Restructuring the Philadelphia Region: Metropolitan Divisions and Inequality

1 Expansion, Decline, and Geographies of Inequality

1 EXPANSION, DECLINE, AND GEOGRAPHIES OF INEQUALITY  T he narrative of the Philadelphia region’s transition into the twenty- first century is a tale of mixed themes. The metropolitan area has expanded dramatically, developing a complex spatial pattern of inequality that defies conventional categories of city and suburb. The timing of growth and decline has affected the kinds of communities we find in different locations in the region. At the most basic level, the emergence of elite suburbs in the late nineteenth century and the emergence of middle-class suburbs in the early- to middle-twentieth century created patterns of housing and land use that in turn affected the subsequent transformations that took place after World War II. The diverse development trajectories of the region’s communities suggested to us that we need more complex categories for thinking about these patterns than “city” and “suburb.” Relying on the simple distinction between city and suburbs does not capture the dynamics of regional development in a decentered region. As a consequence, we have created a typology of the region ’s communities that emerges from a cluster analysis of the population, socioeconomic , and housing differences among communities. Access to jobs, housing, and educational opportunities is markedly different in the resulting five community types: Urban Centers, Stable Working Communities, Established Towns, Middle-Class Suburbs, and Affluent Suburbs. Accordingly, we use this chapter to begin the discussion of several geographies that affect access to income, wealth, and opportunities for mobility. Simultaneous Growth and Decline The metropolitan region surrounding Philadelphia covers a nine-county area that stretches from immediately below Trenton, New Jersey, in the north down to rural Salem County, New Jersey, in the south and from the far western reaches of Chester County, Pennsylvania, to the farmland in the eastern portion of Burlington County, New Jersey. Different parts of this region have experienced dramatically different development trajectories during the past sixty years, as Table 1.1 shows. The table portrays population changes during that period. The city of Philadelphia, whose government serves as both a local authority and a county, lost over one-fifth (21.4 percent) of its population from 1940 to 2000. Among the eight suburban counties, the rates of growth experienced during those sixty years differed widely, from a low of 52 percent to a high of 455 percent. Overall, the population growth and simultaneous decline in different parts of the region resulted in a net loss of population during the 1980s, followed by an improved picture (3 percent gain) during the 1990s. Rapid growth in some communities combined with population loss in others suggests a region that “churns” its population across locations. This is most strongly seen in census information on recent migration (since 1995). The 2000 census collected information on where residents over the age of five had 16 C H A P T E R O N E PA Burlington Camden Co Camden Co Philadelphia Co Philadelphia Co Camden Gloucester Salem Philadelphia Bucks Montgomery Chester Delaware NJ DE MD FIGURE 1.1 The region: Philadelphia and eight surrounding counties. been living in 1995. As Table 1.2 indicates, the majority of people living in the region in 2000 had not moved since 1995. Of those who had moved, almost three-quarters (73.6 percent) had moved from someplace within the region. This pattern varied across the region. Table 1.3 examines the same classification on a county-by-county basis but adds one more piece of information: the percentage of recent movers who had come from outside the metropolitan area E X P A N S I O N , D E C L I N E , A N D G E O G R A P H I E S O F I N E Q U A L I T Y 17 TABLE 1.1 COUNTY AND REGIONAL POPULATION CHANGE, 1940–2000 Population, Population, Change, Growth 1940 2000 1940–2000 (%) Decade* Philadelphia 1,931,334 1,517,550 −21.4 1940s Bucks 107,715 597,635 454.8 1950s Chester 135,626 433,501 219.6 1980s Delaware 310,756 550,864 77.3 1960s Montgomery 289,247 750,097 159.3 1970s Burlington 97,013 423,394 336.4 1960s Camden 255,727 508,932 99.0 1950s Gloucester 72,219 254,673 252.6 1960s Salem 42,274 64,285 52.1 1950s Region 3,241,911 5,100,931...