Monthly Archives: October 2011

According to a recent report by Transportation for America, about 20 percent of bridges in the Philadelphia area deficient and in need of improvement. That makes Philadelphia third in line for American cities with deficient bridges. The study noted that deficient, however, doesn’t necessarily mean unsafe, but simply that they need improvement as there has been deterioration of one or more of its major components.

On Thursday, a resolution was passed by the Philadelphia City Council which contains 40 changes to the city’s zoning code, which by all accounts is out of date. The resolution is a big step in the rewrite process, which is four years in. Sources said it is hoped that the rewrite will be completed by the end of the year.

A recent article in the New York Times pointed out that, in the midst of a volatile commercial mortgage market, life insurance companies are increasingly becoming lenders in the area. Data from the second quarter of 2011 shows that the life insurance industry underwrote a total of $15.7 billion new commercial mortgages.

Philadelphia city officials and supporters from the three-block branch of the Reading Viaduct-an abandoned railway that operated from 1893 to ‘984-have reportedly come up with a development plan intended to revitalize the area. The project is reportedly being led by the Reading Viaduct Project.

A lawsuit brought against the City of Philadelphia with the goal of forcing a reform of the city’s property assessment and tax system was been dismissed earlier this week.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that one of the sites at the Navy Yard will be the site of a new Marriott-brand hotel. The development is being sponsored by Liberty Property Trust, an investment trust headquartered in Malvern. Sources said Liberty is nearly finished financing the new hotel.

In our previous post, we began looking at a Forbes article which made the point that urban populations often seek out government action in order to insulate themselves from increasing urban density. As our last post noted, this “down-zoning uprising” that occurs in various metro areas is evidence that urban populations do not always seek to promote the urban lifestyle, but often seek to control increasing population density.

Our Philadelphia readers may be interested in a recent Forbes article discussing population density. The article noted that while some urban policy experts feel that government population density regulations-even those seeking to slow growth in urban areas-are a subtle effort by urbanites to unfairly impose urban lifestyle preferences on residents, there is nevertheless evidence that urban residents very often favor and seek out government regulations which seek to slow “urban densification.”