I’m in Philly right now for a good friend’s wedding. 

I always feel nostalgic when I come back to this city. Some of my most memorable years were spent here. I grew a lot in those 3 years. I also think that Philly is a highly underrated city – such an intimate urban scale.

I’m staying at the newly renovated Warwick Hotel in Rittenhouse Square. The lobby is beautiful, as are the corridors, but the rooms already feel a bit a dated to me. However the Barcelona Chair in my room is a welcome addition. That thing will never go out of style.

My hotel happens to be two blocks away from my old apartment at 17th and Spruce. So I decided to do a walk-by while I waited for my room to be ready. My roommate and I had the entire second floor of this building:

It was palatial, especially given the bargain price and its location in Rittenhouse Square. 

The graffiti you see above is located on the north wall of the kitchen. I think that’s a recent addition. The fire stair you see provided access to the roof of the building (as well as the street, I hope). I’m not sure we were supposed to go up there, but we obviously used it for parties.

Grillmaster Deli is still next door. They kept me fed when I was studying at home and too busy to cook. That was often. And across the street is the Italian restaurant with its sidewalk patio that I used to look out onto from my bedroom.

This walk-up apartment was by no means fancy. Though it did have ensuite laundry, which was a nice improvement from my previous place. But it was unabashedly urban. My kind of place.

Dezeen recently featured the above project in Philadelphia by Interface Studio Architects. It’s called Powerhouse and the goal was to provide a variety of different housing typologies and tenures within a dense infill project that, at the same time, remains in keeping with its context.

The full block complex contains 31 residential units, which are a mixture of apartments, duplexes (stacked towns), live/work units, and single-family townhouses. There’s also a corner retail space. 10 of the units are rental and the balance are for sale. The development also incorporates 3 existing rowhouses on the block. (Were these the holdouts?)

Here is a diagram from ISA to give you a sense of how these different housing types come together:

The project feels germane to Philly’s urban fabric and it is certainly interesting in its own right. But for those of us from Toronto, it’s perhaps even more interesting because it’s a scale of infill development that we don’t see very often in this city: low-rise intensification. (Also commonly referred to as “The Missing Middle”.)

Recently I’ve been speaking with a number of people about whether or not Toronto should be thinking differently about its low-rise neighborhoods. Because as it stands today, even this sort of gentle density can cause quite a stir. 

Two thoughts immediately come to mind – one of which will not surprise anyone who reads this blog. Firstly, I see laneway housing as an elegant way to intensify low-rise neighborhoods without changing their character. That’s why I’m proposing this house.

Secondly, I have long felt that we should rethink how we treat arterial roads that are not designated as “Avenues.” That is, we should encourage greater densities. An “Avenue” designation signals mid-rise. But absent this, our policies are frankly retrograde, given the way some of these arterial streets have evolved over the years.

What are your thoughts about this scale of infill?

Images: ISA

The Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation recently published a report called: State of Center City 2016. The objective was to measure the progress being made in Philadelphia’s downtown. 

I moved out of Center City (Rittenhouse Square) in 2009, but I still like to follow what’s happening. I really enjoyed my time in Philly. In fact, I remember missing its immensely walkable downtown after I returned to Toronto and touched down in the suburbs briefly before moving back downtown.

If you take a look at the report, one of the first things you’ll probably notice is the concentration of jobs and the concentration of knowledge works (with advanced degrees) in the Center City area. We are seeing this shift in so many cities around the world.

Here are a few graphics (all of which are from the report):

Part of the reason for this is that Center City is anchored by a number of fantastic Universities. This is critical for cities, today.

To end this post, I thought I would post the below comparison of average office rents in major CBDs across the US. I always find these charts interesting, even though the usual suspects are up at the top.

I hope you’re all having a great holiday weekend.