(Deputy Commissioner Seth Bluestein | Photo: Yong Kim, Philadelphia Inquirer) City Commissioner Al Schmidt announced this week that he will soon resign from his position in order to take the helm as CEO of Committee of Seventy, Philadelphia’s venerable century-old good-government advocacy organization. Continue reading

(Accessible trolley infrastructure on Girard Ave | Image: DVRPC) Congress finally passed an infrastructure bill after months of unsightly sausage-making and the details of the final $1.2 trillion package are still trickling out as everyone digests what the local effects are likely to be for the Philadelphia region. The bill is massive and you can find a good high-level summary of the broad funding areas and what they mean for Philadelphia over at the Inquirer. There are a few things in particular worth calling attention to though that may be especially high-impact for Philly, and that state and local leaders should begin planning around. Continue reading

(Photo Credit: Ashley Hahn | WHYY) Vehicle electrification has figured prominently in Democratic politicians’ infrastructure and climate priorities, with various initiatives either already passed or currently in play at the federal, state, and local levels. Continue reading

(Source: Philadelphia City Planning Commission) Eric Adams, New York City’s presumptive next mayor, spoke with the journalist/podcaster Ezra Klein about his city’s housing shortage, and how he would try to resolve the dysfunctional housing and planning politics that have blocked progress in addressing it. It’s worth a listen because Adams’s responses contain some important insights for Philadelphia as the Kenney administration and his planning bureaucracy begin to think about undertaking the city’s next Comprehensive Plan. For those not yet familiar, the city’s Comprehensive Plan is the City’s roadmap that guides a lot of the long-term housing and transportation and infrastructure work, and it’s required to be updated once a decade under state law. This is the main opportunity that the Mayor’s office has to impact city housing policy and set long-term policy priorities for the built environment. Continue reading

(City Council Districts by Population Change | Sixty-Six Wards) Last month we shared some initial population numbers for the ten City Council Districts from the 2020 Census, which will be the numbers used to redraw Council districts in the forthcoming redistricting. Continue reading

Mayor Kenney in his 2015 campaign made an audacious pledge that many Mayors were making around that time, which was to reduce pedestrian deaths and serious injuries to zero, and cut the number in half by 2026. Continue reading

As an addendum to last week’s post about the luxury politics of anti-housing activists and their champions on City Council, Center City District’s monthly economic status report contains some pretty unnerving statistics about the jobs situation, like the fact that the unemployment rate still nearly double what it was in January of 2020, at 9.4 percent.  Continue reading