Report: Where Philly is growing and where it’s not

A new in-depth analysis by Next City takes a deep dive into Philly’s 55 neighborhoods to find out where the city is progressing and where it’s not.

It may not come as a surprise that Center City, Point Breeze, and parts of South Philly are making the greatest advances. Another 20 neighborhoods are doing just fine, falling in the “average” category. But 19 other neighborhoods, including Wynnefield and Frankford, were identified as having to play catch up, either falling behind or facing the greatest challenges.

“Our goal was not to compare one neighborhood to another,” the report noted. “Each has different issues it is grappling with — a different geography, a differing population mix and different density. That’s why, instead, we looked at how the city as a whole had performed during a five-year period in key categories and matched how close each neighborhood came to the those averages.”

Those key categories included crime, median household income, population index, poverty index, and the home price index. The Next City team used 2009-2014 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Screenshot via Next City

Using this data, the researchers weighed each neighborhood’s statistics to the city’s averages, shown below:

• Crime: -19 percent
• Median Household Income: -7 percent
• Median House Sales: +6 percent
• Population: +1 percent
• Poverty rate: +2.6 percent

Based on their calculations, Wynnefield in North Philly was identified as facing the greatest challenges out of all 55 neighborhoods. That’s because between 2009 and 2014 it experienced decreases in population and median household income, as well as an increase in poverty.

As for the the area where Philly is making the greatest advances? That’d be the neighborhoods along the Schuylkill and Southwest Center City. Here, crime decreased by 44.4 percent, household wealth increased by nearly 22 percent, and population is on the rise.

The full breakdown of every neighborhood can be found at Next City.

• Mapping Progress in 55 Philadelphia Neighborhoods [Next City]