Why is Philly so often overlooked?

[Anonymous]

Some beautiful suburbs, though. Main Line has great neighborhoods.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We lived there briefly. It's very race and class divided. The race part is common to most cities but it's easy to forget certain cities are also very socio-economically segregated. You'll be pigeonholed into your niche pretty quickly. Nitty gritty is fun for a while then it becomes tiresome because the nitty gritty population is just too large. A lot of crap happens in Philadelphia that rarely happens in DC. Center City is wonderful and there are a few other gorgeous neighborhoods but much of the city is dreary and much of the new infill housing is shockingly ugly. Transportation by car around the whole region is a nightmare, including the suburbs.

Philadelphia is still living off past glories and no number of modern new developments hides that it's one of the great 19th century cities still living in the shadows of its history. It's not where the energy or innovation is these days. Its claim to fame is being cheaper than NYC. But I will also say the dining scene is excellent, both high and low. It's perhaps the only thing I miss about Philadelphia.

You can’t be serious.

Because transportation by car around the DC area is so much better

We live in Baltimore after living in Philadelphia. It takes a lot longer to get around Philadelphia as the roads aren't as efficiently connected and some of the key links out of Center City are limited like the Schuylkill Expressway, which is backed up most of the time. Driving from Center City to the Main Line or back is time consuming because there is no direct expressway, just the train. Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill aren't easily connected outside trains either. By contrast, Baltimore is easy to navigate with the beltway and I-83 from the city to the northern suburbs. The world isn't just Philadelphia and DC, you know

i agree, i don't understand how philly can have so few direct highways to the places people want to go (are they still using goat paths from the colonial times??) But, I think the lack of an efficient highway system pushes people to public transit so that's a good thing. from many suburbs it is way easier to take the train than to drive into center city.

From NW Philly (Chestnut Hill/Mt Airy/East Falls/Manayunk), we often (if not usually) avoid the expressway by taking local neighborhood roads to East River/Kelly Dr to get to Center City. Of course there are traffic challenges at times, which is the case with any city, but it’s not always a big headache at all. Going to Center City should take about 20 mins using one of the drives during non-rush hour times. Most people I know don’t ever use the Expressway to get from NW Philly to downtown.

The problem would be having to live in one of the neighborhoods cited here. I have friends in Mt. Airy and visit them there and I would have no desire to live there. Just not a nice place to live after having experienced living in DC. They grew up in the Philly area and just don’t have much experience with living anywhere else. The wife lived in New York for a while, but other than that, Philadelphia is their only frame of reference, so they just don’t realize that they could live better elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's historic but dangerous and poorly run. We visited the center of town with the Bell and outdoor exhibit and there was a horrible smell of human feces. No thanks.

OMG. So sad!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was there over Christmas. I found it beautiful and it had an energy I really connected to. I kept thinking I could live there, easily. My son is considering Drexel, and this thread has me wondering a bit.

Don’t overthink it. My son is a college student there and he loves it so much he plans to stay there after graduation. He was offered a job at his employer’s DC office, but he would make the same salary. His goal is to buy a house there three years after graduation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Philadelphia suburbs have great housing stock at a lower cost than the DC area, fantastic public schools, and the regional rail system. There's a tech presence in the 202 corridor (King of Prussia, Chesterbrook, etc), pharmaceutical companies, and some finance (Vanguard), but not as much as you'd find in NYC/DC.

All the major banks are there too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Philadelphian, five years ago, I would shout you haters down. I loved my city. But now it is not what it once was. Violence and drugs are out of control. My neighborhood, once lovely, now has car jackings and muggings. The schools were getting better, but what good schools we had are mow turning to garbage.

I think about leaving.

It is this way all across the country. The poshest parts of DC now have carjackings too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Philadelphia suburbs have great housing stock at a lower cost than the DC area, fantastic public schools, and the regional rail system. There's a tech presence in the 202 corridor (King of Prussia, Chesterbrook, etc), pharmaceutical companies, and some finance (Vanguard), but not as much as you'd find in NYC/DC.

