Many native West Philadelphians declare, often on bumper stickers: This is West Philly. The resident-led struggle to defend these homes has galvanized people in Philadelphia around the defense of housing for Black, Brown, working-class, poor, elderly, and disabled residents. The building of bridges across the Schuylkill River further promoted development, including that of hospitals and other benevolent institutions. Gentrification has been rapidly encroaching upon low-income Black communities nationwide, and has been running rampant in North Philadelphia for the past 15 years. By 2010, only about 5 percent of Queen Village residents were African American. East Mount Airy is a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a population of 21,236. Churches and synagogues, relics of the neighborhoods immigrant past, were converted to market-rate lofts. The land finally came under redevelopment after the Toll Brothers purchased the land in 2013 to construct condominiums. Throughout the post-World War II period, Philadelphia struggled valiantly to entice the middle class back from the suburbs. Southwarks fortunes had begun to fade after World War II. What sets gentrification in Philadelphia apart is that the effected neighborhoods aren't always black. Philip Gentry, a Lea School parent and member of the West Philly Coalition for Neighborhood Schools, said that he has seen some signs of potential gentrification occurring as a result of the funding granted to the Lea School. Thats typical for a gentrifying city. Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries. Eastwick is, as he says, super residential, replete with rowhomes and momandpop shops. This suggests that some 8% of Philadelphia's gun violence can be attributed to gentrification destabilizing the city's illicit drug markets. Johnson notes that these actions started out small but were continuous and built up over time. And resentment towards Penn simmers in the West Philly community. The area around Temple University in North Philadelphia also witnessed rapid changes. Pei designed the towers to incorporate floor-to-ceiling windows along the exterior wall of each apartment, giving occupants expansive views of Philadelphia or the Delaware River. In recent years, a number of Philadelphia neighborhoods have undergone significant transformation, with higher-income residents moving in, real estate prices rising, new businesses . Penn is still displacing people, plain and simple, Casey Lynch (C 18), who has been involved with the Netter Center for four years, said. In the nineteenth century, West Philadelphia transformed from a countryside of family farms and "gentlemen's" estates to a set of residential communities. Dylan Gottlieb is a Ph.D. student at Princeton University, where he works on recent American urban history. She recalls that the value of her parents house appreciated 400% in the time they lived in Philly. By 1990, that figure had fallen to 20 percent. The most comprehensive, authoritative reference source ever created for the Philadelphia region. Census data, when adjusted for inflation, indicates a massive jump in Philadelphia property valuesan average increase 213% since 2000. Its market value is listed as more than $9.5 million, according to the city's website. Follow Backgrounders on Twitter Developed alongside people on the frontlines of injustice, Prism will help deepen your understanding on the most pressing issues of our time. Tracing Philadelphia and its environs since colonial times, Jeffrey Lin finds the same factors propelling neighborhood transformation today. While the pace of Philadelphia-area redevelopment lagged behind other rapidly revitalizing citiesnotably, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C.the specter of displacement troubled government officials and longtime residents alike. The comments are hilarious as they're self aware . In the West Philadelphia area around Mantua, gentrification is a constant, looming concern. Today West Philadelphia bears one particular descriptor: gentrified. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. The blocks surrounding Dock Street continued to be popular in the nineteenth century, as hundreds of merchants established distribution warehouses and sidewalk storefronts to sell a variety of food to other Philadelphia businesses and individuals. By May 20, 2016. Old Philadelphia funded a national advertising campaign that recast the neighborhood as a desirable historic enclavethe better to attract aesthetically-minded middle-class homebuyers. The community is worth fighting for. Davids added. Housing prices soared even more quickly than they had in Queen Village. The area where the UC Townhomes sit used to be known as Black Bottom, a neighborhood of largely working class and working poor African American residents, who were displaced through eminent domain to create UCSC and University City High School, as John L. Puckett, professor emeritus of education at the University of Pennsylvania, writes. Those newcomers remade Queen Villages physical landscape. But for existing communities facing the gentrification of their neighborhood, those dreams of revival were dampened by fears of displacement. In rapidly changing neighborhoods like Old City, minority residents often suffered the brunt of such measures. In the 2010s, Philadelphia tried to strike an equilibrium between development and stasis, renewal and disruption, gentrification and decay. Speculative developers rushed to build housing for Temples expanding off-campus student population in a poverty-stricken African American district west of Broad Street. The top three means of transportation people in West Philadelphia use to get to work are: car, bus or trolley bus and walking. Tang additionally suggested that state interventions needed to deal with displacement, because gentrification has been driven by the deregulation of the housing market. Earning a national reputation during the mid-century