September 6: AV advisory council | Female labor fighters | Urban agriculture + housing

What is dead may never die: Philadelphia heritage and ideas from our neighboring cities in today’s news:

West Philadelphia community leaders say they were blindsided by the City’s decision to scrap its redevelopment plans at 46th and Market, Billy Penn’s Anna Orso reports. In a joint letter to Mayor Kenney, representatives from Spruce Hill, Walnut Hill and Garden Court requested the city “make good on its commitment” for a community engagement process, consideration for public safety concerns, and to hold any new developer “accountable to elements of the original plan, including local hiring and minority contracting.” The Kenney administration wrote back attempting to assuage neighbors’ concerns, affirming there would still be community input in the RFQ review process and consideration for M/W/DBE participation.

In the city that prided itself as the Workshop of the World, we have no labor or manufacturing museum to visualize “the loss of material culture and consciousness” in our industrial heyday, writes Hidden City Philadelphia’s Nathaniel Popkin. One such piece of Philadelphia’s heritage that shouldn’t be forgotten, Popkin argues, is the “the female-led, politically infected Kensington youth movement of the 1920s…[where] working people asserted their demands for fairness, dignity, and equality.” Popkin cites scholar Sharon McConnell-Sidorick’s book Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia’s Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal and draws parallels to the nation’s current struggle to adapt to the changing world economy.  

Delaware governor John Carney signed an executive order Monday creating an advisory council on autonomous vehicles to address public safety, cyber security, and a transportation network, WHYY’s Mark Eichmann reports. Carney hopes that the 19-member task force will help the state plan for the “inevitable” and attract the companies looking to build the infrastructure to support driverless cars.

In Pittsburgh, nonprofit community advocacy group the Hilltop Alliance began soil-rebuilding work on the site of the former St. Clair Village public housing complex. Why the soil prep? The Alliance aims to build a 23-acre urban farm and affordable housing on the site that once housed 680 townhome and apartment units. Josh Cohen, contributing to Next City, unpacks the project’s key components: production farming, affordable housing, and workforce development. Cohen also unpacks all the cooks in the kitchen, including the Pittsburgh Housing Authority, Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority, Allegheny Land Trust, and HUD.

You may have noticed there’s a quite a bit of construction going on in Philadelphia. Some of these buildings are taller than others. PhillyVoice pays tribute to the churches and municipal buildings that once dominated the Philadelphia skyline, including Christ Church at 20 North American Street and Tenth Presbyterian Church at 1700 Spruce Street.