WHY PHILLY?
With approximately 1.6 million residents, Philadelphia is the sixth-largest city in the United States. Its strategic location between New York City and Washington, D.C. on the Northeast Corridor means that 25 percent of the country’s population lives within 350 miles of the city. Located along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, Philadelphia is defined by its waterfronts as well as its green spaces, which reflect the city’s heritage. Like many American cities, Philadelphia experienced periods of post-industrial decline and urban renewal that left neighborhoods empty and segregated.
While the city is currently experiencing a growth of jobs and residents, it is still grappling with many of these legacy issues. While Philadelphia means something different to every resident, it has several universal strengths, including its history, its culture, its diversity, and its connectivity. These strengths make the city well-positioned to take advantage of future trends that will impact the quality of life of urban places.
WHY 2060?
Philadelphia already has a planning framework for 2035, so this plan looks one to two planning cycles beyond that point to think critically about what (and who) the city is ultimately planning for. This gives planners the opportunity to be visionary by imagining how transformative forces could dramatically reshape the city. As a result, Philly2060 identifies the outcomes that Philadelphia should be working towards and proposes specific strategies for achieving them. While this plan, like all plans, is a product of its time, it creates a process for decision-making that could be applied to any set of future conditions.
Philly2060 is a transportation and public realm plan focusing on four key factors shaping Philadelphia in 2060: Climate Change, Mobility, Streets, and Public Space. These factors look at both large-scale systems, like climate change and mobility, and small-scale networks, like streets and public space. Each of these four factors is detailed in a separate chapter that identifies conditions, trends, and strategies unique to that topic. The final chapter illustrates how the combination of interventions across all four sections will transform Philadelphia by 2060. Together, Philly2060 provides a vision of how the City can work to improve Philadelphia overthe next 43 years.
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