Dear readers, let’s take a moment to congratulate ourselves on getting to this point, the end of 2024, a year that in at least one way seemed interminable: The presidential election, which brought international attention to Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and was exhausting.
There were many exciting moments, as well — a presidential debate at the Constitution Center, our so-close-to-glory sports teams, our steep decline in gun violence, our first woman mayor, the Portal. Can we make 2025 our city’s best yet?
Here, a look back at the year we had, through some of The Citizen’s most-read stories — and what that can mean for the year ahead.
The first woman mayor brought a new energy to our city.
Cherelle Parker’s 2024 inauguration was a momentous moment for Philadelphia, whose 100th mayor is also its first Black woman. More than that, she brought to City Hall — and the city writ large — what we sorely needed after the doldrums of Jim Kenney’s last years in office. Parker has shown up big, been willing to spend political capital, passionately advocated for what she thinks the city needs — whether 76 Place or city workers back to the office — and overall made Philadelphians feel like someone is actually working for us over there in City Hall.
As Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt wrote a few months ago:
Arguably not since Ed Rendell has the city had a more uplifting public leader. In her energy and her exhaustive exhortations that we’re “one city,” Parker performs the role of cheerleader-in-chief beyond the expectations suggested by her own campaign for the job.
There have been glaring missteps, too. Parker’s slow hiring of her cabinet and other important posts might have been acceptable had she scoured the country and hired the best of the best; instead, she took months in some cases to hire for important roles, and wound up with folks from inside the building. Her show of thinking about the proposed Sixers arena, while barely negotiating with the team to get the best deal for the city was a missed opportunity to do something truly groundbreaking. And her implementation of several initiatives has been shoddy.
In 2025: Parker will spend the next three years of her first term in Donald Trump’s America. What will that mean for her agenda and for her constituents? Will her experience working with Republican politicians when she was in the state legislature help her navigate the new political environment? How will she manage the tension between keeping Philadelphians safe and cared for, and ensuring the city gets as much federal funding and support as possible?
These are hard questions. We hope to pose them to the mayor early in the year, when we host an annual performance review, which she promised to attend during The Citizen’s Ultimate Job Interview series in the runup to the 2023 mayoral election.
We really, really cared about voting.
And everyone cared about us. Folks moved here from as far away as New Orleans, California, London, even Russia to canvas voters for both candidates, who themselves spent a good deal of time in the city or region — including for the one presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect Donald Trump. The year of turmoil and anxiety from the presidential race culminated in a joyful day — November 5, 2024 — of celebrating our democracy’s most fundamental act of voting. Polls were fully-staffed and bustling, votes were counted quickly. Turnout was a fairly paltry 65 percent — slightly lower than in 2020 — with some 78 percent casting a ballot for Kamala Harris, and therefore disappointed by the election.
In 2025: This is not a presidential year, or the potentially government-changing midterms. But it is still an important election year, with Philadelphia’s District Attorney (among others) on the ballot. Don’t look away; look to Philly, where your vote can determine what happens in your own community.
We argued, marched, testified and wrangled over 76 Place, the proposed Sixers’ arena in Center City.
Although the Sixers announced their intention to build a new arena on Market East in the summer of 2022, the legislation to make it happen didn’t come up for a vote in City Hall until December 19, 2024. The Mayor signaled her approval in August, and City Council spent several weeks debating the merits of the proposal in the fall in advance of passing a set of bills to make the arena possible in the Council’s final meeting of 2024. (They voted 12-5 to approve.)
Predictably, some people were thrilled by the promise of jobs and economic growth and the opportunities for SEPTA, while others were dismayed by the fear of Chinatown’s destruction, overwhelming traffic and SEPTA failure.
In 2025: The arena design still must get approval from the City’s Art Commission, which has the opportunity to shape what it looks like. But as Harris Steinberg told The Citizen in December, “it’s not about the arena anymore, but about the area around it.” What can the City do to use the arena as the starting point for reviving East Market Street? Can we bring mixed-income housing to the area, retail that thrives beyond game days, corridors that lead people to Chinatown so it thrives, not just survives? These are questions still to be answered — and that still need feedback from citizens.
We were dismayed by the closing of the 100-year-old University of the Arts.
The sudden closure, just days after the semester ended in June 2024, was a blow to the arts community at a time when artists and performers are still struggling to bounce back after the pandemic. The school gave students and staff a measly one week’s notice, leaving teachers without jobs and students without a plan to get their degrees. (Local schools, including Moore College of Art, soon stepped up to accept students and honor their scholarships.) It was both a shock and a disaster which has still not been explained properly. Left behind are the university’s Center City real estate holdings, worries about the viability of arts schools in particular and area colleges in general, and — coming the same year as two major social service organizations, Benefits Data Trust and Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger — closed questions about how our community nonprofits are managed.
In 2025: Seven downtown U Arts buildings are for sale. Will any of them be refitted as an arts hub, akin to the Bok or Crane Arts buildings? Or, will they become more high-end condos in Center City? Plus, hopefully, we’ll get some answers about what happened — and staff members will get paid.
We tuned in to hear from the experts on getting shit done in cities.
In 2024, The Citizen’s two-year-old podcast, How to Really Run a City, hosted by former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter featured mayors — including Baltimore’s Brandon Scott and Mesa, AZ’s John Giles — policymakers, problem-solvers and brilliant thinkers on everything from city politics to American culture to race. Most of all, our hosts imparted wisdom — often hilariously — from their collective decades of experience with getting stuff done as leaders in city government. Tune in for some mayoral secrets — and for inspiration on the value of cities.
In 2025: Nutter and Reed, along with Citizen Co-founder Larry Platt, will have plenty of material to discuss with their guests under President-elect Donald Trump’s second term, including how local leaders are responding to federal policies that could disrupt American cities and the people living in them.
We rooted for the Eagles, and our favorite former player. (When we weren’t mad at them.)
It was another whirlwind year for our Eagles. A cut-too-short playoff season that signalled the retirement of beloved veteran Jason Kelce, followed by the ubiquity of Kelce on the local and national scene — followed by another bang-up season for the Birds in 2024, including the arrival from New York of running back Saquon Barkley of the backwards leap that may be the most athletic play in NFL history. We groaned, we celebrated, we hoped, we marvelled, we sang along. And, again, the sea of green on game day brought us all together no matter the mood.
In 2025: Could it be another Super Bowl year for the Eagles? Not gonna jinx it by speculating. Just 🤞🏽.
SOME GOOD THINGS FROM 2024
