The People Screaming Were White

Hall of Mirrors in South Philly

Outdoor dining, Asbury Park.

Professor Elijah Anderson has written a book about Center City Philadelphia entitled The Cosmopolitan Canopy (2011). He points to the Reading Terminal Market and Rittenhouse Square, in particular, as places where all people are welcome, and where just about everybody tries to be nice to one another. This attitude of welcome and mutual kindness contrasts with many other parts of the city, which are best analyzed as urban villages, where residents are clannish and deeply suspicious of outsiders. You don't need to be a gated community to be a closed community, or at least one that tries hard to be so.

I found myself mulling these thoughts as I attended yet another meeting on the future of Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia. At the Christian Street Y, Tuesday, March 1, 6:30 p.m. I got there at 6 in an attempt to make sure I got a  seat, and it was a good thing that I did so. The meeting was in the gym, a large space, but there were remarkably few chairs set out for the audience. The vast majority of attendees stood.

The show began with Mike Carroll, the deputy managing director in charge of the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability (Otis); he ran through the final final design for the remaking of this street. He was standing at the front, behind a desk, with the presentation slides on the wall behind him and a large microphone in his hand. 

Mike's an accomplished speaker with a good baritone voice, but soon I found myself unable to hear him. There were many hecklers in the audience; the one standing behind me and basically shouting into my good ear had a particularly shrill voice. I did try to follow her meaning for a while. As nearly as I could tell, her argument boiled down to this: You didn't consult the neighbors (not true), we're the neighbors (okay, I believe you), we don't want the redesigned road (other people do), so don't do it (it doesn't work quite like that).

This person was unmasked, but had a ready answer for those who queried her on the topic: "Covid is bullshit!" Nearly a million dead, and the coronavirus is bullshit.

As nearly as I could tell, the hecklers were all white. I was sitting among a group of Black neighbors who, like me, had arrived early and gotten seats. I doubt they were particularly happy about the street redesign. I have my own reservations about it. But they weren't yelling. They were sitting quietly and attending to Mike Carroll as best they could.

As I've stated before, I think the current final design, which was reworked from the previous final design, was not brought about by the desire to please the Black residents of Point Breeze. I think it flows from a desire to mollify the owners of businesses located along Washington Avenue. Call them the Auto Repair Oligarchs.

And I think that the business owners, like the Black community in Point Breeze, are urban villagers. They want to have unilateral control over the space they occupy, and they don't like outsiders. Although I think the oligarchs do like the money that comes in from outside.

The Black community in Point Breeze rightly fears gentrification. I think the existing businesses on Washington Avenue fear being replaced by more upscale businesses and large apartment buildings. These processes are already underway, and if the City of Philadelphia were truly interested in slowing the rate of change, there are a number of things it could do, such as helping homeowners in Point Breeze to fix up their homes so they would be less tempted to sell. 

Maintaining Washington Avenue as a barrier between Point Breeze and the neighborhoods to the north may or may not slow the rate of gentrification, but it will certainly encourage the new people moving in to use their cars more and to walk and bicycle less. This is because, right now, you're a lot safer in a car on Washington Avenue than you are either on foot or on a bike.

Towards the end of Cosmopolitan Canopy, Professor Anderson suggests that it would be nice to see the concept move out from Center City and into other parts of Philadelphia. I like that idea quite a lot, and I think the battle on Washington Avenue is basically about an expanding cosmopolitan canopy. This could be rooted in the existing urban villages, if people were willing to live together with mutual respect and kindness. 

Near Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Feb. 27, 2022. 

See also A Turning Point; Quo Vadis, Philadelphia? and Do We Secretly Want Ugly Cities and Dangerous Streets?