Creede, Colo. in 1880

Metropolitan boosters — men employed in the late 19th century to encourage Americans to move west to burgeoning cities — have been of interest to me lately.

I’m interested in how that concept can be brought to modern concepts or urban renewal. I came across a portion of an essay in ‘A companion to the American West,’ collected by William Francis Deverell [p. 513]:

Integral to the hinterland and ‘instant city’ models of nineteenth-century western urban history has been the figure of the urban booster. Cities in the west have been promoted, hawked and downright lied about on a scale rarely matched elsewhere in the nation. Boosters in cities on the make — Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century, San Francisco in the 1860s, Denver in the 1880s, Seattle in the 1900s, Los Angeles and Oakland in the 1920s — spared little effort in luring the investment capital, industry and residents necessary to ensure sustained economic development. Western boosters and their allies engaged in what one historian calls ‘urban imperialism,’ an endless quest for control of the markets and economic bonanzas that guaranteed real estate profits. Booster scholarship has tended to focus on the art of promotion and to see cities as products less of social construction than of capitalist fantasies. But behind boosters is the most interesting feature of western cities: urban growth as an end in itself, an economic logic fundamental to capitalism, was elevated by western boosters to the level of civic religion. In some cities, for instance, space was rarely scare but capital was. In places like Los Angeles and later Dallas and Phoenix, this led boosters to cultivate real estate markets and encourage an urban morphology that spread development horizontally across vast distances. In other cities, an opposite geography was at work, and a great deal of scare capital went into creating very expensive space. In Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, immense amounts of capital were devoted to filling tidelands and wetlands that allowed the cities to grow…

Back in February, Philadelphia magazine profiled Doogie Horner, a quirky stand up comedian who has gotten some national attention, a major publisher’s backing and has the audacity to think he’s going to stay living in Philadelphia.

Doogie Horner is a comedian, and he isn’t encouraged by what he sees inside Noche, a Center City bar filled with binge-drinking 20-somethings on this cold Tuesday night in December. The room is jet-engine loud — not the ideal setting for tonight’s stand-up gig. None of the comics are getting paid. Horner thinks the guy who booked the show is a dentist. Seriously.

While the piece was largely a profile of Horner, there was this undertone of his still trying to make in Philly — a big city in population but not in celebrity or national voice.

Los Angeles has Hollywood. New York is the country’s capital of publishing, financial and TV. Las Vegas had created an entertainment industry. Other cities have a national voice by way of a central figure who forced it that way: CNN made Atlanta a news hub; Oprah gave Chicago a national platform; Warren Buffet made the financial world come to him in Omaha. So can you be a star in Philadelphia?

Philly mag formerly had this popular back page interview series that focused on big name perspective. On the whole, they were celebrities with Philly roots who had made good… elsewhere.

A couple of those interviews in the past year were with comedians actually, one with Dom Irrera and another with Wildwood-area-native Jim Florentine, two Philly comics who felt the need to leave to chase their dreams.

The Philly area has a long list of comics you know but who left to make good. Irrera and Florentine, Bob Saget, David Brenner, Tina Fey, Kevin Hart, Todd Glass an older, dead generation like Curly Joe DeRita, Larry Fine and W. C. Fields (who famously hated Philly more than most).

Bill Cosby sure seems like the kind of cultural institution, like an Oprah, who could have forced his will and made the business come to him, but he took a different route. While he still lives in Philly, he tossed his reputation onto a cultural war and lost.

You look at those like Cosby, stars whose names reach a height that it would seem like the business would come to them, and think that’s the way to create something. In music, Hall & Oates in the 1980s represented an entire genre of blue eyed soul, and the entire Sound of Philadelphia seemed like a shot. In entertainment, Will Smith and his long-time partner DJ Jazzy Jeff seemed like institution enough to build something, perhaps followed by the Roots.

Center City-based Comcast acquired majority stake in NBC, making it one of the world’s largest media companies, though much of its TV and entertainment divisions are staying squarely in New York City.

With so many chances that didn’t much lead to anything, I wonder if there is anything a young comic scene could do, aside from the true value of building another vibrant, local community.

That’s important too, but national perception seems to need a bigger push, and a few stars help do that.

On Christmas Eve, why not discuss gifts.

For, what, the past few hundred years, the more far-flung and exotic the purchase or discovery, the better. Those emotions are mixed up into colonialism and exploration and Manifest Destiny and so many human and American spirits that I don’t care to explore them.

