Roberta Fallon, 76, of Bala Cynwyd, cofounder, editor, and longtime executive director of theartblog.org, prolific freelance writer for The Inquirer, Daily News, and other publications, adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s University, artist, sculptor, mentor, and volunteer, died Friday, Dec. 5, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of injuries she suffered after being hit by a car on Nov. 24.
Ms. Fallon’s husband, Steven Kimbrough, said the crash remains under investigation by the police.
Described by family and friends as empathetic, energetic, and creative, Ms. Fallon and fellow artist Libby Rosof cofounded the online Artblog in 2003. For nearly 22 years, until the blog became inactive in June, Ms. Fallon posted commentary, stories, interviews, reviews, videos, podcasts, and other content that chronicled the eclectic art world in Philadelphia.
The site drew more than 4,500 subscribers and championed galleries and artists of all kinds, especially women, LGBTQ and student artists, and other underrepresented innovators. “I think we have touched base with every major arts organization in Philadelphia at one point or another, and many of the smaller ones,” Ms. Fallon told The Inquirer in May. “We became part of the arts economy.”
She earned grants from the Knight Foundation and other groups to fund her work. She organized artist workshops and guided tours of local studios she called art safaris.
For years, she and Rosof raised art awareness in Center City by handing out miniatures of their artwork to startled passersby. She said in a 2005 Inquirer story: “We think art needs to be for everyone, not just in galleries.”
She mentored other artists and became an expert on the business of art. “She was so generous and curious about people,” Rosof said. “She was innovative and changed the way art reached people.”
Artist Rebecca Rutstein said Ms. Fallon’s “dedicated art journalism filled a vacuum in Philadelphia and beyond. Many of us became known entities because of her artist features, and we are forever grateful.” In a 2008 Inquirer story about the city’s art scene, artist Nike Desis said: “Roberta and Libby are the patron saints of the young.”
Ms. Fallon never tired of enjoying art.
Colleague and friend Gilda Kramer said: “The Artblog for her was truly a labor of love.”
In November, Ms. Fallon and other art writers created a website called The Philly Occasional. In her Nov. 12 article, she details some of her favorite shows and galleries in Philadelphia and New York, and starts the final paragraph by saying: “P.S. I can’t let you go without telling you about what I just saw at the Barnes Foundation.”
She worked at a small newspaper in Wisconsin before moving to West Philadelphia from Massachusetts in 1984 and wrote many art reviews and freelance articles for The Inquirer, Daily News, Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia Citizen, and other publications. In 2012, she wrote more than a dozen art columns for the Daily News called “Art Attack.”
She met Rosof in the 1980s, and together they curated exhibits around the region and displayed their own sculptures, paintings, and installations. Art critic Edith Newhall reviewed their 2008 show “ID” at Projects Gallery for The Inquirer and called it “one of the liveliest, most entertaining shows I’ve seen at this venue.”
Ms. Fallon stands in front of a mural at 13th and Spruce Streets. She is depicted as the figure profiled in the lower left in the white blouse.
Most often, Ms. Fallon painted objects and sculpted in concrete, wood, metal, textiles, and other material. She was a founding member of the Philadelphia Sculptors and Bala Avenue of the Arts.
She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, and later taught professional practice art classes at St. Joseph’s. Moore College of Art and Design, which will archive Artblog, awarded her an honorary doctorate.
“Roberta was an exceptional creative artist” and “a force,” artist Marjorie Grigonis said on LinkedIn. Artist Matthew Rose said: “Robbie was a North Star for many people.”
Her husband said: “Her approach to life was giving. She succeeded by adding value to wherever she was.”
Ms. Fallon (second from right) enjoyed time with her family.
Roberta Ellen Fallon was born Feb. 8, 1949, in Milwaukee. She went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study sociology after high school and dropped out to explore Europe and take art classes in Paris. She returned to college, changed her major to English, and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1974.
She met Steven Kimbrough in Wisconsin, and they married in 1980, and had daughters Oona and Stella, and a son, Max. They lived in West Philadelphia for six years before settling in Bala Cynwyd in 1993.
Ms. Fallon was a neighborhood political volunteer. She enjoyed movies and reading, and she and her husband traveled often to museums and art shows in New York and elsewhere.
They had a chance to relocate to Michigan a few years ago, her husband said. But she preferred Philadelphia for its art and culture. “She was like a local celebrity in the art scene,” her daughter Stella said.
Ms. Fallon and her husband, Steven Kimbrough, visited New York in 1982.
Her husband said: “Everybody likes her. Everybody wants to be around her. She made a difference for a lot of people.”
Her daughter Stella said: “The world would be a better place if we all tried to be like my mom.”
In addition to her husband and children, Ms. Fallon is survived by four grandchildren, a sister, a brother, and other relatives.
Sometimes a terrible year can end with a moment of uplift. This actually happened in the last days of 1968, when Apollo 8 took the first humans in orbit around the moon and sent wonder back to a planet struggling with assassinations and riots. Alas, 2025 seems not such a year. A world already reeling from two mass shootings half a world apart learned Sunday night that Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife Michele had been murdered in their home, allegedly by their own son. Boomers like me saw our own journey in that of Reiner — playing a young campus liberal, then taking down the pomposity of classic rock before both an unprecedented streak of classic movies and unparalleled social and political activism. He had more to give, and leaves a void that can’t truly be filled.
Americans fear AI and loathe its billionaires. Why do both parties suck up to them?
Time’s 2025 person of the year are the architects of AI, depicted in this painting by Jason Seiler. The painting, with nods to the iconic 1932 “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photograph, depicts tech leaders Mark Zuckerberg, Lisa Su, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Fei-Fei Li.
