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Originally Posted by blorkishdork
philatonian, just my two cents and experience when looking for housing. West Philly, and specifically University City has a view of being... well... University oriented which I think deters others from moving there and opt for North or South Philly instead. I don't believe many people want to move next to a frat house or something similar (not that I think that would be likely). With that said, with University City exploding with jobs in the past decade or two, I think that changes the dynamics of the area some. As people now work in University City more, more people will want to move closer to their jobs. Also personally, I find the areas around Baltimore Ave to be much more pleasant than the areas around Market and Walnut streets, those streets feel like a toned down highway, plus the trolleys go down Baltimore so that makes connection to Center City easy (not as easy as the El of course).
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Maaaaaaybe in terms of younger people, but there are mostly families moving into the area of west philly/ucity. Penn, especially, promotes faculty/employee living all the way up to 56th street with the free $10K they give out. Its definitely not a student ghetto like Temple where only students live. Chestnut and the El are not developed simply because baltimore avenue was more of a centralized area connecting clark park, upenn, and usciences. People started buying up those large homes 10-15 years ago when baltimore avenue wasn't a destination. Jump forward all these years and now its a glorious place! 52nd street will develop before chestnut/walnut/market primarily because that whole area is just a big parking lot/gas station/car sales/auto-centric craphood of a neighborhood. I remember walking from my house on 46th and spruce to the EL every day and slipping everywhere with all the grease building up on my shoes as I walked past! The El won't develop because there is a huge scar in that area of these types of businesses. In the future, you will probably see development push west on baltimore, inch up 52nd street maybe all the way to lancaster surrounding this area and maybe if the property gets valuable enough, start creeping eastward down the el. But as it stands right now, there are much nicer affordable areas of west philly/ucity so little pressure is there to develop. Its not all bad, but the 46-45th street/chestnut/walnut region is a big ol not very nice nook to live in.