and develop at its current pace, Old City will truly become Philadelphia's East Village equivalent. These row-homes will surely escalate in value, but will anyone be willing to pay the price for a home built in 2015 a decade from now, especially when they could get an historic mansion in Society Hill for the same price? 

Old City is a dense neighborhood, but their rigid stance against added density and love of parking is going to be a thorn when its residents are forced to face the fact that they live in a very urban neighborhood. While developers are just kowtowing to the neighborhood's demands, those demands aren't thinking of the neighborhood's future. A future where these now-sleek row-homes are subdivided into apartments with useless curb-cut sidewalks facing gerrymandered studios.

We're a big city. New row-homes belong above Vine and below South. In Center City, we need to be looking up.

Surviving Sex and the City

It's a relatively new philosophy, the idea that a successful urban core must be a meticulously maintained playground for the rich and trendy. I blame Sex and the City. I don't think most people who live in big cities necessarily share this attitude, but many of the vocal ones blogging from their Macs at Starbucks sure do. The condo craze transplanted so many urban newbies from homogenized suburbs, as well as the most recent generation just now entering the work force who are cultural products of the Roaring 90's, it makes complete sense that these two archetypes cringe at the thought of returning to the days of Woolworth and a society at harmony with economic diversity.

The Sex and the City phenomena isn't necessarily good or bad. It renewed an interest in our cities and brought life to the streets, restaurants, and boutiques. It saved priceless architecture, expanded neighborhoods, and renewed downtown living as a valid option. This was particularly beneficial to the larger cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, who although they lost considerable population during this nation's urban dark ages they were able to maintain a viable population at the urban heart unlike places like Baltimore or Pittsburgh.

What hurt Baltimore and Pittsburgh's downtowns is the disconnect between residential areas and their downtowns. Ed Bacon, at the opposite end of the Sex and the City philosophy, is often credited with saving Philadelphia's urban population. While he may have dictated all of Philadelphia's mid-century development, he viewed the city as a massive office park. Bacon was a product of his time. Like the vision employed in every other mid-century city, Bacon wanted to chop up Center City into urban islands, focusing on office development and freeways to get commuters in and out. Philadelphia maintained a residential core for the same reason New York and Chicago did. Bacon's vision didn't save Philadelphia's downtown population, but like New York and Chicago we had enough people to survive his vision.

Unfortunately his philosophy left us with suburban amenities far outweighing those of the city. Urban retail in Philadelphia is impractical. It is all or nothing. You can have your dog dyed pink or find a dollar store, but you can't walk to a decent grocery store. While many urban newbies want to make Center City the Delaware Valley's go-to shopping destination, maintaining it as Philadelphia's primary shopping destination is far more important. The suburbs are more than welcome to service the suburbs, but they should not be serving as Philadelphia's primary shopping resource.

While Philadelphia may be responsible as our region's cultural center, accepting this responsibility comes with more than 50 years of economic decline, corruption, and poverty. A city can't just accommodate the wealthy or you wind up with the fallout San Francisco, DC, and Boston are currently experiencing from attempting to maintain the illusion of extremely high standards. We do have a responsibility as the region's cultural representative to set extremely high cultural standards but that is not synonymous with high end shopping. To truly embrace these high cultural standards, a culture must acknowledge and accommodate all of its demographics. Sadly cultures that preach tolerance from a soap box are often the same cultures that sweep their economic diversity under the rug...or ship it to Oakland.

Realistically, retail on Chestnut Street and Market East mirror a large part of Philadelphia's population and thus generate a large chunk of tax revenue. Walnut Street represents the idealistic philosophy that has left other major cities in the red as it is afforded by a much smaller part of Philadelphia's population. Both have their place and balance is vital.

The idea that a city should be on the high end of everything is completely at odds with what the American city is and has always been. The worn storefronts on Chestnut Street and Market East serve as Philadelphia's downtown staples because the Sex and the City set has convinced us that they should be Starr restaurants or nothing, leaving us in the middle to drive to the suburbs for paper towels because this small population of vocal snobs thinks Center City is too good for a Target. A city can't sustain itself on luxuries and the upper-middle class. To succeed we need to accommodate, and tolerate, everyone.