Wilmington Diary, Day Seven: Enough Already

Now that I've completed the first full calendar week on this assignment, I think I'm ready to drop the Wilmington-specific references from my daily blog entries. That's not to say that I won't be writing about the things I observe at my employer or in Wilmington in the future; just that I won't be doing this every single day. I'd like to throw in observations on other things, including what I read in the papers and see going on elsewhere, and I can't really do that in a "Wilmington Diary."

Besides, how much can I say about a city that isn't all that different from hundreds of other small- to medium-sized US cities that are trying to revive their downtowns? Wilmington is fortunate only in that it is in a state where one company and one family--both of which share a common name--wield enormous power and influence and have the cash to back that up. Wilmington's banking-based downtown building boom is the direct result of a law promoted by then-Gov. Pierre S. DuPont IV. The family's hotel is one of the main buildings on the city's central square. And even though it is now outstripped by one of those banks as the city's largest employer, DuPont still employs many Wilmingtonians who take an active interest in civic affairs.

None of this has prevented Market Street from fading as a shoppers' magnet. Even the splendid transformation of an old Masonic temple on Market into the Grand Opera House--bankrolled by MBNA--hasn't brought true nightlife to downtown, whose streets still are mostly quiet after 6 p.m. But amidst the decay, there are still plenty of signs of life, and at least for now, we can cling on to these and hope for better days to come.

On the job: I know this much--I'm fast. But it appears I need to take some more time to study the documents I review to make sure they are communicating clearly with their intended audience. Accuracy and clarity are as important as speed in this job.

I'm also going to have to adjust my dining habits in the company café. I've heard from co-workers that it's very easy to put on weight on the fare served there. (There's also a fitness center, one floor down from the café, but I'm not eligible to use it. However, there are several walking/jogging routes posted on a bulletin board just inside its entrance, and I can use those any time I want.)

Today's observation: How is a credit card like a bottle of wine? When used properly, both offer great benefits. Use them too much, though, and you'll get into trouble.

I'm reading stories in the papers about a pending bankruptcy-reform bill working its way through Congress. Its intent is to make it more difficult for individuals, especially affluent ones, to get out from under all their debts through a Chapter 7 filing. The bill's backers--mainly the big credit-card banks--want these people to file Chapter 13 instead, which requires the filer to at least pay back some of what is owed.

Oddly enough, I'm sympathetic to the card companies' argument--but only up to a point. Yes, if people can afford to pay back some of their debts, they should, and the bankruptcy law shouldn't just be an easy way out from under a spending bender. But people really do fall on hard times they didn't prepare for--and part of the blame for this lies with the card companies.

Our modern lifestyle is not geared towards saving; it's geared towards spending. Almost every advertising message we see, and every unsolicited credit-card offer that lands in our mailboxes, is an invitation to spend. And not just spend--spend as much as possible as soon as possible. We will even make it easy for you by fronting you your future income; when you get it, just give it back to us along with a modest fee.

For the overwhelming majority of us, this isn't a problem. But it might well become one should we lose our jobs or come down with a serious illness or injury. Too many of us spend all our paychecks as they come in, despite what the personal-finance columnists and advisors say, and the difference between success and disaster is one missed paycheck. At that point, a downward spiral begins that can only be halted through filing bankruptcy.

Should that be avoided? Certainly. But we shouldn't close it off as an option just because some people use it not as a lifeline but as a hangover cure.

Postscript: After publishing this, I took a look at the most recently published blogs on Blogger. One of them is called "Payday Loans." That blog is nothing but a series of come-ons for these short-term cash advances at usurious interest rates. It might have been more interesting if it were a cry for help from someone who has become hooked on them.

Wilmington Diary, Day Six

In today's climate, those of us who still believe government has a role to play in promoting fairness and equitable treatment of all Americans usually get accused by those on the Right of being socialists. In this reductionist view, our belief in government as a positive force is equated with an outright dislike of capitalist enterprise.