But I think there’s something changing there.

In 2005, I spent a small fortune in the local currency on hand-crafted wood carvings and jewelry from new friends and acquaintances in a Ghanian mountain village, all to be given to friends and family at home. I was back home for no more than two weeks before I showed off a necklace I was particularly fond of and someone remarked how similar it was to something she had seen at Target.

Oh.

I was brought back to this thought and what it means by a great last-page essay in the strong Philadelphia sustainability magazine Grid.

…I realized that local products are exotic. In this era of cross-culturalism and international trade, it’s easy to lose sight of just how little of what we buy is made where we live. Consider your morning cup of coffee, the T-shirt you’re wearing, or the bottle of water on your desk. We rarely stop to consider that an everyday product could have traveled 3,000 miles to get to us.

…

So, this year I’m looking forward to giving gifts that have the exotic provenance of my hometown. The objects will still be vessels for imparting my experiences, still carry the stories of the people I’ve met and the things I’ve enjoyed. I’m excited to show off the counter-global foods and wares that make Philadelphia unique. When you put some thought into the source, you’re giving a gift that benefits more than just its recipient. MORE

Yes.

So as technology and globalization makes the world flatter, it will be supporting a local economy and finding the most local and most special product that will be *better*.

We’ll see a trend of the local becoming more and more interesting before, of course, as a friend noted, it switches again like all trends do.

It fits into a world of sustainability and urban renewal that thrills me. I don’t know what to do with all those wood carvings now.

NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviewed rapper and cultural icon Jay-Z last month and it proved one of the more interesting episodes of one of the best, longest-running radio shows around. Jay-Z was promoting his new book Decoded (about which Amazon has an interesting video interview).

You should go ahead and listen to the interview right now.

All the highlights are here, but you should look for these discussions in particular, all of which can be found in this transcript, in addition to another longer-form interview.

Five clearest lessons from Jay-Z’s interview:

1. We created a drug-addicted generation and put them in charge of raising our poorest, most vulnerable children: Jay-Z talks about “crack-head” adults and violence fractured a rooted respect for authority and elders. Everything has been broken since.
2. The illegal drug trade is an endemic part of the local economy: Jay-Z said he had a job interview, sorta, to start selling crack, and it speaks to a yearning for structure. He also spoke about his mother knowing he dealt because, he said, everyone in the 1980s was either using or benefiting from the flow of trafficking. Yup, urban blight and cyclical violence and chronic poverty is awfully complicated.
3. Rap music and its culture come more from scared and overwhelmed teenage boys than violent killing machines: Jay-Z says ‘the music leads first,’ so, unlike rock stars who spend years playing in front of crowds first, rappers are thrust onto a stage without any experience. they’re nervous and look like it, but now that’s become a part of the culture.
4. Boys act like they hate women and then older rappers just follow the musical form: the genre and a rapper’s first music comes from teenagers and that immature worldview.
5. Memorizing lyrics gives the sense of power and talent, but nobody can do it flawlessy: Jay-Z said he’s ‘lost plenty material’

It interests me, though, when someone like Terry dives deeply into an interview like this. Because, while the past 15 years or so Jay-Z has had this businessman style, some accounts seem to describe his youth as being the good kid. Whenever Jay walks around with those dark sunglasses and suits, I think of an earlier sidekick role he played that, in addition to other tracks, produced Hawaiin Sophie.

Perhaps because of that long tenure, he still has plenty of interesting things to say.

In his interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I was particularly interested in the 40-year-old rapper talking about changing the genre to welcome aging artists like himself.

I take something of pride in sometimes indulging in great cultural luxuries long after their novelty has waned.

With that knowledge, I’ll share my thoughts on finishing the complete five-season DVD set of celebrated HBO drama ‘the Wire‘ to encourage readers to watch it again, assuming you’ve seen the show at some point since it first aired in 2002.

It’s not difficult at all to piggyback that suggestion onto the concept of the state of media and the future of news.

David Simon, the creator and primary writer of the serial drama based on the inner-workings of drugs, policing and politicking in gritty post-industrial Baltimore, was himself, quite famously, a newspaper reporter for the Baltimore Sun, giving him a career of insight.

