<p>Based on jobs, amenities, and affordable housing:</p>
<p>[Philadelphia</a> named best city for new grads - U.S. business - MSNBC.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24359031/]Philadelphia”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24359031/)</p>
<p>as opposed to ya know* Philly records 5 homicides since Saturday*
[6abc.com:</a> Murder in West Oak Lane 4/28/08](<a href=“http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/take_action&id=6107489]6abc.com:”>http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/take_action&id=6107489)</p>
<p>^I was thinking the same thing. Rendell and the Mayor of Philly at the time of the PA primary, certainly made Philly sound like an urban nightmare in need of all the fed help it could get…</p>
<p>The Chicago papers have been tracking an alarming number of shooting deaths as well.
It seems like all the strides we made in crime during the nineties are reversing. It worries me a lot, for our children’s and country’s future.</p>
<p>My daughter did have a great time in Pittsburgh. ;)</p>
<p>[Things</a> to do in Pittsburgh](<a href=“http://www.studentguidetopittsburgh.com/activities/activitydirectory.htm]Things”>http://www.studentguidetopittsburgh.com/activities/activitydirectory.htm)</p>
<p>It’s no secret on this forum that I am not a big fan of Philadelphia. I grew up in the suburbs and still go back there often- including into the city where my kid goes to college. My husband describes going there as “sticking knives in his eyes”. It just isn’t for us. HOWEVER, I can understand what the article is saying. There is a healthy business community (company headquarters, law firms etc), great museums and symphony, my beloved Philadelphia Eagles (and those other sports teams) and a cost of living below that of NY and Boston. If you haven’t ever lived in Nashville, I can see how it would be appealing! :)</p>
<p>We moved to the Philadelphia suburbs from NYC over 20 years ago. Back then the city was in the doldrums, fairly dangerous, and completely boring compared to NY. But what a difference now: many good restaurants (even in the suburbs!), crowds on the streets in the evenings, and wonderful cultural offerings. Housing in the area is a bargain compared to NYC, and the commuter rail trip into Center City takes only 20 minutes from where we live. While it still can’t compare to NYC (but then, what can?) we love it here.</p>
<p>This article totally ignores the crime issue. Yes, the neighborhoods are affordable, the restaurants are good and the Art Museum is a gem but unless those in power get a better handle on crime they are not going to keep people for the long term. A city needs an established middle class to thrive…not just young people starting out. Philadelphia has safety issues. The suburban-retiree-moving-back-into-the-city trend has already slowed and I am sure that the possibly overblown but constant reports of violent crime are not helping. I work in town and love the restaurants and museums (and the Phillies!) but read the Daily Pennsylvanian for a few weeks to see what is going on in West Philly. Even in Center City there is a certain amount of activity on the streets in the evening but the city clears out early and except for the bustle outside of particular restaurants it becomes quiet after dark. I, for one, do not go strolling at night in downtown Philadelphia. </p>
<p>A doctor friend of mine was running on the Schuylkill River at 4:00 PM one beautiful day last spring and was attacked by a group of middle school kids and hit with a baseball bat. Their ultimate goal was to steal his iPod. Fortunately he only needed some surgery to his jaw and was not more seriously injured. I know of a number of students living in nicer downtown neighborhoods who have been mugged and even though they had originally loved the city now plan on leaving after school. </p>
<p>It is a city with a lot going for it but if people don’t feel safe they won’t stay for the long haul.</p>
<p>I have lived around or in the city my entire life (I moved back into the city 3 months before my son was born in 1989). I have had my car stolen (10 year old car) and broken into (they broke a window and popped the hood and stole ignition wires). People throw trash out their car windows at will.</p>
<p>Yes, the city has good museums. BFD. I don’t feel safe here. Every bank within a 1 mile radius of my house has been robbed. </p>
<p>Last month, my ‘favorite’ crime was when a couple of high school students killed a man on a train platform in center city ‘for fun’.</p>
<p>UPenn, Drexel, Lasalle, St Joes, Temple are all great schools in crappy beyond belief neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Oh as an added bonus you will pay ~4% in city wage tax on top of all the other ‘regular’ taxes.</p>
