Another media tragedy: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down

 So reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I wrote to the Heinz Endowment, and the PBS and NPR affiliates in Pittsburgh, suggesting that the work together to acquire and continue to operate the paper.

Comparable to how WBEZ-FM/NPR took over the Chicago Sun-Times ("Chicago Public Media Announces Its Acquisition of the Chicago Sun-Times,").

And when the Kresge Foundation led a funding round during the City of Detroit's bankruptcy, to keep the collections of the city museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, intact ("Charities commit $330m to help save Detroit's art from being sold in bailout," Guardian).

The Kresge initiative was necessary because the DIA had never been incorporated as an organization separate from the City of Detroit.  

Instead, the Museum was a department/agency of the city, like the police department.  So its assets were at play during the bankruptcy.

Also a couple weeks ago, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stopped printing a paper (the Newark Star-Ledger did this a year ago or so), going to online only.

The book “News Hole: The Demise of Local Journalism and Political Engagement, discusses how enhancing local news media strengthens public involvement.

Newspapers are key to awareness about local happenings and are a key element in whether or not people participate in local civic affairs.  

In my opinion, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is a very good local paper, with strong coverage on land use issues, the arts, public health, etc. I try to go through the back file of local news articles at least once/month.

And I frequently write entries in response to PPG articles such as:

-- "Wednesday, October 19, 2022 It's not the age of the housing stock, but the ability of property owners to maintain it: Disinvestment in Pittsburgh," 2022
-- "Big Ideas for a Better Pittsburgh | and a point about world class cities," 2025
-- "Pittsburgh developer backs down on opposition to ticket fee for concerts, to be used for area improvements," 2023
-- "NBA All Star Game in Salt Lake, economic development hype | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pirates baseball team economics," 2023

Newspapers and community engagement

-- "How Local Newspapers Support Public Awareness and Community Engagement," Hornet Newspaper
-- Civic Engagement Strongly Tied to Local News Habits, Pew Research Center
-- "Rebuilding local news fosters civic engagement," American Journalism Project

According to the Hornet, newspapers:

• Provide access to information
• Hold public officials and corporations accountable
• Provide a voice for the local community
• Strengthen community identity
• Improve community life by fostering participation

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The recent history of the paper is interesting.  It's owned by a small company, Block Communications, with papers in Toledo and Pittsburgh.  I think the original Block used to be an agent for the Hearst Newspapers Group back in the day, buying newspapers.

Pittsburgh used to have two papers, the Press owned by E.W. Scripps, and the PPG.  They ran together on a joint operating group basis, where the Press ran the business operations and printing, with two separate editorial staffs.  But then there was a strike in 1992.

Scripps decided to scrap their paper.   And Block Communications took over the business operations and kept the paper running.

The paper was seen as liberal, but then John Block took over as publisher and he is conservative.  This created problems and the newspaper has been under a strike by journalists for more than a year ("A newsroom tirade and a controversial hire: tension rises at Pittsburgh newspaper," CNN, 2019, "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says it will close. Race and politics have been tearing it apart for years," MediaNation).

Despite its recent turmoil, they've been putting out a quality, informative product.

You don't have to bash the federal government to make the case for local action

Former Republican Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels writes a column for the Washington Post.  He takes conservative positions but he's not a wack job.  That doesn't mean that he doesn't mislead when he writes.

Volunteers planting a tree in 2018.  Getty Images photo.

His current column, "How philanthropy can work without trying to save the world," extols the value of community foundations and philanthropy for taking on local projects.  

He also cites a David Brooks column in the New York Times, "The Localist Revolution," on the value of localism.

Each takes the opportunity to position localism as far superior to federal action.  

But the federal government doesn't deal with rehabilitation of local parks or planting trees--well, the US Forest Service just provided to a lot of communities grants to do just that, "Announcing urban and community forestry funding"--and similarly supra localized projects.  OTOH, community foundations aren't in the position to fund transit systems or run military bases.

(And actually, not unlike the USFS program, the federal government does a lot of pass through funding through states to support local action through programs like the Federal Historic Preservation Fund, Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the Recreational Trails Program.)

The New Deal demonstrated that the federal government was/is capable of accomplishing great things, investing in the nation through investment in community-serving facilities, from rural electrification to building state and local parks via the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was a large jobs program, but it needed projects to do--building college dormitories, municipal buildings, parks, etc. was a good way to keep people employed.