Notably, each of the five seasons take on a different focus of the Baltimore city structure — from the drug trade, to unions to policing to, yes, reporting. So in the past few weeks after finishing the final season, I’ve delved into writing, stories, concepts and conversations. Even if you know the show well, it might be worth seeing what’s out there and, yes, connect it to media.

The clearest take away is not a new one, but its connective tissue is.

The Wire, like fiction for hundreds of years, went further to create interest, understanding complexities and raise concerns than any journalism ever has. ..Ever.

But, the important part is that Simon’s writing was so good because it was seen as so authentic. In turn, the show was so authentic because Simon came from years reporting on what he soon wrote and his other contributors had backgrounds in police work or other knowledge bases.

Journalism can be wonderful for truth but there’s a great chance no one will much see it until it’s on TV.

In one of the contributing writers suggests in a New Yorker profile of Simon that “The Wire” would be “a novel for television,” it’s a story about the “decline of the American empire.”

That’s a compelling, important story — telling the tale of post-industrial historic U.S. cities — that might be important that everyone understand, as it correlates to policy, culture and socialization.

What’s more, the show conveyed the cyclical nature of our problems. Drugs and education and unions and policing and reporting: we never truly fix problems — because they’re way more complicated than we want to admit.

The mayoral candidate that appears in the last three seasons is a reform candidate. Like many of the politicians I have met in my short reporting career, he truly believes in change. Frankly, I believe the vast majority of legislators do want to positively impact their communities — I really do. But it’s complicated. There are so many competing interests and to stay in power, you have to compromise and make trades.

It’s a cycle, like the drugs and education and the rest.

Simon was making sure you’d never be able to watch ‘Law and Order’ ever again, sayings things like, “the sort of bombastic writing tone that broadsheet editors often mistake for voice.” Slate called the program ‘the best TV show ever broadcast in America.’

After the final season, Bill Moyers interviewed David Simon:

Best readings:

• Stealing Life | Oct. 22, 2007 | by Margaret Talbot | New Yorker
• The Angriest Man In Television | January 2008 | by Mark Bowden | The Atlantic
• David Simon on cutting “The Wire” | March 10, 2008 | Q&A by Heather Havrilesky

Other characters grew their own celebrity, notably Felicia ‘Snoop’ Pearson, a hardened drug-trade soldier whose character was based loosely on her own persona. Below, she is part of a Larry King special.

Why is it called The Wire?

The show’s title referred to the wiretap that a unit of the Baltimore police force was using to keep a local drug organization under surveillance. Ultimately, the term suggested more—the way that the show allowed viewers to eavesdrop on various recondite power plays, and the way that poverty, politics, and policing were interconnected in a struggling post-industrial city. In Simon’s view, “The Wire” was never “a cop show. We were always planning to move further and further out, to build a whole city.”[Source]

The final season on the life of the Baltimore Sun:

This final season of the show, Simon told me, will be about “perception versus reality”—in particular, what kind of reality newspapers can capture and what they can’t. Newspapers across the country are shrinking, laying off beat reporters who understood their turf. More important, Simon believes, newspapers are fundamentally not equipped to convey certain kinds of complex truths. Instead, they focus on scandals—stories that have a clean moral. “It’s like, Find the eight-hundred-dollar toilet seat, find the contractor who’s double-billing,” Simon said at one point. “That’s their bread and butter. Systemic societal failure that has multiple problems—newspapers are not designed to understand it.” [Source]

David Simon and other staff, talk about the show’s ‘love letter to Baltimore.’

An interesting Wire prequel, in which young Omar Little foreshadows his future:

And finally, the famed first scene of the show’s first season:

Philadelphia has developed this reputation: Killadelphia or something like it.

In a prominent New York Times profile of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams last week,  the city was described as having been “battered for years by the worst sort of superlatives — the highest murder rate, the lowest conviction rate.”

What a damaging and sweeping comment that when reiterated and reinterpreted across media — that Philadelphia has been “battered” by having the “highest murder rate,” of what, well, they won’t say — can dramatically impact how the Cradle of Liberty is seen nationally.

Williams is supposed to be a part of a “sea change” in the city’s role of prosecuting criminals — a major Philadelphia Inquirer investigation found, as the Times reported, that “the city had failed to obtain convictions in two-thirds of cases involving violent crimes, and that thousands of cases were dismissed because prosecutors were not prepared or witnesses did not appear.”

