Why is Philly not considered cool like Chicago/NYC? (real estate market, to rent)
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We need to distinguish between cool in reputation and cool in fact.
Philadelphia is not a particularly cool city in reputation. It is a rather cool place in fact even though people may consider it a poor man's version of NYC. But a lot of people, I have found, don't really know all that much about it. I would say it enjoys a sort of neutral reputation, at least among those who don't watch Fox News.
But this is only comparing it to its peer cities, which in IMO are DC, Boston, Chicago, SF. Even though some have dumped on DC saying that people "only move there for a job," a lot of people are moving to DC for a certain type of job and a certain type of scene that can't really be found anywhere else but DC, so in that sense it could be considered a "cooler" city than Philadelphia. Not that NYC monopolizes the "cool, artsy and gritty vibe," but there's this sense that you could go up the street and find more of the same thing in NY.
I think that's all fair. And yes, I think that's the conundrum of this conversation. It's the unknown factor of Philly where its innate coolness actually thrives. It's the overlooked underdog mentality, because there's so much more humility and human authenticity that comes from that.
DC and NYC are very well-known and understood entities (although I'd agree that even DC gets a bit of a "short shrift" as far as what it offers as a city), but Philadelphia (again, as you say, not the version defined by Fox News) still has a such a mystique to this day, even after much more exposure since the 2000s than it's had in decades.
Getting back to the thread topic, the point made about places like Nashville and Austin is exactly what I was getting at: they're "pop culture" cool cities. They're having their moment with our social media-obsessed society.
By comparison, Philadelphia is much more of a "niche" city, particularly outside of the East Coast. Its cool factor is amongst a much narrower set of urbanites and hipsters who tire of Brooklyn's cost-of-living. It's a unique mix of gritty and edgy personality and cosmopolitan cultural tastes in a very dense, overwhelmingly rowhome-based environment. It's not for everyone.
So, in that sense, I completely get why Madison from Lincoln, Nebraska is much more likely to go to Nashville or Austin for her destination bachelorette party, and Philly wasn't even really in the running. They're just more "approachable" cities.
And they're just different kinds of "cool" to different kinds of people.
I tend to explain the flood of Brooklynites who have transplanted themselves to Philadelphia over the past 20 years or so thus:
They realized they were paying New York prices for the Philadelphia experience and figured out it made more sense to pay Philadelphia prices for it.
I think that's all fair. And yes, I think that's the conundrum of this conversation. It's the unknown factor of Philly where its innate coolness actually thrives. It's the overlooked underdog mentality, because there's so much more humility and human authenticity that comes from that.
DC and NYC are very well-known and understood entities (although I'd agree that even DC gets a bit of a "short shrift" as far as what it offers as a city), but Philadelphia (again, as you say, not the version defined by Fox News) still has a such a mystique to this day, even after much more exposure since the 2000s than it's had in decades.
IMO, the reason DC the City gets short shrift is because it gets drowned beneath self-important Official Washington.
But you're right — beneath all those swollen egos lies an actual city that can be quite interesting. And you can't beat all those totally free Smithsonian museums.
Let's be serious here. Nashville is 3.6% Asian. By comparison, Charlotte is 6.6% Asian (and 14.6% Latino compared to 10.5% in Nashville), Greenville, SC is 2.7% Asian and 9.5% Latino, Winston-Salem is 2.5% Asian and 15.1% Latino and Jacksonville, FL is 4.8% Asian and 10.4% Latino. So Nashville is not diverse compared to Southern cities around its size and even smaller.
I think Nashville is "cool" among that tier of smaller to mid-sized metros, but it is not going to be able to compete in that category against economic/cultural heavyweights that by their very nature are going to be far more cosmopolitan.
Also, I don't see how NYC could be considered a "cool" city any longer after the Times article last week saying that the median rent in Manhattan is now $4,000. The number of people working in finance, accounting and BigLaw is several orders of magnitude larger than the number of people working in "creative" fields. I'm not sure why NYC seems to be exempt here while SF takes a hit to its coolness. NY stopped being "cool" a long time ago if we're talking about broke people moving here to pursue a dream.
The data doesn't tell the entire story and Nashville has a unique set up in that it includes vast suburban areas (city-county combined). I just know based on my experience actually living and growing up there. If you isolate the figures to Nashville's core, the Asian population will be much higher.
Yeah - no one said Nashville is going to compete with New York (which is my favorite city - I live in the Tri-State Area). My point here is that some of the posts about Nashville contained falsehoods and an inaccurate picture about the city's diversity/vibe. It ain't all Americana here like an Oklahoma City. Nashville is a pretty sophisticated city for its size (world class symphony, HBCUs, medical research, government, creative/music industry) with a major public transit problem (this is the part about it that will continue to hurt the city if the leaders don't fix this aspect of living there).
The data doesn't tell the entire story and Nashville has a unique set up in that it includes vast suburban areas (city-county combined). I just know based on my experience actually living and growing up there. If you isolate the figures to Nashville's core, the Asian population will be much higher.
I get that. But Jacksonville (Duval) is also a city-county combo and it still has a larger Asian/Latino percentage than Nashville. Jacksonville is not a place most people would consider to be wildly diverse.
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Originally Posted by norcal2k19
Yeah - no one said Nashville is going to compete with New York (which is my favorite city - I live in the Tri-State Area).
Actually...
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Originally Posted by btownboss4
Due to the music industry Nashville has the whole “I’ll bartend/taxi drive/etc until I become a star” kind of people go there. I think it’s in the NYC/Miami/LA tier.
