Two detailed reports published in recent days show Philadelphia’s progress at tackling some of the city’s most intractable problems, while highlighting a few areas of concern for the region.
The Center City District (CCD) released its annual analysis, dubbed the “State of Center City,” on Wednesday, about a week after Pew unveiled its 2026 “State of the City.” (Neither are to be confused with the “State of the City” address Mayor Cherelle Parker delivered in December.)
“We start from a place of Philadelphia really being on a roll right now,” Prema Katari Gupta, CCD’s president and CEO, told reporters at a briefing Tuesday. “From Delaware Avenue to the Bellwether District, there are cranes rising in places that a generation ago we didn't think would be possible.”
Pew’s data provides a high-level overview of the city as a whole. It notes that Philadelphia’s homicide total last year (222) was its lowest since 1966. The number of shooting victims also dipped below 1,000 for the first time in more than two decades.
City officials, the report states, estimate that 1,000 people died of unintentional drug overdoses in 2025. If finalized, it would be the fewest since 2016.
Philadelphia’s poverty rate dropped under 20% for the first time since 1979, according to Pew. The city had long held the title of the poorest of the nation's 10 largest cities; that moniker now belongs to Houston.
CCD’s 116-page report focuses primarily on the downtown area. From 2011 to 2024, Greater Center City – defined as Girard to Tasker avenues between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers – saw a 28% increase in its population, far outpacing the city as a whole.
Projects are underway to convert struggling office spaces and other large buildings into residential and mixed-use properties. Among those efforts are proposed overhauls of Centre Square and the Wanamaker building, CCD representatives pointed out.
Retail occupancy in Center City rose to 84% in March, the analysis showed. More than 40% of all jobs in Philadelphia are based in the expanded downtown zone, according to data compiled by CCD.
“We're on very, very strong footing,” Gupta said. “We want to be very clear that these achievements are not evidence that the work is finished.”
Philadelphia’s tax system, with its high reliance on wage and business levies, is a barrier to companies looking to relocate to the city, the document asserts. Another uncertainty is SEPTA, which struggled with well-documented funding and infrastructure crises last year.
In addition, more resources, CCD argues, need to be devoted to supporting the city’s homeless population.
“We think that having visibly homeless people on the streets really unfairly drives the perception of lack of safety,” Gupta remarked. “I think more than anything else, it's not fair for the most vulnerable among us to live that way.”
Among the challenges identified in the Pew report are plateauing education attainment and median income data points.
Just over 36% of adults living in Philadelphia hold bachelor’s degrees, which is on par with the national average but significantly lower than Pittsburgh, Boston and Washington, D.C. More than half of the population of those three cities graduated from universities.
In 2024, Philadelphia’s median household income stood at $60,521 a year, about $20,000 less than the national number, PEW found. Earnings were also higher in several comparison cities, including Houston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Chicago.
