Best Places to Raise Kids are surprising bland and colorless....

[Eastcoast]

Been to Manhattan lately? The NY that I knew is all but dead, which is why there's no going back.

The blog VanishingNewYork (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, often referenced by The Times, Post, Daily News, New Yorker, etc) cries wolf quite a bit but among the hyperbole and catty bitching are many alarms to what we're losing and who we're losing it to.

One of my favorite places was Bill's Gay Nineties, built as maybe the first retro bar in the 20s in homage to the grand 1890s. It just closed and now the landlords are suing to keep the relics. I want to punch them but there's no use. Bridge and Tunnel are taking over because they'll pay $3,000/mo to play Sex and the City while people with souls can't compete with that kind of money.

Yup.

The UES and UWS are at full critical mode with a severe case of affluenza.

So what level of hypergentrification would need to happen in Philadelphia to really cause the city to lose it's character? A complete upper middle class and above whitewashing from Snyder to Girard, river to river?

[Hospitalitygirl]

Um, you talkin' to me?

Just because I say nice things about some suburbs doesn't make me a suburbanite. As I've said both online and I believe to you personally, there's a lot I like about Northeast Philly too. It's still a suburb, and I'd still rather live in the city as well.

I was asking eldondre where he'd put me on the scale where Paul Levy is at one end and (I'm guessing) (no longer) FKD19124 is at the other.

Well...probably both of you.

If I recall correctly, 'dondre is actually a product of the suburbs. You and I are city people, through and through. I am and have always been willing to acknowledge that some will always be one or the other, regardless of the outside influences I previously named. And some could easily be city people but might be more conditioned to think they *should* be in the suburbs at some point in their lives. You know full well I raised my daughter in the city and she turned out quite well, so I never buy the "schools" argument since there are options, as even Pitt described.

What I don't get is people who repeatedly bash or make fun of the city or city dwellers on a message board designed by and for city people, and people who want to know more about the city as an option to live. There are lots of us on here who would rather kick something in the teeth than be forced to move out. Likewise, if you don't like it here, that's ok--I'm sure there's something else for you, just don't gloat that it's suddenly better. It's only better for you! (The generic 'you')

[Pitt]

Northeast Philly is a suburb?

[Malloy]

Northeast Philly is a suburb?

It's not. Sandy is getting all snooty He might call West Phila a suburb too. The wiki entry for 'suburb' is interesting btw.

IIRC, Sandy the area you grew up in looked more suburban than Oxford Circle, right?

[Geno]

It's not. Sandy is getting all snooty

Ah yes, the "city proper"

[Dayman]

Well it's in the city of Philadelphia but the far extreme Northeast certainly is more suburban than urban. I'd say the same for Andorra and parts of far west Roxburough.

[NickleDimer]

The arbitrary wanderings of a municipal border is the final determination of whether you are a good or bad person!!! There is no gray area!!! You are either right or wrong!!!

[mixiboi]

Spoken like a true Negadelphian...

[MarketStEl]

It's not. Sandy is getting all snooty He might call West Phila a suburb too. The wiki entry for 'suburb' is interesting btw.

IIRC, Sandy the area you grew up in looked more suburban than Oxford Circle, right?

Here, have a look around for yourself.

Choose Street View. The empty lot with a driveway on its left side is where my boyhood home stood until it was destroyed in a fire in the mid-1990s.

Most of the older residential neighborhoods in Kansas City are indeed less densely built than where I live now. By the standards of this city, there are precious few truly urban districts in my hometown. (The Country Club Plaza and its immediate environs is one. Most of the part of the city where six-unit, three-story apartment buildings dominated, closer to downtown, has reverted to prairie.)

But in function, relative to KC's post-World War II residential areas, where I lived was urban. (For instance, there was a neighborhood shopping cluster with a small supermarket, a drugstore, a laundromat, a record shop and a barbershop three blocks away that I would walk to regularly, and a neighborhood park was two blocks away.) Similarly, relative to the closer-in districts of this city, including most of West Philly, where I live now is suburban, and the further out you go, the more suburban it gets. Truth to tell, Oxford Circle is more like West Philly than the Far Northeast in form, but as I wrote in the second of my two PhillyGayCalendar columns on living in the Northeast, it still doesn't quite feel urban enough. There's nothing like 52nd Street up this way; Cottman Avenue, its closest equivalent, is too spread out, and Mayfair too far away. BTW, the first column was more uniformly positive.

