Let me return to my main points then, Frank.
First, the notion Ray floated, that the School District of Philadelphia
might pattern a school's boundary around the boundary of a proposed
Historic District, suggests to me someone who has no real-world
experience with the School District -- either as parent, employee,
coordinate government worker or outside agent. The School District has
far bigger fish to fry than other people's real-estate concerns. *Every*
neighborhood school is surrounded by real-estate concerns. But the
School District's billion-dollar focus is its own real-estate concerns.
Here Penn obviously had some input into PAS: it built the darn thing.
But it did not show any interest in "historicity" in so doing; PAS is
dazzlingly modern. In general, the entire "dotted line" between Penn and
historic designation is missing.
Secondly, incessant ruminations about whether or not rising property
values in University City were engineered by local agents such as Penn,
PAS, UCD, etc., repeatedly ignore that similar price rises have been
sweeping sister neighborhoods at a similar radius from Center City for
the past 10 years. I submit there is no evidence -- none at all -- that
local actions caused any of University City's run-up. To demonstrate
they had, you would have to study a neighborhood that was similar in
1998 but lacked our local institutions, and show the price run-up in
that neighborhood has been less than ours. To my knowledge, that work
hasn't been done. Until it is done, all this talk about various forces
"trying to gentrify" University City is a lot of irate talk about an
effect that may, in fact, be zero.
Thirdly, the idea that gentrification -- upward class mobility in an
urban neighborhood -- is globally and massively bad for poor people in a
poor city, cannot be true. There may be local undesired consequences
when a community climbs up the social ladder; few things in life are
100% good. But overall, the chief governmental problem poor
Philadelphians face is that there aren't enough non-poor Philadelphians
to pay the taxes to fund the services, in education and elsewhere, that
poor people need. Therefore, the poor need to attract more middle-class
and prosperous residents to Philadelphia. Presumably they will have to
live somewhere. Unless you just stack 'em up in highrises in Chestnut
Hill, that strongly suggests some neighborhoods must see an influx of
prosperous newcomers. If not in University City, then where? Remember:
it is the urban poor who need gentrification, not the gentry. The gentry
can always go be gentry somewhere else.
I hope you find this clearer. If not, let me know.
-- Tony West
Frank wrote:
And you are avoiding the issue by focusing on whether or not the
people commenting have children, clean up after their dog, leave their
cubicle, etc. What's your point?
Back to schools and real estate. You comment on the way I make my
point ... but not on the point itself. Whether or not a person has
real estate or children, their opinions will be better formed if they
refer to the world beyond Spruce Hill. Neither the School District
nor the urban real-estate market exists inside a neighborhood bubble.
Again I say: Middle-class and wealthy folks don't "need" the inner
city; they've shown they can live outside it and without it. It is
chiefly the poor who need to live within a taxing body that includes
the non-poor. Any disagreement with that proposition?
-- Tony West
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