<p>I lived in the neighborhood for over a decade, and still visit it fairly often. I can see it pretty well from my conference room.</p>
<p>Honestly, what Penn’s campus feels like is going to depend on your frame of reference. (And “feel” is the operative word in any of these discussions – no one ever cares about the statistics that tell you that you won’t be in any great danger there.) If your natural habitat is a pristine suburban environment with one-acre lots and gated communities, Penn is going to feel edgy and dangerous. If you are familiar with cities, and urban universities, Penn is going to feel perfectly familiar, and on the nice end. If you happened to be coming from Temple University, Penn would feel like a pristine suburban environment with one-acre lots and gated communities.</p>
<p>The fact is that a lot of transition happens through Penn and its neighbor, Drexel. On the east, they are bounded by a largely depopulated business zone that the universities are busy redeveloping into dorms, academic buildings, offices, and retail. Then there’s a highway, train tracks, a river, and some of the ritziest neighborhoods in the city on the far shore – all within easy walking distance of Penn. Going west, you have a sleepy, leafy, college-towny neighborhood for a little less than a mile, but it ultimately fades into ghetto. To the north, you have Drexel, but then there’s a very challenged neighborhood that starts only a few blocks from the Drexel campus. South there really isn’t anything – a huge hospital campus for Penn and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and then a curve in the river.</p>
<p>Bits of Penn are isolated from the surrounding urban hubbub, but for the most part it’s pretty open to the city. Big streets run through it, with lots of traffic. It is served by several subway/trolley lines, and an El, lots of buses, and the suburban train system. People traveling from the challenged neighborhoods to the west and north towards the gathering places of Center City may pass right through Penn, or be on the bus when Penn students get on. If that freaks you out, then you will have an adjustment to make at Penn. If you can’t make that adjustment, you won’t feel comfortable there. </p>
<p>It’s not unlike Brown, but bigger, noisier, more urban. It’s not unlike Chicago, but way closer to the center of the city, and with many, many more amenities (shops, restaurants, movie theaters). It’s not unlike Harvard, for that matter, except the streets are straight and more of the buildings are ugly,</p>
<p>Really, it’s fine.</p>