“This is the West, sir. When the facts become legend, print the legend.” — journalist in the 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The top editors at Time (yes, it still exists) looked west to Silicon Valley and decided to print the legend last week when picking their Person of the Year for the tumultuous 12 months of 2025. It seemed all too fitting that its cover hailing “The Architects of AI” was the kind of artistic rip-off that’s a hallmark of artificial intelligence: 1932’s iconic newspaper shot, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” “reimagined” with the billionaires — including Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman — and lesser-known engineers behind the rapid growth of their technology in everyday life.
Time’s writers strived to outdo the hype of AI itself, writing that these architects of artificial intelligence “reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons.”
OK, but it’s a tool that’s clearly going to need a lot more work, or architecting, or whatever it is those folks out on the beam do. That was apparent on the same day as Time’s celebration when it was reported that Washington Post editors got a little too close to the edge when they decided they were ready to roll out an ambitious scheme for personalized, AI-driven podcasts based on factors like your personal interests or your schedule.
The news site Semafor reported that the many gaffes ranged from minor mistakes in pronunciation to major goofs like inventing quotes — the kind of thing that would get a human journalist fired on the spot. “Never would I have imagined that the Washington Post would deliberately warp its own journalism and then push these errors out to our audience at scale,” a dismayed, unnamed editor reported.
The same-day contrast between the Tomorrowland swooning over the promise of AI and its glitchy, real-world reality felt like a metaphor for an invention that, as Time wasn’t wrong in reporting, is so rapidly reshaping our world. Warts and all.
Like it or not.
And for most people (myself included), it’s mostly “or not.” The vast majority understands that it’s too late to put this 21st-century genie back in the bottle, and like any new technology there are going to be positives from AI, from performing mundane organizing tasks that free up time for actual work, to researching cures for diseases.
The most recent major Pew Research Center survey of Americans found that 50% of us are more concerned than excited about the growing presence of AI, while only 10% are more excited than concerned. Drill down and you’ll see that a majority believes AI will worsen humans’ ability to think creatively, and, by a whopping 50-to-5% percent margin, also believes it will worsen our ability to form relationships rather than improve it. These, by the way, are two things that weren’t going well before AI.
So naturally our political leaders are racing to see who can place the tightest curbs on artificial intelligence and thus carry out the will of the peop…ha, you did know this time that I was kidding, didn’t you?
It’s no secret that Donald Trump and his regime were in the tank from Day One for those folks out on Time’s steel beam, and not just Musk, who — and this feels like it was seven years ago — donated a whopping $144 million to the Republican’s 2024 campaign. Just last week, the president signed an executive order aiming to press the full weight of the federal government, including Justice Department lawsuits and regulatory actions, against any state that dares to regulate AI. He said that’s necessary to ensure U.S. “global AI dominance.”
This is a problem when his constituents clearly want AI to be regulated. But it’s just as big a problem — perhaps bigger — that the opposition party isn’t offering much opposition. Democrats seem just as awed by the billionaire grand poobahs of AI as Trump. Or the editors of Time.
Also last week, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul — leader of the second-largest blue state, and seeking reelection in 2026 — used her gubernatorial pen to gut the more-stringent AI regulations that were sent to her desk by state lawmakers. Watchdogs said Hochul replaced the hardest-hitting rules with language drafted by lobbyists for Big Tech.
As the American Prospect noted, Hochul’s pro-Silicon Valley maneuvers came after her campaign coffers were boosted by fundraisers held by venture capitalist Ron Conway, who has been seeking a veto, and the industry group Tech:NYC, which wants the bill watered down.
It was a similar story in the biggest blue state, California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024 vetoed the first effort by state lawmakers to impose tough regulations on AI, and where a second measure did pass but only after substantial input from lobbyists for OpenAI and other tech firms. Silicon Valley billionaires raised $5 million to help Newsom — a 2028 White House front-runner — beat back a 2021 recall.
Like other top Democrats, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro favors some light regulation for AI but is generally a booster, insisting the new technology is a “job enhancer, not a job replacer.” He’s all-in on the Keystone State building massive data centers, despite their tendency to drive up electric bills and their unpopularity in the communities where they are proposed.
Money talks, democracy walks — an appalling fact of life in 2025 America. In a functioning democracy, we would have at least one political party that would fly the banner of the 53% of us who are wary of unchecked AI, and even take that idea to the next level.
A Harris Poll found that, for the first time, a majority of Americans also see billionaires — many of them fueled by the AI bubble — as a threat to democracy, with 71% supporting a wealth tax. Yet few of the Democrats hoping to retake Congress in 2027 are advocating such a levy. This is a dangerous disconnect.
Time magazine got one thing right. Just as its editors understood in 1938 that Adolf Hitler was its Man of the Year because he’d influenced the world more than anyone else, albeit for evil, history will likely look back at 2025 and agree that AI posed an even bigger threat to humanity than Trump’s brand of fascism. The fight to save the American Experiment must be fought on both fronts.
Yo, do this!
I haven’t tackled much new culture this month because I’ve been doing something I so rarely do anymore: Watching a scripted series from start to finish. That would be Apple TV’s Pluribus, the new sci-fi-but-more-than-sci-fi drama from television genius Vince Gilligan. True, one has to look past some logistical flaws in its dystopia-of-global-happiness premise, but the core narrative about the fight for individualism is truly a story of our time. The last two episodes come out on Dec. 19 and Dec. 26, so there’s time to catch up!
The shock and sorrow of Rob Reiner’s murder at age 78 has, not surprisingly, sparked a surge of interest in his remarkable, and remarkably diverse, canon of classic movies. His much-awaited sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continuesbegan streaming on HBO Max just two days before his death. Check it out, or just re-watch the 1984 original, which is one of the funniest flicks ever made, and which is also streaming on HBO Max and can be rented on other popular sites. Crank it up to 11.