But now, the ideology of neoliberalism ("Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems," Guardian) denigrates government in favor of private action.  Although, while Reagan implemented the ideology on steroids, arguably it started with Jimmy Carter (deregulation of the airlines, etc.) and it's an area of rare bipartisanship.

And in the US, the Republican party has degenerated into an anti-government, anti-public investment stance that makes positive action by the federal government less likely.  

This trickles down and shapes the electorate in ways that make many less inclined to support community initiatives and working together on projects of common interest ("In the land of self-defeat," New York Times).  

George Monbiot argues it's about values and an extrinsic versus intrinsic orientation ("To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him. Psychologists may have the answer," Guardian).  Extrinsics take, intrinsics give.  From the article:

We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society. They are also moulded by the political environment we inhabit. If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop. 

If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end. This process is known as policy feedback, or the “values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled needs.

Furthermore, the federal government, hampered by underfunding, does fail more regularly--albeit under Republican presidents more than Democrats, e.g., the Bush Administration response to Hurricane Katrina, or the Trump Administration response to covid (Trump basically killed 400,000 people) and its hurricane response in Puerto Rico (studies say at least 8,000 people died).

A good example is how the Republicans in Congress are outraged by re-funding the IRS, so it can collect the income taxes people should pay.  They'd prefer the wealthy blow off their obligations.

Neither Daniels nor Brooks write much about Republicans as obstructionists to quality of life and public investment in their states and communities. 

In fact they mostly vote against such bills and then fire off press releases and social media posts about how they brought various federally funded projects to their districts and states.

P.S. Republican-controlled states tend to have reduced quality of life as measured by life expectancy and other indicators ("People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties," Scientific American, "Data shows conservative policies on health, guns and more increase mortality," St. Louis Post-Dispatch).  From the P-D:

Meanwhile, researchers with the University of Washington analyzed political policies on a liberal-to-conservative scale, then measured mortality rates on a range of issues. Some newly empowered Missouri pot smokers might find it unnerving that the study found a correlation between conservative marijuana policies and lower mortality rates. But on virtually every other policy metric — health care, criminal justice, environmental protection, gun safety, labor rights, tobacco taxes — conservative policies and higher mortality rates went hand in hand.

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Mailing envelope, 1960, US Forest Service packet of materials sent to a women's club in Ohio.   The envelope is in bad shape but the other materials are in excellent condition.

Recently I've been collecting (more) ephemera related to parks on various topics.  I came across the most fascinating set of US Forest Service materials from 1960.  

I already knew that "women's clubs" of various types, both when women couldn't vote and/or tended to be "housewives," were key elements in local civic affairs.  As women entered the workforce these organizations tended to wither away, with the major exception of the League of Women Voters.

The director of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, who later became director of the National Park Service, was a proto-feminist in part because of his wife, a suffragette and activist.  Both the Forest Service and NPS cultivated support through women's clubs across the country.

USFS published and distributed materials specifically designed for these groups.

It fits in with my belief that schools, libraries, parks and other public-facing units of local government can be loci for civic engagement, just like community foundations.

Nationalization of banking came at the expense of local communities

There is a section in Death and Life of Great American Cities, where Jane Jacobs describes driving on a US route across the Northeast coast, going through town after town in decline.  

She describes being shocked at seeing a successful community.  Later she learned that it still had a remaining community-based bank committed to making business and building loans, whereas the other neighborhoods she passed through had been redlined--areas determined to be less viable, and therefore too risky to lend money to.

I remember the period of bank consolidation in Detroit.  National Bank of Detroit (NBD) merged with Bank of Chicago, later to be gobbled up by what is now JPMorganChase.  Comerica is the merger of a bunch of Detroit banks, the company moved its headquarters to Texas although it still has interests in Detroit, naming rights for the baseball stadium, Comerica Bank.

Many cities went through a similar process, to the point where most city center regional banks have been acquired by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo, although there are still some large center city banks here and there.

And studies generally show that as corporations consolidate and leave former headquarters cities, their financial and philanthropic commitment declines 

-- "The geography of giving: The effect of corporate headquarters on local charities," Journal of Public Economics (2010)

It's not clear these days how well local banks function compared to what Jane Jacobs described.  Banks have community reinvestment requirements, but I don't think the reporting is very good.  In fact I think that branches should have to publish infographics each year, detailing their local operations.

