Under the Radar Urban Comebacks

[PhilliesPhan]

This area of Philadelphia is going to be one to keep an eye on for years to come:

https://www.ocfrealty.com/naked-phil...onrail-tracks/

All of these projects saddle the Conrail tracks, which has long been the divider between fully gentrified Fishtown and fast-gentrifying East Kensington and Olde Richmond from Port Richmond (a long-stable neighborhood beginning to see spillover from the two aforementioned neighborhoods) and the Kensington that most people are familiar with. With development pressure from Fishtown and East Kensington spreading north and northeast, and with the City finally cleaning up the open-air drug market along Kensington Avenue, the projects mentioned in the article are going to push the development wave firmly over the tracks.

In the future, I firmly believe that my wife and I are going to talk about Kensington in the same way that my mom talks about Northern Liberties. She loves to tell stories of how Northern Liberties was a seedy neighborhood full of crackheads around the time I was born in the mid-90s. Our future children may find Kensington to be just as trendy as my wife and I find Fishtown to be today.

[MolsonExport]

1979 (I have the soundtrack for Taxi Driver in my head, as I look at these):
• Video Link

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by PhilliesPhan

This area of Philadelphia is going to be one to keep an eye on for years to come:

https://www.ocfrealty.com/naked-phil...onrail-tracks/

All of these projects saddle the Conrail tracks, which has long been the divider between fully gentrified Fishtown and fast-gentrifying East Kensington and Olde Richmond from Port Richmond (a long-stable neighborhood beginning to see spillover from the two aforementioned neighborhoods) and the Kensington that most people are familiar with. With development pressure from Fishtown and East Kensington spreading north and northeast, and with the City finally cleaning up the open-air drug market along Kensington Avenue, the projects mentioned in the article are going to push the development wave firmly over the tracks.

In the future, I firmly believe that my wife and I are going to talk about Kensington in the same way that my mom talks about Northern Liberties. She loves to tell stories of how Northern Liberties was a seedy neighborhood full of crackheads around the time I was born in the mid-90s. Our future children may find Kensington to be just as trendy as my wife and I find Fishtown to be today.

I live in Oregon and look at Kensington real estate. Thats a big neighborhood. All those videos you see on the internet are just on the main drag and around that park. Go north or south a few blocks and it looks pretty good in alot of spots. You have to dig thru the weeds a bit to find some gems.

[MolsonExport]

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/new...1970s-vergara/

[Crawford]

Those pics are from very different areas.

First is modern-day Tribeca. At the time it would have been a largely abandoned market district. Washington Market moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx in the late 1960's, so the area was basically abandoned. Then artists took the loft spaces and gentrification eventually ensued. Now extremely affluent.

Second pic is South Bronx. Morrisania, which at the time was one of the roughest and poorest areas of the city. Still a generally poor area, but revitalized.

[MolsonExport]

yes, they are from different neighborhoods and boroughs of New York. Much of the city was badly decaying back then. I remember my first trip in 1985...things were improving in Midtown, but Times Square, Harlem, and the Lower East Side were squalid. South Bronx was no-go:


https://nytravelswinston.travel.blog...a-south-bronx/

[Crawford]

I visited NYC with parents as a child, but my earliest memories of really exploring NYC was in 1996. Even then, the LES and Harlem were still pretty rough. Times Square was cleaned up by that point. It wasn't really until the early 2000's, under Bloomberg, when immigration & gentrification really took hold citywide.

I wish I was old enough to have explored NYC in the 1970's.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

yes, they are from different neighborhoods and boroughs of New York. Much of the city was badly decaying back then. I remember my first trip in 1985...things were improving in Midtown, but Times Square, Harlem, and the Lower East Side were squalid. South Bronx was no-go:


https://nytravelswinston.travel.blog...a-south-bronx/

Yeah, this is the neighborhood where they filmed Wolfen, a weird early 80's werewolf flick. It was the most devastated neighborhood in the city. Jimmy Carter came to view the devastation.

This is the same street scene today (you see the same nice-looking public school, which thankfully survived). Still a poor area, but totally fine.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8361...8192?entry=ttu

[Bailey]

Houston is seeing a bunch of 'contained and focused infill' that is really creating new connective walkable urban districts within the city.

Here is an example of what is Under Constriction and on the Boards, for this focused area:

[bridge25]

Originally Posted by PhilliesPhan

This area of Philadelphia is going to be one to keep an eye on for years to come:

https://www.ocfrealty.com/naked-phil...onrail-tracks/

All of these projects saddle the Conrail tracks, which has long been the divider between fully gentrified Fishtown and fast-gentrifying East Kensington and Olde Richmond from Port Richmond (a long-stable neighborhood beginning to see spillover from the two aforementioned neighborhoods) and the Kensington that most people are familiar with. With development pressure from Fishtown and East Kensington spreading north and northeast, and with the City finally cleaning up the open-air drug market along Kensington Avenue, the projects mentioned in the article are going to push the development wave firmly over the tracks.

