I would by far walk the streets of Harlem than those of Philly. Philly is basically a city in anarchy.
Wow, I think I understand why Philly is so often known as “Killadelphia”... what ever happened to “The City of Brotherly Love”?
Post-Rudy, much of Central Harlem is no longer as dangerous as it once was. There are actually whites living there (especially Euro hipsters). Hell, I found myself driving down 125th Street at 1AM on a weeknight, and I saw blacks, whites, and hispanics walking along the main drag, something that would have been unthinkable 15 years ago.
Philly, on the other hand, reminds me of Lindsey-era New York, albeit with a rising black majority. New York was helped in that the wealthy never left, and it attracted a multiethnic range of immigrants to keep one race from dominating politically. Philly, on the other hand, has been a city of neer do well blacks, and a declining population of proletarian whites, with a small area of center city reserved for the yuppies. In other words, it is still stuck demographically in the 1970s.