This isn't the best example of an infographic, but the best I could find.  I picture one say showing 5 and 10 mile radii from where the branch is located, with information about residential mortgages made, business loans made, and personal loans made.  With demographics breaking down loans by income, race, etc.  I suspect most of the deposits are used out of the area.  Source: BECU.

Philadelphia Inquirer business columnist Joseph DiStefano has a piece, "How Philly lost its big banks, and a little survivor that’s grown in the vacuum," about two books about the history of Philadelphia's banks, most of which have met similar fates to those of Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, etc.  From the article:

Philly’s big banks lived for generations. That includes Girard and Fidelity, Provident and PSFS, and especially the grandest and toughest, PNB and First Pennsylvania, whose combination as CoreStates was designed to keep Philadelphia in business as the nation’s oldest financial center.

These big banks funded factories, transport, and trade, taught school kids to save, guarded fortunes, decided who in the divided city got to buy property and who had to rent, intervened in public crises, and hired armies of workers, many of them low-paid women with little power but vast responsibilities.

These banks all vanished in the merger mania of the 1980s and 1990s, amid mass layoffs that emptied Center City office towers. The biggest bank still based in the metro area is now Delaware’s WSFS, which bought its way into the vacuum left by the passing of the big lenders after enduring its own near-death experiences.

As it happens, Charles Coltman III, the No. 2 executive at CoreStates when it vanished in a $20 billion 1997 merger, and Marvin “Skip” Schoenhals, the man who saved WSFS from a near-shutdown, then a threatened takeover, have now published memoirs giving their insider accounts of the news events of more than a quarter century ago. What can we learn?

... a tough but supple credit culture that he argues has been stripped, leaving promising businesses without hope of healthy funding, by rigid regulators captive to the Wall Street mega-banks.

 ... Beyond the scope of the book is the larger question of why Philadelphia bankers, so strong for so long, lost public influence, their sense of personal responsibility, and the moral will to excel, leaving a hole in the city’s leadership.

... Schoenhals’ book, cowritten with Brittany Kriegstein, is, like Coltman’s, part life story. It goes on to recount the rescue takeover of the badly over-extended former Wilmington Savings Fund Society by canny investors who put the well-connected, straight-arrow manager in charge. And it shows how he avoided their plan to resell the bank for a fast profit, won time to rebuild the staff and its credit culture, and boost its stock to stay independent.. 

Then again, one of the criticisms of too locally focused banks, especially those cozy with developers, is that the bank's loan portfolio can be especially risky, if economic conditions change. That's driven many banks to failure.  From the article:

While WSFS recovered as Philly’s banks vanished in the ‘90s, there’s a more recent moral lesson, in WSFS’s eclipse of Delaware’s once-dominant Wilmington Trust Co. At a reception in Wilmington on Dec. 12, Schoenhals recalled how he had limited developer loans to just over 10% of his bank’s portfolio on the eve of the Great Recession — vs. Wilmington Trust’s 40%, enough to sink that bigger company when land values fell. But that story isn’t in this book; he plans a sequel.

Denver's Urban Land Conservancy as a BTMFBA implementer

The previous entry, "Nonprofits need to BTMFBA too," re-mentions that nonprofits have to have a real estate and facilities strategy as part of master planning, that just like artists, they can't expect real estate developers to plan for them, plus they need to be prepared in the face of strong, money-driven real estate markets.

Almost immediately after I published that entry, there was an article in my newsfeed, "How this nonprofit in Westwood is avoiding being gentrified out of the area," from the Denverite, about how the in the neighborhood is able to control its real estate destiny by partnering with the (Denver) Urban Land Conservancy.  From the article:

This month, Re:Vision, a Westwood nonprofit that focuses on improving food access and food security, and the Urban Land Conservancy, a real estate nonprofit that aims to preserve communities and prevent displacement, announced they’d be collaborating through a real estate partnership that allows each organization, especially Re:Vision, to continue benefiting the westside. 