<p>If it wasn’t for 10 year tax abatements on new construction, the ‘rebirth’ would not have happened. All those people buying new condos in Center city pay no real estate tax for 10 years. Nice for them, sucks for the rest of us.</p>
<p>OK, I was going to stay out of this thread, but I feel like I have to give some testimony here.</p>
<p>Elleneast is completely wrong that “the city clears out early” and one should not go strolling at night in downtown Philadelphia. As it happens, last night around 10:30 pm I walked from the Kimmel Center (Philadelphia Orchestra) to the lot where I park my car – a distance of well over a mile, really from just inside the southern edge of the downtown area to just outside the northern edge. There were people everywhere, until I got within a block of my lot (which is out-of-the-way, but cheap). It was a great feeling. That has been true every time I have stayed downtown after work for the past several years.</p>
<p>If the “suburban retiree moving back into the city” trend has slowed, it has slowed from a tsunami to a mere flood. Actually, it’s not retirees so much who are moving back in – that was ten years ago. It’s people in their 50s who aren’t about to retire. I was at dinner last night with four other couples, three of whom live in the burbs. All three want to move into Center City when their youngest child (which means either 10th or 11th grade) goes to college. The only issue is whether they can sell their Main Line houses for enough to get a nice apartment. We know at least ten families who have made this move in the past few years.</p>
<p>Crime: It is a serious problem, here and elsewhere. Taking into account the last horrible weekend, it is still down over 20% vs. a year ago, and half of what it was in the mid-80s. It also does not affect the areas where affluent people live very much. Most of the violence is between people who know each other, or between rival drug gangs, in impoverished areas of the city that I rarely see unless I choose to, or out the window of a train. That doesn’t make it OK at all – in a sense, it makes it worse. And, as in other cities, a lot of the ultra-bargain places where young people starting out live are in transitional neighborhoods that are not as safe as Rittenhouse Square or Chestnut Hill. But I lived in a neighborhood like that for a decade, on the far edge of the Penn community, at the height of the crime rate, and other than petty theft (porch plants, car break-ins) it did not touch the lives of any of the people I knew there.</p>
<p>Philadelphia is indeed a great place for young people to live right now. Cheap, happening, cultural critical mass (and not just Art Museum/Orchestra high culture) sense of excitement. It’s also still very much a provincial city with a lot of atty-tood. Litter is a constant problem, and I swear people must be teaching their children to cross on red, wait on green (or just to wander across streets oblivious to whether cars might be using them, too). People still beg and hustle on the streets. But it’s very livable.</p>
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<p>JHS, I am glad that you have had a different experience and am very glad that you posted it. On numerous occasions I have walked down very quiet streets in different sections of the city when going back to my car after dinner so I am not completely wrong and I was stating my opinion when I said that I, for one, would not go strolling about in Center City at night.</p>
<p>Center City is safe. There is alot more to Philly than Center City. The people living there are not raising their families there (for the most part). The are singles and retirees. And the tax abatement (no real estate taxes for 10 years on new construction) is a big reason why.</p>
<p>Be careful where you park in Center City. you want to have a car when you come back. Our parking authority can be overzealous :-)</p>
<p>JHS, I think our kids graduated from the same HS last year. Would you have lived in the neighborhood of that school. No. Would you have sent your kid to Lasalle (right next door)?</p>
<p>The article was poorly written, especially when the featured person was there for grad school, not an independent job choice. Also very regional, fine if you want to be on the east coast, especially if family and friends are in the region. Sounds like someone was coming up with something good to say about a city that had been put down by others. Irrelevent to those not near there- so many great places to live off the radar of the northeast media.</p>
<p>As the song goes “…that’s why I hang my hat in Tennessee!”</p>
<p>Philadelphia Hospitality- My son’s car was towed for a very minor parking violation near his college apartment in Phila. He had to take two forms of transportation and walk a couple of miles to the “pound” to get it. There was a mix-up on the title caused by our move from TX to TN (we had done everything, but there had been a glitch by TN with some of the paperwork). My husband ran all over trying to get it sorted out so son could buy the car out of hock. Things were faxed to Phila police etc to prove it was titled. They would not release the car without the actual new plate. It was ridiculous. This was even with a letter from the TN DMV faxed to them. S had to pay an additional $20 and make another round trip to the pound 4 days later before the car would be released.</p>
