City revitalization, greening on agenda for campaigns

Major cities across the United States are spending time, money and effort on improving the quality of life for their residents, and Philadelphia is certainly no exception.

With the mayoral election just a few days away, voters will be bringing their opinions on the city's revitalization strategy with them to the polls.

"Everybody wants to see their neighborhoods looking good," said Steve Maurer, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. "It's something that people are concerned about all the time."

Since 2001, as part of a program designed to eliminate blight and revitalize the city, Mayor John Street has been using a $295 million dollar investment to combat what he describes as more than 40 years of built-up blight.

The program, known as the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, is described on the city's Web site as "a strategy to rebuild Philadelphia's neighborhoods as thriving communities with clean and secure streets, recreational and cultural outlets and quality housing."

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society is working with the NTI program on a strategy known as city greening -- turning vacant lots into clean, functional public space.

"In the fabric of a very successful city, you're going to have very healthy neighborhoods," Maurer said. "Greening is... a significant part of those neighborhoods."

Street has pledged to continue his NTI program, stressing the fact that more than 185,000 abandoned cars were removed from the streets and hundreds of abandoned properties were acquired and dangerous buildings razed in 2002.

But NTI and the mayor's city revitalization strategy has not been without its critics, least of all Sam Katz, the mayor's Republican opponent in the election. Katz believes that the mayor has not followed through on his promise to deliver more community housing.

"One of John Street's 1999 campaign promises was a pledge to speed up the construction of new housing in Philadelphia as part of neighborhood reinvestment," said Katz spokesman Nathan Raab in a statement. "Yet when new home starts are down by almost half in three years... [and] building permits are down nearly 60 percent since 2000... something is wrong."

Other critics have argued that though NTI may have made tangible changes on the ground level, Street has not lived up to his promise of fundamental change to a city administration that can often be difficult, if not impossible, to navigate. They say, for instance, that in certain cases more than 17 agencies can exercise veto power over a single development project.

But Street contends that fulfilling these promises will take time, and would have happened already if it were easy.

"Streamlining all the different housing agencies, and trying to collapse those into one is actually a really complicated proposal," Street spokesman Mark Nevins said. "It's not as easy as just waving a magic wand and making it so."

"The mayor has said that there have been times that he wished that NTI could move more quickly, but we're dealing with problems that took 50 years to create, it's not going to go away in two or three years," he added.

Katz says he wants to focus on revitalizing the city's infrastructure, rather than destroying it.

"As mayor," Raab said, "Sam will focus on construction and not just on destruction."

Regardless of who is mayor, Maurer believes that the city is uniquely positioned to be a leader in national city revitalization strategy over the next few years. Provided, he says, that the city's administration continues to focus on cleaning up Philadelphia's neighborhoods.

"Any mayor in any city in the United States has to deal with [city revitalization] right now," he said. "You have empty spaces, and you want to turn those empty spaces into open spaces."

"You get investment in neighborhoods when people feel the neighborhood is stable," he continued. "When the trash is picked up, the lots are kept clean, the houses are maintained, then you start getting real estate investment in an area, and then businesses invest."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.