Changing Skyline: The sensuous city

That you can now embark on an hour's walk in any direction from City Hall without encountering significant urban blight is at least partly a result of the city's tax abatement policy. But tax breaks alone wouldn't have produced all those new rowhouses if the Housing Authority had not demolished virtually all of its forbidding, out-of-context high-rises under the Rendell and Street administrations. A dozen towers were replaced with more than 7,600 new units, mostly in the form of rowhouses.

What distinguishes this boom from its predecessors is that it was accompanied by a distinct change in the way Americans perceive cities. In the '70s and '80s, Carrie Bradshaw would have carried a can of Mace instead of a designer purse. Television's gritty urban cop dramas portrayed cities in apocalyptic terms. News images of riots, crime, and angry anti-busing protests stuck in people's memories.

There's clearly been a mellowing. Cities and suburbs no longer see themselves as enemies. Race is less of a polarizing issue, and cities are safer than they've been in decades. For today's college graduates, a generation that has mostly grown up in the suburbs, cities are an alluring Oz that offers - if Sex ... is to be believed - a nonstop whirl of art openings and romantic trysts.

Even the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center towers didn't derail the urban comeback. The nation's outpouring of sympathy for New York was a remarkable turnaround from its response 26 years earlier to the city's bankruptcy, immortalized by the New York Daily News headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead."

In Philadelphia, much has been made of the fact that the city's population inched up last year for the first time in 60 years. That's nice, but far more meaningful is the growth in the number of households, which shot up by 18,000 by 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Rowhouses that once housed sprawling, multigenerational families are increasingly home to singles, gays, and empty-nesters.

Like other successful American cities, Philadelphia still must reckon with difficult economic issues. Planners argue that urban places will need to invest heavily in infrastructure and transit just to stay even, especially as energy prices shoot up.

Cities also have to remember they're competing with the suburbs for residents, and that means matching their record on clean government, fiscal management, crime, schools, and public amenities like parks.

Not everyone will want to live in a big city like Philadelphia. But after a decade of improvements and image enhancement, most people probably wouldn't mind spending the weekend, especially if they can get a good rate at one of the new hotels.

Contact architecture critic Inga Saffron at 215-854-2213 or isaffron@phillynews.com.