Ask me anything
Question: What news value, not advertising value, is accomplished by publicizing every one of Trump’s insane rantings daily? — @bizbodeity.bsky.social via Bluesky
Answer: This is a great question, and the most recent and blatant example which I assume inspired it — Trump’s stunningly heartless online attack against a critic, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner, just hours after his violent murder — proves why this is a painful dilemma for journalists. I’d argue that Trump’s hateful and pathologically narcissistic post was a deliberate troll for media attention, to make every national moment about him. In a perfect world, it would indeed be ignored. But it was highly newsworthy that his Truth Social post was so offensive that it drew unusual criticism from Republicans, Evangelicals, and other normal supporters. We may remember this is as a political turning point. Trump’s outbursts demand sensitivity, but that Americans elected such a grotesque man as our president can’t easily be ignored.
What you’re saying about…
It’s been two weeks since I asked about Donald Trump’s health, but the questions have not gone away. There was not a robust response from readers — probably because I’d posed basically the same question once before. Several of you pointed to expert commentary that suggests the president is experiencing significant cognitive decline, perhaps suffering from frontotemporal dementia. Roberta Jacobs Meadway spoke for many when she lambasted “the refusal if not the utter failure of the once-major news outlets to ask the questions and push for answers.”
📮 This week’s question: We are going to try an open-ended one to wrap up 2025: What is your big prediction for 2026 — could be anything from elections to impeachment to the Eagles repeating as Super Bowl champs — and why. Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “2026 prediction” in the subject line.
Backstory on how I covered an unforgettable year
Rick Gomez, who travelled 65 hours by bus from Phoenix, Ariz., holds an AI photo composite poster of Donald Trump, in Washington, the day before Trump took the Oath of Office to become the 47th president of the United States.
Barring the outbreak of World War III — something you always need to say these days — this is my final newsletter, or column, of 2025, as I use up my old-man plethora of vacation days. To look back on America’s annus horribilis, I thought I’d revive a feature from my Attytood blogging days: a recap of the year with the five most memorable columns, not numbered in order of significance. Here goes:
A year that many of us dreaded when the votes were counted in November 2024 began for me with a sad reminder that the personal still trumps the political, when my 88-year-old father fell ill in the dead of winter and passed away on March 11. I wrote about his life, but also what his passion for science and knowledge said about a world that, at the end of his life, was slipping away: Bryan H. Bunch (1936-2025) and the vanishing American century of knowledge.
Still, Donald J. Trump could not be ignored. On Jan. 19, I put on my most comfortable shoes (it didn’t really help) and traipsed around a snowy, chilly Washington, D.C. as the about-to-be 47th president made his “forgotten American” supporters wait on a soggy, endless line for a nothingburger rally while the architects of AI and other rich donors partied in heated luxury, setting the tone for a year of gross inequality: American oligarchy begins as Trump makes billions while MAGA gets left out in the rain.
One of the year’s biggest stories was Trump’s demonizing of people of color, from calling Somali immigrants “garbage” to his all out war on DEI programs that encouraged racial diversity, when the truth was always far different. In February, I wrote about the American dream of a young man from Brooklyn of Puerto Rican descent and his ambition to become an airline pilot, who perished in the D.C. jet-helicopter crash. His remarkable life demolished the MAGA lie about “DEI pilots.” Read: “Short, remarkable life of D.C. pilot Jonathan Campos so much more than Trump’s hateful words.”
If you grew up during the 1960s and ‘70s, as I did, then you understand the story of our lifetimes as a battle for the individual rights of every American — for people to live their best lives regardless of race or gender, or whether they might be transgender, or on the autism spectrum. I wrote in October about the Trump regime’s consuming drive to reverse this, to make it a crime to be different: From autism to beards, the Trump regime wages war on ‘the different’
A grim year did end on one hopeful note. Trump’s push for an authoritarian America is faltering, thanks in good measure to the gumption of everyday people. This month, I traveled to New Orleans to chronicle the growing and increasingly brave public resistance to federal immigration raids, as citizens blow whistles, form crowds and protest efforts to deport hard-working migrants: In New Orleans and across U.S., anger over ICE raids sparks a 2nd American Revolution
What I wrote on this date in 2021
On this date four years ago, some of us were still treating Donald Trump’s attempted Capitol Hill coup of Jan. 6, 2021 like a crime that could be solved so that the bad guys could be put away. On Dec. 16, 2021, I published my own theory of the case: that Team MAGA’s true goal was provoking a war between its supporters and left-wing counterdemonstrators, as a pretext for sending in troops and stopping Congress from finishing its certification of Joe Biden’s victory. That didn’t happen because the leftists stayed home. More than 1,000 pardons later, check out my grand argument: “A theory: How Trump’s Jan. 6 coup plan worked, how close it came, why it failed.”
Recommended Inquirer reading
Only one column this week, as this senior citizen was still recovering from that grueling trip to New Orleans. On Sunday, I reacted with the shock and sadness of seeing a mass shooting at my alma mater, Brown University. I wrote that in a nation with 500 million guns, it’s a virtual lock that some day our families — nuclear or extended, like the close-knit Brown community — will be struck by senseless violence. And I took sharp issue with Trump’s comment that “all you can do is pray.” There is much that can and should be done about gun safety.
Sometimes the big stories are the ones that play out over decades, not days. When I first started coming regularly to Philadelphia at the end of the 1980s, the dominant vibe was urban decline. The comeback of cities in the 21st century has altered our world, for good — but a lot of us old-timers have wondered: Just who, exactly, is moving into all these new apartments from Center City to Kensington and beyond? Last week, The Inquirer’s ace development reporter Jake Blumgart took a deep dive into exactly that — highlighting survey results that large numbers are under 45, don’t own a car, and moved here from elsewhere, and telling some of their stories. Local journalism is the backbone of a local community, and you are part of something bigger when you subscribe to The Inquirer. Plus, it’s a great Christmas gift, and you’ll get to read all my columns in 2026. See you then!
