In other, more concise words, you were wrong and the stickers are
indeed in West Philadelphia. There. That was easy, wasn't it? One
simple sentence.
By the way, "all the fuss" was mostly *you* refusing to admit that
the boundaries, in their fluidity, had changed.
Frank
On Apr 6, 2007, at 05:14 AM, Anthony West wrote:
"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.
