The city has returned to business as usual on almost every front, but last Tuesday's events have forced the cancellations of two high-profile cultural events.
City Council is resuming activity this week, and the mayor is proceeding with plans made long before Tuesday's deadly attacks in New York and Washington.
However, two main cultural events -- the Corporate council on Africa and the Splendor of Florence festivals -- will be postponed.
The city is preparing to welcome home members of an urban safety rescue team that Mayor John Street sent to New York last week. Twenty-three teams nationwide, including eight from Pennsylvania, are being "rotated to help with the exhaustion factor," according to mayoral spokeswoman Luz Cardenas.
Police Commissioner John Timoney sent five forensic experts to New York this week to help examine the crime scene surrounding what once was the World Trade Center.
"We have offered [more assistance], but they have not asked for more yet," Cardenas said.
And despite the trying times, the mayor, as well as City Council, are not putting any of their previously planned projects on hold.
"We've been very vigilant, and we are all concerned, as all of us across the nation and the world are." Cardenas said. "But as the president has asked us to do, and the mayor said himself, we need to resume to as much normalcy as possible."
Dan Fee, spokesman for City Council President Anna Verna, said that things in Council "were slowed down," for a while, though the legislators have been forced to pick up their agenda immediately.
"President Verna had considered canceling Thursday's Council session, but she didn't want to let the terrorists win," he said.
Items up for consideration include Council's redistricting plans and the mayor's anti-blight initiative.
"Certainly everyone has been concerned and has expressed their shock and outrage, but there are big things on the agenda for fall," Fee said. "It's all, quite frankly, urgent."
New homes for the Eagles and Phillies also won't be put off by the terrorist strikes, with construction on the stadiums in South Philadelphia proceeding as planned.
"None of the Phillies' work was affected," team attorney David L. Cohen said. "We maybe lost a half a day of construction, but these have been relatively manageable issues to work through."
But while the city's municipal functions and grand-scale projects go on as planned, the city's cultural events have been delayed by Tuesday's tragic events.
The Corporate Council on Africa, which has been moved to Oct. 30, will bring representatives of 35 to 40 African nations to Philadelphia.
"We were very involved with this event as it supports trade opportunities here," said Dwane Bumb, a spokesman for the Commerce Department, which oversees the event.
"We sort of didn't want to have a high-profile event with heads of state because there were security issues," Bumb said. "It's also a difficult time as far as airport accessibility is concerned."
Airport hassles were also behind the decision to postpone the Splendor of Florence, which celebrates the culture of Philadelphia's sister city, Florence.
"People arriving here for the festival were not going to be able to get here at the times they needed to be," Bumb said.
"It's difficult to pull off a festival while we're worried about people in New York," Cardenas added. "For the people coming from Florence, it was difficult to get here."
The festival was originally scheduled for last weekend, but has now been rescheduled for Oct. 10.
Bumb said that as far as actual development projects were concerned, they have not been experiencing any unusual delays.
