Local economy and the power of investing in our own communities

By now, people in Philadelphia know that Chinatown is opposed to this arena. It is increasingly evident that there is widespread popular opposition to the arena. Arena proponents sometimes ask “Well, if you don’t want an arena, what else can you put there?” or sometimes declare “Chinatown shouldn’t be able to block the development of the city.” And the developers have threatened that even worse possibilities loom if (when) the arena is blocked. I have a vision for the Fashion District site – a vision informed precisely by those things that make Chinatown so important and precious. Relationships, community, small family businesses, a locally generated economy with big regional impacts, culture and experiences only available in our urban core. In response to the question “What else could we put there?” I wrote this proposal. This is a proposal from the heart – for the heart of the city. 

Philadelphia,  “the city of neighborhoods,”  once understood residential communities as sources of vitality and sustainability. Once, Philadelphia neighborhoods built strong individual local economies around solid jobs, strong ethnic identity, waves of immigration and migration. 

Yet, recent economic policies have favored the creation of transient residential spaces: large apartment complexes maximizing profits for individual developers who take advantage of tax abatements. Large corporate projects that are not committed to the residential communities that comprise the backbone of our city. 

In fact, small businesses have long been the foundation of local economies. They create jobs that develop relationships with and among workers, residents, and all those with whom they interact. They have multiplier effects. They are generative, and mutually reinforcing. Small businesses in our communities build a sense of belonging in, and to, our city by providing community gathering spaces, opportunities for people to connect and create a strong sense of identity – a place-based local identity rooted in the city itself. Small businesses make and provide necessary goods and services for people in a living, vital, community. And when a community is sustainable, these small businesses become multigenerational lifelines and legacies, sites generating memories, skills and relationships as well as a sustainable living. 

We see this in Chinatown.

Multigenerational small businesses include specialist provisioners – catering to the needs of the community rather than outsiders. Everyday and ritual needs for life’s necessities—altars, the things needed to celebrate holidays, medicines, food and cookery—are the lifeblood of economic development and of cultural development as well. In recent years, these community lifelines have been bypassed and undercut by the false belief that corporate investment will drive our local economy. This is antithetical to local development and community vitality.

What is a uniquely Philadelphian approach to the development of the heart of our city? How does a city that prides itself in history and culture reimagine the future in a post-Covid city? Not with a cookie cutter corporate behemoth project approach— the development “vision” that has consistently destroyed local economies and local small businesses, and cleared residential communities of long term residents, in sites across the country.  We have ample examples of this failed model. 

A new vision is required to offer real alternatives to this kind of corporate development model.  

Imagine the money spent on everyday goods continuing to recirculate in the local economy. Imagine local businesses providing ample, meaningful employment opportunities. What if the backbone of our downtown development brought the economy back to a human scale? What if our focus was on developing community cohesion, cultural resonance and place based economic development that directly contribute to our own residents and communities’ well-being? What if principles of a green path and long-term sustenance and sustainability oriented our plans? What if we used the principles utilized globally in feminist planning as a tool for planning our path forward? And what if our downtown core – easily accessible from all areas – served to drive local economic development, heal ethnic and racial rifts, promote interdependence and allow for more frequent interactions across our diverse communities, fostering face-to-face interpersonal relationships?

Local initiatives are necessary to building a new economy from the ground up. Philadelphia’s strengths lie in two interrelated things:  a) the diversity that an urban center offers, challenging the monoculture of the surrounding suburbs with a vibrancy that only a city can offer b) the kinds of arts and culture that are only available in the city – and often reflective of the rich diversity of a city’s communities. 

A Proposal: Culture at the Heart

Imagine…

A center city space housing a combination of food, shopping, services, arts and culture – all focused on local small business, community based organizations, creatives and education.

A food court filled with small family owned businesses serving ethnic food from across the city. There are workshops and the technical support small businesses need.

Work places for culturally sustaining creatives are housed here. Dance companies, music ensembles, and visual artists. There is much needed rehearsal space, classes accessible to all in the city, and performance spaces. A cluster of non-profit arts and culture programs working with arts funders from the philanthropic community cultivate and grow the region’s  valuable and unique creative forces here. This is a hub: a  gathering place for ethnic communities across the city who come to teach and learn. A regional attraction for people far beyond the borders of Philadelphia. A space offering something unavailable anywhere else in the state. 