So, yes, Philadelphia has a problem convicting criminals and crime is certainly a major sticking point for people living in cities (though I’ll add that violent crime is down nationally and many inner-ring suburbs have been battling increases in gangs and drugs and crime since the 1990s). And this ‘Killadelphia’ reputation doesn’t help… but how accurate the name is remains a point of contention here.

Three points

1. The overwhelming number of murders are targeted — as I read in a 2007 column from the Inquirer’s Tom Ferrick. Though I can’t quite recreate that point in existing literature or research offhand, it’s intuitive enough that the chances of you catching a stray or being gunned down are quite a bit less likely than we often think. In our cities, mostly poor black boys are killing poor black boys.
2. The overwhelming number of murders happen in neighborhoods most educated, relatively privileged people aren’t going to live. See this 2007 map from the Inquirer.
3. The sense of what cities are most dangerous, or at least most murder-ridden, is a remarkable marketing game.

Killadelphia’s real rap is being the most dangerous big city — with the highest murder and violent crime rates of the country’s 10 largest cities. But it’s hardly the most violent of big cities when taking in to account all of those with a quarter million people or more.

As seen in the chart above, according to 2008 figures, Pittsburgh — often lauded as a functioning, safe Midwest city — has a higher per capita murder rate than Philadelphia — yes, Pittsburgh. So does Washington D.C. St. Louis has double the murder rate and almost always lauded — the music! the food! — New Orleans has nearly three times the rate, though, yes, the post-Katrina apocolypse likely has quite a bit to do with those numbers.

There are two details that need to be settled. First, as all of the country’s crime statistic-collecting agencies are very quick to remind us, crime numbers are just crime numbers. They reflect a sea of variables and are complex matters that no one has actually entirely figured out.

Secondly, Philadelphia — and all U.S. cities — need to aspire to more. Philadelphia ought not settle with being the most violent of the country’s largest cities. With Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, Philadelphia is easily the most culturally significant of American urban centers so it should be far easier for it, like the rest, to be safer than its peers.

It’s just worth noticing how misrepresented these figures can be.

But the skew of violent crime — this perception — so interests me and will surely affect the development of all our cities.

Last month, a study from the Brookings Institution was a major news story.

White flight? In a reversal, America’s suburbs are now more likely to be home to minorities, the poor and a rapidly growing older population as many younger, educated whites move to cities for jobs and shorter commutes. [Source]

It’s complicated of course: new immigration trends chasing a different American dream, people of color from cities doing the same, white families from inner-ring suburbs moving farther from cities and younger white people moving back into those same cities (like me).

But it got me thinking about perceptions.

About how often someone who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century would disparage and dismiss our American cities as unlivable — tourist attractions amid pits and ghettos. No matter that the Brookings report suggests a larger percentage of country’s poor are now in the suburbs.

The suburban poor grew by 25 percent between 1999 and 2008 – five times the growth rate of the poor in cities. City residents are more likely to live in “deep” poverty, while a higher share of suburban residents have incomes just below the poverty line. [Source]

The report was promoted under the guise that our country needs to rethink its evaluation of our cities. That sometime in the 1950s, young white people started leaving cities for a new lifestyle. For 60 years, populations of every kind have followed what our country’s most able residents did then. Something has flipped and the speed with which it happens has everything to do with perception.

It’s funny that the two things that seem to most often keep people from living in our cities — crime and schools — are two things that are perhaps most impacted by one’s population.

If Philadelphia had 2.1 million residents (like in 1950), including a healthy swath of working families (no matter their race, religion or creed), its crime rate and public school success would be quite a bit different, I’d say.

I’d guess jobs to be the third most popular reason someone might move away from the cities. Residents and tax dollars and safer streets would impact them too.

Change is go’n come in our cities but how quickly we respond to those changes will make all the difference.

This is a conversation I’ve had too many times.

I am in Washingto D.C. today, the day after Martin Luther King day, for the inauguration of Barack Obama. While I will have much more to say on that in coming days, being here reminded me of how often we in the mid-Atlantic take for granted what we have: five of the most influential cities in the country and among the more meaningful in the world.

All Americans have relative access to them, but the densest collection of our residents can visit Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington D.C. for the weekend.

While many like to point to the availability of train access between historic European cities, the age of Middle Eastern and Asian metropolises and the culture of South American and African urban centers, I can’t help but think there is something meaningful here.

