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Gardening in the city

PHILADELPHIA

The Greening of a Historic City

Once a cultural center of America, Philadelphia began a downward spiral earlier than most cities, in the 1930s. When the city’s historic homes fell into disrepair, most were too old or too large for today’s families, and costly to bring back. Residents fled to the suburbs because of the condition of the neighborhoods and their schools. The exodus peaked between 1970 and 2000, when the city lost 400,000 residents and 200,000 jobs.

Philadelphia’s government and cadre of community development corporations struggled to stem the tide. During the mid-1990s, some CDCs finally began to have some success. One in particular, the Asociación de Puertorriqueños en Marcha (Association of Puerto Ricans on the Move or APM), captured the imagination of investors by implementing a unique and aggressive strategy to revitalize its portion of North Philadelphia.

APM is the city’s largest social and health care service delivery organization aimed specifically at the city’s growing Hispanic community. In the early 1990s it started a CDC subsidiary to work on the neighborhood surrounding its headquarters and largest health clinic. The CDC began by building several rental housing developments using city and state support and the federal low-income housing tax credit program. After succeeding with its rental projects, which helped to stabilize the population, APM built a shopping center, anchored by the first new food market in the neighborhood in decades. The CDC then worked with the City to launch a homeownership effort, including building 100 new homes for sale to new buyers.

A part of this multi-part plan has been an innovative Green City Strategy. APM built in yards and green spaces near all of its new homes, and then gradually integrated the green spaces into commercial corridors, parks, pedestrian walkways, and transit points.

This Green City revitalization created more than 1,300 saleable parcels in Frankford, South Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, eastern North, and North Central Philadelphia.