Nicetown

Mention Nicetown to a Philadelphian and they often say, “I hear it’s not so nice.” Unemployment and crime rates are high and the schools are poor. But Nicetown is close-knit, and the community mobilizes on behalf of local kids. In 2014, three years after losing a long battle to retain public control of their high school, residents won the right to keep control of their elementary school. And for more than a decade, the Nicetown Community Development Corporation (NTCDC), a nonprofit dedicated to economic revitalization, has been trying to repair the two-and-a-half-acre gash running through its commercial center by transforming the underpass into a public recreation space. “Kids are running up and down the streets. We don’t even have a basketball court,” Quenton Bowman, a longtime resident who volunteers with the NTCDC, told me one recent morning.