“This partnership has been years in the making,” said Sarah Harman, ULC’s vice president of real estate. “I think it was around 2019 that ULC and Re:Vision really started talking about what we might do together. And that brainstorming resulted in this new partnership with Re:Vision and ULC’s continued and deepened engagement with the Westwood neighborhood.” 

Re:Vision, which started in 2007, owns and operates the RISE Westwood Campus, a community hub that hosts an urban farm, the nonprofit’s no-cost grocery, Cultura Chocolate, a commissary kitchen and several other businesses and community needs. The campus was previously a junkyard, and Re:Vision purchased the site with a $1.2 million loan from the city in 2014 with some stipulations, one being the nonprofit had to use the site for community use.

Typically, land conservancies and land trust deal with open space and farmland, although urban-focused land trusts tend to focus on multiunit housing.

And that's an issue here too, as it appears as if the Urban Land Conservancy is also focused on adding housing to the site over the long term.

But the ULC is also focused on providing and preserving "shared office space for nonprofits and mission-minded organizations."

While I still believe in the need for overarching organizations like SEMAEST and other types of community development corporations to focus on this kind of property preservation specifically, this is another model for accomplishing it.

Nonprofits need to BTMFBA too

This isn't news.  Nonprofits, artists (Sharon Zukin, Loft Living, 1982), gays ("The 'gaytrification' effect: why gay neighbourhoods are being priced out," Guardian), churches ("Churchly blight," 2007), etc. held property because the areas weren't in high demand.  

When conditions, attitudes, and popularity changed--in particular wrt urban settings and urban living--the neighborhoods moved from being weak markets to strong markets, and only the people and organizations with the most money are able to compete.

The BTMFBA thesis--Buy the * * Building Already--makes the point that to be able to retain presence in the face of market pressures, you need to own the building.

-- "BTMFBA: the best way to ward off artist or retail displacement is to buy the building," 2016

My original piece, "Arts, Culture Districts, and Revitalization" (2009), made the point that artistic disciplines and organizations needed discipline-specific culture plans with a focus on facilities, because without facilities there is no arts district or space for artists and organizations.

The original piece didn't outline a mechanism--now I think it should be arts-focused community development corporations, operating at a city or county wide scale ("Reprinting with a slight update, "Arts, culture districts and revitalization"," 2018).

But it's about nonprofit uses of all types, not just the arts, which I do write about from time to time ("BTMFBA revisited: nonprofits and facilities planning and acquisition," 2016).

The Washington Post has an article, "A food pantry’s closure means more than lost meals for hundreds of families," about a food bank shutting down in Nashville, a particularly strong real estate market of late, because it lost its lease.

All nonprofits should have a real estate/facilities plan as part of strategic planning.

This is especially true for nonprofits operating in strong real estate markets.

From the article:

"Right now I’d say nonprofits are facing a confluence of crises,” said Tim Delaney, the president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits. “We’re out here fighting, trying to find some balance with increasing demand, rising costs, and declining donations — holy cow! It’s too much for a system to bear.” 

The Little Pantry met the increased demand, but it also had to deal with increased costs, on everything from food prices to rent and real estate. Downey realized her organization would be forced to close its doors late last year after failing to find an affordable new location in one of the nation’s hottest real estate markets. According to experts, the same pressures could soon shutter nonprofits everywhere, underscoring the shaky state of so much of the country’s charitable community. Free health clinics, child care organizations, prison reentry programs, domestic violence shelters — all could collapse under the same financial weight that brought down the Little Pantry. 

“All these things threaten the ability of nonprofits to serve people in their local communities,” Delaney said. “Policymakers at all levels of government are just assuming nonprofits make it work, but we can’t. God Almighty, we try, but at a certain point, the laws of economics take over.”  ...

Downey began renting her current building five years ago. It was a crumbling former school building owned by a church. The Little Pantry agreed to undertake repairs and renovations and put around $300,000 into the property. 

But by late 2021, Downey knew the owner would not be renewing the lease, and, despite working with real estate agents and friends, she struggled to find a new location. 

And local community foundations should take the initiative to work with nonprofits on such matters, create a facilities/real estate initiative, etc.

One example, although it works on the national scale, is the Kresge Foundation.  It funds buildings, usually up to half, with a required local match. 