In other words, my assessments of neighborhood function are relative. As far as form is concerned, I'd have to cross the city line in order to find neighborhoods that look like the one I grew up in. (Unless we're talking Upper Roxborough - but that also postdates WW2, for the most part.)

[Malloy]

Mayfair is def urban to me. Frankford Ave, decent # of corner stores, full of rowhomes. Minutes to FTC.

There's nothing like 52nd Street up this way; Cottman Avenue, its closest equivalent, is too spread out, and Mayfair too far away. BTW, the first column was more uniformly positive.

[billy ross]

The arbitrary wanderings of a municipal border is the final determination of whether you are a good or bad person!!! There is no gray area!!! You are either right or wrong!!!

The borders of Philadelphia are far from arbitrary. However, even when they aren't particularly geographically compelling, they have become extremely meaningful over the past few centuries. If that weren't so you wouldn't trumpet how great Montgomery County is in comparison to Philadelphia. In one breath you claim the municipal borders are extremely meaningful while in another you claim that they mean very little. You aren't intellectually honest.

[NickleDimer]

The borders themselves don't mean anything other than who you pay taxes to and how your municipal services are. There are amazing places in the city and horrible suburban areas, and vice versa. Any disagreeement I've had with you in the past has been with you brightsiding about how great low city taxes are while dismissing the wage tax (some suburburban towns have one that's 1%!!!!) and trumpeting the virtues of city schools all while sending your own kids to a posh private school. Talk about intellectual dishonesty!

[raider.adam]

I grew up in a semi rural (not even a suburb) part of Illinois and it was a great childhood. Do I think I suffered because it was a community that was probably over 90% white? Would I have had better life experiences as a kid if I had to make sure all doors and windows were closed and locked before I left the house? Did I suffer culturally because it took my parents or school field trips an hour to go to Chicago to take me to museums as opposed to a 20 minute public bus ride? Would I be a better person growing up hearing about a murder a day on the news? Did I miss out on education by not going to high school that had to have specific violence policies, metal detectors or a special classes because such a high percentage of the female population gets pregnant?

The silly suburbs vs city battles are just two sides of the same coin. One side tries to feel superior over one because they can wash their hands of inner city issues and the other side tries to feel superior by giving a level of legitimacy to urban issues by embracing it as some sort of life experience.

Guess what, the world would be a better place if we were able to live in the best of both worlds.


Let's just all agree that there are pluses and minuses to both suburban and urban living that fits the desires of individual families and people and it is ok as long as none of the choices involve New Jersey.

[FKD19124]

The thing of it is, I grew up and experienced the uban life. If it were not for some of things that went drastically south in the lat 20 years in the city I would probably still be there.
I would love for my child to experience what I did growing up in the city but it has become less safe not to mention the schools are piss poor compared to when I was a kid.
Sure there are pockets of the city that are still somewhat stable but they are starting to shrink unless you have alot of money and can afford to live in areas that cost alot of money(chestnut hill) and you do not mind paying taxes for city services that are dysfunctional.

I grew up in a semi rural (not even a suburb) part of Illinois and it was a great childhood. Do I think I suffered because it was a community that was probably over 90% white? Would I have had better life experiences as a kid if I had to make sure all doors and windows were closed and locked before I left the house? Did I suffer culturally because it took my parents or school field trips an hour to go to Chicago to take me to museums as opposed to a 20 minute public bus ride? Would I be a better person growing up hearing about a murder a day on the news? Did I miss out on education by not going to high school that had to have specific violence policies, metal detectors or a special classes because such a high percentage of the female population gets pregnant?

The silly suburbs vs city battles are just two sides of the same coin. One side tries to feel superior over one because they can wash their hands of inner city issues and the other side tries to feel superior by giving a level of legitimacy to urban issues by embracing it as some sort of life experience.

Guess what, the world would be a better place if we were able to live in the best of both worlds.


