Which city has retained more of its poor white working class, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh? (Scranton: middle-class, apartments)

[mrshadow914]

Between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which would you say has retained it's poor white working class population the most and still has a working class culture? Gentrification has driven many poor working class whites out of major cities so I'm curious how these two compare

[jtab4994]

I am not familiar with either of these cities, but there are some who would argue that destruction of working class neighborhoods, followed by gentrification by well-connected developers, is a process that is done deliberately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUPeqXYgMpA

[kyle19125]

The population difference is massive with 1.6 million in Philadelphia and 360K in Pittsburgh. The number of poor white/blue collar workers in Philly seems much larger and more pronounced in my opinion.

[NYtoNJtoPA]

I don't really know about that, given that Philly itself is predmominantly a black city, and the most impoverished major city in the nation. There are plenty of poor white areas outside the city like Bristol, Croydon, Tullytown, Bridgeport etc. Pittsburgh doesn't have the poverty level of Philly though cost of living has to be cheaper there, and the city itself is something like 65% white. So if I had to guess Pittsburgh has a larger population of poor white people, though it's probably nothing compared to the likes of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre which is the "whitest" combined metropolitan stat area in the country.

[Higherho]

Originally Posted by kyle19125

The population difference is massive with 1.6 million in Philadelphia and 360K in Pittsburgh. The number of poor white/blue collar workers in Philly seems much larger and more pronounced in my opinion.

302k for City Proper Pittsburgh. 1.6 million is the Philadelphia County. Allegheny County is 1.23 million so the difference is not much.

[thedirtypirate]

Pittsburgh's metro is and has always been more blue collar. Not as much as somewhere like Detroit, but most studies will put it in the top 10 or close:


Cities of Opportunity: America's Top Spots for Blue-Collar Work


Blue collar workers do get paid pretty well in PA

Cities With the Most Successful Blue-Collar Workers

[Duderino]

Crazy to say given their heavy industrial histories, but Philly and Pittsburgh are both actually on track to becoming amongst the most post-industrial/white-collar metros in the US.

Both metros' highest growth industries (STEAM-based) today all but assure that.

[SteelCityRising]

I live in what is supposedly a "poor" neighborhood within the city of Pittsburgh and am surrounded by working-class whites. My neighborhood feels more lower-middle-class than poor, though. There are some large swaths of poverty in/around Pittsburgh; however, the city overall feels solidly middle-class, and most of the suburbs feel middle-class to even upper-middle-class (i.e. Sewickley, Fox Chapel, Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, Oakmont, etc.) I believe nearly half of Pittsburgh adults aged 25 or older possess at least a Bachelor's Degree now, and I believe our city's median household income is somewhere around $65,000. My husband and I earn a tad north of that combined and live comfortably here in the heart of the city.

[bridge12]

In total population, probably Philadelphia. In percentage of the population, definitely Pittsburgh.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by NYtoNJtoPA

I don't really know about that, given that Philly itself is predmominantly a black city, and the most impoverished major city in the nation. There are plenty of poor white areas outside the city like Bristol, Croydon, Tullytown, Bridgeport etc. Pittsburgh doesn't have the poverty level of Philly though cost of living has to be cheaper there, and the city itself is something like 65% white. So if I had to guess Pittsburgh has a larger population of poor white people, though it's probably nothing compared to the likes of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre which is the "whitest" combined metropolitan stat area in the country.

I would quibble with your use of the word "predominantly" in the above sentence.

Blacks are indeed the single largest racial/ethnic group in the city, but they outnumber whites by only three percentage points, and no group accounts for 50 percent of the population (Blacks make up 40% of the city's population according to the latest Census data).

The gap grows when one excludes Hispanics from the white total, but I wonder what percentage of the Black population is Hispanic? (Hispanics may be of any race. The Census Bureau never presents a non-Hispanic Black figure.)

And over the last 30-odd years, the plurality has shifted back and forth between whites and Blacks. I strongly suspect it could shift back within the tenure of the new Mayor, given who's more likely to fill all the new market-rate apartments and townhouses being built in the city now.