Gentrification is the controversial process of affluent people moving into a historically low-income neighborhood. It is often criticized because the current residents have limited options to buy or rent equivalent housing in alternative areas at the same price. If they stay, prices for products, services, and taxes rise and existing social networks are disturbed. ''Gentrification'' is the opposite of

white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...

—when residents voluntarily move away as a neighborhood declines. In Philadelphia, various neighborhoods, each with a characteristic class and ethnic makeup, are being shaken as newcomers move in. The impact of gentrification has been felt most in a number of neighborhoods around Center City such as lower North Philadelphia, Francisville, Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Kensington, Fairmount, Center City West, Hawthorne, University City, Point Breeze, and Grays Ferry.

Background

Philadelphia serves as an example of urban growth, decline, and regrowth along with other industrial cities of the

northeastern United States The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southe ...

, including

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

;

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...

; and

Newark Newark most commonly refers to: * Newark, New Jersey, city in the United States * Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey; a major air hub in the New York metropolitan area Newark may also refer to: Places Canada * Niagara-on-the ...

and nearby

Trenton, New Jersey Trenton is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. It was the capital of the United States from November 1 to December 24, 1784. Philadelphia has a longer history and arguably richer provenance than its competitor cities. It has a deepwater port and was the first capital of the United States. Development in Philadelphia began along the Delaware, at Penn's Landing, at a spot that enjoys a close approach of the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It fl ...

two miles to the west. Near the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock (village), New York, Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of N ...

are the oldest neighborhoods and

Independence Hall Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, where both the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted by America's Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Fa ...

. Development continued westward to Center City, halfway between the two rivers. By convention, orientation in Philadelphia is in reference to Center City, defined by

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

. It was completed in 1901, a symbol of the success of the city. From the end of the Civil War through the 1920s, Philadelphia was an industrial powerhouse. Growth fueled by a deepwater port, proximity to Pennsylvania coalfields, and immigration from Europe brought success in textiles, shipbuilding, locomotives, pharmaceuticals, and even

Stetson Stetson is a brand of hat manufactured by the John B. Stetson Company. "Stetson" is also used as a generic trademark to refer to any campaign hat, in particular, in Scouting. John B. Stetson gained inspiration for his most famous hats when he ...

hats. That wealth paid for neighborhoods of working class, middle class, and luxury housing. The development of the various neighborhoods in the city was the product of the prevalent transportation mode when the neighborhood was developed. For example, early development of the

Society Hill Society Hill is a historic neighborhood in Center City Philadelphia, with a population of 6,215 . Settled in the early 1680s, Society Hill is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia.The Center City District dates the Free Soc ...

neighborhood was driven by the waterborne transport on the Delaware. Trolleys, elevated trains, (and subsequently subways over the same routes) helped develop neighborhoods at the turn of the twentieth century, before the automobile. Likewise, the first suburban bedroom communities developed along the Pennsylvania Railroad's

Main Line Mainline, ''Main line'', or ''Main Line'' may refer to: Transportation Railway * Main line (railway), the principal artery of a railway system * Main line railway preservation, the practice of operating preserved trains on an operational railw ...

. Areas then not served by mass transit were likely to be poorer, like

South Philadelphia South Philadelphia, nicknamed South Philly, is the section of Philadelphia bounded by South Street to the north, the Delaware River to the east and south and the Schuylkill River to the west.Chestnut Hill. Philadelphia experienced a boom during WWII, but the city's advantages dissolved in the face of external forces. Textile industries moved to the South. Banking regulation destroyed Philadelphia as a regional banking center. Automation made the

Philadelphia Stock Exchange Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), now known as Nasdaq PHLX, is the first stock exchange established in the United States and the oldest stock exchange in the nation. The exchange is owned by Nasdaq, which acquired it in 2007 for $652 million, a ...

redundant. Consolidation in retail resulted in the absorption of

John Wanamaker John Wanamaker (July 11, 1838December 12, 1922) was an American merchant and religious, civic and political figure, considered by some to be a proponent of advertising and a "pioneer in marketing". He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a ...

and

Strawbridge and Clothier Strawbridge's, formerly Strawbridge & Clothier, was a department store in the northeastern United States, with stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Center City Philadelphia flagship store was, in its day, a gracious urban emporiu ...