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer‘s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
Once considered the loudest hospital in the Philadelphia area, Riddle Hospital in Media has significantly reduced its nighttime noise levels, newly released federal data shows.
At the Main Line Health Riddle hospital, only 12% of patients from the most recent survey rated the area around their room at night as “sometimes” or “never” quiet — down from 26% of patients surveyed between July 2022 and June 2023.
Across the Philadelphia region, 52% of patients said their hospital room was “always” quiet at night. That’s slightly worse than nationally, where patients said hospitals were quiet throughout their stay 57% of the time.
Virtua Mount Holly Hospital in New Jersey is now rated the loudest by patients.
Nazareth Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia, owned by Trinity Health, was ranked the second loudest in the region.
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Quieter hospitals have benefits for both patients and staff, helping to lower anxiety levels, improve sleep quality, and ease the flow of communication.
Riddle Hospital’s improvement follows construction of a new 230,000-square-foot patient pavilion that had temporarily increased noise at its Delaware County campus.
“With the pavilion’s 2023 completion, as well as the resulting addition of more private rooms, noise is significantly reduced,” spokesperson Larry Hanover said.
Reducing noise is also priority for Penn Medicine, whose Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) was rated the quietest hospital among the 25,000 patients surveyed in the Philly-area.
Chester County Hospital, also owned by Penn Medicine, was ranked the second quietest.
The health system has made big investments in recent years to address noise levels at its hospitals, according to the university’s website. The Pavilion, which opened at HUP in Center City in 2021, was designed to reduce noise levels and nightly disruptions by separating nonclinical work from patient care areas.
Each floor of the $1.6 billion building centers around an “offstage” area for staff to hold conversations and calls away from patient rooms that line the perimeter. The design of the rooms also allows care teams to check vitals and refill medications from the hallway, reducing nighttime disruptions.
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Philadelphia roads will be closed Monday and Tuesday for the funeral services of Highway Patrol Officer Andy Chan.
Several streets in the Callowhill, Chinatown, and Center City neighborhoods will begin closing Monday evening for a first viewing, with additional roads closing Tuesday for the second viewing and funeral.
Chan, 55, who suffered a critical brain injury six years ago in a motorcycle crash on his way to work, died Dec. 2. Since the crash, the 24-year police veteran had required around-the-clock care. His fellow officers fundraised for his medical expenses.
A viewing will be held Monday at Holy Redeemer Chinese Catholic Church, 915 Vine St., from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The second viewing will be held Tuesday at theCathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, 1723 Race St., from 8:15 a.m. to 10:40 a.m., with the funeral following directly after.
Highway Patrolman Andy Chan (l) at the promotional ceremony of his old partner Sgt. Kyle Cross.
Road closures
Drivers should avoid the areas listed, use alternate routes, and expect delays.
These streets will be closed at 4 p.m. Monday and will reopen at the conclusion of the viewing procession:
Ridge Avenue between Wood Street and Hamilton Street
Vine Street (westbound) between Eighth and 10th Streets
10th Street between Hamilton and Vine Streets
Ninth Street between Callowhill and Wood Streets
Callowhill Street between Eighth and 11th Streets
Wood Street between Ninth and 10th Streets
These streets will close at 5 a.m. Tuesday and will reopen at the conclusion of the service:
18th Street between the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Vine Street
These streets will close at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday and will reopen at the conclusion of the procession:
15th Street between Spring Garden and Callowhill Streets
Broad Street between Spring Garden and Callowhill Streets
Callowhill Street between Broad and 17th Streets
17th Street between Callowhill and Benjamin Franklin Parkway
These streets will close at 6 a.m. Tuesday and will reopen at the conclusion of the service:
Benjamin Franklin Parkway between 16th and 22nd Streets
Vine Street between Logan Circle and 16th Street
Race Street between 16th and 18th Streets
17th Street between Vine Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway
19th Street between Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Cherry Street
Additional streets near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Eakins Oval may be closed or detoured.
Parking restrictions
Parking is notallowed on the streets listed above during the designated times. “Temporary No Parking” signs are displayed along the streets.
Vehicles parked in these zones during the posted hours will be relocated. The Inquirer has a guide on what to do if your vehicle is “courtesy towed.”
Public transportation
SEPTA Bus detours will be in place, according to the city, but SEPTA has not shared these details yet. Get live service updates at septa.org.
We are standing at the crosswalk of a bold new era in street design and management.
Streets make up roughly 30% of a Philadelphia’s land. Yet, most are locked into a single use: moving and storing cars. What if, instead, we treated them as dynamic public spaces capable of changing function and meaning depending on the time of day, the season, or the needs of the neighborhood?
That question guided a recent pilot project I helped lead in Chinatown, which will be unveiled next month. As part of “the Chinatown Stitch” — an ambitious effort led by the city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, with state and federal partners, meant to heal a neighborhood long divided by transportation infrastructure. Our team designed a movable market stall, a piece of street furniture that serves as both a vendor kiosk and a community gathering space.
During Chinese New Year or other festivals, when the streets overflow with people and energy, the stall slides into the roadway, transforming asphalt into a festive plaza. When the celebration ends, it retreats, making way for traffic once again.
For a neighborhood starved of public space, this small, movable structure has become a powerful symbol: The street itself can flex, adapt, and respond. It embodies what planners and landscape architects call the Flexible Street Strategy — a vision for cities that recognizes streets as living systems, not fixed infrastructures.
Open Streets
For more than a century, street planning has been governed by rigid right-of-way definitions. Sidewalks for walking. Lanes for driving. Curbs for parking. These rules answer only one question: what belongs where? The flexible street concept asks another: when? When should a street prioritize cars, and when should it belong to people?
