How Public Funds Are Spent on Philadelphia’s Neighborhoods

Philadelphia’s communities are often characterized by their open spaces, such as parks, playgrounds, and plazas. In every neighborhood, these are places where residents gather, relax with family and friends, build community, and access economic opportunities. Generally built and maintained by the local government to serve residents, some spaces serve the community immediately surrounding them, while others are designed for citywide use. And these sites are funded through capital investments made by Philadelphia’s city government.

Citywide capital investments are typically buildings—such as City Hall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, or the prison complex—that serve the city more broadly. In contrast, local capital investments, such as recreation centers or library branches, are more directly significant to neighborhoods within a half-mile but also are available for anyone in the city to use. Multi-neighborhood assets—including fire stations, police stations, and health centers—fall somewhere in between the other two types of investments.

The Pew Charitable Trusts set out to help determine how capital fund commitments were distributed across various demographic groups, protected classes, and geographic areas in the city. With this lens in mind, Pew recently released the “Capital Budgeting in Philadelphia” report, which analyzed the city’s capital investments from fiscal year 2011 through fiscal 2022. During this period, the city registered $2.5 billion in encumbrances—purchase orders or contracts that reserve appropriations in anticipation of future expenditures.

In the last five years, local governments throughout the country have explored how infrastructure funding and capital investments are evaluated and distributed. Cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore have taken it a step further and also assessed existing assets to help inform future investments and guide the equitable distribution of funding.

Pew found that, on a citywide basis, capital investment in Philadelphia amounted to $802 per capita over the period studied, though the amount varied widely from one part of the city to another. Capital investments are determined by the priorities of the then-mayoral administration at the time the spending is allocated. The commitments and investments in the analysis include both assets (such as physical and technological infrastructure) and encumbrances.

Although citywide investments—those meant to serve the entire city—had the highest overall per capita cost, local investments are a critical and significant portion of the city’s annual allocation for capital spending. Of the 730 assets included in the analysis, 46.7% were local, 33.7% multi-neighborhood, and 19.6% citywide. Pew also analyzed 10,547 encumbrances. Of those, 53.1% were associated with local assets, 24.7% with multi-neighborhood assets, and 22.2% with citywide assets.

The geographic distribution of each type of asset throughout the city depends on use. Cultural institutions and some municipal and public safety facilities, such as police headquarters, are concentrated in Center City, while capital investments in recreation centers are more generally distributed throughout the city. (See Figure 1.)

Generally, citywide assets cost more to build and maintain than local assets, which serve nearby neighborhoods. And many citywide assets are concentrated in Center City tracts, which have some of the highest incomes in the city. Therefore, an examination of the demographic impacts of the distribution of capital investments by geography (also known as their area of focus) found that census tracts with the highest median incomes had higher per capita encumbrances than tracts with the lowest median incomes. (See Figure 2.)

Overall, from fiscal 2011 through fiscal 2022, per capita investments in capital improvements in Philadelphia varied widely by the type of project, its location, its use, its beneficiaries, and the characteristics of the project’s surrounding area.

The demographic differences in the distribution of these assets are notable, and the city invests more in higher-income areas, for example. A contributing factor is that many of Philadelphia’s largest and most expensive assets, meant to serve the entire city, are located in and around Center City, an area of the city with the highest median household incomes. Neighborhood-level investment, particularly for recreation and social services, was more evenly distributed.

These capital investments, significant features of and amenities for neighborhoods, are located in every community in the city. A continued focus on distributing funds equitably; making regular, planned assessments of spending; and adjusting as needed will allow local officials—and residents—to better understand how the choices made to fund the publicly owned built environment in Philadelphia directly affects their communities, their families, and their lives.

Katie Martin is a project director and Maridarlyn Gonzalez is a senior associate with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia research and policy initiative.