Let's just all agree that there are pluses and minuses to both suburban and urban living that fits the desires of individual families and people and it is ok as long as none of the choices involve New Jersey.

[annie]

ILet's just all agree that there are pluses and minuses to both suburban and urban living that fits the desires of individual families and people and it is ok as long as none of the choices involve New Jersey.

[mixiboi]

Wait, I just learn from the update to the Valley Swim Club story that it was in Huntingdon Valley...one of the places on this list..

Ok, now I'm over it.

[MarketStEl]

The thing of it is, I grew up and experienced the uban life. If it were not for some of things that went drastically south in the lat 20 years in the city I would probably still be there.
I would love for my child to experience what I did growing up in the city but it has become less safe not to mention the schools are piss poor compared to when I was a kid.
Sure there are pockets of the city that are still somewhat stable but they are starting to shrink unless you have alot of money and can afford to live in areas that cost alot of money(chestnut hill) and you do not mind paying taxes for city services that are dysfunctional.

The thing is, except for that "dysfunctional city services" part - and even there, there are those in City Hall who are doing their best to deliver, at least if the people I know personally in the Water Department and L&I are any guide - I can either find more exceptions than I suspect you believe exist to what you say or suspect that your own filters are in operation.

I'm not a native, but I may as well be, having spent 28 of my 53 years on this planet here now. All but the last 1.5 of those years were spent in Center City, Washington Square West to be specific. From what I can tell, those "stable" areas down that way are growing, not shrinking. The city's overall population growth from 2000 to 2010, ending a 50-year slide, is the result of a process that was several decades in the making and began in the urban core. I can remember when the streets of Center City pretty much died at 5. That hasn't been the case for years. For most of the time I've been here, Northern Liberties was a semi-abandoned expanse of empty factories and half-empty homes that everyone insisted was Philly's "next big neighborhood," then all of a sudden, right around 2000, I turned around and it really was. Decay and renewal still coexist there (the old Ortlieb brewery and the Piazza at Schmidt's are about three blocks apart), but renewal clearly has the upper hand. It's already happened in Queen Village and Bella Vista, it's well along in G-Ho, and it's even begun to work its way through Point Breeze, much to the consternation of some of the current residents. That doesn't sound to me like "shrinking."

I now live in the part of the city you left, if your posting handle is accurate. (My ex lived in Northwood, two blocks west of Frankford High, when we met. Every day, I ride the Route 59 trolleybus right past that to head into the city for my work.) I'm somewhat familiar with some of the history of the Northeast, especially the racial fears that drove opposition to The Subway Line We All Agree The Northeast Needs But May Never Get. I even got to experience the aftereffects of those fears up close and personal when I ambled over to one of the bars near where I live one night shortly after moving up this way. To hear some people talk about the neighborhood I now call home, Oxford Circle has morphed into the ghetto now.* Couldn't prove it by me. (Frankford Avenue beneath the El, by contrast, has.) This part of the city is now incredibly diverse, and I enjoy the ability to access reasonably priced restaurants and food stores that are either overpriced or nonexistent in the city center up this way. A Haitian-American [who I met during the campaign at Philly's LGBT community center, where he dropped in for a political event] challenged our state rep this past primary, and I imagine he drew a few votes from some of the Brazilian, Korean and Jamaican immigrants who can also be found in this district (I think the Russians live in the next district north). Again, this is decline?

I neither have nor plan to have children, but I know that there are some good public schools in the city, most of them not named Penn Alexander. The city school district IS dysfunctional, but it also is home to the single best public high school in Pennsylvania and one of the best in the country, and the public high school that ranks just below it - the oldest in the city - is one many suburban districts would love to have as their flagship as well. (Granted, you have to clear an academic hurdle in order to get into either of these. But that shouldn't take away from their distinction.) In my research for a school guide our real estate sales team maintains, I found a couple of schools near Center City whose students (a) do quite well academically (b) are mostly from low-income families. One of these is just south of one of those great public schools not named Penn Alexander, and the civic association of the neighborhood it partially serves has taken an active interest in strengthening it.

