Center City Insights
A Walkable Childhood: How Center City Philadelphia is Attracting and Retaining Families
September 2026
Center City Insights
Center City Insights
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A Walkable Childhood
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Center City Insights
A decade of growth, against the national trend Most large American cities are losing households with children. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that the child population fell in most of the nation’s 38 largest cities between 2015 and 2024, including in Philadelphia, where the number of children under 18 declined 6% citywide. CCD’s own analysis of a different census dataset revealed a 3% decline in Philadelphia’s population of children. In both cases, the data show the city following a widespread trend of fewer kids in big cities. Zoom into Greater Center City, and we find a different story. Over the past decade, the number of children living in Greater Center City grew 11%, adding more than 2,100 kids across the eight ZIP codes in Philadelphia’s core. That rate of growth puts downtown Philadelphia in the same company as Seattle and Washington, D.C., the two cities the Journal analysis identified as outliers defying the national trend. Our downtown is steadily gaining children while the rest of the city and region experience declines in residents under age 18 (-3% and -2% respectively). This is a timely back-to-school reminder that Greater Center City serves a major role in the attraction and retention of families in Philadelphia. Cultivating new generations of city kids by creating a downtown and neighborhoods that support families at every stage is an activity with meaningful quality of life and economic implications. Read on to learn more about Greater Center City’s strengths as a place to raise kids, and what the implications are for policy makers, developers, and those shaping the built environment.
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A Walkable Childhood
Child population change, 2014-2024
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014, 2019, 2024) Child Population Change, 2014-2024
% change in children, 2014-2024 14% 12%
11.3%
10% 8% 6% 4% 2% -3%
0 -2%
-2.2%
-4% Greater Center City
City of Philadelphia
Philadelphia Metro
Greater Center City’s population under 18 has grown more than 11% in a decade, whereas Philadelphia and the surrounding region have seen this population decline.
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Center City Insights
Families are not just arriving, they’re staying Recent analysis of census data uncovers a reassuring pattern: families in Greater Center City are not leaving when their kids reach school age. While the under-5 population downtown held steady over the past decade, Greater Center City has experienced a surge in school-age children. The 5- to 9-year-old cohort grew by 24%, and the 10- to 14-year-old group rose by 47%. This phenomenon is the demographic signature of families who settled in neighborhoods like Northern Liberties, Bella Vista, and Fairmount a decade ago and stayed through elementary and into middle school. The data combats a familiar narrative: when young professionals become parents, they leave for the suburbs. Instead, Greater Center City’s population dynamics over the past decade reveal that our urban core has performed well on retaining families after they have children. Age cohort change in Greater Center City, 2014-2024 Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014, 2019, 2024) Child Population Change, 2014-2024
% Change 60% 50%
47.1%
40% 30% 23.6%
20% 10% 0 -10%
-0.8%
-20%
-19.4%
-30% Under 5
5 to 9
10 to 14
15 to 17
A 47% growth in the 10-to-14 age group suggests families aren’t fleeing at kindergarten, but rather staying through middle school.
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A Walkable Childhood
Schools as a strong indicator of neighborhood strength What’s keeping families in and around Center City? Turning to our schools can offer a first clue. Once again bucking a citywide and school district-wide trend, Greater Center City families have increasingly turned to their neighborhood catchment-based schools. Bache-Martin School in Fairmount has grown enrollment 48% over 10 years. Greenfield in Rittenhouse is up 24%. Meredith in Bella Vista is up 39%. Adaire in Fishtown is up 26%. The data bolsters the neighborhood strength narrative. Catchment retention, or the share of families who choose to send their children to their neighborhood school, is rising at several key schools. Greenfield now retains over 90% of families in its zone. Bache-Martin jumped from 67% to 82%.
Enrollment changes in Center City schools, 2015-2025 Source: School District of changes Philadelphia Enrollment in Center City Schools, 2015-2025
60%
47.8% 40%
26%
24.3% 20%
16.3%
0% Albert M. Greenfield School
Bache-Martin School
George W. Nebinger School
Alexander Adaire School
Bache-Martin increased enrollment by 48%, one of the highest rates of any district school in the city.
