This archive article is selected from The Cleveland Pages, the city's only weekly independent journal of politics and opinion on the Internet. Find out all about the Cleveland Pages here, or check out the current issue.
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Last week's Cleveland Pages article about a visit to Philadelphia drew a little more attention than usual. My neighbor and activist pal Bill (hi Bill!) had passed a copy or reference to the article to one of his favorite mailing lists, one devoted to "civic values."
A few Philadelphians suggested more or less that my head needed to be removed from the place it was stuck, that Philly is full of corruption, mismanagement, police brutality, organized crime, pollution, and more and more and more. One fellow wrote that "Rendell himself would have been delighted to read the account from our friend in Cleveland. For the past 20 years, remaking center city to be tourist-friendly has been a central element in Philadelphia's strategy for recovery and that a visitor returns with such kind words will suggest that we're all On the Right Track." Talk about embarrassing, for me, being lumped in with the "Comeback City" types. And from a guy whose tone reminded me a lot of... myself.
What went wrong? How could this "spicily independent" (I just like writing that) writer get slammed on the mailing lists and addressed sarcastically as "Mr. Cleveland"? Well, a few things.
One thing is that visitors do not and can not move around a new city like the old-timers. I did pretty well for a suit guy though: Grays Ferry, believe me, is no way part of this revitalized downtown, and you do get to meet a decent cross-section of people while riding the Broad Street and Market Street subway lines.
Of course it's not the same as moving yourself and your family into overcrowded public housing. But what is? As someone whose view is necessarily limited but who also knows a little about how big cities are run (and how politicians like to dress up for visitors), I know about my filters and try to correct for them. I was glad to get some pointers from aware people who have lived in the area for decades.
I came away from the exchange with a little list of interesting, non-touristy places to visit; several hints for further research; and some reassurance that Philadelphians haven't gone as soft as their pretzels. Not too bad.
The story I got from longtime Philadelphians was so familiar it made me laugh and cry. The Center City and riverfront areas do look nice, but only because everyone else is being taxed to death to subsidize them. Politicians and local Chamber of Commerce boosters love "image" projects but let the infrastructure deteriorate over decades. One writer accused the Philadelphia leadership of paying even less attention to the old industrial base than in Cleveland, creating an economy that has fewer opportunities for skilled blue-collar workers than we have.
Right now the local governments are discussing the site for a new baseball stadium for the Phillies, and the terms of debate as I read in the Inquirer reminded me of the old Dome vs. Hexatron vs. open-air questions of the mid-80s. Article after article about this location and that design issue avoided the issue of who is going to pay for the project and what it will actually do for the city. I guess the shill press is always with us. (By the way, I thought the City Paper was decent. Comments?)
But nobody objected to my characterization of SEPTA as being reasonably priced, reasonably efficient, and reasonably well-traveled though, which leads me to think that public transit there really is quite a bit better than here. Nor was there argument that the higher population density there (a much different matter from overcrowding) helps support amenities that aren't realistic in smaller, more lightly saturated cities such as Cleveland.
Scratch a Philadelphian, find a Clevelander. You don't have to go far to find the same general issues:
I have always found that big-city people, when asked about their most significant public concerns, name most of these five items in something like that order. A few people, the kind that actually don't mind being called "urban pioneers," will vaguely volunteer something like "downtown renewal." Hardly anybody ever mentions specific glamour projects without prompting. True here, true in Philadelphia, true practically everywhere.
And let me say again that not a single person among the hundred-some-odd I met during that trip suggested that a winning sports team in a new stadium would be anything more than fun to watch. I found that distinction particularly striking considering how much the public agendas have in common between our two cities. Perhaps that is the difference between a real "major league" city and one which desperately wants to be thought of that way.
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This document's template was last modified on Wednesday, 09-Nov-2005 18:51:58 EST. There is a new Cleveland Pages more or less every weekend. The entire Cleveland Pages website is © 1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,2003 by Mark W. Schumann, all rights reserved. Copyrights belonging to others on individual items are noted. Nobody else would take the credit or blame for these opinions anyway.
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