In the future, I firmly believe that my wife and I are going to talk about Kensington in the same way that my mom talks about Northern Liberties. She loves to tell stories of how Northern Liberties was a seedy neighborhood full of crackheads around the time I was born in the mid-90s. Our future children may find Kensington to be just as trendy as my wife and I find Fishtown to be today.

South and East Kensington is great now. It's kind of wild to hear people talk about how terrible Kensington is. It's actually a huge neighborhood and the problem areas are really just the northern/eastern part of the neighborhood. East Kensington is probably one of the "coolest" parts of the city right now in terms of new stuff opening up.

The border of Kensington/Fishtown along Front Street is another area that's in the midst of a massive change. It's going to be one of those places where you look at street view and it's mostly abandoned and in 5-6 years, it's built up with mixed-use buildings and new storefronts. It's literally almost 10 blocks of nothing but construction right now.

An area of Philly that has definitely had a comeback of sorts of Manayunk and Roxborough. It's maybe not your traditional comeback story because neither one really hit that hard of times. However, both neighborhoods really fell out of favor before the pandemic. Fewer restaurants, not really hip, very little construction. Since the pandemic, both neighborhoods are absolutely booming and now the new restaurants are coming, too. A lot of this is because you can simply get more space, a yard, while still being in the city. Housing prices are through the roof in both neighborhoods.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, this is the neighborhood where they filmed Wolfen, a weird early 80's werewolf flick. It was the most devastated neighborhood in the city. Jimmy Carter came to view the devastation.

This is the same street scene today (you see the same nice-looking public school, which thankfully survived). Still a poor area, but totally fine.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8361...8192?entry=ttu

yeah, I remember being fascinated while watching "Wolfen"...not by the movie, but by the sheer decay of the South Bronx.

• Video Link

^skip to 1:14 for South Bronx decrepitude

Also:
• Video Link

[chimpskibot]

Originally Posted by PhilliesPhan

This area of Philadelphia is going to be one to keep an eye on for years to come:

https://www.ocfrealty.com/naked-phil...onrail-tracks/

All of these projects saddle the Conrail tracks, which has long been the divider between fully gentrified Fishtown and fast-gentrifying East Kensington and Olde Richmond from Port Richmond (a long-stable neighborhood beginning to see spillover from the two aforementioned neighborhoods) and the Kensington that most people are familiar with. With development pressure from Fishtown and East Kensington spreading north and northeast, and with the City finally cleaning up the open-air drug market along Kensington Avenue, the projects mentioned in the article are going to push the development wave firmly over the tracks.

In the future, I firmly believe that my wife and I are going to talk about Kensington in the same way that my mom talks about Northern Liberties. She loves to tell stories of how Northern Liberties was a seedy neighborhood full of crackheads around the time I was born in the mid-90s. Our future children may find Kensington to be just as trendy as my wife and I find Fishtown to be today.

Yes the riverwards group and Mo Rushdy will be looked back as visionaries for being so bullish on central Kensington's redevelopment. I wouldn't be surprised if median HH income nearly doubles in this area by the end of the decade.

[isaidso]

Not the extreme swings one sees in the US but a good half of Canadian cities (and in every region of the country) are experiencing a significant urban resurgence. It's not limited to the big cities of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Urban cores are filling in, people are moving there, retail is opening to service the increased population, and PT is being expanded/improved.

Some are further along than others but this is a nationwide phenomenon. Some of the most notable are Halifax, Moncton, Ottawa, Hamilton, KW, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Kelowna, Victoria. Others are set to follow although there are some small slow growing cities like Saguenay, Sudbury, and Thunder Bay that fall further and further behind.

It gives one reason for optimism when one sees a metro of 650,000 building rail. Kitchener-Waterloo is one of the smallest metros in North America with LRT. Their Ion LRT opened in 2019.


Kitchener-Waterloo's ION light rail system


https://www.urban-transport-magazine...ew-light-rail/

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Bailey

Houston is seeing a bunch of 'contained and focused infill' that is really creating new connective walkable urban districts within the city.

Here is an example of what is Under Constriction and on the Boards, for this focused area:

Houston keeps on claiming to be walkable and I've yet to ever see a pedestrian anywhere in Houston ever. Except for maybe from the car park to the shopping center in which the person is about to enter.

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I visited NYC with parents as a child, but my earliest memories of really exploring NYC was in 1996. Even then, the LES and Harlem were still pretty rough. Times Square was cleaned up by that point. It wasn't really until the early 2000's, under Bloomberg, when immigration & gentrification really took hold citywide.