era of urban renewal, he was featured in Time and Life magazines and was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the White House's Conference on Recreation and Natural Beauty. Yet even in the midst of this apparent nadir, there were glimmers of hope. On Sept. 29, just minutes into freshman convocation, Liz Magills first major speech as University of Pennsylvania president was disrupted by about 100 protesters. Gentrifying tracts experienced the second highest average violent crime rate between 2014 and 2019 at 13.4 per 100 residents, while non-gentrifiable tractsmostly middle- to upper-income and predominantly whitehad the lowest average violent crime rate over the six-year period at 6.7 per 100 residents. In 1970, the neighborhood had only 90 housing units; by 1990, it had 1,665. In the 1990s, young urban professionals flocked to the area. The gentrification of University City, or "Penntrification," forces Philadelphia's already vulnerable Black population out of their homes and brings white families and students into their former neighborhoods. "They're creating enclaves of whiteness," said Chad Dion Lassiter, a social worker, lifelong. Philadelphia did not become the international stage as Bacon had hoped. But nobody could deny the effectiveness of the organizing, which has forced the property owner to extend its contract with HUD again, this time until the end of December. Its now down to 42,000. This "process" is very dangerous as it has a notorious reputation of displacing old residents and creating terrible living situations for those it has not displaced. And no one can question the rapidity with which its occurring. Penn also offers incentives for its faculty to reside in nearby West Philadelphia. Factors that had once driven people away from citiestheir density, their older housing stock, the presence of ethnic and racial minoritiesnow drew them back to the urban core. The student solidarity work has drawn disciplinary proceedings by the administration. The signs of gentrification can be spotted throughout Philadelphia neighborhoods like Brewerytown, Kensington and West Philadelphia, among others. I can't see how that would be positive.. Like The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia on Facebook, Housing and Community Affairs Collections, Urban Archives, Philadelphia City Planning Commission and Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority papers, Follow The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia on Instagram, Like The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia on Facebook, Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back, Without Pa. help, Philly gentrification relief could have unintended results (WHYY, April 15, 2013), Gentrification property tax relief- for whom? For many Philadelphians, the 60s and 70s made evident Penns active role in spreading gentrification outward from campus. About 75 people took part in the event, held four days before a critical vote at a Zoning Board of Adjustments hearing. This new fourstory building will have 21 apartment units, and Penn Family Medicine University City will move into the first floor office space from its building a few doors down at 4623 Spruce St. There is a stereotype that gentrification refers to low-income African Americans being pushed out by rich whites, but this is not the case in many of the areas in Philly where gentrification is occurring. Gilmores definition of racism, the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death, is also instructive in terms of what residents and organizers are fighting against. For example, when the university partnered with the school district to fund Penn Alexander Elementary in 2001, 57% of the students in its catchment area were African American; as of 2021, Black students represented less than 17% of the student body. Others were more mercenary, buying and renovating abandoned shells for profit. While Temples administration tried to encourage better relations between students and residents, it did little to discourage the spread of private development around its campus. The struggle to preserve the UC Townhomes had humble beginnings. And what does it say that we exist in a gentrified spaceone that our school created? As would become common in subsequent renewal projects, a coalition of public organizations, local and federal governments, and private investors worked together to remake Society Hill. Low sales forced dozens of businesses to leave the building over the years and the NewMarket formally closed in 1987. Business owners constructed warehouses along Dock Creek in the late 1600s so ships could unload food, materials, and other products efficiently. Fighting Gentrification in West Philadelphia. Ethnic businesseskosher wine merchants, haberdasheries, and furrierswere reincarnated as vegetarian restaurants, feminist bookstores, and hip clothing boutiques. Annabelle Williams is a sophomore in Wharton from Chester Springs, PA, studying Management and Marketing. But for many students residing in the Penn Bubble, community issues take a backseat. Both Alexander and Johnson attest that constant meetings and forcing the owner to extend the HUD contract multiple times has been stressful on the residents. Yet such changes also came with a cost: the social disruption and displacement of existing residents. In the Old City area just north of Society Hill, those tax incentives encouraged developers to convert abandoned workshops into stylish loft apartments. By the late 1960s, middle-class newcomers joined their fight. For the first of three mapping layers, the city's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) used . The protesters, including students, chanted Save UC Townhomes and stop Penn-trification. After sitting briefly, Magill attempted to continue, making the disrespectful suggestion to the protesters, among whom were local residents facing eviction, that Democracy cannot work unless people