But I wasn't even specifically thinking about New York, but instead the "economic and cultural heavyweights" I mentioned before such as SF or Chicago.
I think sometimes people make these silly type of comparisons out of hate and jealousy TBH. Like, SF is a very beautiful and impressive city with an amazing culinary scene and breathtaking scenery, yet we're supposed to be believe people don't move there because it's "cool," they just move there because they got a job (which is sort of ridiculous if you think about it considering SF has the 2nd most Ivy grads after NYC...the people who on average have the best job prospects and can therefore be more selective about where they will live). And we're supposed to believe the millions of international visitors who travel there are no indication that the city is "cool" since millions of international visitors also make the pilgrimage to Orlando every year to ride Space Mountain.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 06-14-2022 at 09:49 PM..
I get that. But Jacksonville (Duval) is also a city-county combo and it still has a larger Asian/Latino percentage than Nashville. Jacksonville is not a place most people would consider to be wildly diverse.
Actually...
But I wasn't even specifically thinking about New York, but instead the "economic and cultural heavyweights" I mentioned before such as SF or Chicago.
I think sometimes people make these silly type of comparisons out of hate and jealousy TBH. Like, SF is a very beautiful and impressive city with an amazing culinary scene and breathtaking scenery, yet we're supposed to be believe people don't move there because it's "cool," they just move there because they got a job (which is sort of ridiculous if you think about it considering SF has the 2nd most Ivy grads after NYC...the people who on average have the best job prospects and can therefore be more selective about where they will live). And we're supposed to believe the millions of international visitors who travel there are no indication that the city is "cool" since millions of international visitors also make the pilgrimage to Orlando every year to ride Space Mountain.
What people want on vacation and what they want in life are not the same. Vegas and Orlando are proof of that, which is why Tourism is a bad indicator of “coolness” especially when a huge portion of foreign visitors is friends and family which is determined in places like Seattle, Houston, SF, and DC by what company sponsored your cousins Work visa not what city you want to go to.
San Francisco literally had the 3rd largest economic growth rate in the country over the last 20 years and had pretty lackluster demographic growth. That’s a huge sign people just move there for the money. By my standard of cool, Philly is marginally cooler than Chicago because Chicagos economic growth is quite strong compared to its demographic growth
Miami has horrible wages, But people move there anyway despite the fact they’ll be poorer in Miami than home in Cincinnati.
What people want on vacation and what they want in life are not the same. Vegas and Orlando are proof of that, which is why Tourism is a bad indicator of “coolness” especially when a huge portion of foreign visitors is friends and family which is determined in places like Seattle, Houston, SF, and DC by what company sponsored your cousins Work visa not what city you want to go to.
No, it's not a bad indicator. You're just pretending to be too stupid to understand the difference between why someone would visit Orlando and why someone would visit Paris.
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Originally Posted by btownboss4
San Francisco literally had the 3rd largest economic growth rate in the country over the last 20 years and had pretty lackluster demographic growth. That’s a huge sign people just move there for the money. By my standard of cool, Philly is marginally cooler than Chicago because Chicagos economic growth is quite strong compared to its demographic growth
If population growth is the true measure of coolness, then that means that all the Southern/Sunbelt cities with explosive population growth over the last 20 years are the coolest cities in America.
SF obviously can't grow as fast as Nashville or Raleigh due to constraints on housing supply. This is a silly argument you're making.
No, it's not a bad indicator. You're just pretending to be stupid to understand the difference between why someone would visit Orlando and why someone would visit Paris.
If population growth is the true measure of coolness, then that means that all the Southern/Sunbelt cities with explosive population growth over the last 20 years are the coolest cities in America.
SF obviously can't grow as fast as Nashville or Raleigh due to constraints on housing supply. This is a silly argument you're making.
A place like Vegas is the extreme but in pretty much every city people who live there don’t do the things tourists do. Do New Yorkers go to Times Square? The top of the Empire State Building? The Statute of Liberty?
What most do on vacation is see the sights. Which is fundamentally different than wanting to live there
No a place like Houston had large economic growth and population growth. Moving to Houston is most often an economic decision.
There is a reason SF is basically the only city not to fully recover to its 2019 rent prices. It’s because people wanted to get paid $265,000 to work at Uber, they didn’t particularly want to live in San Francisco.
No a place like Houston had large economic growth and population growth. Moving to Houston is most often an economic decision.
There is a reason SF is basically the only city not to fully recover to its 2019 rent prices. It’s because people wanted to get paid $265,000 to work at Uber, they didn’t particularly want to live in San Francisco.
You've been around here long enough to know about Bay Area NIMBY-ism and the housing shortage it has created.
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Google, Apple, Facebook, and other internet giants are growing fast, and they're desperate to hire more engineers. The Bay Area should be comfortably topping the population-growth charts among large metropolitan areas. And the rising wealth of the region's technology elite should be boosting demand for schoolteachers, doctors, chefs, barbers, landscapers, nannies, and others in service jobs. That, in turn, should trigger a massive building boom, creating jobs for construction workers. Hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of people outside of high-tech should be benefiting from the boom.
But that hasn't really happened. Strict building regulations have made it impossible to significantly increase the Bay Area's housing stock. So rising tech industry wealth is mostly translating into higher housing costs. Middle-class people outside the tech sector are finding it harder to pay the rent and impossible to buy a house.
It has nothing to do with "coolness" and everything to do with a lack of inventory.
If it’s all about NIMBYs driving up housing costs why did SF have the weakest real estate recovery in the country after COVID?
I think you thinking SF is cool is very much your opinion and not really supported by much evidence
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