by national firms. Decline of railroads made

Baldwin Locomotive The Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1951. Originally located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century. The company was for decades t ...

and

Budd Company The Budd Company was a 20th-century metal fabricator, a major supplier of body components to the automobile industry, and a manufacturer of stainless steel passenger rail cars, airframes, missile and space vehicles, and various defense products ...

superfluous. Globalization took control of

Smith Kline and French Smith, Kline & French (SKF) was an American pharmaceutical company. History In 1830, John K. Smith opened a drugstore in Philadelphia, and his younger brother, George, joined him in 1841 to form John K Smith & Co. In 1865, Mahlon Kline joined '' ...

to the United Kingdom. And as American men stopped wearing hats,

left. Philadelphia population declined in every decade starting in 1950, until 2000. Between 2000 and 2010, the population grew a minuscule 0.6%, with growth accelerating in the following decade. Many of the newcomers choose to live in and near Center City, in neighborhoods that offer easy access to jobs and amenities. While population was rising, urban home ownership was declining, from a nation-leading 59.3 percent in 2000 to 52.2 percent in 2012. Philadelphia also ranked as one of the poorest cities in the U.S., with 26.9 percent of residents deemed poor by federal standards. Of major cities, only Detroit is poorer. As of the 2010 Census, Philadelphia was ranked as the ninth most racially segregated metro area in the U.S., with many residents living in neighborhoods where 75 percent or more of the population consisted of a single racial group. With renewed growth, neighborhoods convenient to the new employment in the city became attractive. In 1987, the skyline changed. For the previous ninety years, no building was taller than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall. Taller buildings allowed more dense development of the Center City area. The tallest is headquarters of Comcast, headquarters of the largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world, an indication of the city's renaissance. White collar workers at companies like Comcast are ready to invest in communities that had housed less affluent people for decades.

Urban renewal since 1949

Neighborhood improvement in Philadelphia has been the result of two factors: formal government projects and informal redevelopment in the form of

gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...

. From 1949 onward, redevelopment was the result of government projects including highway building, housing projects, and zoning changes, and government-sponsored projects including the development of University City, Southwest Center City and Society Hill. Each of these projects included

community displacement Community displacement is the movement of a population out of a neighborhood as formal or informal redevelopment occurs. It may be a result of gentrification, the informal redevelopment that occurs when new, and typically more affluent people, mov ...

. Opponents point to the heavy-handedness of these projects. Only after about 2000, as the population of the city began to grow again, did gentrification become substantial. There is little evidence that the informal development of gentrification drove substantial amounts of community displacement. In a recent sturdy, Pew defined gentrification in Philadelphia as a neighborhood that had an average income 80% of the median in 2000 and higher than average in 2014. It wrote, "“gentrification is a relatively small part of the recent story of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods.”

Neighborhoods

University City and Mantua

In 1872, the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

moved to the west of the

, a mile and a half west of Center City, an area known as West Philadelphia.

Drexel University Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, S ...

constructed its main building nearby at 32nd and Chestnut Streets in 1889. This northern part of

West Philadelphia West Philadelphia, nicknamed West Philly, is a section of the city of Philadelphia. Alhough there are no officially defined boundaries, it is generally considered to reach from the western shore of the Schuylkill River, to City Avenue to the nort ...

is Powellton Village and

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard language, Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture ...

. The northeast border is Mantua Avenue, the first street west of the Schuylkill River, the bank of the river being taken up by the Pennsylvania Railroad, and more recently, the Schuylkill Expressway. By the late 1880s, Mantua was a predominantly white, working-class neighborhood. In the 1940s, however, "

" occurred due to many factors including redlining,

deindustrialization Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially of heavy industry or manufacturing industry. There are different interpre ...

, and suburbanization. As in many other areas of Philadelphia, "white flight" resulted in Mantua becoming a primarily African American neighborhood. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had declined, and was the site of the 1978 MOVE shootout. In 2014, the median household income was less than $17,000, more than half of Mantua residents lived below the poverty line, and 96% percent of Mantua's children under five lived in poverty. Improving Mantua has become a priority for city leaders, as the neighborhood has been plagued with violence and many blighted properties. In 2008, the Mantua Tower, a public housing project, was demolished. The Tower will be replaced with low density public housing. The area to the south and west was developed by the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). The campus experienced growth after World War II as a result of the

GI Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

. The site of the Philadelphia Almshouse, later named the Philadelphia General Hospital, became the campus of the

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is a children's hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with its primary campus located in the University City neighborhood of West Philadelphia in the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The h ...

