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Also this issue: Basket Case The Jackson Jive |
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July 25-31, 2002
loose canon
Mayor Wilson Goode used to carry a list of Philadelphia Firsts, instances when the city led the nation. At public events, as spirits generally lagged, he’d pull out a well-creased piece of paper and wave it around as inspiration. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, the Home of the Cheesesteak could not possibly be languishing, he’d say. And that our being first meant we could be the best.
It occurred to me recently that instead of celebrating how Philadelphia has led the pack, we might well be grateful for the ways in which it trailed. How arrested urban development saved this city.
Now it's true that Wilson Goode did manage to work a wonder of urban renewal in record time for the residents of Osage Avenue. But in other areas, especially in Center City, change fortunately came less dramatically.
Unlike cities elsewhere that soared upward, literally, in the '70s, much of Philadelphia today still has a modest profile. The unwritten rule that capped buildings at the height of Billy Penn's hat conspired happily with another legacy, of old narrow streets that limited development to a human scale.
Less by design than by default, Philadelphia is still a livable place today because people cling to traditions with a tenacity that approaches the irrational -- but which somehow turns out to be sensible.
I recently watched a road repair crew crawl oh-so-slowly up a street where I live in Society Hill. They didn't appear to be slacking; it is tough, time-consuming work installing colonial stone that will withstand the banging of modern trucks.
Why bother? Everyone knows how slick stones get when wet, how quickly they ice up in the winter. How many axles are bent and bumpers dented.
To spend diminishing tax dollars on a dysfunctional transitway is nuts. But we still keep those cobblestones, while cities rushing forward might have paved them over, making their streets more accommodating to cars.
Yet often what's amenable to modernity -- to cars, commerce and consumerism -- is less friendly to people. As cars go faster, those who walk or bike get left behind.
So in many modern, more developed cities, pedestrians are becoming extinct -- despite new efforts to re-create urban habitats where people can walk, talk and meet, freely and openly. Places that conservative old Philadelphia never lost.
One item probably not on Wilson Goode's list of firsts, an achievement that placed Philadelphia on the vanguard hundreds of years ago, was the creation of public space. And if public spaces continue to be valued and defended against development -- as I will suggest next week -- Philadelphians will ensure a livable future.
Because sometimes it's best to be last.