I was in Bryn Mawr and Haverford yesterday. They are not what they once were.

What do you mean?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I was there over Christmas. I found it beautiful and it had an energy I really connected to. I kept thinking I could live there, easily. My son is considering Drexel, and this thread has me wondering a bit.

Your son will be fine at Drexel. Temple, on the other hand…

I’m in Philadelphia for the first time right now. We came for the weekend to visit Drexel and are staying in an AirBnB in Center City. I’ve really enjoyed our trip. It’s a little gritty but aren’t most cities? Even if my child doesn’t end up here, I’m sure we will be back to visit again.

We’re going up to visit Drexel next weekend. We are staying with friends who live there and have sent their kids to college in Philly. They are excited to go to dinner with us in Center City and show DC around West Philly. They are good friends who would be honest and warn us off if they thought that it would be a bad experience for DC.

PP here. Is your DC going to admitted students’ day? My DC will be there, too. Funny to think there will be a dcum contingent present

You should raise a flag or wear a button!

[Anonymous]

Moved from DC to Philly several years ago and couldn’t be happier with the decision. We live in a suburb with excellent public schools and a big house that cost half as much as our townhome in Northern Virginia. I quickly and easily made more friends in a couple months here than I made in almost a decade in the DC area. People are more down to earth and friendly. Cost of living is lower and it’s easier to get to the beach! Because our main home is so much cheaper, we were actually able to buy a shore house and can get there almost every weekend in the summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Moved from DC to a suburb several years ago and couldn’t be happier with the decision. We live in a suburb with excellent public schools and a big house that cost half as much as our townhome in Northern Virginia. I quickly and easily made more friends in a couple months here than I made in almost a decade in the DC area. People are more down to earth and friendly. Cost of living is lower and it’s easier to get to the beach! Because our main home is so much cheaper, we were actually able to buy a shore house and can get there almost every weekend in the summer.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I was there over Christmas. I found it beautiful and it had an energy I really connected to. I kept thinking I could live there, easily. My son is considering Drexel, and this thread has me wondering a bit.

Don’t overthink it. My son is a college student there and he loves it so much he plans to stay there after graduation. He was offered a job at his employer’s DC office, but he would make the same salary. His goal is to buy a house there three years after graduation.

Please dissuade him. He is too young to settle down like that <2 hours away from where he grew up.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The Philadelphia suburbs have great housing stock at a lower cost than the DC area, fantastic public schools, and the regional rail system. There's a tech presence in the 202 corridor (King of Prussia, Chesterbrook, etc), pharmaceutical companies, and some finance (Vanguard), but not as much as you'd find in NYC/DC.

I was in Bryn Mawr and Haverford yesterday. They are not what they once were.

What do you mean?

Stay north of Lancaster Avenue.

[Anonymous]

Funny thread. Amazing how clueless people in DC are. Have fun living in your soulless office park of a city around other miserable arrivistes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Funny thread. Amazing how clueless people in DC are. Have fun living in your soulless office park of a city around other miserable arrivistes

I’m literally standing outside in Philly as I write this.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Violet crime. Filthy-Delphia.

Agree. The streets are a mess- we visit friends there every year or so and the same streets have had the same cracks and potholes for at least seven or eight years now.

It is also extremely insular. People hang out with their families or their friends from high school and have very little interest in incorporating new people into their friend groups. If you didn’t get out of the area when you went to college (and, no, going to Penn State Main Campus doesn’t count. Because half the students there are from Philadelphia.), you will never break away.

So many people who live there never lived anywhere else. About as far as they will go is New York City, but they tend to come running back to Philly after five or ten years or so. I just can’t imagine living that way.

Yep. This is it.

I actually DO like it, but it's way more blue-collar than NY or Washington. It took me a long time to like it, LOL.