This wiew is way too simple. Sure, there are many private companies that, given the chance, would abuse their workers, screw their communities and cheat their customers if doing so meant they made a bigger profit, and we've seen some of the biggest of these fall into well-deserved bankruptcy during the last decade.

But there are at least as many companies that understand that profit is not an end in itself, but rather a sign that the company has done right by those who depend on it: The customers who purchase its goods or services, the people who make the enterprise work, the communities in which they do business, and finally, the investors who put up their money to finance the company's growth. The company I currently work for most emphatically falls in this latter category.

The inspirational sayings found on walls throughout the headquarters complex--including the ubiquitous "Think of yourself as a customer," found over every doorway--might strike some as bordering on the hokey. But they are meant to illustrate a mindset that the company brass instills in everyone who works here: Never lose sight of who you are working for, and treat that person the way you would want to be treated. The management then practices what it preaches by treating the workforce the way they would want to be treated. They implement policies that make juggling work and life easier. They get involved in the community and encourage their employees--oops! There are no employees here, just "people"--to do the same. They keep everyone informed about just how well the company is doing from day to day and encourage people to come up with ways it can do what it does even better. If challenges lie ahead, they keep people informed about their nature.

It's a very people-focused attitude, and from what I've been able to learn, it's served this company well. People here love what they do, and the company in turn supports them for doing what they do to the best of their ability. Given that this company has been extremely successful--a pioneer in its industry--I would think that most large companies would want to emulate its practices. Maybe they do. I would love to think so.

Wilmington Diary, Day Five

A break in the pace of documents to review gives me a little time to catch up. Note to self: Beat up on SEPTA for not taking a page from Amtrak's book and offering wireless Internet access on Regional Rail. This is a frill, and not central to SEPTA's mission of moving Philadelphians 'round the region, you say? Perhaps. But judging from the number of Regional Rail riders I see working on their laptop computers every day, I suspect that there are many who might be willing to tack a little extra onto their TrailPass fares in order to get Internet access on board.

On the job: The job is going well. The bosses are pleased with my work. I'm happy, and tired. I like everything about this job but the commute. Getting up at 5:30 a.m., leaving Philly at 7 and not getting back home until 7 p.m. puts a crimp in my style, even if it means I can finally catch up on reading while on the train. But I now understand why many Americans buy frozen entrees or pick up take-out meals on the way home in the evening. This regimen leaves little time to cook right.

Today's observation: Well, actually, this one's from Monday, when I came in for a half day when the office was closed (my mentor asked if I could use the extra hours--do you think I'd turn her down?).

While killing time in downtown Wilmington in the early afternoon, I wandered through the Ship's Tavern District--a two-block stretch of Market Street that Wilmington's city fathers are trying to turn into a yuppie magnet. The east side of the street remains, like most of Market Street, a faded shell of its former self, with a few businesses surviving among the empty storefronts. On the west side, spruced-up structures boast signs announcing new merchants to come, and others tout loft apartments. In the middle of the central block of the district sits a sandwich shop with checkered tablecloths and faded signs on the east side and a brand-new Subway franchise on the other.

This rankled the owner of the sandwich shop, a Greek gentleman in what looked like his early 60s who had been there for decades. He told me a classic David-and-Goliath story, in which the city played Goliath, using every tool at its disposal short of eminent domain to encourage him to sell the building, close up shop and move on.

"If the city wanted to revive businesses in the area, why didn't it just give you a low- or no-interest loan so you could rehab your place yourself?" I asked.

I don't remember exactly what he said in response, but it boiled down to, That might make too much sense.

Certainly, the city--and New Castle County--found ways to help the company where I am currently working build a grand international headquarters right in the heart of downtown as opposed to expanding its offices in Newark, Del., where it was founded, even more. I'd be curious to know how much it cost them to acquire the handsome 1914 New Castle County Court House from the county, for instance. Maybe there was a tax abatement of some sort for the new construction--all four city blocks' worth of it. And maybe the thousands of people working in these buildings help boosts Wilmington's municipal coffers through local taxes they pay (I will learn more about this when I get my first paycheck this week).