In a recent entry ("Speaking of the need for arts-related CDCs to buy, hold, and operate arts facilities: Seattle and BTMFBA | The Inscape Arts building"), I mentioned how Seattle has created a city department, Cultural Space Agency, to work on this but only for arts groups, but it has minimal funding and expects the profit motivated private sector to take the lead.  From the article:

One building Downey toured — already outside the Little Pantry’s budget — was sold to an outside investment company before she had left the parking lot, Downey said. 

This type of function needs to be extended to nonprofits more generally. 

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I am now on the board of a large public park that is semi-independent of the city or county park system.  There is a master plan, but not really a formal capital planning process, especially one that integrates tightly with city and county funding systems.  One of my major goals is to get a standing committee on capital planning and finance, a capital plan, etc.

NPR story about how Philadelphia can look to Baltimore for better practice on historic preservation-based revitalization

I think this article ("Philly is losing historic buildings at an alarming rate. Can it learn from Baltimore?") is "funny" because my first attempt at a blog entry in November 2004 was reprinting an op-ed I wrote the year before, published in the Philadelphia Daily News, about how Philadelphia should be more focused on historic preservation as an urban revitalization strategy, which was my take away from attending the then "Urban Forum" conference on urban revitalization sponsored at the time by LISC.

-- "An outsider's version for saving Philly," What I wrote then:

No. 1 is the job core at the heart of the city. We know that a strong core is required to drive demand to reoccupy vacant housing, particularly by those who don't want to spend a lot of time commuting. Focus on job development, retaining businesses and attracting new ones.

No. 2 is solid public transportation. A tour of Girard Avenue convinced me that major investment in non-automobile transportation is essential to the revitalization of our traditional cities. Bringing back the trolleys to surface streets like Girard makes vacant houses worth occupying and rehabilitating.

No. 3 - recognize the value of your historic housing stock. Buildings that Philadelphians think are worthless would go for a million dollars in Washington.

At the time, then Mayor Street was promoting demolition as the primary revitalization strategy, called NTI--Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.  This was back when the city was still a weak market, and its major program was a ten year property tax abatement for properties being converted to residential.

I was proud of myself for asking a leading question about this at one of the plenary talks, and I think it helped shift NTI's focus some, the National Trust for Historic Preservation started working with the city on preservation initiatives, etc.

But 18+ years later, apparently Philadelphia is still losing a lot of historic buildings.  From the article:

Despite its struggles, Baltimore places a greater premium on protecting its historic infrastructure and achieves far more in the field of preservation than its larger cousin to the north. 

In large part, that’s because city leaders have seen historic preservation — often considered an arena for a handful of wealthy snobs — as a tool to anchor rowhouse neighborhoods that are fighting divestment. ...

Local policies are especially important because there is little that neighborhood preservationists can rely on at the federal or state level. National Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits are only applicable to income-producing projects. That means they can’t be applied to owner-occupied properties. The National Register of Historic Places offers no protection from demolition. 

At the state level, Maryland offers more than Pennsylvania. Up to $5 million can be divided across the entire 13 million-person Keystone State annually — again, only among income-producing properties. With less than half the population, Maryland’s $7.5-to-$10 million a year tax credit goes further. Still, it has shrunk dramatically from the years where it existed without a cap: As much as $98 million a year was being drawn from the subsidy back in 2003. Unlike Pennsylvania, Maryland also offers a rehabilitation tax credit for owner-occupied historic properties.

Some observations.  

(1) Baltimore seems to have more local foundations committed to local investment, although the Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund is based in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has locally focused philanthropic initiatives, like Pew Charitable Trusts.

But maybe the better comparison is Pittsburgh.  The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation is one of the nation's best practice local preservation groups.  Unlike most, over the years it has been an active "developer," taking on "white elephant projects and improving them, usually with the support of local foundations.  Other foundations are all in on the city as well.

(2) The focus of preservation groups and neighborhood stabilization organizations.  Philadelphia has a decent preservation group, the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, another great group called the Design Advocacy Group, a number of active community groups, community-focused newspapers and journalists at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, with a lot of coverage on Philadelphia issues especially Inga Saffron, one of the nation's last beat writers focused on urban design, and other stakeholders. 

But a key difference between preservation groups in Philadelphia versus Pittsburgh and Cleveland, is that the latter deliver specific assistance programs including loans to assist homeowners directly in maintaining and rehabilitating their properties.  

PHLF has homeowner rehabilitation programs, including loan programs and technical assistance.  In the past, there had been other groups offering similar kinds of assistance, including the now defunct Community Technical Assistance Center.  The best is the Cleveland Restoration Society.

Also, while Philadelphia has plenty of national landmarks like Independence Hall and Benjamin Franklin's home, it doesn't treat the whole city as a "heritage area" the way that Baltimore does.  

Baltimore is a designated National Heritage Area, after first having local designation under the state program ("Treating an entire city as a heritage area/conservation district, rather than a neighborhood by neighborhood approach," 2020). 

Thinking of your community as a heritage area changes how you think about the value of historic preservation as a centerpiece of neighborhood revitalization programming. 

(3) State support.  The article focuses on state support.  Pennsylvania does some interesting things, for example it has a good receivership law allowing for the "curing of property nuisances" by independent groups ("Receivership as a strategy for notorious nuisance properties," 2017), but doesn't provide much in the way of funding.  

The article discusses how Baltimore does a form of this, without acknowledging Pennsylvania has such a program, it's just not used much.

Maryland is better, but has the same problem of state legislators resenting what they see as extranormal financial help being provided to the state's major cities, so at the state level, they've put restrictions on the use of the preservation tax credit, just like Pennsylvania, which has even more cities that would be eligible.  

Maryland does have the Maryland Historic Trust which operates state-wide and the Maryland state heritage areas program.  But Pennsylvania has similar structures.

Pennsylvania in the past has introduced best practice programs on neighborhood and commercial district revitalization, but support of these programs waxes and wanes with each succeeding administration.

(4) Local government support.  When I first got involved in preservation/urban revitalization, I used to say of cities like Baltimore and Pittsburgh, that "they have a desperate willingness to experiment, because they have no other choice," that that was why those cities were innovative and DC wasn't.

Still, Baltimore has issues.  They too wax and wane depending on who is leading the government.  They had a big urban renewal phase.  And they tend to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of vacant properties present in the city, which leads them to be supportive of demolition of historic buildings, if that's what a developer wants to do.

But they have a number of strong neighborhood associations, and perhaps most importantly, some systematic neighborhood stabilization programs, one of which, Vacants2Valule, is mentioned in the article, support from the philanthropy sector, and other stakeholders that help keep a focus on neighborhood improvement.

Maybe a key factor is that these programs have the support of local government but at the same time they are independent of local government, although closely aligned.

Somehow, Philadelphia has less of this, and the city government is less focused in practical ways on neighborhood stabilization and revitalization.

Note that both Baltimore and Philadelphia have had tax abatement programs supporting the conversion of properties to residential.

Systematic neighborhood stabilization programs.  The article mentions the Vacants2Value program in Baltimore, where the city can take over nuisance properties and sell them off to developers for rehab and resale.  

It doesn't mention the Live Baltimore resident recruitment program or the Healthy Neighborhoods program, which focuses its efforts on stabilization in a set of specific neighborhoods in transition.

Where Baltimore (and Pittsburgh) differs from Philadelphia is in having neighborhood focused initiatives where a lot of the energy is independent of local government agencies, so it stays focused.  \Where these efforts are focused on property rehabilitation, resident recruitment, etc.

In 2020 (with an additional post in 2021), I wrote a series of entries about how to go about doing systematic neighborhood stabilization in weak real estate markets.  Ironically, the program that I think is the model is one pioneered by the State of Pennsylvania, called "Elm Street," and modeled after the Main Street commercial district revitalization program.

-- "The need for a "national" neighborhood stabilization program comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts: Part I (Overall)"
-- "To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2"
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisance programs: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)"
-- "A case in Gloucester, Massachusetts as an illustration of the need for systematic neighborhood monitoring and stabilization initiatives: Part 4 (the Curcuru Family)"
-- "Local neighborhood stabilization programs: Part 5 | Adding energy conservation programs, with the PUSH Buffalo Green Development Zone as a model," 2021

Philadelphia could take on the Elm Street approach and focus it on key neighborhoods in the city.

... along with 

-- enhancing the employment base in the center city, and

-- enhancing and expanding public transportation in the city ("SEPTA Metro rebranding of rail services: insights into conceptualization of transit networks," 2021)

as I wrote in 2003.