There is a very interesting letter in this week's UC Review. Mitchell. Gordon responds to Paul Levy's letter of last week and follows-up on his original opinion piece about moderately priced housing. In this letter, Gordon touches on the problems the rapid gentrification causes for the young creative class that is the proclaimed focus of Penn's marketing scheme for Philadelphia. He also cites Daniel Brook's book, The Trap, Selling Out to Stay Afloat In Winner-Take-All America.
Has anyone on the list read this book to date? Mr. Brook wrote the article, "Battle of the Bowl" for the City Paper and was one of the first journalists who got to see the planned destruction of our community and the "funky vibe" culture marketed by Penn. I hope he used the Philadelphia examples in the book. Briefly, Penn calls the success of our extremely diverse community and the incredible creative, artistic, and intellectual capitol the "funky vibe." Even while the UCD occupation forces policies to destroy this preexisting community, Penn markets it as a "funky vibe" neighborhood. While the thrust of Mr. Brook's investigation for the City Paper focused on the contemptible research done by UCD's partner the Friends of Clark Park, I made sure to expose Mr. Brook to the tactics and vision of UCD as well. The divide that is now emerging between Penn and its civic association partners was apparent even then in 2002. FOCP has a longstanding vision of a gated provincial Victorian garden for Clark Park under their control and for their exclusive use. They were considered by residents and city officials to be a club of mostly cranks back then. UCD has the vision that Clark Park will be the western edge of Penn's campus and it will be used for marketing events designed for the upscale class of upper middle class consumers, and will be controlled exclusively by Penn. The very people that create the funky vibe, and have formed an incredible culture in the park for decades; are the very people that both visions want removed from Clark Park. I explained to Mr. Brook that Clark Park was one of the great urban parks in a very successful diverse urban community and in fact had the very "artistic exciting" community that Penn desired. I explained to him that destroying the culture of Clark Park and replacing it with corporate marketing events made no sense to the goal of attracting college grads. I explained how I proposed to Penn that West Philly should be held up and studied to find out why it was a magnet for the creative class they claimed to desire. I proposed that instead of rolling the bulldozers over the community that Penn actually consider community engagement and partnership with all the diverse communities that came together so successfully in West Philly Some of you may know about the history of South Street, another funky community. South Street too was considered a cool, strong artistic community before it was converted into a trendy urban shopping mall. The boring upscale class always appear to believe that they can capture the essence of the funky while they drive out the funky people. I'm very interested to see how much of the Philadelphia example gets into Mr. Brook's book. He seemed like a bright guy to me. Also his journalism was responsible unlike what we've seen in the DP, Public Record, and Washington Post. I know that it is important for the truth about the Penn process for community destruction to get out to the national and international community. It may be too late for this part of West Philly to hold onto the remnants of our once great community and democratic rights; however, perhaps if others see the example of corporate Penn, there will be hope for other communities. I'll pick up the book today or tomorrow. Please share your thoughts about the book or the various forces pushing the creative class out of eastern West Philadelphia. Sincerely, Glenn