But the little guys like the sandwich shop owner, it appears, see very little benefit from all this. The workers don't lunch in the local eateries, for instance, and at the end of the day, they all clear out of downtown--like I do--headed for their homes outside Wilmington. In the meantime, the small businesses which are supposed to be the backbone of the economy--whether it's local, regional or national--get hassled and bypassed in favor of mega-projects and national chains, when perhaps just a little seed money and a few more customers would do wonders for them.

It's almost enough to make me want to become a Republican, except that the GOP would only deliver more of this same stuff were they in power at the local level.

Wilmington Diary, Day Two

On the job: Boss took me in for a chat first thing today. Said I'd come on a bit too strong with some co-workers--"you're flamboyant, and this is a more conservative culture," or something like that. (No, I haven't come out to any of my co-workers yet. But if any of them read my resume, I've got the Philadelphia Gay News listed among my freelance outlets.) I allowed as to how I often come across as a know-it-all and said I'd tone things down 20 decibels or so. Then the person I'm working with directly told me she was upset, because the boss said she was upset with me when she wasn't. (We've hit it off quite well.) Only the second day, and already I get a taste of office politics. Sheesh.

Today's observation: What is the difference between MBNA headquarters and an Atlantic City casino?

No, I'm not talking about money. I'm approaching this from the urbanist perspective.

Here's the difference: MBNA headquarters has more windows and is more tastefully decorated.

Otherwise, the two are quite similar in that they are total environments--it's not necessary for those inside them to venture outside for anything from the time they enter until the time they're ready to go.

The casinos have restaurants, shops, and services all under one roof. So does MBNA headquarters. And the top brass had at one time toyed with the idea of turning the old New Castle County Court House (now part of the MBNA HQ complex) into a hotel, or so I was told, furthering the parallel.

I understand why the casinos do this--they want to keep as much of their patrons' money in their own hands as possible. I can appreciate why a large company does this--it helps employee morale.

But for a large company in a big-city location, or even a small-city one like this one, this strikes me as a bit redundant.

Supposedly, one of the benefits a company enjoys from having its offices in the middle of an urban business district is that, unlike in the suburbs, ancillary services--diners/restaurants, dry cleaners, barber shops, hair salons, gift shops, small grocery stores, and so on--are nearby, within an easy walk of the offices. The city benefits from having the company's workers patronizing all those shops during the day, and the activity adds life to the streets.

Wilmington's main shopping strip has seen better days, but there's still lots of places to shop or run errands within a stone's throw of Rodney Square. You won't see too many MBNA employees taking care of personal business in these places, though--they can do everything within the headquarters complex. For all the complex interacts with its surrounding area, it may as well be the suburban office campus it is in spirit.

(I do need to be fair here: the company doesn't mind at all if you decide to have lunch across Rodney Square in the Hotel DuPont or somewhere along Market Street instead of in their (excellent) employee cafeteria. And the fact that it is possible to do this by just walking up the block does distinguish the in-city complex from the suburban one.)

Wilmington Diary, Day One

Well, make that Day Three, as I've spent most of the past three days in Delaware's largest city, prepping for this honest-to-God Day One of an indefinite temporary assignment at MBNA, the giant credit card issuer headquartered in the heart of downtown Wilmington.

Even if this assignment runs no longer than the one-week trial period my employer-at-one-remove and I have agreed to, this is already a learning experience on several fronts. It's my first exposure to the corporate sector and to the world of banking. It's also a chance for me to take the measure of a new city and see what I can discern about the place from looking around.

Herewith, the first of a bunch of observations on what the redevelopment of Wilmington, as exemplified by MBNA's move into the city, might tell us about cities in general.

Jane Jacobs--who wrote with dismay about the deadening effect some uses have on a cityscape, with the four banks located at Broad and Chestnut in Philadelphia in 1961 as an example--would probably be amused by what downtown Wilmington has become. The large banks that moved their credit-card operations to Delaware have transformed the Wilmington skyline, giving this small (roughly 90,ooo population) city a big-city appearance.

But it's gone beyond that. The banks have even annexed the public square--literally.

