August 9: Modular mid-rise on Washington | Franklin Institute digital signage | Party transportation platforms

The sidelined Silverliner V trains are costing SEPTA more than $1 million per month, Tom MacDonald reports, although the cars are still under warranty. 

A 5-story, 48-unit modular apartment building was dropped into place and assembled over the course of just three days at 12th and Washington Avenue, Melissa Romero reports. This was a by-right project, so the developer, Westrum Development, wasn’t required to present the plans to Passyunk Square Civic Association. 

The Wall Street Journal highlights recent economic growth trends in Philadelphia in an article about a national trend of concentrated growth in urban cores and stagnating outer neighborhoods. “As gentrification battles in hot global cities such as New York and San Francisco attract national focus, many more cities would like to spread recent economic gains in their urban core across the city, rather than temper them.” 

Dave Heller talks to Mary Tracy of Scenic Philadelphia about her group’s opposition to digital signage outside the Franklin Institute. 

TourPHL is a new resource created by the Center for Architecture, Hidden City, and the Preservation Alliance featuring non-commercial tours that go off the beaten path to under-explored areas of Philadelphia.

Daniel Kay Hertz reads the parties’ platforms on transportation and despairs. “Both of these platforms are deeply disappointing on urban transit. If it’s perhaps unsurprising that the Republican Party…would be hostile to urban transportation, it’s more surprising that the Democrats—a large amount of whose base resides in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and so on—would phone it in on this issue.”