(CHOP) in 1974. The area occupied by Drexel, Penn, and CHOP is known as University City. Other participants in this development included

Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

, Presbyterian Hospital (Philadelphia), and

Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM) is a private medical school with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and additional locations in Suwanee, Georgia (PCOM Georgia) and Moultrie, Georgia (PCOM South Georgia). Founded ...

working together to build the University City Science Center. Development of University City was the result of both government policy and economic drivers. Land for new facilities was relatively cheap. Developers built housing to accommodate student housing. In so doing, existing residents were pushed out. The areas to the west and northwest of University City remain blighted. Penn's first significant but controversial expansion into the community was done with the aid of the federal

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

program. The

Housing Act of 1949 The American Housing Act of 1949 () was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing. It was part of President Harry Truman's program of domestic legislation, the Fai ...

allowed Penn to rebuild West Philadelphia under the Slum Clearance and Community Development and Redevelopment program.. An exact number of the people displaced isn't known, but figures range from 5,000 – 10,000. Soon after that, the West Philadelphia Corporation, consisting of Penn,

, An earlier Housing Act would give the institutions generous grants to building academic centers, and soon enough, West Philadelphia became Urban Renewal Areas 3, 4, and 5. Area 3 consisted mainly of the Black Bottom neighborhood, and while described by newspapers as "20 devastated acres of rundown bars and garages and warehouses," it was still home to hundreds of families who soon found themselves without a home. In retrospect, early federal attempts at urban redevelopment were destined to fail. According to the annual business review from

Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research Fraser may refer to: Places Antarctica * Fraser Point, South Orkney Islands Australia * Fraser, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb in the Canberra district of Belconnen * Division of Fraser (Australian Capital Territory), a former federal ele ...

, 800,000 units of public housing have been erected; however, according to a research from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, Title I and III under the program were later discredited generally for not solving the housing problem and yet, fostered a worse form of slum in high-density projects. University City did not include public housing projects, unlike Hawthorne in South Philadelphia. In the 1990s, opposite to Philadelphia, however, University City experienced a significant move-ins. According to

The Pew Charitable Trusts The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1948. With over 6 billion in assets, its stated mission is to serve the public interest by "improving public policy, informing the public, a ...

, up till 2014, well-educated

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...

millennials Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the Western demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000 ...

took up 40% of the population within

University City, Philadelphia University City is the easternmost portion of West Philadelphia, encompassing several Philadelphia universities. It is situated directly across the Schuylkill River from Center City, Philadelphia, Center City. The University of Pennsylvania was ...

.. Besides, University City median house prices rose from $110,000 to $350,000 from 2000 to 2006. Furthermore, its average household income increased steadily from $30,000 to $50,000 from the 1990s to 2010s. In spring 2015,

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...

led a group of ten Penn institutions to enhance the city's inter-connectivity under program Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking. As part of Penn's effort to have the university integrated into West Philadelphia, Penn has sponsored a program to make their staff and faculty residents of nearby neighborhoods. The university had instituted the Home Ownership Incentive Program that provided $3,000 per year for seven years or $15,000 up front for housing expenses to employees who purchased homes in University City. The only restriction was that the employees must live in the house for seven years. The employees who already owned a home in the designated area could get up to $7,500 in matching funds toward exterior home improvements. The program has changed recently in that it only covers $7500 in a no-interest or forgivable loan. A program has been in effect since 1965, when it created the Guaranteed Mortgage Program, which offers an option to finance 120 percent of the cost for a property needing rehabilitation. Over the last 30 years, staff, faculty and young professionals have been buying homes further and further west, southwest and northwest raising the collective property values of those neighborhoods. As another incentive, the university helped to build Penn Alexander Elementary School, a state-of-the-art K-8 school designed to make the neighborhood even more attractive to professors and other affluent residents. However, the school only accepts students who live within a certain radius, and alienates many of the poorer residents in University City. However, this wasn't the only school Penn had a hand in building. In 1963, University City High School was planned as a magnet feeder school for the universities in the area. Residents in the community fought against it, not believing that their children would be allowed in. After countless battles, the school was built, was predominantly African American, and was afflicted with the problems typical of an inner-city high school. The school was eventually closed in 2013 and was demolished in 2015.