The United States is the world’s greatest exporter of culture and five of our most powerful hubs are all within eight hours.

Do you take advantage of that? If you aren’t in the region or even the country, am I overselling what I have?

Boston

Why do I care?:
Population: 608,352
Size: 89.6 sq mi
Nickname: Beantown
Symbol:
Sports Teams: Celtics, Bruins, Red Sox, Patriots
Universities: Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern University, UMass-Boston
Famed Newspaper(s): Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Herald
Famed Corporation(s): Dunkin Donuts,
Famed Citizens: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg, John F. Kennedy Jr.
Phrases to help fake you’re a local: “I’m from Wahdatown Mass!”

New York

Why do I care?: U.S. Cultural Capital
Population: 8,274,527
Size: 468.9 sq mi
Nickname: Big Apple; City that Never Sleeps
Symbol: Statue of Liberty
Sports Teams: Yankees and Mets, Giants and Jets (in name), Knicks, Rangers
Universities: New York University, Columbia University, Fordham University, Fashion Institute
Famed Newspaper(s): New York Times, New York Post and New York Daily News and Village Voice
Famed Corporation(s): Dunkin Donuts,
Famed Citizens: Adam Sandler, Rudy Giuliani, Frank Sinatra, Norman Rockwell
Famed Music: Jay-Z, Billy Joel
Big Money: John D. Rockefeller
Food: Pizza, nuts, Italian ice
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

Philadelphia

Why do I care?: U.S. Historical Capital
Population: 1,449,634
Size: 135 sq mi
Nickname: City of Brotherly Love; Illadelph
Symbol: Liberty Bell
Sports Teams: Phillies, Eagles, Flyers and 76ers
Major Universities: University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Drexel University, and La Salle University
Famed Newspaper(s): Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Tribune
Famed Corporation(s): Comcast, QVC, Vanguard, Slinky
Famed Citizens: Bill Cosby, Bob Saget, Joe Fraizer, Tina Fey, Ben Franklin
Famed Music: The Roots; Hall & Oates; Paul Robeson; Beanie Sigel; Man Man; Dr. Dog; Jill Scott
Big Money: Stephen Girard
Food: Cheesesteaks, soft pretzels, water ice, Tastykakes
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

Baltimore

Why do I care?: History; National Aquarium
Population:637,455
Size: 80.8 sq mi
Nickname: Charm City
Symbol: Waterfront
Sports Teams: Ravens, Orioles,
Major Universities: University of Maryland, Loyola University
Famed Newspaper(s): Baltimore Sun
Famed Corporation(s):
Famed Citizens: Ray Lewis, Cal Ripken Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Frederick Douglass
Famed Music: Toni Braxton
Food: Crab cakes
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

Washington D.C.

Why do I care?: U.S. Political Capital
Population: 588,292
Size: 68.3 sq mi
Nickname:
Sports Teams: Redskins, Nationals, Wizards
Universities: George Washington University, American University and Howard University
Famed Newspaper(s): Washington Post and Washington Times
Famed Corporation(s):
Famed Citizens: “Sugar” Ray Leonard; Colin Powell;  Sojourner Truth
Famed Music: Marvin Gaye Duke Ellington
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

OK, plus, having grown up in New Jersey, I had to add the Garden State.

New Jersey

Why do I care?: U.S. Political Capital
Population: 8,685,920
Size: 8,729 sq mi
Nickname: Garden State
Sports Teams: Devils, Nets (for now); Jets and Giants (really!)
Major Universities: Rutgers University; The College of New Jersey and Montclair University
Famed Newspaper(s): Newark Star-Ledger
Famed Corporation(s): Wyeth and every other pharmaceutical company known to man
Famed Citizens: Jon Stewart
Famed Music: Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean
Phrases to help fake you’re a local:

So for those nearby appreciate being so near to so many distinct cultures. Those outside of it, let me know how excessive this all is.

What did I miss?

Photo by Ronald C. Saari. See more at RonSaari.com.

It’s Christmastime in the city.

U.S. center cities of all shapes and sizes can expect a wave of traffic, from the exurbs, the suburbs, the neighborhoods and outside the region. They come for shopping and sightseeing and, really, the setting that your city will create, with lights, decorations, atmosphere, a tree and cheer.

So, on Christmas Eve, why not figure out how we can do it better.

