Schemers on the Schuylkill

Should marketers name our neighborhoods?

by Andrew Zitcer

Sometimes I say I live in University City. Mostly I say I live in West Philly. It doesn't trouble me much either way; after all, people know what I'm talking about. But somebody must feel differently, because stickers have been appearing on the stop signs and car bumpers that try to sharpen the distinction. "This is West Philly," they proclaim. "University City is just a marketing scheme."

I am struck by the stickers' tone of right-eous indignation. Just a marketing scheme. My first thought: If you object to this marketing scheme, it seems hypocritical to fight it with a ... marketing scheme.

But then I want to know why. What is it about the moniker that is so troubling?

The stickers are right. Factually correct. "University City" is a marketing scheme. In the 1960s, the name was dreamed up at the same time that the West Philadelphia Corporation masterminded eminent domain and urban renewal, leading to the creation of the University City Science Center and the expansion of Penn and Drexel. It also caused the destruction of thousands of homes and the dispersion of a lively community called "The Bottom." It was the era of top-down planning, causing similar upheaval in urban neighborhoods from Boston to Oakland. This part of West Philly came to be defined by its major research institutions, and the new name was a reflection of that change.

The creator of these stickers is weighing in on this issue � 40 years too late. The name "Society Hill" was a product of the same time period. Philadelphians have had dozens of these neighborhood-rebranding exercises thrown our way. Some stuck, some didn't: Commerce Square, Bella Vista, South of South, Blocks Below Broad. All invented in an effort to market a neighborhood as something unique, distinct, desirable.

So why does "University City" generate such disapproval? Perhaps the provocateur wants to comment on gentrification. We live in what sociologist Mark Stern would call a "pov-prof" neighborhood: a place with a higher than average concentration of low-income and high-income residents.

This state of affairs is not new to West Philadelphia: It was a place that housed the summer mansions of Philadelphia's industrial and manufacturing magnates, as well as factory workers, servants and even farmers. As the universities grew in importance and the rich fled to the suburbs, these large houses were bought up by Penn professors and, more recently, Center City professionals. The idea that we can suddenly erase this 40-year marketing scheme and will ourselves into a mythical West Philly seems false and pointless.

There is a great tradition of the elite trying to be "of the people." Witness George Orwell dressing up in rags to research his book Down and Out in Paris and London. On the other end of the intellectual spectrum, Mary-Kate Olsen has been praised for her "bohemian" or "dumpster chic."

Now, I have not been able to find out who is making these stickers, but, based on where they're turning up, I would bet that they are authored by young activists who live in a kind of self-imposed temporary poverty. For them, the idea of West Philly, with its gritty underdog image, is a more palatable place to identify with than a prosperous, gentrified village.

But they fail to see the forest for the trees. The problem in our neighborhood is that, while I am well-educated, gainfully employed and safe, some of my neighbors have none of these advantages. This tale of two cities, as the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board recently called it, is the story that keeps me up at night. Not the one about what to call the neighborhood. Not the one where we wish that we could ignore the prosperity brought by the universities and self-identify with a more "authentic" nomenclature. The marketing campaign we need to conduct is one in which we demand and work for better schools, better transit, more effective government and safer, cleaner streets. When that story becomes reality, you can call my neighborhood whatever you want.

Andrew Zitcer is an urban planner and arts advocate.