PHILADEPHIA INQUIRER Op Ed: … In some ways, Philadelphia is like Detroit. Both had thriving manufacturing sectors that disappeared. Both suffered huge outflows of households to the suburbs. Philadelphia, once the nation’s third-largest city, has lost 25 percent of its population and is now the fifth-largest city. Detroit lost more than 40 percent of its residents and is now just the 18th largest.
The negative impact of the massive thinning of the population on the cost of government has not been recognized. Detroit was built to hold more than two million people. It is down to 700,000. Similarly, Philadelphia could house 2.5 million people, but the population is roughly 1.5 million. Despite this loss of taxpayers and businesses, neither Detroit nor Philadelphia – nor other similar cities – adapted its government or land-use pattern to the smaller population.
That failure is the root cause of the financial problems facing Detroit and those Philadelphia is dealing with… (more)
EDITOR: The article in its entirety should be required reading for Mayor Rick Gray and City Planner Randy Patterson. The total redevelopment of Lancaster Square East from the vacant and dysfunctional Bulova Building and moribund Brunswick and its Annex into an upscale residential condominium community is precisely the type of remedy that the author is proposing.
