A City I Never Learned to Love

As someone born and raised in the sprawling suburbs outside of Philadelphia, the city has always felt like a distant presence. Especially growing up, my family would make the twenty minute commute to the city for Korean food and Philly cheesesteaks, or go shopping around Rittenhouse Square Park in my teens. It was always interesting to see such an entirely different urban landscape being accessible right next door -- a city strongly divided by university cities, affluent high rises, and deteriorating brick project split-homes. Driving through, my parents who grew up in Philly would point out reminiscent memories from their twenties: stores that closed down and rich housing that became subsidized -- and it was always interesting to hear how the city changed. What once used to house the upper classes of Philadelphia has all converted into split wall homes, and lack of parking space plagues the unmaintained streets with double parallel parking, and it feels almost dystopian. These observations made the city feel less like a unified whole and more like a patchwork of disconnected realities, stitched together by roads and memories rather than shared progress. My suburban hometown was far from this under developed reality, featuring catered neighborhoods and house properties with glorious lawns and backyards. And to think this was all merely ten minutes away from the cities of Camden and Southern Philadelphia was foreign. As I grew older I wouldn't dare to drive my car into the city, filled with congestion and insane rush hour traffic. Even the PATCO train which my friends and I often took to University City was lined with underdevelopment and lack of maintenance, with the stations leaking plumbing and homeless drug addicts sleeping along the stairs. These moments made the systems that are meant to connect the city feel more separated, reinforcing the sense that decline was embedded into everyday infrastructure. My parents would advise me to "plug my nose and run" when I hit the "dangerous" parts of the city, and I was never allowed beyond the high rises and parks without my friends. Growing up you'd hear stories of students being chased by the homeless population and how dirty the city is becoming, and to be fully honest the city never maintained a romanticized memory in my head. Any time I visited and became exposed to the true reality of an unkempt metropolis, I would question how a simple river created such contrasting urban fabrics. Philadelphia truly felt like a real life Gotham, and I would always question if the southern outlines of the city would ever become transformed back into the developed properties my parents once lived in. While these underdeveloped areas generate the cultural cuisine hotspots, I feel that Philly will always leave a bitter taste in my mouth, remaining somewhere I'd never truly love visiting from how apparent lack of maintenance endures. In recent years, Fishtown and Brewerytown have finally seen this sense of redevelopment, however the ethics of gentrification and erasure of cultural notes from these areas are heavily criticized by Philadelphian residents. Even walking through these areas with my parents, the area has generally turned entirely plain and most of the diverse populations have been booted out of the regions into the more underdeveloped areas -- replaced by uniform developments stripped of the character that once defined them. I think Philadelphia as a whole sits in my mind as a big, ongoing urban project that doesn't feel real sometimes -- especially as in recent years the city has made a bigger move to elevate regions closer to Center and University city. However, it still feels wrong to drive through the southern regions sprawled from the big stadiums on the outskirts by the river -- remaining neglected and entirely underdeveloped as it spirals further and further into a urban ghetto. This uneven attention highlights how cities can selectively grow, leaving certain communities suspended in decline while others are polished for visibility.