Rodney Square--downtown Wilmington's epicenter, featuring a statue honoring its namesake, Caesar Rodney, who rode through mud and storms to cast Delaware's vote for independence in 1776--used to be dominated by civic institutions. On its east side was the New Castle County courthouse; on its south, the Wilmington Public Library; on the north, the city's main post office; and on the west, the Hotel DuPont, owned by what used to be the biggest company in the state. (That honor now belongs to the one where I'm now working.)

The library remains there, untouched. The hotel spruced itself up. But the post office is now relegated to the basement of its own building; the rest is now the front door to the headquarters of Wilmington Trust, the biggest full-service bank based in the city. And the New Castle County courthouse has been annexed to the MBNA headquarters--the county's moved to new digs four blocks away--and the company is trying to figure out what to put in it.

I'm not sure I like this development any more than Jacobs did. But it appears to be paying off for the city, in some way. But perhaps not the way the leaders hoped it would, if what's inside MBNA headquarters is any guide. More on that tomorrow.

It Looks Like a Big City, But It's Really 100 Small Towns Thrown Together

I have noticed of late that I now regularly run into people who have moved to Philadelphia from somewhere else and are pleasantly surprised by what they find here. And these people aren't rubes from the T-Zone or farmers from the Great Flyover, but people who have been exposed to city life already somewhere else--often as part of a collegiate experience.

This I take as a hopeful sign for the city's future. It confirms something I already know about the city--that it has finally become comfortable with its own urbanity and has shed enough of its traditional modesty to let its hair down and enjoy itself--though not enough of it yet to display the self-confidence it ought to have by now.

The outsiders also appear to be pleasantly surprised by one old Philadelphia quality the city hasn't shed: its small-town feel at the neighborhood level. Even in the heart of the city, it seems, one can settle into a community of people where everyone not only knows everyone else, but everyone else's business too, much as the denizens of Harper Valley and Peyton Place did.

This strikes me as an unusual quality for a large city, though it may just well be that I haven't spent enough time in other cities' neighborhoods. Certainly there are neighborhoods in Boston that are as close-knit and insular as Philadelphia's Fishtown, for instance. But here, the insularity and close-knittedness can be found even in those parts of the city where you would least expect to see it--my own "Gayborhood," for example.

I would think that such a quality would make this city somewhat intimidating for outsiders. I guess I'm wrong about that.

Why Some People Are Heading Back to the City

I had an interesting conversation last Wednesday with a woman who just might be an unwitting poster girl for the back-to-the-city trend.

At a wine-and-cheese party at a City Line Avenue hotel, I wound up talking with a couple of older women who live in Levittown. One of them, an energetic 74-year-old, told me that she enjoys getting out and going places. "I hop on the train and go into Philadelphia all the time," she said. "I take the Phlash bus around town. I like to visit the museums and go to the shops."

Without my asking why, she explained, "I come into Philadelphia because there's no place to go in Levittown."

In that sentence she captured the central flaw with the Auto Age suburb--it was designed as a new urban form, but without all the necessary urban functions. The people who built places like Levittown all over America had a certain model of suburban life in mind. That model can be summed up with the phrase "a good place to raise your kids." The ample yards and quiet residential streets of these large subdivisions guaranteed families ample space for their children to play without having to walk to a park or schoolyard. Schools were located near the center of neighborhoods to put them in easy walking (or bus) distance of all the students. Shopping centers on the edges of the developments provided most basic needs--and some extra ones, if they were large enough.

All this was just fine as long as the parents were working and the children young. The model did not work so well once the children reached adolescence or the parents retired, and the reason why turned out to be the same for both retirees and children: There were few diversions these people could easily reach, especially without a car. No corner taverns or eateries. No art galleries or promenades. No place to be in public, casually interacting or simply sharing experiences with one's fellow citizens.

