"West Philadelphia" and all other community designations are roughly five years
old in their current incarnations on the Philadelphia City Planning Commission
map, a PCPS cartographer said yesterday. However, West Philly is not a
"neighborhood" in this new system; rather, it is a "Planning Analysis Sector",
one of a dozen-odd larger entities that carve up the city, sometimes
overlapping PCPS "neighborhoods".
Planning Analysis Sectors are a 21st-c. innovation, said Maryann Longacre, as
was the entire push to redefine the city's communities. "The previous system
had grown in a haphazard manner. We knew it didn't describe the city's
communities properly." After much research, PCPS upgraded its detail on
communities, raising the number of "neighborhoods" it recognized from around 70
to around 300.
In the process, numerous neighborhoods contained in University City were
recognized and defined. These were territories with civic associations of their
own. "University City" was left on the map with the campus area east of 40th
St. and south of Market St., which no civic association claimed.
This came as news to Longacre. "I certainly feel University City covers a
larger area than that," she said. "I'll bring the issue up at our next meeting"
to review the new mapping system.
The reduction of University City is understandable, given designers'
constraints. The new scheme derived its data from street-level planners in
PCPS. City planners are expected to know the civic leaders on their beats and
to report the boundaries they claimed. So territories claimed by civic
associations were defined as "neighborhoods". Territories not claimed by
associations were assigned to neighborhoods on the planners' judgement.
For simplicity's sake, the current PCPS map does not reflect overlapping claims
by civic associations. City planners tended to split the difference to provide
lines of demarkation that are neat, instead of wholly descriptive. There is
also no current method to map "nesting of neighborhoods", to describe the way
smaller neighborhood identities often nestle inside larger ones.
Nevertheless, the new system is a major advance in accuracy, detail and
accessibility over the previous system. It shows a genuine effort by PCPS to
keep up with the internet age. Tons of newly available information can be
accessed by the public, provided they understand its architecture.
Nothing requires other governmental bodies to follow PCPS "neighborhood"
designations. Indeed, that agency still employs traces of an earlier system in
some internal reports. Neighborhood Transformation Initiative boundaries do not
follow PCPS boundaries and the Police Dept. goes by a third set.
That's all fine with Longacre, for whom urban mapping is a permanently fluid
and debatable project. "Neighborhoods are dynamic," she insisted, so their
names and boundaries are constantly changing over time. PCPS' goal is to find a
useful way to play catchup with current community usage rather than to issue
top-down orders.
As to the original question of where West Philadelphia leaves off and Southwest
Philadelphia begins, the Millennium 2000 version, according to PCPS, is that
the border runs from Cobbs Creek along Baltimore Ave. up to 50th St., where it
cuts south. So the new Dock Street brewpub is in West Philly, while the credit
union is in Southwest Philly. The boundary runs down 50th St. to the train
tracks; follows the tracks to Kingsessing Ave.; runs up Kingsessing to 46th
St.; follows 46th St. across Woodland to Paschall; Paschall to Grays Ferry, and
Grays Ferry to the Schuylkill R.
In the University City community alone, this Planning Analysis Sector boundary
runs cuts across three neighborhoods: Cedar Park, Kingsessing and West Shore.
What about the stickers that kicked up all the fuss? In PCPC terms, they are
comparing apples with oranges. University City is a neighborhood, West Philly
is a Planning Analysis Sector. They are correct in that they are placed in
areas PCPC defines as "West Philadelphia" and not as "University City" at this
time. But that is not because PCPC regards "marketing schemes" as unworthy of
neighborhood designation, or "West Philly" as worthy of it.
-- Tony West
All this because you disagree with the City's map?
Referring to the beginning of this thread, the "marketing scheme" signs are
indeed in West Philly.
Frank
On Apr 2, 2007, at 11:51 PM, Anthony West wrote:
The final answer is there is no final answer. The City has its own
Neighborhood Map, which is intended to be a practical guide to planners and
community groups. It recognizes University City, because duh, it exists now.
Thus it pushes away from UC terms like "West Philly" and "Southwest Philly", so
they can be used to distinguish other tracts of land. There's no law that says
folks have to pay attention to this map if it honks them off.
And it completely ignores the nesting phenomenon, which is very real in
social geography. We live in hierarchies of neighborhoods, which we deploy
variously according to the context of discussion. For instance: I live in West
Philadelphia, in University City, in Spruce Hill. Which placename I use depends
on whom I'm talking to and what I'm talking about. No law says I have to be
consistent. No law says lower-level neighborhoods can't overlap higher-level
boundaries.
