University, City, Community

 

Can it be over 33 years ago that this fresh-faced 18-year-old kid from the San Francisco Bay Area suburbs first arrived in Philadelphia? I had been to this city and to the Penn campus exactly one time in my life prior to that, and I was a teenager with hardly any worldly experience, so whatever initial expectations and first impressions I might have had were shallow at best. Nevertheless, I'm sure that what first drew me to the place (besides the world-class education available at Wharton) and what excited me upon actual arrival was an urban form that seemed to click for me. Coming from a car-dominant part of the country, being able to navigate solely via walking, biking, and transit created a literal sense of movement, energy, and interaction that worked for me. Not that 18-year-old me could've afforded a car or wanted to bear the headache of insuring, parking, and maintaining it. But still, it was liberating to be plopped into a brand new place and be able to get around without being tethered to a large and expensive machine.

It turns out that kind of circulation is good for all sorts of things that I subsequently came to value and understand. Tolerance is bred when we interact with people different from us rather than being sequestered inside our climate-controlled vehicles. Cultural exchange and crossover exposure begets the sort of explosion of ideas, expression, and production that makes people happy and places thrive. And the innovation that drives a region's competitiveness occurs in the very places where lots of smart people can easily work, play, and dream together, planned and unplanned.

Fast forward to the present, and the prospects for the Philadelphia region are bright in relation to the activity taking place in this little sliver of the region that I now call home. University City is home not only to world-class universities and hospitals, but also to a whole constellation of research institutes, startup ventures, and dominant science industry players. With this massive physical footprint of innovation infrastructure and industry activity, the center of gravity for the region has grown from what we in the region call "Center City" (i.e. our downtown) to a "Greater Center City" that jumps across the Schuylkill River to include most of my University City neighborhood (and I believe, one day, will also jump across the Delaware River to include parts of Camden, New Jersey). The future holds much in venture capital raised, businesses birthed, and scientific discoveries brought to market. 

All of this is happening in a physical place that cannot be detached from other things happening in the same space: households of all income levels, K-12 schools, and a rich mix of small non-profits. Which is good: you don't want a sterile, mall-like setting for pushing scientific boundaries and conducting life-changing research. But it does reinforce a central premise that most of us desperately want but few of us know how to achieve, which is: how do you make sure that a soaring tide truly lifts all boats and doesn't swamp the most vulnerable?

Much easier said than done, to be sure. But think of where equity can meet opportunity:

* All this activity is only as good as a steady stream of talent at all educational levels, so we must invest in thoughtful collaboration that connects people looking to build their careers with employers seeking labor. The best way to lift up our lower-income households is through gainful employment, and we just so happen to be sitting on some of the highest-growth sectors and companies right in our own backyard. Making the connection is benefitted by proximity, but it does not happen without intention, via skill-building and laddering and exposure and supports.

* More activity and more people usually means more demand for housing, which absent new supply means (by the law of economics) price goes up. Which is exactly what people worry about when they talk about gentrification and displacement. Alas, artificial attempts to control price, or expensive ways of adding supply, are prohibitive, yielding solutions that are ineffective or impractical. Better to push in other places, namely making it easier to add supply anywhere and everywhere, incentivizing existing landlords to maintain their units in good condition, and creating opportunities for people to make more money (and therefore afford higher rents). More supply means more and better choices for all, with the the positive consequences for the households with the fewest resources.

* The power of agglomeration only comes into play if adding more gets you even more, exponentially even, as in 1 plus 1 becomes 2 and then 1 more becomes 3 or more and then 1 more becomes 4 or even more. Alas, in many cases adding more has diminishing or even negative returns, where 1 plus 1 is 2 but 1 more becomes less than 3 and then 1 more starts to become even less. Namely, traffic and congestion rear their ugly head, yielding inefficiencies and headaches such that people eventually make choices to go elsewhere. Which is why investment in transit - routes, frequency of service, and the rider experience - is so important. Because that is what allows places to scale, is that they are not predicated on more people driving more cars into the same area. Owning a car is so expensive compared to walking, biking, and transit, so places that require driving are impenetrable for poorer households, and conversely places that are more multi-modal unlock opportunities for those same households.

* People are not robots. They love beauty, hate blight, and avoid dangerous places like the plague. A safe street, a vibrant commercial corridor, and a pleasant pocket park are truly public goods, which can be freely enjoyed by all without barrier (what economists call "non-excludable") and which can largely be enjoyed by more and more without diminishing or crowding out the experience of others (what economists call "non-rivalrous"). Indeed, in such settings, the more people that enjoy something, the better the experience is, for who doesn't prefer people-watching in an active public space over walking through an abandoned public space? Given this leveling, less resourced households gain the most when public spaces are secured and made more beautiful.

The future of University City, of Philadelphia, and of cities in general is up in the air. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? All I can hope for is more progress like what we've seen since I arrived 33 years ago, and more of what I've listed above to make sure that happens and does so in ways that are equitable.