urbanSTL

^ they have so many historic buildings it's barely even noticeable. walking around in Philly, it's never occurred to me that they have a problem with over-demo of historics, at least not compared to St. Louis. they're also a very poor city relative to their size, with lots and lots of crumbling buildings in need of restoration. frankly, i'm amazed at how much *hasn't* been demo'd.

^^There are those as would say the same thing about us: no one will notice we have so many. (Arnie Spirtas, for instance.) But the truth is the supply, however large, is limited. And if they have no review process than now is the time to implement it.

And it's darn nice to hear that someone thinks we're doing something right. Even if we really do need to do more.

I subscribe to Philly YIMBY, and I'm constantly surprised at how ugly so much of their new construction is (some of the larger-scale stuff is quite nice, but the infill tends to be awful). 

^^ i mean, every city should have preservation review. i was just surprised to read that it's an issue in Philly given how much they're managed to preserve without it. the thing that always strikes me the most about Philly (after the trash everywhere) is that so much of the city is covered in densely packed, decrepit old buildings that are somehow still occupied.

^ yeah, a lot of their smaller scale infill is hideous and does not complement the historic stuff well.

The new infill is pretty awful. And people here (philly) tend to hate it. I'm definitely not one to put historic replica on a pedestal but if copying the house down the street prevents some of the crap I see in this city, I'd support it every time. Case and point across the street from my boyfriend's sister's house. 

A counter example in Kansas City. Historic building form with contemporary elements and materials. 

^ yeah, lots of cuboids. and they're often a floor or two taller than the extant form so they stick out even more.

^^ . . . Maybe. But the neighborhood in Philadelphia loos lovely, dense, and spectacularly walkable. Within 400' you have 9 restaurants, 2 bars, 2 coffeeshops, a veterinarian's office, a florist, a pharmacist, a daycare, an antique store, offices, a school . . . And sure, most of them are off to the east on what might be a majorish road, but they're all directions. That's Saigon grade density right there. There's not many neighborhoods in Chicago I can think of that look like that. (Maybe not any.) There are exactly zero businesses inside that distance from my house. (And I live in a fairly walkable neighborhood by Midwestern standards.) Locally even Soulard can't really compete with that. The only reason there's anything at all within that distance from the KC address is the strip mall across the alley. Maybe the KC building looks better, but . . . dang, I'd enjoy being in the middle of something like what Philly has on offer there.

^ pretty sure Chicago has lots of neighborhoods that are at least as dense. they just have a different built form (multi-family instead of densely packed rows). for example, i think Chicago has a lot more of this sort of thing than Philly does:



the two cities have approximately equal population densities. personally, i enjoy Chicago neighborhoods more than Philly neighborhoods.

^That different form leads to a different result. It gets to the "granularity." With the greater granularity of the Philadelphia model you get more individual ownership which can mean more small business. (Which was the thing that so impressed me about the Philadelphia map. Just the staggering number of small businesses in such an easy walk. 400' isn't even a full block around here, and yet I counted fully eighteen small businesses in a circle of that radius. Of every conceivable sort. Now, that's google maps for you. They're not always accurate. But I'm struggling to find a neighborhood with even half that density of stuff to do in St. Louis. Maryland and Euclid gets me to eleven. I can't find any better than about five in downtown and six or seven in Soulard. Park and Vail nabs me ten if I count the realtor's office. (I didn't count all the office stuff in Philadelphia.) I hadn't done a careful study of Chicago, but 14th and Michigan gets me 11. Chinatown comes out about similar, and it's all restaurants and coffee shops. Even Roosevelt and Michigan doesn't really do any better. At the end of the day, large buildings may give you the same density of people, but you end up with fewer, larger businesses that are more often national or even global chains. You get a lot less local variety. And I don't think Chicago can touch Philadelphia there, even if the density of people is the same. Chicago is just too expensive to have the sort of mom and pop variety I like. I actively don't want a Trader Joes or a Whattaburger. I'd rather have local stuff. Every time and all the time. The Philie model gives you that. The Chicago model does not.

^ i'm not comparing Philly to St. Louis. obviously there's no comparison in terms of density of anything (except maybe parks—and St. Louis has WAY better parks). but i'm not convinced that mom-and-pop commercial space is more expensive in Chicago, nor that there's more of it in Philly. it varies quite a bit from neighborhood to neighborhood. i feel like a lot of assumptions are being made. regardless, aesthetics matter. i'll take 11 mom-and-pops and a cleaner/more attractive environment over 18 mom-and-pops and a cluttered, trash-covered one any day. just MHO based on walking around in both cities.

^I will grant that the location in Philadelphia might be "cherry picked." I'm not doing any kind of careful study here. Just a sort of gut reaction. And my reaction to the Philie shot was basically "That's unreal! No way that's in the US!" It felt like Saigon or downtown Peterborough in the UK. And looking at the map to see what businesses were nearby truly blew me out of the water. Chicago, by comparison, just feels like another US city. Sure, it's big. But it's pretty standard. Nothing surprising there. It's like St. Louis, but more. (Mind you, I like St. Louis. And Chicago too, for that matter.) If Philadelphia is trashy that's obvious neither in the street photo nor in my memory of the place. (Which is twenty years out of date, mind. This really requires a refresher.) Could also be that I'm more tolerant of a little mess. Different strokes for different folks. Please understand, I don't mean to run Chicago down here. Just trying to express my surprise at the Philadelphia shot.