Chinatown

;History Between 1882 and 1943, the population of Philadelphia's Chinatown was controlled under

Chinese Exclusion Act The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplom ...

and

Geary Act The Geary Act was a United States law that extended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by adding onerous new requirements. It was written by California Representative Thomas J. Geary and was passed by Congress on . The law required all Chinese re ...

. In the 1920s, the population was about 1,600, but as the 1960s and 70s approached, Chinatown lost about 26% of its housing and the population went down to around 400 people. Between 1943 and 1980, after passage of the

Magnuson Act The Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943, also known as the Magnuson Act, was an immigration law proposed by U.S. Representative (later Senator) Warren G. Magnuson of Washington and signed into law on December 17, 1943, in the United States. It ...

, Chinatown grew in size, from Wood Street, south to Arch Street, and east-west from Eighth to Twelfth Street and the area soon became home to many Asian immigrants. As of the

2000 U.S. Census The United States census of 2000, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2000, to be 281,421,906, an increase of 13.2 percent over the 248,709,873 people enumerated during the 1990 cen ...

, the city ranked the 11th for Asian population within

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The Asian population took up 80% of Chinatown's population. The ethnic groups included

Filipinos Filipinos ( tl, Mga Pilipino) are the people who are citizens of or native to the Philippines. The majority of Filipinos today come from various Austronesian ethnolinguistic groups, all typically speaking either Filipino, English and/or othe ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, Asian Indians,

Koreans Koreans ( South Korean: , , North Korean: , ; see names of Korea) are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Korean Peninsula. Koreans mainly live in the two Korean nation states: North Korea and South Korea (collectively and simply refe ...

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

Cambodians The Khmer people ( km, ជនជាតិខ្មែរ, ) are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Cambodia. They comprise over 90% of Cambodia's population of 17 million.

Hmong Hmong may refer to: * Hmong people, an ethnic group living mainly in Southwest China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand * Hmong cuisine * Hmong customs and culture ** Hmong music ** Hmong textile art * Hmong language, a continuum of closely related ton ...

Laotians This is a demography of the population of Laos including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Laos' population was estimated at ab ...

, Thais and

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

. ;Gentrification Philadelphia's Chinatown is close to Center City. The central location of Chinatown put it in competition with other land uses. From the 1960s through the 1980s, parts of Chinatown were destroyed for the

Vine Street Expressway A vine (Latin ''vīnea'' "grapevine", "vineyard", from ''vīnum'' "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themselve ...

and the

Pennsylvania Convention Center The Pennsylvania Convention Center is a multi-use public facility in the Market East, Philadelphia, Market East section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, designed to accommodate conventions, exhibitions, conferences and other events. The "L"-shaped ...

. As a result, Chinatown is now geographically constrained, not dissimilar to the situation in other urban centers, including New York and San Francisco. Nevertheless, city government seems committed to preserving it. The Friendship Gate, completed in 1984, was the first authentic Chinese gate created by artists from China. Chinatown has encountered many brushes with community displacement and has fought it off many times with mixed results. In 1992, there was a proposal for a federal prison to be built at 8th and Callowhill Streets in Chinatown. After two years of the Chinatown community fighting it, the plan was thrown out. In the mid- 1960s, the

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Yassmin Gramian. Presently, Pe ...

(PennDOT) announced plans to build the Vine Street Expressway. In 1973 PennDOT included the demolition of a building on 10th and Vine Streets and Holy Redeemer Catholic Church. When the demolition crew arrived, they found Chinese youth protesting on the demolition machines. They managed to slow the construction of the Vine Street Expressway, but in the end it was still built. The Gallery shopping mall and the Pennsylvania Convention Center are other completed projects that limit the expansion of Chinatown and which proceeded in spite of community objection. In 2000, there was a proposal to build a baseball stadium in Chinatown. Many of the people in Chinatown felt that the construction of the stadium would negatively impact the community by adding congestion and obnoxious fans, and they felt it would not bring anything positive to the community. Chinatown organizations united to stop the construction of the stadium. There were also plans to open a casino at the Gallery on 8th and Market Streets. The Chinatown community successfully opposed it; the casino was built instead on the Delaware River waterfront.

