Originally Posted by omnivore

Eh, I'm not so sure. If they made their decisions on purely objective criteria, I think they'd have had a store in CC by now. Because even if Philadelphia has a high poverty rate, it still has a huge number of wealthy downtown residents, commuters, tourists, creative professionals, and students in absolute terms. Which suggests to me that there are also subjective factors at play: Philadelphia's out-of-date bad reputation, its place in the shadow of other east-coast cities, and perhaps even the ease and familiarity of locating stores in malls. To be charitable, I'm sure they base their location decisions on the numbers you cite, but they aren't uninfluenced by such subjective factors.