<p>Two weekends ago (his college spring event weekend) he was walking with his girlfriend on a street on the edge of campus at 9pm Saturday night. He was grabbed and handcuffed (hands behind back) by two non-uniformed state policemen and accused of underage drinking. He asked them to check his ID (he is 21) and they let him go. This was campus-police patrol area and they were upset that the state police were even doing this. Apparently they rounded up a bunch of kids that night and they all get to go to court on the same date. </p>
<p>I think Philadelphia is a really rough city. Yes, there are many plusses and people make it work. It would not work for me, and I grew up outside the city. My son gets tired of it, but he gets by. He is very independent and has been away from home for a long time. I fear for his safety every day, and I am not an over-protective parent. </p>
<p>I do think it has a strong business community and there are good jobs to be had. The wage tax is absurd and cost S more than his federal income tax.</p>
<p>Go Eagles!!</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Sue: I guess I would have had to let my kids go to LaSalle, having let them take public transportation to the school next door for years. I wouldn’t sugarcoat that neighborhood, or Temple’s, or even St. Joe’s. (Of course Villanova is where the real crooks are, but they don’t bother with mugging students.) And I wouldn’t claim University City (Penn and Drexel) is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but people imagine it is far worse than it is. Which is probably true of all of the schools here (except Villanova).</p></li>
<li><p>MOWC: I hadn’t seen stories about that kind of sweep. It sounds like the neighbors got fed up with something, and someone knew someone else. Having lived in the area, I certainly know what it’s like to wish that someone would handcuff some drinking teenagers once in awhile. But not really.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t want to make too many presumptions about WC, but my kids’ friendship circles include literally dozens and dozens of kids at Penn (between her two high schools, my daughter had almost 30 classmates go there), and this is the first story I’ve heard of Penn students getting harrassed by the police. </p>
<p>Penn may be a little the victim of its own success. The area around it has gotten so upscale that the people living there now are probably less tolerant of rowdy undergraduates than the people they bought their houses from were.</p>
<p>MomofWC - This police thing on campus must be new or maybe just a once in a blue moon event. I know lots of Penn kids and they have reported (for years) lenient policies on underage drinking. So maybe it’s changing. Now PSU cops…don’t mess with them. They’re known for “nabbing” underage drinkers and get hundreds per year (just not at football games when lots of alumns are around).
I live in the suburbs of Philly and have no desire to move to center city. I live close enough so it’s pretty easy to attend concerts and games. The crime has been really scary…and seems to be getting worse. I like quiet too so forget the big city life for me. Overall though, I like Philly, and MUCH prefer it over NYC. NYC makes my blood pressure rise. Too crowded ( I always feel like I’m in a herd of cattle when I go there) and WAY too pricey. Everyone’s different…</p>
<p>The Penn police are very lenient. They just want to make sure everyone is safe and not too noisy. This state police thing was unusual and, in my view, pretty frightening. How were these kids even supposed to know they were really cops since they had no uniforms? Neither my son or his friend had alcohol in their possession or were being loud. They were just grabbed on the sidewalk. I guess there was a need for some revenue.</p>
<p>Parking attendants in Philly are well known for being brutal…there’s even a reality tv show dedicated to them -LOL- Parking Wars - [Parking</a> Wars - A&E TV](<a href=“http://www.aetv.com/parking-wars/]Parking”>Watch Parking Wars Full Episodes, Video & More | A&E)<br>
I’ve seen it too - I go to a great park in Philly for walking and running, and on nice days, they run out of parking spaces in the small lot. So folks park up and down on one side of the road - there’s plenty of room really - no hazard. Then the parking cops stroll up and down handing out tickets with scowls on their faces. Where are these folks supposed to go? The way the park is configured, there’s really no place to park your car and walk. Give it a rest!</p>