I don't think I could have reported the existence of commitment like that a decade or two ago. I don't think I could have spoken of a "greater Center City" much as the Center City District does back then either. Those occasional acts of violence or mayhem that have folks pulling out their worry beads are troubling, and I really don't begrudge anyone who decides to move in order to reduce their exposure to them their choice, but contrary to what those folks state - and I do put you in this category - they haven't halted, or even significantly blunted, the momentum.

There remains a Tale of Two Cities quality to this place, and that quality will remain with us for some time to come. But I don't share your pessimism about it. One of those two cities is clearly on the rise. We just need to make sure it remains that way. That requires vigilance and effort, not resignation and withdrawal.

*On the other hand, I should note that the African-American woman who lives next door to me lamented to me on the El to work one morning that the newer arrivals in this neighborhood don't know how to behave and are dragging it down. And so it goes.

[MarketStEl]

I think I need to add something to my previous post.

The money part is more true than not true: the neighborhoods where that virtuous cycle has taken hold are all more expensive places to live now - it's one of the seemingly unavoidable side effects of gentrification. That's what has some in Point Breeze upset. And I think it's a reflection of a troubling long-run general social trend, which is the stratification of our country into a rich one and a poor one with a hollowed-out middle.

The Northeast remains home to much of that hollowed-out middle. So perhaps the dread some up this way express still is understandable. But the threat doesn't really come from the usual Thems that seem to drive the expressed fears. Rather, it comes from something bigger than Them.

[FKD19124]

The thing is, except for that "dysfunctional city services" part - and even there, there are those in City Hall who are doing their best to deliver,

I agree there. But Michael Nutter is only as good as his city council will allow him to be.

I'm not a native, but I may as well be, having spent 28 of my 53 years on this planet here now. All but the last 1.5 of those years were spent in Center City, Washington Square West to be specific. From what I can tell, those "stable" areas down that way are growing, not shrinking. The city's overall population growth from 2000 to 2010, ending a 50-year slide, is the result of a process that was several decades in the making and began in the urban core. I can remember when the streets of Center City pretty much died at 5. That hasn't been the case for years. For most of the time I've been here, Northern Liberties was a semi-abandoned expanse of empty factories and half-empty homes that everyone insisted was Philly's "next big neighborhood," then all of a sudden, right around 2000, I turned around and it really was. Decay and renewal still coexist there (the old Ortlieb brewery and the Piazza at Schmidt's are about three blocks apart), but renewal clearly has the upper hand. It's already happened in Queen Village and Bella Vista, it's well along in G-Ho, and it's even begun to work its way through Point Breeze, much to the consternation of some of the current residents. That doesn't sound to me like "shrinking."

well I think the good neighborhoods are slowly turning. The more section 8 housing creeps in the worse things are. My sister in-law lives off of cottman avenue near montour street. She moved in there in 1997. It was nice then. Now its getting bad. Her house has been broken into a few times in the last 3 to 5 years. the apartments across the street are now all section 8 and the people living in them are *******s. The quality of life is not the same.

I now live in the part of the city you left, if your posting handle is accurate.

I lived closer to simpson playground. but I used to drink at Walts tavern too. Was in there a few years ago.

(My ex lived in Northwood, two blocks west of Frankford High, when we met. Every day, I ride the Route 59 trolleybus right past that to head into the city for my work.) I'm somewhat familiar with some of the history of the Northeast, especially the racial fears that drove opposition to The Subway Line We All Agree The Northeast Needs But May Never Get. I even got to experience the aftereffects of those fears up close and personal when I ambled over to one of the bars near where I live one night shortly after moving up this way. To hear some people talk about the neighborhood I now call home, Oxford Circle has morphed into the ghetto now.* Couldn't prove it by me. (Frankford Avenue beneath the El, by contrast, has.) This part of the city is now incredibly diverse, and I enjoy the ability to access reasonably priced restaurants and food stores that are either overpriced or nonexistent in the city center up this way. A Haitian-American [who I met during the campaign at Philly's LGBT community center, where he dropped in for a political event] challenged our state rep this past primary, and I imagine he drew a few votes from some of the Brazilian, Korean and Jamaican immigrants who can also be found in this district (I think the Russians live in the next district north). Again, this is decline?

yeah it is. Summerdale/Oxford circle does not have the same quality of life that it had.

