Background
Orientation | Natural Resources | History
Philadelphia sits at the confluence of the Delaware River and its smaller tributary, the Schuylkill, in southeastern Pennsylvania, about 150 miles northeast of Washington DC and about 100 miles southwest of New York City. Most of the city lies between the two rivers in a riparian buffer zone where hundreds of underground streams flow, although several Philadelphia neighborhoods collectively known as West Philadelphia (including Eastwick, Powelton, Mantua, and University City) are located across the Schuylkill River to the west, and ferries and bridges connect Philadelphia with Camden, New Jersey across the Delaware River to the east.
The center of Philadelphia is located at 39°59'53" north, 75°8'41" west. The current population of Philadelphia is about 1.5 million, down from a peak of about 2 million in 1950.
Philadelphia's Natural Resources
Philadelphia has an extensive parks system anchored by Fairmount Park and including urban squares, natural areas (including stream corridors, woodlands, meadows and wetlands), street trees throughout the city, and many neighborhood parks. The Philadelphia parks system comprises about 8,900 acres in all.
The city of Philadelphia spans two physiographic regions, the Piedmont and the Inner Coastal Plain, with the dividing line occurring at the fall line of the Fairmount Water Works, where the first falls on the Schuylkill River are located.
Philadelphia generally receives from 30” to 50” of precipitation most years (including about 20” of snowfall). Average high temperatures vary from around 30°F in winter to around 87°F in July and August, although high temperatures above 90°F are not uncommon in during summer.
Local wildlife includes various species of coyotes, foxes, beavers, peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, beavers, otters, raccoons, snakes, rabbits, owls, frogs, deer, turtles, fish, and butterflies. In addition, many migrating birds stop over in Philadelphia during the spring and fall migration seasons. Local flora includes purple coneflower, swamp milkweed, butterfly weed, swamp sunflower, swamp mallow, blue-flag iris, bee balm, cinnamon fern, flowering dogwood, quaking aspen, black cherry, willow oak, basswood, witch-hazel, and wild rose, among many others.
For more information about Philadelphia's natural resources, see the bibliography.
Early History
William Penn received a land grant from King Charles II of England for land west of the Delaware River, where he looked to found a colony based on the Quaker ideals of freedom and religious tolerance. He named and chose the site for Philadelphia, the location of an earlier Swedish settlement, and specified a grid with wide streets to avoid another disaster like London's 1666 Great Fire, as well as to embody his vision of a "Greene Countrie Towne." The original location of Philadelphia comprises present day Center City and the waterfront area around Penn's Landing.
The original inhabitants of the Philadelphia area included the Lenape who, despite William Penn's pacifist Quaker beliefs, were decimated by European diseases and eventually forced further west.
Philadelphia's 1793 yellow-fever epidemic (the first in a series) killed nearly 5,000 people in less than five months, and drove many wealthy citizens to the suburbs. Philadelphia recovered, and remained the largest city in the North American colonies until overtaken by New York City in 1836.
Philadelphia continued to grow, becoming an early railroad hub, which (together with its location on the Delaware River), made it a major industrial center. In 1854 the city annexed surrounding suburbs to reach its current size of 159 square miles.
Post-Industrial/Vacancy
As in many eastern American cities, Philadelphia's fortunes fell with the decline of industrial manufacturing after World War II. Exacerbated by Federal highway development and Federal housing policies that encouraged new development outside the city, as well as racial and political unrest inside the city, large areas of Philadelphia's Center City and surrounding neighborhoods fell into disrepair. In addition, narrow lots crowded with small, aging townhouses (including Philadelphia's distinctively tiny three-story "Trinity" townhouses with one room per floor) became less attractive to Philadelphians than larger houses in outlying suburbs. Philadelphia has consistently lost residents since 1950. Between 1950 and 1990 the city lost over 400,000 residents. In the 1990s alone another 4.3% of the population left, many headed for nearby areas, including Montgomery County.
The city has razed many of its unsafe abandoned buildings leaving vacant lots, while others remain standing. Today Philadelphia has the highest per capita vacancy rate in the country. As of the 2000 census, almost half (45%) of the residential street segments in Philadelphia contained some kind of abandoned property and more than one third (36%) contained at least one vacant residential structure, totaling approximately 26,000 vacant residential structures and nearly 3,000 vacant commercial and industrial structures—more than 40,000 vacant parcels to date.
Renaissance
Recently Philadelphia has experienced regeneration in and around Center City, as well as redevelopment in outlying areas of Philadelphia, including parts of Manayunk, Germantown, and East Falls. This renaissance, however, has not reached every neighborhood. Pockets of urban blight remain throughout the city, particularly in the ring of neighborhoods around the city center, including North Philadelphia, Kensington, Parkside, Grays Ferry, Point Breeze, and others.
Recent initiatives to revitalize Philadelphia include the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green project to "clean and green" vacant lots throughout the city, and the City of Philadelphia's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), an unprecedented effort by the City of Philadelphia to counter the history of decline in Philadelphia and revitalize Philadelphia's neighborhoods.
You can view a map showing the locations of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's vacant land stabilization projects (2.6MB PDF file). For more information, visit the PHS website.
For more information about Philadelphia's history, see the bibliography.