from Brooklyn to Philly.. need advice!

[PennKid]

Originally Posted by rotodome

Man, I was an urban studies major once upon a time too, and sorry but I really wouldn't compare East Passyunk to Park Slope. Philly and Brooklyn do have lots of similarities, and there are parts of Brooklyn that remind me a lot of parts of Philly (eg: Carroll Gardens feels a lot like northern South Philly in places, Clinton Hill is a lot like University City, Brooklyn Heights feels somewhat like Rittenhouse Square, etc), but I would never make the stretch of saying South Philly was a microcosm of all the very various parts of Brooklyn. I really don't feel that comparison at all. Brooklyn is much more varied and diverse from an urban and architectural standpoint than just South Philly.

I never said that South Philly has all that Brooklyn does, especially the second downtown core and the overall density but its occasional brownstone brick homes and three-story houses grade out to lower-rise brick rowhomes, which grade out to the awning-bedecked semi-suburban homes, which is the same gradation as in Brooklyn... take a ride down Flatbush Ave from Atlantic Ave down to Avenue U and you will see the same transition as you might going down Broad Street...

Similarly, if you take a ride east-to-west from Front and Tasker to 30th and Tasker, you have a transition from dense working-class white neighborhoods, to leafy gentrifying neighborhoods, to dense immigrant neighborhoods, to poor Black neighborhoods, much as you would going west-to-east on the Fort Hamilton Parkway and then Linden Ave. from Bay Ridge to Ditmas to Flatbush to Brownsville...

As for East Passyunk, I know the architecture may be a bit less grand, but the explosion of mostly white, professional-parent families, the as yet unmarried yuppies, the new street trees planted by new neighborhood groups, and the working class history give a very similar feel to Park Slope..

[rotodome]

Originally Posted by PennKid

I never said that South Philly has all that Brooklyn does, especially the second downtown core and the overall density but its occasional brownstone brick homes and three-story houses grade out to lower-rise brick rowhomes, which grade out to the awning-bedecked semi-suburban homes, which is the same gradation as in Brooklyn... take a ride down Flatbush Ave from Atlantic Ave down to Avenue U and you will see the same transition as you might going down Broad Street...

Similarly, if you take a ride east-to-west from Front and Tasker to 30th and Tasker, you have a transition from dense working-class white neighborhoods, to leafy gentrifying neighborhoods, to dense immigrant neighborhoods, to poor Black neighborhoods, much as you would going west-to-east on the Fort Hamilton Parkway and then Linden Ave. from Bay Ridge to Ditmas to Flatbush to Brownsville...

As for East Passyunk, I know the architecture may be a bit less grand, but the explosion of mostly white, professional-parent families, the as yet unmarried yuppies, the new street trees planted by new neighborhood groups, and the working class history give a very similar feel to Park Slope..

Sorry, I just think that's a real stretch. And I'm very familiar with both places.
There's nothing remotely like Ditmas Park in South Philly, for example. Maybe you could make a case for somewhere else in Philly resembling it, but noplace in South Philly.

East Passyunk is an example of recent gentrification of a modest working class neighborhood. Park Slope is an elite NYC neighborhood where celebrities live flanking a huge landscaped park that every street runs into. It did go through a gentrification phase decades ago, but I don't think there are really many comparables in 2011. East passyunk has a few new boutiques and restaurants, sure, but in my opinion as someone who lived in the Slope. I don't think they really feel very similar at all, either physically or (and this is a plus for South Philly) in terms of the types of people who live there.

Much of South Philly also has this characteristic very tight, almost claustrophobia inducing dense network of tiny houses on tiny streets with tiny patio yards, narrow sidewalks and generally very few trees or green space that feels unlike all but a very few places in Brooklyn (none of which you mentioned up there).

By the way, no diss intended to South Philly, which is a place I've made my peace with, after hating it as someone who grew up elsewhere in Philly.