Center City Philadelphia, downtown Chicago and midtown Manhattan are the densest urban business districts in the United States. So there can’t possibly be better places to take your family, significant other or holiday shopping list. Other cities and towns can learn from where they succeed and where they fail.

Philadelphia, where I live, lags behind the other two. The reason is people.

I have heard Philadelphia described as being either too big for its own good or the biggest small town in the world. One of the more popular urban self-descriptions is being a “city of neighborhoods.” Screw ‘em. Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods. So, those neighborhoods create their own identities and celebrations. The circle of power is small, and these other collections will quickly convince you this city of 1.5 million couldn’t have more than 8,000 residents.

Because of these small clusters, there isn’t the same push from within the city to Center City. Families from the Northeast, northwest, south, north and west need to be drawn in. The Center City Business Development Corporation, like any central location for a region or city, needs to be valued as a *thing people – families, couples, friends – do in the holiday season.

Where’s your hub?

Where does a family’s holiday tour through your center city begin? In previous years, this is something Philadelphia struggled to develop.

Today is the end of the debut of the Christmas Village, a collection of small, outdoor shops next to City Hall that has been open daily since the day after Thanksgiving. In this economy, sales were unsurprisingly sparse, but if the German-themed village, which came at no cost to the city, can become an annual event, Philly might have its home.

This summer, word came that a huge grant came through for Center City development, some of which could be used to develop a skating rink next to the city’s municipal services building, across John F. Kennedy Blvd. from the current home of the Christmas Village, on often desolate Dilworth Plaza.

That is the beginning of a hub of holiday visits, which really helps develop that holiday spirit in a city.

What’s there to do?

I am a big believer in giving families something to do for free. They’re bound to spend money anyway, but then they feel like there’s reason for them to come. Families, in turn, give a sense of wholesome safety for other people. The more people, the more eyes on the street – to allude to Jane Jacobs – the safer your center city is.

Philadelphia has a long history of businesses following this model and another turned out this year.

On Thanksgiving Day at 10 a.m., in the lobby of the Comcast Tower, now the tallest building in the city, telecommunications giant Comcast debuted a 15-minute family holiday show. Say what you will about the Philadelphia-based company, but I saw the show, which runs through the end of 2008, and on the lobby’s enormous screen, the display is mesmerizing. What’s more, it’s free, and brings hundreds of families north of JFK, if barely, every hour on the hour. Someone tell me the last time any family has walked north of City Hall, not on the Franklin Parkway, on purpose.

Comcast joins legends of Philadelphia Christmas history.

Understand that in the middle of the 20th century, Philadelphia was the capital of U.S. retail via the new department-store trend and Market East was their proud promenade. While Strawbridge & Clothier, Lit Brothers, Wanamakers have all since shuttered, their famed Christmas displays live on.

Macy’s (admittedly a big New York City flag on Market East showing which city won the title of U.S. retail capital) now displays the Dickens Village of Strawbridge fame and the old holiday light show from Wanamaker’s Grand Court. Now, parts of the Enchanted Colonial Village from Lit Brothers is displayed in the Please Touch Museum.

These are traditions like seeing Santa or having tea at the Bellvue before seeing a performance of the Nutcracker at the Acadamy of Music (the oldest opera house in the country).

On Dec. 17, all of the Avenue of the Arts first launched the lighting of its famous South Broad Street strip – at no cost to the city. If City Hall – the country’s largest municipal building – could become a bit friendlier, like it seemed when lit two years ago, there would be a splendid nexus of holiday fun, my friends.

Of course, the city’s Christmas tree, this year appropriately placed back in the City Hall courtyard (after alternately tried at Love Park, as seen above, and on Dilworth Plaza), still isn’t the display it should be. Either more decorating, more people or otherwise more action needs to happen around it. If Christmas Village can expand and develop, perhaps have portions of it in the courtyard to keep traffic around it.

Conclusions

All the lights in the world won’t create a holiday environment that will bring families and other visitors. People and lights will. Wrangle corporate involvement into offering shows or displays – I’d like to see lots more in Philadelpha, in window displays and shows from every skyscraper in Center City. You should be able to answer what is the center of your city’s holiday environment?

Then, let them come, spend money and watch the entire cycle build on itself.

Merry Christmas.

“Christmas in Philadelphia” produced by Emile D’Amico. Vocals by Jack McDade.

Top photo courtesy of Ronald C. Saari.