Based on research my team completed last summer, the results have been stunning. Foot traffic soars. Businesses thrive. And, perhaps most tellingly, children return. On a normal day, we counted two kids passing through a block in 15 minutes. During one Open Streets event, that number jumped to 39.
It’s not just a statistic; it’s a story of safety, belonging, and joy. For once, the street was everyone’s.
Restaurants take over 18th Street as the streets around Rittenhouse Square are closed to vehicular traffic for pedestrian-only zones for the city’s Open Streets program.
When the Open Streets program began, its organizers expected bureaucratic hurdles — clashes between departments, debates over lost parking revenue. Instead, city agencies from streets to parking embraced it. Post-pandemic, there’s a new understanding: Streets are no longer merely conduits for cars. They are the connective tissue of civic life.
The success of the program, first launched in 2024 and revived last summer, has inspired plans to expand across downtown. But as encouraging as such pilots are, they still exist as exceptions to the rule. But the Flexible Street Strategy holds that flexibility should not require special permission. It should be baked into the DNA of how cities plan, design, and manage their streets.
This means rewriting the system itself. Instead of rigid right-of-way codes, cities need regulatory frameworks that acknowledge streets as time-based spaces — spaces whose use shifts dynamically according to demand, culture, and context.
To move from philosophy to practice, flexibility can now be managed with precision through technology.
Using digital twin models, IoT sensors, and AI-driven analytics, our team is building a data platform that identifies “flex windows” — hours when converting a street from traffic to pedestrian use offers the greatest benefit with the least disruption. The system integrates live data on street anchor activities (schools, restaurants, parks, etc.), traffic volumes, safety, and equity to recommend optimal transformation times.
A community stage
Still, the real power of the flexible street idea lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t require new infrastructure — just imagination, data, and a willingness to test. Its nonpermanent, pilot-friendly nature allows cities to experiment at low cost and low risk. Just like the market stall installed in Chinatown, which amplified existing street events and vividly showed how a street can transform into a stage for community life.
If the official Chinatown Stitch aims to reconnect neighborhoods divided by a sunken highway through large-scale infrastructure, our market stall serves as a micro-stitch — achieving the same goal on the scale of the city block by redefining the street as public space and reconnecting residents, shops, and everyday social life.
Although the Chinatown Stitch funding was cut by the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the project has still secured planning funds. Led by OTIS and PennDot, the whole design team is actively finalizing the design. The market stall pilot project is part of this work and serves as an important advocacy and outreach tool for the overall project, supported strongly by Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation.
At the end of the day, whether they recognize it or not, our cities no longer have the luxury of static infrastructure. Between climate change, social fragmentation, and changing mobility patterns, flexibility is not a design preference — it’s survival. The street of the future isn’t just paved for movement; it’s programmed for life.
If we want streets that truly belong to everyone, we must give them the freedom to change.
Yadan Luo is a landscape architect, lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and the creative director of YH LAB.
Philadelphians without retirement savings plans through their employers could soon have access to a plan through the city after lawmakers approved legislation Thursday to enable the novel program to move forward.
City Council members unanimously passed legislation that creates PhillySaves, which is modeled on state-facilitated “auto-IRA” programs that allow people to invest through payroll deductions at no cost to their employers.
Voters would have to approve the creation of an investment management board through a ballot question, which is slated to appear in the May primary election.
The measure was part of a flurry of legislation Council considered during a marathon meeting Thursday, its last session of the year before legislators reconvene in mid-January. Lawmakers passed dozens of pieces of legislation touching on issues including housing, public health, small-business growth, and public safety.
In addition to approving the retirement savings program, Council approved legislation to:
Ban mobile outreach groups that provide medical care and support services to people in addiction from a swath of Kensington, the epicenter of the city’s drug crisis.
Prohibit so-called reservation scalpers, or websites that allow users to reserve tables at coveted restaurants and resell them without the permission of the businesses.
Here’s a breakdown of what else happened on Thursday:
H.O.M.E. inches forward over Parker’s objections
City Council on Thursday approved a key piece of legislation related to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., initiative, the latest step in the drawn-out fight over how the city should spend the proceeds from the $800 million in city bonds the administration plans to sell to support the program.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks to the crowd at The Church of Christian Compassion in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of West Philadelphia on Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. Parker visited 10 churches in Philadelphia on Sunday to share details about her HOME housing plan
Over Parker’s objections, Council successfully pushed to lower income eligibility thresholds, prioritizing poorer residents. For instance, lawmakers ensured that 90% of the bond proceeds that will be spent on the Basic Systems Repair Program will go to households making 60% of area median income, which is about $71,640 for a family of four.
“This budget opens city housing programs to ensure that more than 200,000 low-income and working-family households have a chance to get into a program that provides housing stability and economic mobility and increases,” said Councilmember Rue Landau, who helped lead the push to lower the income thresholds. “This is a transformational investment, a win-win.”
Supporters react as City Council approves a key piece of legislation related to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s H.O.M.E. initiative Thursday, Dec. 11, 25 on the last day of the 2025 session.
A separate but related piece of legislation — an ordinance authorizing the city to sell the bonds — also needs to pass before the administration can take on debt for the initiative. That proposal, which won committee approval Wednesday, is expected to come to the Council floor in January.
In a statement Thursday, Tiffany W. Thurman, Parker’s chief of staff, thanked Council for its vote.
“We look forward to continuing conversations with Council President Kenyatta Johnson and members of City Council in the weeks ahead, and to fulfilling Mayor Parker’s strong vision to save Philadelphia’s rowhomes,” she said.
Council waters down a bill on training for security officers
Council approved a bill requiring private security guards in Philadelphia to go through 12 hours of training when they are hired and an additional eight hours of training every subsequent year.