^ no worries. i'm not in love with Chicago or anything. it's just that i've spent a lot of time in Philly lately and i don't care for it. i enjoy walking around in Chicago. i enjoy walking around in DC. i enjoy walking around in Boston. but i really don't enjoy walking around in Philly. i think i just don't find the place aesthetically pleasing.

^I haven't been there in a long time. I'm mostly reacting to a map, which is notoriously unreliable. I've been to nine countries and two continents since the last time I was in Philadelphia. Which is probably a good sign that I need to go back and re-explore some of those US cities I've not been to in decades.

This planned Amazon warehouse commits just about every urban no-no you can think of (image from Philadelphia YIMBY):

^With even less excuse. Yeah, that's positively awful. Eek!

I saw this in the Philadelphia Inquirer this morning.  SEPTA does a pretty good job of moving people around the area and maintaining their extensive fleet of vehicles, but I can't help but think they could be putting their limited funding into projects that produce a bigger bang for the buck.  And unless you're from the area, how is one to know the Norristown Speed Line is in Montgomery County?  (Fact:  Most of it is, but the initial stops from the 69th Street Terminal starting point are in Delaware County).  Or that the Route 15 Trolley runs along Girard Avenue?   And what will the regional rail lines be called?  It was just a couple of years ago they dropped the R1, R5, R9, etc. nomenclature in favor of the lines' actual destination name.     

That SEPTA allowed the disgusting and disgraceful conditions at the northern most stations of the Market/Frankford Elevated, particularly the Somerset station, to deteriorate to point where they were extremely dangerous to commuters, especially during a pandemic, was unconscionable.  Now that the city has allegedly cleared out the drug encampments and open air drug markets on Frankford Avenue,  SEPTA should be beefing up security and maintenance/cleaning at the York/Dauphin, Huntingdon, Somerset, Allegheny and Tioga stations so ordinary commuters aren't fearing for their lives when they enter these stations.  I ride SEPTA extensively, and the only time I have was fearful on it was last summer riding from 8th and Market to the Frankford stop.  

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Aug 20, 2021

https://www.phillyvoice.com/broad-stree ... th-philly/

This is what the completed Ballpark Village, as viewed from Broadway just north of Walnut, should look like.  Perfect scale and massing, with one continuous stretch of transparent glass storefront and residential common area, and an unbroken street wall except for a pedestrian passage south to the ballpark at 7th Street...perhaps an archway, something like the west entrance to Busch Stadium?

Typing this up for a second time because my previous login timed out. Protip: copy and paste long messages somewhere else first before hitting the "Full Editor" button. Also, I've already spent way too long trying this summary up today because of the complexity of this whole situation.

1,300-acre Philly refinery property to be redeveloped as The Bellwether District | Philly Voice
The Bellwether District: Hilco’s new brand for the old PES refinery complex in South Philly | WHYY

Real quick summary: This is great news. The site is disgusting and has to go. Warehouses sounds like a disappointment but the land simply isn't fit for housing. And this is a step toward a better city 100 years from now.


PES-site by A P, on Flickr

This rendering is massive if you want to zoom in:


The 25% of the site that doesn't look like boring distribution warehouses:


Sooooooo there's this massive 150 yr old refinery in southwest Philadelphia that had a bit of an explosion in 2019 which forced the company to call it quits. Hilco paid $225M for the site ($225M too much IMO) and has been slowly cleaning the site and preparing it for construction of new distribution warehouses. Obviously warehouses don't sound very exciting but considering the poisonous hell hole that we currently have, I think there's already been some excitement about this. The land is too dangerous to be used for housing, especially for children. The tap water risk alone would be too high. I expect the site will be made safe for the 19,000 workers expected to use this site in 10 years. Well yesterday they announced a name for the project "The Bellwether District" and today released renderings. 75% of the site looks like amazon warehouses as expected but the remaining 25% looks pretty cool and might offer something more interesting.

Overall though, this is just one step into turning this land back into something fit for human use. This is necessary for Philly. I didn't know about this site before moving here. One day last year while browsing on Google Maps, I started looking at this land and thinking: 1) holy crap what a massive waste of potential. And 2) What health affect has this had on the city and what am I breathing in right now?? Philly is known for having some of the worst air quality in the country and this site had to have played a role. I learned later that this site is now closed but only for the last two years. Unfortunately the articles about this project don't go too in depth about the pollution conditions at this refinery but the fact that they touched on it at all freaks me out a little. I'd love to see if any studies were done on the refinery's affects on air quality in West, South, and Center City Philadelphia through the years.

Nothing but demolition and remediation is planned for the next 4 years. I guess it's good that a free market solution was found but the fact that the company willing to fix this not only paid $225M to an oil company for the land but also has to pay for remediation is disappointing. I'm just wandering if we could have gotten something better if the cleanup was paid for directly or through taxes by the oil industry.

For some, the most exciting bit will be the 4 new miles of riverfront trail that will come with this, which will also hopefully spur the construction of the remaining 1.15 mile gap to connect it to the current terminus of the Schuylkill River Trail just north of the site. The additional park land and amphitheater shown in the renderings is an incredible added bonus.

Again, something better should be done but this is a huge step for the city.