News that a grand jury is considering possible corruption in the award of economic development funds by the Delaware River Port Authority to politically connected recipients makes Peter Hendee Brown’s posting on the DRPA on this site especially timely. What the DRPA is supposed to do and how it operates is hard to grasp from the many news accounts that has put the agency in the news over time. Brown provides the background that helps make sense of the agency’s central importance to the region and the structural problems that arise from its operations.
When I first returned to the area after a long absence to write a book on Camden in the late 1990s, I was surprised at the way DRPA operated, not as an agent for regional development but as a cash cow that directed funds in equal portions to Pennsylvania and New Jersey without an overall strategic plan. Some projects made immediate sense, such as refitting the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the aftermath of the government’s departure from the site. Other investments were harder to sell. Spokesmen for the agency often talked about building tourism, for instance, by making investments on both sides of the Delaware River, and some good results came from that vision as well, not the least funds that helped make the President’s House memorial in Philadelphia a reality. But building tourism—which might conceivably generate returns by increasing tolls over bridges connecting the two states—was never central to DRPA’s goal. Supporting allies and garnering political credits appears to have topped the list of priorities, to say nothing of the financial benefits that might be gained through related contracts and political donations, among other things.
As Brown indicates, the creation of the DRPA was part of a movement to remove from politics certain public investments operating as non-partisan authorities. As Louise Dyble’s devastating critique of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, Paying the Toll: Local Power, Regional Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge, demonstrates, reigning in such authorities can be difficult indeed, and holding them accountable nearly impossible. DRPA may not reach that standard, but accountability remains a concern to the many people who continue to pay tolls into this organization’s coffers.
Whether an indictment will follow the grand jury’s investigation, DRPA deserves close scrutiny. We hope that our fellow citizens in the greater Philadelphia region will be aided in their assessment of the DRPA by Brown’s essay. Certainly, none of us have heard the last about controversies surrounding this important player in our region.
Richard Florida, well-known for introducing the term “creative class,” has recently released an assessment of the class divide distinguishing the Philadelphia area. Part of a larger series on U.S. cities, the report draws from the U.S. Census American Community Survey to designate areas across the region as part of one of three classes: creative, service, and working. The study is of particular interest to the editors of the encyclopedia because Florida provides one strategy for understanding the region just as we are about to undertake the challenge of assigning essays that will help us define what has constituted “greater Philadelphia” over time. We would be interested in how those who have been following our work react to Florida’s essay. It has already provoked a good deal of commentary on-line, and we welcome your own reactions.
The mission of the Global Philadelphia Association is "to assist—and to encourage greater interaction among—the many organizations and people who are engaged in international activity in the Greater Philadelphia Region, to promote the development of an international consciousness within the region, and to enhance the region’s global profile." We are pleased to have Global Philadelphia as a new civic partner, as well as to add The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia to the membership roll of Global Philadelphia. To find out more about Global Philadelphia, visit the association's web site, and to learn more about Philadelphia's global heritage, visit our "Philadelphia and the World" content theme.
We are grateful to all of our volunteer authors and editors who are making The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia possible. Every day we receive hundreds of page views from information seekers, including teachers, students, and interested readers not just locally but also across the country and around the world. Our authors include the most prominent historians of Philadelphia as well as young scholars making their marks with new research and other subject experts.
For our next expansion, we seek volunteer authors to contribute essays related to the built and natural environment and regional events and traditions. We also seek volunteer authors to write about counties in the region, and some topics remain available to continue expansion of the themes of City of Neighborhoods, the Cradle of Liberty, and the Workshop of the World. For more information and to see a list of available topics, click here.
We are pleased to announce that The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia will enhance its digital platform with a two-year, $81,040 grant awarded by the William Penn Foundation to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers–Camden, the Encyclopedia's institutional home. The grant will allow us to add photo galleries of material artifacts; place-mapping; new text about Philadelphia’s history; links between history and the news; and more. We look forward to working with our civic partners as well as the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in developing these new features.
The William Penn Foundation, founded in 1945 by Otto and Phoebe Haas, works to close the achievement gap for low-income children, ensure a sustainable environment, foster creativity that enhances civic life, and advance philanthropy in the Philadelphia region. With assets of nearly $2 billion, the Foundation distributes approximately $80 million in grants annually. Learn more about the Foundation at www.williampennfoundation.org.
Help us grow! During the summer of 2012, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia seeks volunteer authors to contribute essays related to the themes of City of Neighborhoods, the Cradle of Liberty, and the Workshop of the World. Prospective authors must have expertise in their chosen subjects demonstrated by previous publications and/or advanced training in historical research. For further information, visit our list of available topics.
This week our Children's Television essay is featured by Rutgers Media Relations in a news release by Ed Moorehouse. The article calls attention to the Rutgers-Camden connections of the two authors, Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic of the Robeson Library and the Ph.D. program in Childhood Studies, and Brandi Scardilli, who earned her M.A. from the Rutgers-Camden Department of History. In the interview, the essay authors also comment on children's television programming today. Update: Listen to Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic discuss her research on WHYY-FM, broadcast May 9, 2012.
While so many this week are remembering the Titanic on the 100th anniversary of that epic disaster, WHYY Newsworks turned its attention to "epic failures" in Philadelphia's history. We helped by putting reporter Peter Crimmins in touch with Michael Zuckerman, the author of our "City of Firsts" essay, and our associate editor Stephanie Wolf. Their insights into such memorable events as the Bicentennial and Sesquicentennial were featured along with others' comments about the Tram to Nowhere, the MOVE bombing, and other "epic failures." What would you add? Visit Newsworks to join the discussion. (And keep coming back to the Encyclopedia - we will add essays on the Sesquicentennial and Centennial celebrations this summer.)
We were so grateful and impressed by your expressions of support for our application in the Knight News Challenge. We have learned that our proposal will not be advancing to the next round of the competition -- in all, more than 1,100 applications were submitted and all but 51 were eliminated in the first round of screening. Although we are disappointed, we are glad for the positive developments that emerged from our collective effort. We have attracted new, enthusiastic potential partners for the future, and we have more than 200 followers for the @Backgrounders Twitter feed that we started for connecting history with the news. We will continue to use this to serve the public and add value to the Encyclopedia project. To follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Backgrounders. To see the projects advancing to further consideration in the Knight News Challenge, and comments about the selection process, follow this link: http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/20962258701/knight-news-challenge-on-networks-moving-to-the-next.
This week's news presented an ideal opportunity to connect history with the news, using our Backgrounders feed on Twitter to reach journalists and other interested readers. When WHYY's Newsworks posted its report that Autumn Adkins Graves, the president of Girard College, will step down at the end of the school year, we added background with our Girard College essay as well as a link to Temple University's outstanding "Civil Rights in a Northern City" project. These resources, combined with the news account, call attention to the significance of the service of President Graves as the first female and African American head of this landmark Philadelphia institution.
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