Another question is "What is the end result of this?" To what ends can you currently take it? Let's say all the dilpidated houses and vacant lots in Philly were turned into respectable homes, then what? Raise the property value and force out the poor, destroying communities, but to what end? Philadelphia is the largest city in the country to be continually losing population. If there was reason to believe that if entire blocks were bought cheap and fixed up they could be sold for alot of money then it would occur regularly. It doesn't occur because you can't get people to move to or stop moving out of the city which means there is no clear sign demand will increase. You fix the homes in a certain area, but that doesn't get rid of the drugs, crime, crappy schools, or general poverty that pervades the city. The only way this would work is if Philly had a growing middle class (the North East doesn't count as it is pretty much its own entity) which means jobs and extra revenue to deal with the afore mentioned problems. Then those people who were moving up the ladder would be interested in a better neighborhood as would people moving to the city because of work. Like I said, fix up the entire frickin city if you like and it won't change a thing except possibly some poor would be displaced. Housing conditions is not the problem and fixing it won't be effective because it doesn't solve the problem just one of the symptoms. If houses were crap, but people were interested in living in the city then you would see big investment firms doing this on a larger scale, but they aren't because people aren't moving into the city; no demand.

(snip)
Do you really think that this could cause conflicts between new residents who are investing in the communities and the current residents?
(snip)

It always has! Even when people are moving into vacant homes and fixing them up.

Just look at the love-hate realationship the universities have with their neighbors- Temple is accused of erasing blocks, Penn was vilified for causing gentrification, Drexel had support, then criticism about building new student housing- and so on-

New residents move in, fix the places up, which leads to higher values, but also higher tax assessments, and that can drives out existing residents -either bacause they can't afford it example north & west Philly, or because they don't like the neighborhood now, example -Manayunk.

You're seeing that in the area South of South, Manayunk- anywhere that buidings are cheap enough that it's possible to rehabilitate them. Another thing you see is the sharp gentrification in some neighborhoods - you have elderly residents who own their homes, and are, in effect trapped in declining neighborhoods because they can't afford to rent, and can't afford to sell their house, plus the psychological pressure of living there all their lives.

So- how to fix this?

Part of it needs to be quasi-military strategy of divide and conquer. Currently, we're trying to aggregate blighted areas into huge blocks that are easy to address with top-down government redevelopment projects- East Falls and Tasker Homes may be good prototypes.

What we SHOULD be doing is dividing blighted areas into digestable chunks, so that every blighted areas become discontinious areas, with lots of edge space, so that bottom-up single owner house by house refurbishment can work.

One way to accomplish this is to re-establish mental safezones in the historic commercial streets of the areas. Germantown, Ridge, Lancaster, Broad-

Limit the 10 year new home construction tax abatement to buildings under 5 stories, along historically important commercial street corridors. That will lay down a new framework where redevelopment benefits all of the City, not just a few highrise builders in hot areas like Center City, Manayunk, and Old City. Re-establish a gridwork of streets with shops, new investment, foot traffic, aestetic and landscaping to show people care and add visible policing. The practical ideal should be that blight will remain, but break up "the badlands" into crossable areas of a few blocks here and there. Once you do that, once you have a established areas where people feel safe, then smaller investors can come in and make money by puchasing and rehabilitating homes on the blighted edges.

Philadelphia has always had poor areas, dilapidated areas - most of Independance Hall was one of the cities worst slum neighbohoods- not entirely coincidentally this was also one of the oldest and most historic neighborhoods, but 1950s & 1960s design didn't recognize the value of old homes. However, there's a new bill in PA legislature that would provide tax credits for businesses AND residences to restore historic homes- here, the towns and cities and old neighborhoods could get a real break - moving into an old Philly townhouse, or purchasing a pair of rows and doing a break-through, could become economically copetitive with the lower tax costs in the suburban homes.

Hal

is it really all that complicated?
penn has met mixed results. they have not been that sharply criticized by large groups. many worry that they will be pushed but so far it hasn't happened. working families have been able to stay. temple's approach deserved criticism. it smacks of the city idea of taking land with eminent domain, tearing it down, and handing it over to some connected developer (sound familiar?...NTI is supposed to work this way but there are no takers.) i've heard temple is going to try to emulate upenn. run the local school and provide incentives to live in the area. #1 concern is safety. people will move in if it's safe. i thiunkn you are right on with the mental safe zones. that's followed by cost and schools.

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<hal wrote about re-establishing commercial corridors to divide up blight>

Is it really all that complicated?
(snip)

Actually, yes-

Blight isn't necessarily a complex problem, but because many different layers of sytems - political, residential, commerical- have reacted to them, adjusted to them, you don't just have to treat the initial problem, you also have to treat the reactions of several other systems to that problem.
Reactions to blight create a complex effect - almost like a chiropractic, rolfing, or physical therapy approach, to treat not just just the injury, but the body's reaction and accomodation to that injury- and this applies also to the body politic.

I did find that the Philly Business Journal did a multi part article about something similar- the need to balance NTI's residential rebuilding with a commercial rebuilding:

philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/ 2003/06/16/focus1.html

One thing that was pointed out - many of the older streets and boulevards that became commercial avenues - germantown, Limekiln, Ridge, Lancaster, Haverford, Woodland, Passyunk- all predate the city block pattern that was later imposed on these areas- These diagonal boulevards now have to cut across the city's grid pattern. Because these old roads run diagonally, they cross both N-S and E-W streets, thus they have more traffic lights, which leads to slow moving traffic - which is good for pedestrians and leads to better commerce- think of it as inherent traffic calming.

Hal

mmm...

What about a setting up a co-op to buy up houses on a block?

__________________
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. - Robert Orben

Has anyone seen any articles lately about people getting together to purchase house cooperatively?

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Be prepared! That's the Boy Scouts' marching song, Be prepared! As through life you march along.
-Tom Lehrer

Reading some of these comments on this thread...it really shows how much has changed in 2 years.