Vendors who are local small businesses provide goods produced by local artisans. Artists in residence at Culture in the Heart have opportunities to market their products. Elders have a pathway to pass down precious knowledge.

Organizations focused on local economic development and green technology, advocacy organizations, immigrant and refugee service organizations, and other  non-profits serving communities across the city can locate their offices here in order to be accessible. 

Educational opportunities abound: Classes and seminars feature the languages, histories and cultures of the city. English classes are offered for newly arrived immigrants. Workshops – not only for small business owners, but on a range of things that all Philadelphians could benefit from – access to health care, understanding city services and more. 

An innovative public school serves English Language Learners – but not only English Language Learners –  and ensures that language and cultural maintenance and development are viewed as the asset they are. Here, students from all over the city learn communications skills for the next century, helping to foster a home grown multi-lingual pool of talent that is embedded in local communities. Students, with the support of their teachers,  apply the skills they are learning to help market the local businesses that share their space, report on the issues faced by the communities who use the space, and help create websites, social media campaigns and more. 

A library of things: A concept already implemented in Europe and some locales within the US. Where people can check out “things” – anything from kitchenware to power tools – needed for limited use, or to try out newly acquired skills. A way for things to be donated, recycled. A place to employ people who can fix and maintain things. Workshops offered in the space teach basic skills in woodworking, electronic repair, sewing, cooking and more. A place designed to limit waste in the city, to foster skill building, enhance leisure, create community.  

Not just affordable, but purposely priced units for living scale down the inflationary cost of real estate caused by equity driven financialization of housing. We provide truly affordable housing – housing that, for example, front line workers like teachers, transit workers, nurses, can afford. 

A vibrant place where all Philadelphians – including women, children and elderly – can feel safe, welcome, seen, heard, celebrated. 

A place that the city, the individual residents of the space, and philanthropy all contribute to co-creating. 

A place that is unabashedly Philadelphia – a collective manifestation of the diverse communities that have served as the backbone of the city since its founding. A forward-looking central city place that serves as a national model for community-centered revitalization. And yes, a place that brings in transient dollars, tourists, and suburban escapists as well – but on a human, liveable scale. 

Reality Check

Many of the Philadelphia neighborhoods that are most vibrant are those with small local, often immigrant-run businesses, and (unlike downtown and adjacent neighborhoods) most have revitalized largely without gentrification and displacement – Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, 6th – 11th Streets along Washington Avenue, and 7th Street below Snyder Ave. as well as 5th Street in various parts of North Philadelphia and Olney, Castor and other avenues in the Northeast, are some examples of vibrant, local communities. 

Beyond Philadelphia, there are places that can be seen as models of strong local economic spaces. Flushing, New York has become a major hub of local, family run businesses that support patrons from the city and the world and  whose unique small businesses attract people into the area. In Philadelphia, Reading Terminal Market could be complemented by such development and the Reading Market itself shows the popularity of spaces highlighting small local businesses with both local patrons and tourists alike. 

Some will say downtown development and downtown retail are different from neighborhood development and retail. The high land values and fixed costs (e.g., security) downtown, not to mention the large footprint(s) of the retail space in the Gallery/Fashion District, require bigger tenants that can pay the rent. Many small, local businesses, whether retailers or service providers, would probably struggle to operate at price points or do enough volume to pay the “downtown rent.” 

But small businesses also drive downtown development and are successful (contrary to the old, tired narrative of urban economists working to justify the decisions of retail chains and big developers). Places that house food halls with local businesses are more exciting and generally have healthier, and more ethically produced food, than food courts with chains. These are the special places that people – locals and tourists alike – most appreciate. Downtowns in the US and other countries have transformed in the 21st century largely – and most successfully – with local businesses, not the older model of chains and behemoth development. Small businesses drive economic growth overall, and they create more multiplier effects, partly through more local sourcing and often higher wages that go directly to the small business owner, rather than the sorts of corporations that rent space in arenas, food courts, and shopping malls and where proceeds revert to corporate entities with no ties to – and no allegiance to – the city. 

These ideas for bundling services and production for the public good are hardly radical. According to this 2020 article from Forbes, hardly a bastion of radical, wildly unattainable ideals, failed malls present an opportunity to build a new kind of tenant solution that builds bundles of national and regional human services including: