Liberal Talk Radio

Philadelphia, a city in which I once resided and which has been sitting in New York (and DC)’s shadow for far too long, got two boosts this week, both from the big neighbor to the North.

First came this New York Times article on how Philly is fast becoming the “sixth borough” of New York. The article tries to make the case that artists (and generalized bohemians, too) have been priced out of Brooklyn and so are slowly making their way down the NJ Turnpike to Philly. As anyone who’s been to Greenwich Village or SoHo or TriBeCa knows, bohemians eventually cause gentrification that prices them out of the very neighborhoods they revitalized. The whole system works so darn well that even the red-as-it-gets city of Spokane, WA is building a “gay district” in the hopes of giving their city some BoHo charm (take THAT David Brooks!!).

As happy as I am to see the beautiful city of Philly fawned over like this, we should take it with a grain of salt. These articles are really compelling to write about, but what happens is they quote a bunch of newly expatriated New Yorkers, who are still high on the post-move buzz of their new home. The glow will wear off, and eventually they’ll realize they need to move on (or back):

But Mr. Lowy, of Portico gallery in SoHo, is skeptical about the long-run chances for young artists: “The quality of life is pretty good but many of those artists probably won’t stay. Can you get an art dealer to come to your studio when you’re in Philly? Sure, you have time to make more art, but there’s no one to buy it.”

In other Philly news, we heard this week that several New York firms are investing in the Philly Stock Exchange. These are not second-string investment firms, either: UBS, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Citigroup. Apparently these firms are hedging their bets against the NY Stock Exchange getting too powerful (and expensive).

These two stories may yet be related. As the Professor has argued, what makes a big city a big city is that it has a thriving financial sector, which tends to boost all other local industries: banking, technology, the arts, etc. Philly’s nascent stock exchange could be the slow burn that leads to it actually becoming the city that those bohemians want it to be.