Connor Barwin's Civic Season

This week, we won against Buffalo on the field—and off. Civically, Philadelphia and Buffalo are two very similar cities. Both were once manufacturing towns, but are now driven by government, healthcare and educational institutions. As such, both have high poverty rates, roughly the same percentage of residents with BAs or higher, and roughly the same degree of inequality.

As we’ve seen with other Rustbelt cities, both Buffalo and Philly began losing population in the 1950s as the national economy fundamentally shifted after World War II. But while our population has stabilized and even grown since the turn of the 21st Century, Buffalo’s is still in decline. “History and location accounts for Buffalo’s greater decline,” explains Professor Richardson Dilworth of Drexel’s Center for Public Policy. “Philadelphia was once a major port city that developed a manufacturing base, which propelled its 19th Century growth. Buffalo was the terminus of the Erie Canal and thus became an important nodal point for trade and commerce in the 19th Century. But once the canals and railroads became less significant to the U.S. economy, Buffalo ceased to be economically important and simply became a location on a lake that got a lot of snow. Philadelphia still had a geographic advantage, being between Washington, D.C., and New York City, and, since we’re larger, we tend to have a more diversified economy.”

At first blush, it may seem surprising that a higher percentage of residents in Buffalo report having moved there in the last year. But think again, Dilworth says. “These are percentages, and Philadelphia is much bigger,” Dilworth points out. “Another important question is where these people moved from. Buffalo is pretty vibrant, but the upstate New York economy is truly miserable. So it stands to reason that people are moving to Buffalo from places like Newburgh or even nearby Erie, Pennsylvania—a far more depressing place than Buffalo.” Transplants to Philadelphia, on the other hand, tend to come from more economically competitive cities, like Brooklyn, NY.

Next week we host the Arizona Cardinals.