I wish I was old enough to have explored NYC in the 1970's.

I hate to give him credit, but NYC (especially Manhattan) really began to clean up during Rudy's administration. Sanitized might be a more accurate description, but even the 80s weren't all that terrible in Manhattan. I had friends living in the East Village in the in the Alphabets. It felt fairly safe around there until you crossed Ave. C. Actually most of Manhattan, including Midtown and Times Square, was never actually the basket case that folks like to portray. It was often seedy and even a bit menacing, but it was also full of life and normal NYC activity. I was living in DC for most of the 80s and early 90s, but I was a frequent visitor to NY and managed to see a lot of the edgy night life found in the Meat Packing district and also in the East Village. Also attended a lot of theater in Times Square area and elsewhere. I usually stayed with friends on the UWS or in the East Village and was out at all hours of the night. I lived in NYC off and on in the late 60s and early 70 (UWS and Morningside Heights), so I am pretty familiar with Manhattan during that entire period. Was at Columbia in 1968 with a part time job in the Graduate Studies admissions office in the ground floor of Low Library (Deja vu moment this spring!). I spent a little time in Brooklyn, but I can't really speak to the quality of life there during that time frame. I am certain that many visitors and suburban dwellers felt uncomfortable in NYC in the second half of the 20th Century, but I always felt safe and very happy to be there.

[Crawford]

Yeah, from older colleagues who lived thru that era, some of the disorder/decline narrative is a bit exaggerated. The East Side of Manhattan never really had major issues, and the West Side, while it had seedy parts (Times Square esp.), there weren't really no-go zones in Manhattan outside of parts of Harlem and the eastern fringes of the LES/Alphabet City.

The city was messy and intimidating but it was never exactly Death Wish/Warriors caricatures. Even in the absolutely worst years, you still had millions of regular people riding the subways every day, walking the streets, going to work, school, having fun, etc. And it was still the richest, most dynamic city economy anywhere.

And the 1980's were clearly trending better than the 1970's, at least in the core parts. The worst years seem to be mid-late 70's.

[craigs]

I first started hanging out in NYC without my family in 1988. My friends and I would pile into a car and head down from Boston. We always crashed in the Lower East Side (Rivington near the Bowery). The area had seen better days (and is seeing better days now), but we thought it was a perfectly functional and reasonably safe 'home base' for our explorations of the city. In fact, I was staying there during the Tompkins Square riots in the East Village (which is part of the plot in Rent). If you listened to the radio or television it was bedlam, but on the street the disorder was limited to just that immediate vicinity.

Anyway, in those years we would drive around Brooklyn for hours and it seemed much like the LES--ungentrified, a bit faded, but the bones were solid and it seemed completely normal. We obviously didn't go to East New York or whatever, but as I remember it most of the heart of Brooklyn in the late 1980s and early 1990s consisted of regular folks just living their lives. And the whole city, including Brooklyn and the LES, kept getting cleaner, safer, and more functional in those years before Darth Giuliani's reign.

[iheartthed]

Giuliani probably gets far too much credit for NYC's comeback. The city had already started to reverse the population decline before he was elected mayor, recovering about 30% of the lost populations in the 1980s alone. Also, it was Ed Koch that spearheaded the turnaround of Times Square. By the time Giuliani was elected in 1994, the revival was well in motion.

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Giuliani probably gets far too much credit for NYC's comeback. The city had already started to reverse the population decline before he was elected mayor, recovering about 30% of the lost populations in the 1980s alone. Also, it was Ed Koch that spearheaded the turnaround of Times Square. By the time Giuliani was elected in 1994, the revival was well in motion.

The Times Square/42nd St. turnaround was a slow going proposition. It sort of kicked off during the Koch administration, but it was another 10 to 15 years before major changes became visible. Koch maybe deserves more credit, but street life in Manhattan really did become safer and more sanitized when Rudy took over the helm and hired William Bratton as his police commissioner. A lot of people objected the way police were conducting things under the "no broken window" policies of the Giuliani era, but just about everyone agreed that conditions on the street had improved- less vagrancy, safer parks and subways, less graffiti, people threatened with fines for public urination, public drinking, etc. The streets were a bit less fun maybe, but public morale overall improved a lot as a result of this no nonsense approach to policing. I am most certainly not a fan of Rudy G., but I thought he was a pretty good mayor.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

yes, they are from different neighborhoods and boroughs of New York. Much of the city was badly decaying back then. I remember my first trip in 1985...things were improving in Midtown, but Times Square, Harlem, and the Lower East Side were squalid. South Bronx was no-go:


https://nytravelswinston.travel.blog...a-south-bronx/

I first visited NYC in 1986 and it was still pretty post apocalyptic but raw with loads of character as were the people and wish I was old enough to have been able to explore it before it was revitalized in the early to mid 90's.