Young Philadelphians

Check out this great article from Metropolis about the amazing things young Philadelphian's are doing.

Creating the New City: Part One

By Ada Kulesza on July 8, 2011 11:13 AM |

By Ada Kulesza

This is a story about lovers.

It's no love story; rather, it is a story about people who love a city they have inherited, an ancient place founded by Quakers and built by Revolutionaries. Pockets of that old world are still scattered around Philadelphia, but the men who first built it wouldn't recognize it.

Philadelphia is the bone yard of the Industrial Revolution. The ruins of extinct businesses stand like empty monuments to an economy that's gone.  But, many of the young people living here today see beauty in its post-industrial shell. Look inside and you'll see people working, slowly, to create the city's new economy - and with that, its new culture.

Young people today are like those who created our country. They want to do things their own way. They see blight as potential for green development. They see idle teenagers as potential entrepreneurs. They see a tanking economy as the signal to follow their hearts.

The young people featured in this story may not know each other, but they keep saying the same thing. There's something really great going on here. There's an exciting energy humming through the city.

"I love Philadelphia."

Their declarations of love are almost always followed by "even though..." Philadelphia has problems. We offer 12 stories about young people who are working to solve these problems. Most of them are in their 20s, a number of them are émigrés who grew up elsewhere. Some are profiting nicely; some are just starting out on very long journeys, with no certainty of success. All of them are part of a city on the rise because it's doing things a little differently.

They bring to their missions originality, vitality and optimism. but something else is threading through each of these tales: they aren't doing it alone. Strict individualism may have worked in the past; but this is the cooperative generation. They're reaching out to each other and to the many groups and communities that comprise the city. They're listening. And they're doing it themselves. They are the source of energy that has the power to make this a story with a happy ending -- for them and for the city they love.

Welcome to Philadelphia's next generation.

Read the rest here: http://www.phlmetropolis.com/2011/07/makers-of-the-new-city-part-one.php