East Falls

East Falls is northwest of Center City, about four miles up the Schuylkill River, which originally provided the power for textile mills. Since the nineteenth century, the east bank of the Schuylkill has housed a mix of working and middle-class families. It is home to the William Penn Charter School,

Philadelphia University Thomas Jefferson University is a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Established in its earliest form in 1824, the university officially combined with Philadelphia University in 2017. To signify its heritage, the univer ...

(founded in 1884 as Philadelphia Textile School and later known as Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science), and the former site of the

Medical College of Pennsylvania Drexel University College of Medicine is the medical school of Drexel University, a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The medical school represents the consolidation of two medical schools: the first U.S. medical schoo ...

merged with

Thomas Jefferson University Thomas Jefferson University is a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Established in its earliest form in 1824, the university officially combined with Philadelphia University in 2017. To signify its heritage, the univer ...

in 2017. Whether it expands its East Fall footprint remains to be seen. According to Jennifer Greenfield, the first vice president of the East Falls Community Council, “The university wanted to expand outwards, but now we convinced them to expand upward.” Efforts such as this to maintain the integrity of the neighborhood are evidence that despite evident gentrification and other changes, East Falls will remain the working and middle-class neighborhood that it is today. A planned community transformation was thwarted in 2005, when Donald Trump proposed locating a casino in the former Budd factory. This plan fell through because of community protests. Proponents of the proposed casino claimed that it would bring more business to East Falls, while the East Falls Community Council argued that crime would increase. In the end, the state gaming control commission rejected the proposal in favor of the

SugarHouse Casino Rivers Casino Philadelphia, formerly SugarHouse Casino, is a casino entertainment development along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's Fishtown neighborhood, one of five stand-alone casinos awarded a gaming license on December 20 ...

in Fishtown.

Society Hill

is the oldest neighborhood in Philadelphia, a mile southeast of Center City, close the Delaware River, and home to history civil buildings including

. In the 19th century, the area lost appeal as the city's main commercial district moved west and the affluent residents moved closer to Center City or to areas like Chestnut Hill and the Main Line. The neighborhood then became an African American community centered around the Mother Bethel Church at 6th and Lombard.

W.E.B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...

studied the neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an employee of the

. In his groundbreaking work of urban sociology, The Philadelphia Negro, DuBois documented the awful conditions of the neighborhood: "We lived there for a year, in the midst of an atmosphere of dirt, drunkenness, poverty, and crime. Murder sat at our doorsteps, police were our government..." W.E.B. DuBois studied the 7th Ward, which only includes roughly two blocks of what is today known as Society Hill. Also, US Census data shows that Society Hill in 1940 (census tract 10) was a racially mixed area and quite consistent with the rest of Philadelphia. The houses deteriorated until the 1950s. In the 1880s, Society Hill had average home prices. By 1960, home prices had dropped to the tenth percentile (ninety percent of homes in the city were more valuable). By 1970, the neighborhood had surged to the ninetieth percentile. It appears government policy was a key factor. In 1948,

Edmund Bacon Edmund Bacon may refer to: *Sir Edmund Bacon, 2nd Baronet, of Redgrave (c. 1570–1649), English MP for Eye and for Norfolk in 1593 and 1625 *Sir Edmund Bacon, 2nd Baronet, of Gillingham (c. 1660–1683), see Bacon baronets *Sir Edmund Bacon, 4th B ...

, head of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, created plans to “redevelop” Society Hill. In 1956, the Old Philadelphia Development Corporation joined the

Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority The Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA) was created by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Urban Redevelopment Law of 1945. Until the Fall of 2011 it was known as the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia (RDA). Function The ...

(RDA) in the effort. In the 1950s, the RDA acquired of land in the Dock Street area by declaring it "blighted". They designed standards of restoration for historic property. In 1960, owners were forced to renovate their houses or their property would be declared blighted and the RDA would use eminent domain to obtain the property. Residents of these “blighted” homes were often forced out, for a variety of reasons. Some residents could not pay for the renovation of their houses, others were renters, and their landlords would not pay. In either case, the RDA, through blight declaration, bought out many African American residents and sold the houses to people who agreed to restore the exteriors, virtually all of whom were white. In 1964,

Society Hill Towers Society Hill Towers is a three-building condominium located in the Society Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The complex contains three 31-story skyscrapers with 624 units on a site.I.M. Pei Ieoh Ming Pei
– website of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners ( ; ; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was ...