If that Levittowner's comment can be taken as an example, there is still a need even in our privatized Auto Age suburban landscape for public places that serve recreational, cultural and entertainment functions. Many older interwar suburbs have such places in their central business districts, and their siting makes them reachable by a variety of means. Retrofitting such places into our newer suburbs seems a bit more difficult, but that hasn't stopped towns like Schaumburg, Ill., from trying. The movement of empty-nesters back into in-town neighborhoods is one way some Americans are trying to reconnect to the communal realm; it's quite likely that as the decades pass, our newer suburbs will, like Schaumburg, attempt to construct this realm in their midst from scratch.

Why The Press Did Not Out Jim McGreevey

This is a topic of a front-of-the-book article in the October issue of Philadelphia magazine, and after reading it, I believe the author--and Philadelphia's readers -- would have been better served if they had read one of Michelangelo Signorile's explanations of why some politicians
deserved to be outed and others not in the Advocate.

As it is, the article is competent enough: the point it makes is that nobody in the Trenton press corps felt that McGreevey's being gay was story enough in and of itself to devote throwing investigative resources at in a big way. Reporters did repeatedly ask the governor about rumors he was gay, which were routinely denied, and when the news of Golan Cipel's appointment to a post he was apparently not qualified for broke, the angle became more relevant and was pursued by more media outlets. But still nothing appeared in print or on air stating definitively that Gov. McGreevey was gay, and nothing would have had McGreevey not outed himself in his resignation announcement.

Of course, McGreevey outed himself mainly as a means of diverting attention from yet another unsavory tale of corruption; such tales have been staples of his term in office. But nothing else he did made his being gay relevant to anything else.

Which brings me to the reason why Signorile might have been a better person to answer that question. As the article fails to note, just about every politician who has been outed was kicked out of the closet by the gay press or gay activists bent on exposing their hypocrisy in supporting legislation or other state action that was hostile to the notion of equal treatment for gays. As McGreevey did no such thing, there was no real reason to reveal his sexuality against his wishes except in the context of some scandal where it might have influenced his decisions, as was the case with the Cipel appointment.

The View from the Handlebars

For the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to experience Philadelphia on two wheels, since a friend with a bicycle took up residence here. Besides good exercise, it's given me an opportunity to roam a little further beyond my home neighborhood and see just how easy--or difficult--it is for bicycles and motor vehicles to co-exist.

My first observation on that latter topic is this: Bicyclists have a built-in advantage in much of the city, thanks to the narrowness of the streets--a legacy of the original 1682 city plan, which was extended into much of North and South Philadelphia. Narrow streets--especially when they have parked cars on both sides, as they do almost everywhere outside Center City--force motorists to slow down and be more cognizant of the environment through which they are driving. On some of the most crowded streets in Center City, I find I can actually keep pace with the cars and trucks.

My second observation is this: Bike lanes provide a false sense of security. Even though motorists do observe lane discipline, and by and large stay out of the marked bike lanes, there are inevitable conflicts by dint of their traditional location at the right edge of the travel space. If there is a parking lane to the right, bicyclists still run the risk of running into car doors that open suddenly. Motorists attempting to turn right must cross the lane to do so, and often, they will not look to see if they are cutting off a bike in the bike lane; if a bicyclist is traveling in a mixed traffic lane, this does not happen, as the motorist must pay attention to the bike just ahead of him in the same lane. And what happens when it's time for the bicyclist to make a left turn? There is still at least one lane--and usually more than one--of mixed traffic to cross. If motorists are not used to encountering bicyclists in the regular lanes, they will soon completely forget to pay attention to them.

Philadelphia's Streets Department has been very good about posting "Share the Road" signs on city thoroughfares, even those with marked bike lanes. Judging from the behavior of the drivers around me as I travel through the city, the message must have soaked in. Education, not segregation, is the key to making sure two- and four-wheeled conveyances can get along together on city streets.

On Google as a Method of Self-Validation

So, here I am, jotting down comments on urban development and idly surfing Blogger as a way not to dwell too much on a job interview this afternoon, and I stumble across the fact that Blogger is now a subsidiary of Google.

Of course, Google has been much in the news lately, having raised a ton of money by selling shares to the public. Its proprietary cataloging and page ranking technology, which relies in part on the Internet equivalent of word-of-mouth references, is also much discussed and widely admired.

