The Black Worker and the Knowledge Economy in Philadelphia: University-Led Displacement vs. Homeowner Democracy

Many have posited that university-driven development is the solution to the problems of deindustrialization and disinvestment. Others have criticized this work for displacing residents, contributing to inequality, and compromising urban democracy. My research investigates the consequences of university-driven development in Philadelphia, especially for African American communities that surround the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Drexel University. I use the theoretical contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois and David Harvey to conceptualize Philadelphia’s high rate of low-income homeownership as a product of the struggle of black workers and communities for democracy and the Right to the City. I conducted 33 qualitative interviews with long-time residents, political activists, university administrators, and community institutions. I also conducted quantitative analysis including logistic regression analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data comparing outcomes in gentrifying and non-gentrifying neighborhoods and spatial K-cluster analysis.

My results show that university-driven development is leading to the conversion of single-family homes into apartment buildings and multifamily rentals while fostering a vision of the city in which developers, city officials, and university administrators (in the words of one interviewee) “bring Manhattan to Philadelphia.” For Black homeowners, density is shorthand for social, economic, and political displacement of the working class and the disappearance of affordable homeownership opportunities. Density and affordable housing—and an ideology of urbanism—as conceptualized by city planners, university officials, developers, and new residents, clash with communities’ definitions of what the urban fabric of Philadelphia should be, as well as what truly affordable housing looks like. Furthermore, the influx of a student and professional population and its definition of “progressivism” has led to the political displacement of constituencies that have been shaped by Black liberation movements. Black homeowners and Black electorates are leading resistance to university-driven development, whether it is the movement against the building of Temple’s Stadium, or the drive to “save-zone” neighborhoods by rezoning them from mixed residential to single family, in order to preserve homeownership. Their resistance is rooted in the historic struggles of the Black worker in Philadelphia. I conclude with a discussion of the context of decreasing rates of homeownership in the country as a threat to a truly democratic society.

Meghna Chandra received her PhD in Social Welfare from the School of Social Policy & Practice. She will be joining the Institute of Racial Justice at Loyola University in Chicago as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Economic Justice.