I neither have nor plan to have children, but I know that there are some good public schools in the city, most of them not named Penn Alexander. The city school district IS dysfunctional, but it also is home to the single best public high school in Pennsylvania and one of the best in the country, and the public high school that ranks just below it - the oldest in the city - is one many suburban

well for those who do have kids like me, quality of life and good schools are extremely important.
HR Edmunds and Frankford are not the good schools they once were.

districts would love to have as their flagship as well. (Granted, you have to clear an academic hurdle in order to get into either of these. But that shouldn't take away from their distinction.) In my research for a school guide our real estate sales team maintains, I found a couple of schools near Center City whose students (a) do quite well academically (b) are mostly from low-income families. One of these is just south of one of those great public schools not named Penn Alexander, and the civic association of the neighborhood it partially serves has taken an active interest in strengthening it.

how did we digress to center city?

I don't think I could have reported the existence of commitment like that a decade or two ago. I don't think I could have spoken of a "greater Center City" much as the Center City District does back then either. Those occasional acts of violence or mayhem that have folks pulling out their worry beads are troubling, and I really don't begrudge anyone who decides to move in order to reduce their exposure to them their choice, but contrary to what those folks state - and I do put you in this category - they haven't halted, or even significantly blunted, the momentum.

There remains a Tale of Two Cities quality to this place, and that quality will remain with us for some time to come. But I don't share your pessimism about it. One of those two cities is clearly on the rise. We just need to make sure it remains that way. That requires vigilance and effort, not resignation and withdrawal.

*On the other hand, I should note that the African-American woman who lives next door to me lamented to me on the El to work one morning that the newer arrivals in this neighborhood don't know how to behave and are dragging it down. And so it goes.

well let me state again.....if the quality of life was what it was 20 years ago as well as the schools I would have stayed.
For people to suggest I left because I "don't like those people" as one person on the board suggested in another thread, they have their heads up their asses and they themselves
have moved out of the northeast for the same reasons ( thought they state otherwise ) for rich areas like society hill or other parts of center city.
I know black people who lived in Frankford that I went to school with since kindergarten that left for northen delaware because they agree the section 8 housing has
screwed up the neighborhood.

[thoth]

Unless you have different information, I believe Sec 8 vouchers have been capped at around 14,000 citywide for some time now. I don't believe any area has had major increases or decreases in voucher distribution over the last ten years. Sometimes property values go down and old people die off, relatively poorer people move in.

Apart from a handful of areas, I don't see radical differences in the vast majority of the NE from now at 2005. Which is to say that it still has a good quality of life and isn't a bad place to raise a kid. My girlfriend graduated from a charter school in the lower NE in 2007 and frequently returns to her home neighborhood. It's mostly as she remembers it.

Most of the NE is as much a suburb as the inner neighborhoods of Portland (or Kansas City for that matter) are "city".

I agree there. But Michael Nutter is only as good as his city council will allow him to be.



well I think the good neighborhoods are slowly turning. The more section 8 housing creeps in the worse things are. My sister in-law lives off of cottman avenue near montour street. She moved in there in 1997. It was nice then. Now its getting bad. Her house has been broken into a few times in the last 3 to 5 years. the apartments across the street are now all section 8 and the people living in them are *******s. The quality of life is not the same.




I lived closer to simpson playground. but I used to drink at Walts tavern too. Was in there a few years ago.



yeah it is. Summerdale/Oxford circle does not have the same quality of life that it had.





well for those who do have kids like me, quality of life and good schools are extremely important.
HR Edmunds and Frankford are not the good schools they once were.




how did we digress to center city?





well let me state again.....if the quality of life was what it was 20 years ago as well as the schools I would have stayed.
For people to suggest I left because I "don't like those people" as one person on the board suggested in another thread, they have their heads up their asses and they themselves
have moved out of the northeast for the same reasons ( thought they state otherwise ) for rich areas like society hill or other parts of center city.
I know black people who lived in Frankford that I went to school with since kindergarten that left for northen delaware because they agree the section 8 housing has
screwed up the neighborhood.