, along with a low-rise project, Society Hill Twownhouses, were completed. The buildings were listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places on March 10, 1999.

Fishtown and the riverfront

Fishtown, is an area to the northeast of Center City on the banks of the Delaware River. The neighborhood has traditionally been home to a large

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

and

working poor The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain und ...

Irish Catholic Irish Catholics are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland whose members are both Catholic and Irish. They have a large diaspora, which includes over 36 million American citizens and over 14 million British citizens (a quarter of the British ...

population. Fishtown's proximity to Center City and other gentrifying neighborhoods, Northern Liberties and Old City, the hipster culture has recently spread into Fishtown and the surrounding area. Artists, musicians, and young professionals have been drawn to the area, and they are rapidly buying up properties. The nightlife and art scene, resulting from the growing population of "hipsters", creates a new and young atmosphere in the neighborhood. This change in the make-up and character of the neighborhood attracts more people of the same relatively young and affluent demographic, thus reinforcing the process of

. Due to the widespread availability of housing and the high rate of home ownership, there were initially not been many people displaced by the gentrification of Fishtown. In the past eight years, however, the housing values have more than doubled leading to many low income renters being pushed out. There have been some tensions and conflicts between the locals and the new, young residents, but many long-time inhabitants seem to welcome influx of high-income people who bring more resources.

Fairmount

Fairmount is a neighborhood a mile north of Center City. During the 19th century, Irish and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

immigrants made up most of the neighborhood's population. In the early 20th century

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

and

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

immigrants also began coming to Fairmount. The Fairmount neighborhood changed dramatically after the 1940s and 1950s. The

Girard Avenue Girard Avenue is a major commercial and residential street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For most of its length it runs east–west, but at Frankford Avenue it makes a 135-degree turn north. Parts of the road are signed as U.S. Route 13 and U.S. ...

shopping area was destroyed by riots in the early 1960s, and has never been substantially developed since. Also, the residents of Fairmount experienced the hardships of deindustrialization; factories closed and poverty and crime increased. The demographics of the area changed as many white residents moved to suburban areas, and parts of the neighborhood became predominantly African-American or

Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...

. The addition of upscale town homes in the 1980s and 1990s caused displacement of longtime minority residents as younger generations moved away from Fairmount when they could no longer afford to live there. The real estate boom began to draw many affluent white people back from the suburbs to neighborhoods like Fairmount. Members of the community have worked diligently to preserve and improve their surroundings. The neighborhood remains largely white, but it continues to become gentrified. Younger professional families, students, and singles are moving in. The attraction for most is its proximity to Center City,

Fairmount Park Fairmount Park is the largest municipal park in Philadelphia and the historic name for a group of parks located throughout the city. Fairmount Park consists of two park sections named East Park and West Park, divided by the Schuylkill River, with ...

, and the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

Southwest Center City

Southwest Center City is located immediately to the southwest of Center City. It is also known as the

Graduate Hospital Southwest Center City (SWCC), also known as Graduate Hospital, is a neighborhood in South Philadelphia bordering Center City Philadelphia. The neighborhood is bordered on the north by South Street, on the south by Washington Avenue, on the west ...

area. Settlement in the area began in 1684. It was primarily an immigrant neighborhood and eventually became a thriving African American commercial and entertainment district. In 1947, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission proposed the Crosstown Expressway, a multi-lane highway across the city along the blocks between South Street and Lombard Street. This project would have effectively separated the different “land usages” to the north and south, which would have been, in essence, separating racial groups. The project would have also uprooted several thousands of people from homes they had owned for years, if not generations. Fearing that their homes would be confiscated through use of eminent domain, many residents sold their homes and left the area, while others stayed to fight back. The Citizens’ Committee to Preserve and Develop the Crosstown Community (CCPDCC), was formed in opposition to the expressway and was composed mostly of white residents from the Society Hill and Rittenhouse Square areas, as well as the black residents along the path of the planned expressway. As a result of this opposition, the plans for the expressway ultimately fell through, leaving the area full of abandoned property. The narrative of the area parallels that of University City. Neighborhood advocates claim that Graduate Hospital, an established hospital on the edge of the neighborhood, took advantage of the cheap, abandoned property and expanded through a process of buying properties and letting them deteriorate to bring other property values down. As people moved out of the declining neighborhood, Graduate Hospital bought more of the abandoned property until it could build a new hospital building. The hospital provided necessary services, however, they did not confine their expansion to sections of the neighborhood approved during negotiations with the community. Several community organizations banded together and, though there was some displacement, residents and local merchants were able to maintain their neighborhood. Recently, due to the spread of the upscale businesses and residences of Center City toward western South Street, property values have risen, and there has been further displacement of lower income, mostly minority, inhabitants. The former Graduate Hospital is now Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse, a rehabilitation and acute-care facility owned by