But the final version of the bill, authored by Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, has been significantly watered down by amendments following a legislative showdown between the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which championed the original version, and real estate and private security industry leaders, which said it was overly onerous and costly.
Thomas’ original bill required security guards to receive 40 hours of training upon hiring, and it prohibited employers from conducting the training for their own workers. Instead, the instruction had to be provided by a nonprofit — potentially including a labor union. SEIU 32BJ, one of the most influential unions in the city, represents building services workers, including security guards.
The amended version, however, allows employers to conduct the training after getting approval for their program from the Philadelphia Office of Worker Protections — a major relief for business leaders.
The new version, which now heads to Parker’s desk, also exempts security guards for bars and restaurants from the training requirements, and pushes back the bill’s effective date from Jan. 1 to March 1.
An inquiry into DEI contracting changes is coming next year
City Council next year will examine Parker’s decision to end its long-standing policy of prioritizing women- and minority-owned businesses in city contracting and replace it with a system favoring “small and local” firms.
Johnson authored a resolution allowing the Committee of the Whole, which includes all 17 members, to look at the history of minority contracting policies in the city and “the rationale, design, and anticipated effects” of Parker’s new policy. The resolution was approved in a unanimous vote, and a hearing will likely be scheduled in the first half of 2026.
Race- and gender-conscious government policies have been targeted by conservative legal groups following a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action in college admissions. The Inquirer revealed in November that Parker quietly ended the city’s 40-year-old contracting policy earlier this year due to the likelihood it would be challenged in court.
The mayor has said her new “small and local” policy will accomplish many of the goals of the old system because many small Philadelphia businesses are owned by Black and brown residents and have faced roadblocks to growth.
Attorneys hired by the city, however, had recommended a race- and gender-neutral policy of favoring “socially and economically disadvantaged” businesses, according to administration documents obtained by The Inquirer.
Lawmakers will get the chance to weigh in on that decision next year.
A controversial zoning change passes for University City
Council on Thursday also approved Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s controversial University City zoning overlay, which seeks to regulate how higher education institutions dispose of property.
The legislation has been diluted from its original form, and it now regulates the sale of property over 5,000 square feet in University City — which would largely affect only universities themselves.
Councilmember Jamie Gauthier in chambers as City Council meets Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, on the last day of the 2025 session.
Gauthier has further amended the legislation to exclude healthcare institutions. Among other things, the bill would require that property owners have building permits in hand before they are allowed to move forward on demolitions.
A sale of land would also trigger review by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.
The legislation is part of Gauthier’s outraged response toSt. Joseph’s University’s sale of much of its West Philadelphia campus to the Belmont Neighborhood Educational Alliance, a nonprofit that operates charter schools. The organization is led by Michael Karp, who is also one of the larger student-housing landlords in the area.
Thomas, a Democrat who represents the city at-large, was the only member to vote against the bill. His vote was a break with the tradition of councilmanic prerogative, in which members generally approve legislation offered by Council members who represent geographic areas when the measure affects only their districts.
Quote of the week
Councilmember Brian J. O’Neill (left) uses his end-of-session speech in City Council Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025 to say goodbye to longtime legislative director Robert Yerkov (right), who is leaving for a job outside government.
That was Councilmember Brian J. O’Neill, Council’s longest-serving member, who is typically its shortest-winded. But on Thursday, he took his time in a speech saying goodbye to longtime legislative director Robert Yerkov, whose last day as a Council staffer is next month.
O’Neill said he was struggling to wrap up his remarks and joked that Council should limit the amount of time that its members can speak. Public commenters are generally limited to three minutes of remarks.
To quote Shakespeare: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Philadelphia lawmakers on Thursday approved two changes to city law that are aimed at boosting business for restaurants and the hospitality sector ahead of an expected influx of tourists visiting the city next year.
Legislators also voted to ban so-called reservation scalpers, which are third-party businesses that allow people to secure tables and then resell them without authorization from the restaurant.
Both measures passed Council unanimously and were championed by advocates for the restaurant industry, who lobbied lawmakers to ease burdens on the tourism and hospitality industry ahead of several large-scale events in the city next year, including celebrations for America’s Semiquincentennial, when Philadelphia is expected to host a flurry of visitors.
They both now head to the desk of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, who has never issued a veto.
The outdoor dining legislation, authored by Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat who represents the city at-large, expands the number of so-called by-right zones, where businesses can have sidewalk cafes without having to obtain a special zoning ordinance.
Currently, by-right areas are only in Center City and a few commercial corridors in other neighborhoods. Restaurants outside those areas must undertake a sometimes lengthy process to get permission to place tables and chairs outside.
The expanded zones, which were chosen by individual Council members who represent the city’s 10 geographic districts, include corridors in Manayunk and on parts of Washington Avenue, Passyunk Avenue, and Point Breeze Avenue in South Philadelphia.
The legislation also includes all of the West Philadelphia-based Third District, which is represented by Jamie Gauthier, the only Council member who chose to include her entire district in the expansion.
The cafe area on the sidewalk outside of Gleaner’s Cafe in the 9th Street Market on Thursday, July 27, 2023.
Nicholas Ducos, who owns Mural City Cellars in Fishtown, said he has been working for more than a year to get permission to place four picnic tables outside his winery. He said he has had to jump through hoops including working with multiple agencies, spending $1,500 to hire an architect, and even having to provide paperwork to the city on a CD-ROM.
“There are a lot of difficult things about running a business in Philadelphia,” Ducos said. “This should not be one.”
At left is Philadelphia Council President Kenyatta Johnson greeting Rue Landau and other returning members of council on their first day of fall session, City Hall, Thursday, September 11, 2025.
Council members also approved the reservation scalping legislation authored by Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, a Democrat who represents the city at-large. He has said the bill is modeled after a similar law in New York and is not aimed at popular apps and websites like OpenTable, Resy, and Tock that partner directly with restaurants.
