20 Ways to Make Philadelphia the Best Damn City in America

By creating an alliance of leaders in these sectors, along with business and government, we can develop a plan for the future. We need to ask: “If we want to be the healthiest region in the country 20 years from now, how do we get there?” I think all the components for success exist in our city now.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and Comcast’s cable network are outlets that can serve as conduits for communicating our health-improvement goals to the public. Our research community has the ability to identify opportunities to improve the health of our residents. And our medical community can help translate this research into practices that can save and improve lives. 

If we want to build a culture of good health, the infrastructure is already here. We must tap into our regional resources, conduct research to discover new ways to improve health, and then teach the broader community how to incorporate those ideas into their daily lives.

3. OPEN A CINEPLEX IN CENTER CITY.

We’d never forsake our independent-minded Ritz -theaters, but we crave a Center City spot for blockbusters. Build the glitzy, modern structure in that parking lot at 8th and Market, to help spur rehab of Market East and finally put the “Disney Hole” behind us.

4. CLOSE PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

That’s right. The Michael Nutter book-in-mouth disaster when he was trimming the budget last year actually makes sense. We wouldn’t close all the libraries, of course. Or even most of them. But Loree Jones, co-executive director of the mentoring organization City Year, has a plan: She proposes that we open library branches within our public schools that have no libraries, or have libraries with no books, or have a few books jammed into a closet. That way, the libraries would not only serve the schools but also become community hubs  —  as after-school oases for children and computerized job-resource centers for neighborhood adults, for example. Security issues will have to be sorted out, but if the community is invited in, folks who never set foot in their local schools would actually start feeling connected to them. Which might just have a sweet side effect: A firsthand look at the sorry state of public education in this city could bring an outcry, one that pushes the powers-that-be to make schools better.

5. BE PROUD OF OUR CITY.
By Meryl Levitz, president and CEO, Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation

As a newcomer here in the 1970s, I was struck by how Philadelphians answered my questions about my new home. They didn’t sound happy with Philadelphia, and described what it could be rather than what it was. I took a course called “The Peopling of Pennsylvania” at the Balch Institute to understand it all better, and E. Digby Baltzell, author of Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, explained to me: “My dear, they are apologizing to you. They created the country, and they are not sure what has happened since.”