University of Pennsylvania Health System The University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) is a major multi-hospital health system headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. UPHS and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania together comprise Penn Medicine, ...

. Flight of black residents from the neighborhood has continued in the 21st century. Pew estimates that 4,000 black people left the neighborhood between 2000 and 2014.

Hawthorne

Hawthorne Hawthorne often refers to the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne may also refer to: Places Australia *Hawthorne, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane Canada * Hawthorne Village, Ontario, a suburb of Milton, Ontario United States * Hawt ...

is a small portion of

South Philadelphia South Philadelphia, nicknamed South Philly, is the section of Philadelphia bounded by South Street to the north, the Delaware River to the east and south and the Schuylkill River to the west.Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, commonly known as CAPA, is a magnet school in South Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the edge of the Christian Street Historic District. It is a part of the School Distri ...

). Hawthorne was the target of federal housing initiatives in the 1960s. Four low income housing towers comprising 576 housing units were built in the Martin Luther King Plaza, in the 700 block of South 13th Street. They, like similar

projects A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...

in other urban areas were afflicted with crime, physical deterioration, fragmented services, and increasing levels of poverty. On October 17, 1999, the building was demolished and was replaced by a residential development with mixed income housing funded through HOPE VI, an initiative of the

Department of Housing and Urban Development The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the Secretary of Housing and Urb ...

(HUD). The construction of the new homes was completed in the end of 2004. This new housing became an integral part of the neighborhood; it wasn't a separate entity as the MLK towers had been. The development is equipped with a park and recreation center, as well as support services to help residents get and keep jobs. The neighborhood also has mixed raced committees organized to keep the area clean and make it more welcoming and beneficial to the community's users. Despite the positive results of the initiative's efforts, it ultimately led to

. Only half as many low density units replaced the high-rises. The former residents of the MLK towers were dispersed during the construction. many former residents could not afford to move into and sustain a living in the new MLK complex. This has ultimately changed the demographic of the neighborhood; prior to the government intervention and development provided by Hope VI, the neighborhood was predominantly African American. However, since federal intervention, the community is about 67% White, 12% Black, 15% Asian, and 6% Latino.

South Philadelphia

South Philadelphia South Philadelphia, nicknamed South Philly, is the section of Philadelphia bounded by South Street to the north, the Delaware River to the east and south and the Schuylkill River to the west.Pat's King of Steaks Pat's King of Steaks (also known as Pat's Steaks) is a Philadelphia restaurant specializing in cheesesteaks, and located at the intersection of South 9th Street, Wharton Street and East Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia, directly across the ...

. Recently, however, Mexican and Chinese immigrants have been moving in, opening businesses, and renovating the housing stock (126 percent increase in Asians from 1990 to 2000). Following this revival of the area, the only part of the neighborhood still in a state of deterioration was the Ice House, a building abandoned by owner Jerald Goldfine who paid taxes to resist condemnation. The Ice House was a paradox: it increased in value as the area improved, but it was also the only structure keeping the area from reaching its true potential. In response, in 2007 Councilman Frank DiCicco proposed a redevelopment bill. However, the surrounding areas were included in the redevelopment bill as well, meaning that the immigrant businesses responsible for the upswing could potentially be seized by eminent domain at any time. There was huge public outcry, but the bill was passed anyway, even without the community's support. So far only the Ice House has been seized, and there are plans to build a two 31 story building in its place. At this point, no residents have been displaced.

References

Bibliography

External links

PBS: Gentrified:Stories from rapidly changing Philadelphia

Philly Mag : Report: Philly Is Gentrifying More Than San Francisco, the Poster Child for Displacement

Curbed Philadelphia : PHILADELPHIA GENTRIFICATION

{{US housing by state Geography of Philadelphia

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Housing in Pennsylvania