Political Lessons from American Cities: Philadelphia

Reforming Philadelphia examines the cyclical efforts of insurgents to change the city’s government over nearly 350 years. Political scientist Richardson Dilworth tracks reformers as they create a new purpose for the city or reshape the government to reflect emerging ideas. Some wish to thwart the “corrupt machine,” while others seek to gain control of the government via elections. These actors formed coalitions and organizations that disrupted the status quo in the hope of transforming the city (and perhaps also enriching themselves).

Dilworth addresses Philadelphia’s early development through the present day, including momentous changes from its new city charter in 1885 and the Republican machine that emerged around the same time to its transformation to a Democratic stronghold in the 1950s, when the city also experienced a racial transition. Focusing primarily on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Dilworth evaluates the terms of Mayors Frank Rizzo, Wilson Goode, and Ed Rendell, as well as John Street, Michael Nutter, and Jim Kenney to illustrate how power and resistance function, and how Philadelphia’s political history and reform cycles offer a conceptual model that can easily be applied to other cities.

Reforming Philadelphia provides a new framework for understanding the evolving relationship between national politics and local, city politics.

Temple Press is publishing six titles in their series, “Political Lessons from American Cities,” which is edited by Richardson Dilworth, UAR Managing Editor and Professor of Politics at Drexel University.

Credits 

Many thanks to Gary Kramer and Sam Cohn at Temple University Press, the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University, the managing editors at Urban Affairs Review, and our guests for sharing their time and insights with us. The show’s music is “Hundred Mile” by K2, courtesy of Blue Dot Sessions. 

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