Richard Florida and another dude I hadn’t heard of (but he’s local) have a plan for post-pandemic Philadelphia, and it goes something like this:

• Focus heavily on medical and biotech R&D and startups, where we are a major center.
• Upgrade workforce skills to participate in this industry.
• Local procurement policies, especially from minority businesses.
• Do something to fill vacant store fronts.
• Do something about poverty.
• Raise the minimum wage.
• Develop “concrete actionable strategies” to do these things.

This all sounds pretty good to me. It’s short on specifics of course. We need to grow the economy and create professional jobs somehow without alienating the anti-gentrification crowd. Then tax revenue could increase and just maybe you could do something about poverty. Poverty is the tough nut to crack because there may just not be enough money to go around within a single political jurisdiction, although there probably is plenty to go around in the metro area as a whole, and certainly in the state and country as a whole.

I think professional management of city services would also help. Philadelphia should be a first class international city, but in addition to the income and education inequities it is held back by a personality that is too accepting of amateurism and mediocrity, and too unwilling to look at what is working elsewhere and adapt it. This is not such a tough nut to crack, in my view. Government, businesses, educational institutions, and the public worker unions could get together and probably come up with a plan to upgrade services significantly while saving money, building skills, and creating jobs in the process. This would be a win-win-win for everyone.