Instead, it is a crackdown on websites that don’t work with restaurants, such as AppointmentTrader.com, which provides a platform for people to sell reservations and tickets to events.
Jonas Frey, the founder of AppointmentTrader.com, previously said the legislation needlessly targets his platform. He said his company put safeguards in place to prevent scalping, including shutting down accounts if more than half of their reservations go unsold.
But Thomas has cast the website and similar platforms as “predatory” because restaurants can end up saddled with empty tables if the reservations do not resell.
Zak Pyzik, senior director of public affairs at the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, said the legislation is an important safeguard for restaurants.
“This bill provides clear, sensible protections that will keep restaurants in the driver’s seat,” he said, “and in control of their business and their technology services.”
When Adam Sawyer and his wife, Marissa Tan, moved to Philadelphia in 2024 from Baltimore, they were attracted to Center City by its proximity towork and mass transit.
The couple figured if they sold their car, they could even afford to rent in one of the thousands of new, high-rise apartments that have been built across Center City over the last 10 years.
Tan had just gotten a new job with the Cooper University Hospital in Camden, and Adam needed access to 30th Street Station for work. They eventually settled on the PMC Property Group’s Riverwalk North at 23rd and Arch Streets and have been impressed by the city, its transit system, and life without a car.
Adam Sawyer and his wife, Marissa Tan, moved to Philadelphia in 2024 from Baltimore.
“One of the things I love about living in a city is that you’ll be walking down the street and there are five different events you didn’t even know about,” Sawyer said. “Festivals, farmers markets, just activity, people doing things. I love that Philadelphia has so much energy.”
In many ways Sawyer and Tan — who are both 35 — are representative of the people who have taken up residence in the new apartment buildings across Center City. Between Pine and Vine Streets, river to river, 3,500 new apartments have opened since 2023.
Center City District (CCD) set out to learn more about who is calling these apartments home, with a survey of more than two dozen buildings constructed since 2015.
Like Sawyer and Tan, the vast majority of respondents to CCD’s survey are under 45 (83%), more than half don’t own a car (55%), and close to half moved from outside the Philadelphia area (44%). Sawyer works remotely like 21% of respondents, and Tan works in healthcare like 32% of them.
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In a city where a fifth of all residents live in poverty, the respondents aren’t representative of the average Philadelphian in many ways. The buildings surveyed have an average rent of $2,645, well above the median of $1,387.
But the results show that there is a market for the kind of new buildings that are still being proposed. They alsohighlight that many people are attracted to the most central parts of Philadelphia because it offersmore density, walkability, and other urban characteristics that few other American cities can boast.
“People actively choose Philadelphia over other cities and metropolitan areas because we outperform them in some ways,” said Clint Randall, vice president of Economic Development with CCD, which is funded by downtown property owners and provides advocacy and services like additional security and cleaning downtown.
“The city spent so many decades shrinking,” Randall said. “When you see this entire skyline of high-rise apartment buildings emerge, it contradicts what longtime Philadelphians think they know about this place, which is that it does not grow or attract residents.”
Reversing reverse commuting
Center City District’s survey confirmed a longtime finding of the organization’s other research reports: People who live downtown are likely to work there or very close by.
In Philadelphia, reverse commuting is common, a testament to the fact that many private-sector employers have remained outside the city to avoid wage and business taxes. But among survey respondents, only 12% commuted to the suburbs for work compared to almost 40% citywide.
Over half of respondents work in either Center City or University City, and a similar proportion work in either healthcare (32%) or in the jobs more typically associated with office towers: “business, professional, or financial services” (27%). Twenty-one percent work from home.
“A lot of people are in medicine, in healthcare. I see a lot of scrubs,” said Kaz Rivera-Gorski, about her building One Cathedral Squareat 17th and Race Streets.
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“I would imagine there’s a good amount of people that work remotely, too,” said Rivera-Gorski, who is a management consultant who works from home. “I see people on their laptops in the shared spaces during the day.”
Seventy percentof respondents said their jobs are within walking, biking, or transit distance from their homes, while 80% of them said that owning a car was not necessary to enjoy daily life in Philadelphia.
That’s part of what attracted Sawyer and Tan, even though another part of Philadelphia’s allure was that it was closer to family in central and eastern Pennsylvania (the couple have a Zipcar membership).
“While I do drive, I really, really dislike driving,” Sawyer said. “I’ve lost people. Everybody has, to either accidents or crashes or DUIs. So we were open to selling our car and became more and more convinced it was a good idea.”
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Retaining out-of-towners
Randall said that he was surprised by the proportion of CCD’s respondents who reported having moved to Philadelphia from outside the region. (A recent Realtor.com report showed that Philadelphia switched from having mostly local interest in rental listings before the pandemic to mostly out-of-towners today.)
The survey also found that the majority of Center City dwellers planned to be living in Philadelphia inthree to five years, with 45% planning to continue renting and 16% hoping to buy.
“You hear about the transience of other places like D.C. or Boston, and it seems like people are here [in Philadelphia] and they intend to stay,” Randall said.
That is certainly the goal of Annika Verma, a student at Temple University who lives in the Logan Lofts in Callowhill.
“I am already calculating: Can I get an entry-level job? What salary would work for the rent in this area?” Verma said. “I would love to stay. The area seems ideal for me in terms of commuting or walking. Anything, everything is a 15-20 minute walk or bus ride away.”
Sawyer and Tan are hoping to stay in Philadelphia, too. They are currently searching Center City for a condo to buy. They may try to stay in their current Logan Square neighborhood for its proximity to the Schuylkill River Trail and 30th Street Station.
“We love it,” said Sawyer, who notes that they’ve lived in three cities in Texas, Cooperstown in New York, and Baltimore before this. “But our favorite place we’ve ever lived is here in Philadelphia.”