can live together, learn from one another and, paradoxically, disagree. Amid continuous chants, Magill was unable to finish her remarks. Armed with generous mortgages, these gentrifiers were careful to heed OPDCs stringent guidelines for historical verisimilitude. The gentrification taking place in West Philadelphia is often referred to as Penntrification. Long-term residents are forced to move away from jobs and social networks. And while that goal might have seemed outlandish to many in the winter of 2021, it seems quite possible now. Housing activists and UC Townhomes residents fight gentrification in West Philadelphia Housing activists, university students, and residents have staged protests and encampments to defend low-income housing in UC Townhomes by Jared Ware October 7th, 2022 Business owners opened smaller boutiques, restaurants, and bars that catered to youthful adults who preferred to live within walking distance of dining and other diversions. These arrivistes chose to live inand work to renewa historic and diverse part of the city. Dennis witnessed one of the earliest unveilings of Penns Landscape Development Plan of 1977. DuBois seminal 1899 work of urban sociology, The Philadelphia Negro, catalogued the lives and labors of those living in the predominantly African-American Seventh Warda narrow rectangular strip that spanned the southern edge of Center City Philadelphia, from the Schuylkill River on the west to Sixth Street on the east. Penn was in search of a grant for urban renewal at the time; but the grant stipulated that the neighborhood needed to be blighted (i.e., so unsafe, uninhabitable, or dilapidated that it is a candidate for eminent domain). In 2014, Philadelphia City Council enacted the Longtime Owner Occupants Program (LOOP). . As in Society Hill, Queen Villages African Americans were the most dramatically affected by gentrification. At mid-century, the area remained a bastion of Black life, teeming with blues and jazz clubs, barrooms, and Black-owned businesses. Attendees said that groups of residents are trying to fend off gentrification in West Philadelphia. As part of the construction process, thirty-one acres of houses and commercial buildings were razed to provide enough space for the redevelopment project, forcing hundreds of individuals and merchants to relocate. New groups and institutions inundate an area and push out those who lived there before. Leon Tyer has lived at Penn Wynn House in the Wynnefield neighborhood of West Philadelphia for six years with the help of a federal voucher program that helps low-income people living with HIV/AIDS pay rent. Many of these working-class immigrants were employed in restaurant and domestic servicesa sector that grew along with Philadelphias affluent urban class. Smith, Neil. Even as the city government struggled to balance the costs and benefits of neighborhood revival, many areas remained untouched by the effects of gentrification. Attracting new residents to Philadelphia seemed like the surest way to grow the citys tax base as manufacturing jobs evaporated and suburbanization continued apace. Queen Villages heyday of diversity and cooperation proved to be short-lived, however. As these anchor institutions continued to attract thousands of young, highly-educated residents to Philadelphia, previously disinvested neighborhoodsfrom Spruce Hill, near the University of Pennsylvania,and Washington Square West, which adjoined Jefferson and Pennsylvania Hospitalssaw increases in population and property values. Ella is critical of her former school, and how she thinks it serves the University and its facultys families more than unaffiliated West Philly residents. Penn Alexander receives operating contribution of $1330 per student from the university, in addition to staffing and teaching assistance from Penns Graduate School of Education. Soon after, Penn moved westward. Further from the booming downtown, neighborhoods continued to suffer from abandonment and decay. Buoyed by the success of Society Hill, other Philadelphia neighborhoods began to experience revitalization during the 1970s. Even though Black residents fought gentrificationforming an anti-displacement group that demanded low-income housing optionstheir efforts were largely unsuccessful. Context: IBID Associates, the owner of the 70-unit complex at 3990 Market St., didn't renew its affordable housing contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which expires July 2022. During the 1980s, new federal tax credits helped fund the redevelopment of other overlooked neighborhoods. For every new town house built in Graduate Hospital or Queen Village, scores of crumbling row houses were demolished in Nicetown and Kensington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Artist Isaiah Zagar covered dozens of drab brick walls in the neighborhood with his kaleidoscopic mirror-flecked murals. Using those criteria, Nicetown has taken steps forward in the last five years. Even as Philadelphia experienced deindustrialization and decline in the 1970s, a handful of neighborhoods began to experience a phenomenon known as gentrificationa process where affluent individuals settled in lower-income areas. After rallying at City Hall, protesters stormed the BIA networking event at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, confronting developers and public officials. WVU economist Zachary Porreca compared data on property values and shootings in Philadelphia and found that when one block gentrifies, drug crime migrates to neighboring blocks, escalating in the. Nearly one-third Latino in 1960, the neighborhood was only 14 percent Latino by 1990. But in reality theyre just untrained, typically nonchalant kids.. Phyllis Jones Carter owns a business in West Philadelphia and is a longtime . As in Society Hill and Queen Village, the gentrification of Graduate Hospital triggered striking demographic changes. 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