We have a great city, with a unique neighborhood fabric, a premier location on the eastern seaboard, ample natural and cultural resources, and more. We have one of the last truly walkable downtowns in America, and we are by far the most affordable large city in the country. People can put down roots, buy a house, and start a family here in Philadelphia.

And yet we have a city rife with poverty, unemployment and inequality. We do not take full advantage of our opportunities, and we have done far too little to share the benefits of our economic prosperity with all of our city’s neighborhoods and residents.

We cannot address problems of crime, poverty, and unemployment unless we pursue an agenda of economic growth with social justice. This means using the power of government to promote job creation, job training, and economic development where they’re most needed; obtaining our fair share of education and transit funding statewide; and not displacing seniors and working families when new investment arrives.

We have to set a tone in City Hall that Philadelphia wants to attract business and development, but for a reason: to improve life here for everyone, businesses and residents alike. We need to have a citywide development coordinator. We need to better support the hundreds of community development corporations in our city. We need to collect impact fees from developers planning very large projects so we can start to meet the overwhelming need for affordable housing. We need to strengthen our commercial corridors, which are incubators for small businesses and which provide tremendous spillover benefits to their surrounding communities. And we need to develop our waterfronts, ideally without casinos, into places where our port operations thrive, our citizens live and work, and everyone accesses and enjoys a tremendous natural resource.

In Northern Liberties we have created a Neighborhood Plan that forcefully articulates these values of growth with justice. We support mixed-income housing, green and open space, public, casino-free waterfront access, neighborhood commercial corridors, and mixed-commercial uses. Just imagine what all our neighborhoods could accomplish if we had concrete, focused support for these values in City Hall.