One of the beauties of the method is that it is much more difficult for an individual or company to game its way to the top of the list. A site or page rises to the top because other sites or pages point to it, which is a way of implying that people find the page useful or worthwhile.

For businesses or companies, this sort of implicit endorsement can be quite valuable. But what does it mean for individuals?

I've been pondering this a bit ever since I lost my position at the top of a Google page ranking. Prior to April of this year, if you were to enter the name "sandy smith" into Google and click on "I'm Feeling Lucky," you would have gone directly to my home page on pobox.upenn.edu. This, I imagined, is because back when the Internet was just beginning to turn from in-group plaything to mass-market phenomenon, I put up a personal site that listed some of my interests, web pages of acquaintances, a capsule bio and links to transit agencies around the world (connected to another of my interests). Since I participated in a bunch of Usenet newsgroups, what probably happened is that other Usenetters put links to my page onto their pages and thus bumped up its "usefulness" according to the Google taxonomy.

When I lost my job at Penn, I lost my web site too. Now, Googling "sandy smith" first takes you to the "home for lost pages" of a Web developer in Washington, D.C. But as I scanned down the list of "sandy smith" sites, there at position number 5 was my own profile on Blogger.

Why would this be? I only created this blog last month, and a little over a month went by between post number 1 and post number 2. According to the traffic stats, I've probably had as many visitors to my blog as a Rolls-Royce dealership in Mississippi would get in the same time span.

Which once again, leads me to wonder: Who wants to know more about me? Is my life that interesting? My thoughts? Who is reading, and why? Unfortunately, these questions Google cannot answer. All it can tell me is that, among the tens of thousands of Sandy Smiths out there in cyberspace, I must be interesting or intriguing to at least a large handful of friends, acquaintances and total strangers.

Maybe you can clue me in on why.

Just what is blight, anyway?

If you live in or around Philly, as I do, you are probably familiar with the chain of communities collectively known as the Main Line. These are all older, affluent suburbs, with charming, eclectic business districts that usually center on the train stations of the Pennsylvania Railroad route that gave the area its name.

Some of these, such as Ardmore, are struggling to remain vibrant in the face of competition from regional malls and trendy districts such as Wayne and Manayunk. Some of their shops are vacant, and some of their buildings could use a little sprucing up.

But I doubt that anyone, upon seeing them, would judge them blighted.

And yet that is exactly what officials in Ardmore--and in the northern suburb of Jenkintown--are calling them. All so they can take advantage of a decades-old state law promoting urban redevelopment.

The law, passed in 1943, gives municipalities expanded powers of condemnation in order to remove blight and redevelop rundown neighborhoods. Ardmore officials would like to construct a new retail complex and train station along historic Lancaster Avenue in order to keep people strolling the street and better connect the district to the equally historic Suburban Square shopping center across the tracks. In Jenkintown, borough officials want the designation so they can purchase fading properties and offer them to developers willing to either rehabilitate them or build new structures.

All of this may be desirable, even beneficial for neighboring merchants. But it seems a bit too heavy-handed a use of government power. And to get that power, the governments in question have to, in effect, disparage their own communities by declaring them in worse shape than they really are.

That our big cities engaged in the same sort of behavior in the urban renewal era of the 1950s and 1960s does not make it any more right or justified today.

stumbling into this weird universe...

I feel like the person who went out to the store to get a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk and returned with sirloin steaks and sparkling water, but no milk and bread.

All this started when I tried to post a response to Robert Cote's blog. Turns out that Blogger won't let you post replies without a user name. So the next thing you know, I'm going through the account setup process and I now have a blog! Sneaky how they do this, isn't it?

Very well, then. Now that I too am among the millions of one-person publishers, I may as well offer content. You will find here from time to time my thoughts on politics, the state of the world, culture, history, cities, transportation, architecture and whatever else may happen to strike my fancy at the time. This blog may be the equivalent of the tree falling in the forest with no one hearing it; if so, at least I've had some fun posting to it. If not, I hope you will share your thoughts and responses.