Of course, upscale dining, entertainment and tourism make Center City and University City more radioactive to mob disruption.
In the long term, though, corralling the problem within the geographic confines of a few upscale neighborhoods could do more lasting damage, if it allows us to ignore some of the factors that could help explain these violent outbreaks.
And for that, we may have to look to London.
This past weekend, more than 200 young people were arrested in London as three days of violence and looting spread through some of that city's poorest neighborhoods. There, the young people set fire to buildings and cars, and threw bottles and fireworks at police. The violent riots were thought to be sparked by anger in the black community over a police shooting of a 29-year-old man. High unemployment was also cited.
It's easy to dismiss a connection between the Philadelphia mobs and London's riots; Philadelphia's mobs don't have a "cause" and have not been prompted by an external event.
But we're misguided if we don't understand that our own unstable economy, with high jobless figures especially in poorer neighborhoods, and deep budget cuts to education and social services could be a less dramatic but just as incendiary set of circumstances that the young may be responding to. They might not be protesting any one thing, but lashing out at everything, and although it's valid for the mayor to tell parents to take more responsibility, let's not forget that many of the homes that these youth must get to earlier could be miserable; parents spread their misery to their kids.
Let's be clear: explaining is not the same as excusing. Street-mob participants should be prosecuted as fully as the law allows. Curfews should be enforced - and probably widened to include other neighborhoods in the city.
But we should also be asking: how much failure in our systems - from education to the family- can young people be expected to tolerate before erupting?
And how much can we?
