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Comment by kingkongrevenge | Hacker News Reader

The problem with Philadelphia is the City of Philadelphia. The surrounding suburbs have tons of capital and businesses and highly educated people and very nice neighborhoods. The city itself is a hopeless basket-case. It just seems to me that you can't make the leap into being a first tier metro region without desirable urban neighborhoods. I've read that younger people leave Pennsylvania not for lack of jobs or for notably better wages, but because it's boring.

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As someone who lives just outside Philadelphia I would disagree. At least the people I know who have left the city do so because they only came here for school and take jobs back home.

We're not talking about them. We're talking about the net outflow of younger natives.

Reminds me of Cleveland, Ohio and to a lesser extent Detroit. Some of the young neighborhoods (The Flats is a prime example) in Cleveland who were thriving ~10 years ago are now dead. It's ridiculous.

As someone who left Pennsylvania: Dead on.

As a resident of Pittsburgh, I disagree. :)

I also left for the same reason.

Philly has some issues, but it's much better than it used to be. It's a huge city. There's a lot of growth in some great areas. You get a lot for your money here. Many compare the current state of the city to NYC in the 80's. There's lots of potential.

> You get a lot for your money here.

Rents are cheap. Taxes, insurance, and any sort of labor the unions control are absurdly expensive. You have to be crazy to start a business downtown rather than just outside the city. If you're a major corporation you can negotiate special terms so it makes sense to locate downtown, but that's more of a bad sign than anything.

Yes, some taxes and costs are higher, but I like living and working in a big city instead of the suburbs. There's a lot of incentives for businesses moving into the city now. Property taxes are insanely low here (a fraction of surrounding locations). I've seen huge improvements in the last five years. And I don't think it's fair to write it off so easily. You have to factor in quality of life, and Philly has a lot to offer. And it's just plain ridiculous to say Philly is boring with the amount of nightlife and culture here.

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