The place imagined in the plan bears little resemblance to the celebrated waterfront neighborhoods of Vancouver, British Columbia, and New York's Battery Park City, where a stockade of skyscrapers lines the shore. Philadelphia planners, led by the firms Cooper Robertson and KieranTimberlake, envision something that looks more like a typical Center City block, with a mix of low- and mid-rise buildings, punctuated by the occasional 20-story high-rise.
As the first serious development blueprint for the area since the early '80s, the plan abandons many of the cherished assumptions that have guided Philadelphia's waterfront policies for the last half-century. The plan's shorter skyline is an up-front acknowledgment that the low housing demand in Philadelphia cannot support a continuous wall of urban high-rises.
Penn's Landing, which for so long was the focus of the city's attentions, is also no longer seen as a viable site for a jam-packed mega-development, for much the same reason.
Philadelphia's energy will now go into developing the publicly owned Festival Pier at Spring Garden Street, which is better linked to the city's pedestrian-oriented street grid and transit system, and well-suited for a Piazza at Schmidts-style mixed-use project.
It's not just the vision for the 6.5-mile stretch of waterfront that has evolved in the new plan. So has the strategy for realizing it.
The city no longer harbors any expectation that a vibrant waterfront neighborhood will spring full-blown from the pages of the plan, said Thomas P. Corcoran, president of the Delaware River Waterfront Corp., which commissioned the strategy. Instead, the plan is structured so development can occur piecemeal over 30 years. The gradual pace means only modest public subsidies will be required.