Alternative Middle Years at James Martin, in Port Richmond, is all but finished and ready for students to occupy after winter break.
Community members, district officials, and dignitaries gathered Tuesday to take tours and trumpet the new construction, a bright spot in a district grappling with a large stock of aging and sometimes environmentally troubled buildings.
“This is what growth looks like,” said Paula Furman, AMY at James Martin’s principal. The middle school educates 200 students in grades 6, 7, and 8.
Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. and Debora Carrera, the city’s chief education officer, applaud a student performance Tuesday at AMY at James Martin, a new middle school in Port Richmond.
Sarah-Ashley Andrews, the school board vice president, noted that of the district’s roughly 300 buildings, more than 200 were built before 1978.
“Projects like this underscore why continued investment is essential,” said Andrews.
On time, on budget
Inside, the 88,000-square-foot, four-story structure at Richmond and Westmoreland Streets just off I-95 is a marvel: all light and flexible seating, makerspace, “digital flex lab” (think: computer lab), and “gymnatorium” (spiffy gym and auditorium). It has modern science labs, dedicated spaces for instrumental and vocal music, and a killer view of Center City from its rooftop outdoor classroom.
The outdoor space with a view of the Center City skyline at the new AMY at James Martin school.
The school replaces an 1894 structure razed to make way for new construction. It is the Philadelphia School District’s sixth new building in 10 years.
“It is kind of crazy, just the giant leap forward that students will be taking, just in terms of furniture, not to mention the technology,” said Melanie Lewin, a district school facilities planner who led tours of the new building. AMY at James Martin students, who have been temporarily learning in classrooms at Penn Treaty High School, used to learn in a 19th-century building; they’re relocating to a building with built-in charging outlets and “noodle chairs” that let them fidget securely while in class.
The instrumental music classroom at the new Amy at James Martin School in Philadelphia.
“This school was not just built to look fantastic,” Watlington said. “I want everyone to know that it was built on time and on budget. That is no easy feat when the price of everything is going up — inflation, tariffs, everything.”
Some neighbors showed up at Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting to celebrate. But the process was controversial at first — some protested the loss of the old AMY at James Martin historic site.
City Councilmember Mike Driscoll alluded to the past pain on Tuesday.
“It’s been a struggle, I’ll admit that,” Driscoll said. But, he said, the new school is lovely. “When you see the plans on paper, it doesn’t do it justice.”
A looming facilities master plan
AMY at James Martin’s opening comes with the district approaching a crossroads: Officials are awaiting a years-in-the-making facilities master plan, the first in decades.
While schools in the Northeast and in a few other spots are overcrowded or nearing capacity, schools in many parts of the city are dramatically underenrolled.
Custom cushioned seats in a classroom at the new Amy at James Martin School in Philadelphia.
Officials have said that some schools will likely cease to exist as part of the process, now expected to culminate early next year with Watlington making recommendations to the school board for grade reconfigurations, closures, co-locations, significant renovations, and new construction.
AMY at James Martin, in its current form, is likely to come in under the district’s minimum recommended school size, at 200 students. The school’s capacity is 500, officials said.
But Casey Laine hopes the school count grows by two in January.
One of the bathrooms for students at the new Amy at James Martin School in Philadelphia.
Laine, who lives around the corner from the new AMY at James Martin and attended Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting, is the mother of a sixth and seventh grader who currently attend Bridesburg Elementary.
She’d like her kids, a son and daughter, to transfer to AMY at James Martin if possible.
“This is beautiful,” Laine said. “I’m so excited.”
Center City hoteliers Ken and Vittoria Schutz are celebrating their love of Champagne and caviar with a lounge called Bar Caviar inside Dwight D Hotel, their boutique hotel at 256 S. 16th St., a few doors from Monk’s Cafe near Rittenhouse Square.
At the heart of the concept, expected to open next spring, is a Champagne list that is expected to read more like a collector’s catalog than a bar menu: 50 selections in total, with 15 by the glass.
One headline-grabber is Salon, the ultrarare Champagne produced only in exceptional years from a single village and a single grape. Bar Caviar plans to offer it by the glass, at what Ken Schutz estimates at $600 per pour. Nonvintage options will start at $15.
Rather than provide a short list of familiar labels, Schutz said he wants guests to experiment and learn. Schutz is a level 3 sommelier who is also working on a masters in Champagne from the Wine Scholar Guild.
“Champagne is the original slow drink,” he said, explaining that it takes multiple stages to make, including two fermentations and aging on the lees for at least 15 months. “Time is really what you’re paying for,” he said. “It’s a complex process that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves.”
Schutz said they want to offer a spectrum — from grower champagnes using innovative techniques and single-plot expressions, to the large houses that specialize in blending for consistency year after year. “There’s a lot of room to explore,” he said.
The food program will be equally refined, with the opening menu featuring five varieties of caviar served in classic presentations and as part of composed dishes, alongside small plates and a rotating selection of oysters and crudo. The early months will emphasize raw and cold preparations, with a broader hot menu expected to begin later.
“We wanted to do something distinctive, so Champagne and caviar felt like a perfect pairing,” Schutz said. “Both celebrate craftsmanship and heritage, and they share this idea of time. Both are slow, deliberate products.”
He said his wife visited farms in Europe and selected producers that raise sturgeon in environments that mimic natural habitats, not concrete tanks.
The couple are taking their inspiration from the counters of London or Paris, “where you can sit at a counter and enjoy caviar service in an elegant but relaxed way,” Schutz said.
They’re aiming for what he called a “minimalist, approachable vibe” rather than luxury. Vittoria Schutz, who studied at Cabrini University and Moore College of Art, designed the 11-room hotel, which opened in 2014. Set in an 1840s rowhouse, it blends antique and modern design.
“We want people to feel comfortable coming in, not intimidated,” he said.