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Center City Insights
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A Walkable Childhood
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Center City Insights
Everything you need, all within a walk For parents considering whether Center City can work for their family, the question extends past schools. It is whether the full daily ecosystem — the grocery store, the playground, the library, the childcare center, the pediatrician — sits within a comfortable walk rather than a car ride away. In the dense and walkable fabric of Greater Center City, running errands, stopping by the playground, and grabbing dinner with another family don’t have to be three separate car trips completed on different days; they become connected parts of a seamless and sometimes spontaneous experience enabled by proximity and walkability. Greater Center City’s amenity-filled neighborhoods contain all of the ingredients that parents seek out: the area’s 10 libraries, including Parkway Central, offer a key third space for families, alongside 104 parks, 56 playgrounds (including 17 with spraygrounds in warm weather) and nine public pools. Beyond the municipally managed offerings spread across Center City, public-private partnerships offer unique child-centric destinations that are regional draws for all families but just another neighborhood options for downtown residents. Living in Greater Center City means that the Discovery garden of Sister Cities Park; the mini-golf and carousel of Franklin Square; and the hammocks, barges, and carnival attractions of Spruce Street Harbor Park and Summerfest are often just a walk, transit trip, or bike ride away. Childcare infrastructure has grown considerably as well. In the past two years alone, Greater Center City has added 18 childcare centers, bringing the number up to 166 total licensed providers with a capacity of over 10,300 children. These new facilities are distributed across neighborhoods where family growth is strongest, like Northern Liberties and Spring Garden.
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A Walkable Childhood
On the commercial side, more than 20 supermarkets have opened across Greater Center City in the last 15 years, supplemented by dozens of delis, convenience stores, and specialty shops. From a new Sprouts in Northern Liberties, a new Aldi in Graduate Hospital, and multiple locations of Whole Foods Daily Shop on the horizon, a larger share of city residents are enjoying walkable access to high-quality supermarkets. Family favorite retailers like Barnes & Noble, Born Yesterday, and Five Below have been joined by experiential concepts offering mini-golf, bowling, arcade games, and movies. Options for kids’ clothing have proliferated as retailers from Uniqlo and J. Crew to Primark and Old Navy offer options across price points, all a few blocks from one another.
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Center City Insights
The missing piece: family-sized housing If the amenity ecosystem is the strongest argument for a walkable childhood downtown, the housing pipeline is the most significant gap. While Greater Center City added nearly 22,000 housing units between 2016 and 2025, more than three-quarters of them were studio or one bedroom units. Only about 23% were two-bedroom units or larger, the minimum a family with children realistically needs. The share of family-sized units in the total inventory is actually shrinking, from 24.7% to 24.2%. There is also a divergence within Greater Center City itself. Nearly all the family growth is occurring in Extended Center City (the ZIP codes to the immediate north of Vine Street and south of Pine Street). Neighborhoods like Poplar and Point Breeze currently perform better at offering more family-sized floorplans. Core Center City, where the housing stock skews heavily toward studios, lost households with children over the past decade. Providing more places for families to live could reverse this pattern and make Core Center City a more attractive place for prospective families. However, the current housing delivery pipeline is tilting away from families, not toward them. In 2024 alone, 80% of deliveries were studios or one bedrooms. The families are here, school enrollment is improving, and the daily ecosystem works. What Greater Center City needs now is a housing pipeline that meets the needs of the families hoping to stay. Zoning and development incentives that encourage two- and three-bedroom units in new construction, particularly in Core Center City, would address the gap between where families want to live and what the market is building.
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A Walkable Childhood
Share of new housing units, 2016-2025 Source: CoStar
Share of New Housing Units, 2016-2025
2.3%
0.1%
Studio
19.4%
21.0%
1 bedroom 2 bedroom 3 bedroom 4+ bedroom
57.2% For every family-sized unit delivered in Greater Center City over the past nine years, roughly three studios or one-bedrooms were added.
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Center City Insights
The case for (more) children downtown Greater Center City already accomplishes what most American downtowns aspire to achieve: growing its family population, strengthening its schools, and sustaining the mixed-use ecosystem that makes a walkable childhood not just possible, but preferable. The appeal of city parenting stems from both culture and convenience. Short and easy trips for daily needs are a plus, but so is a childhood where experiences like watching movies on the Schuylkill River trail, walking to a kidfocused Philadelphia Orchestra concert at the Kimmel Center, and playing with bubbles at Open Streets on your way home from the grocery store are expected rather than exceptional. With so much going for it, what gives parents pause about raising kids in Greater Center City? For some, it’s safety — and the citywide cratering of crime rates should ease those worries. For others, it’s the reverse commute one or both parents must make, which can prove too arduous to sustain. This is why it is so important that we continue to make the case to companies for establishing and growing their presence in Center City. Whether that’s the announcement that JPMorgan Chase will expand at 2400 Market, or that Burlington is relocating its headquarters to Schuylkill Yards from New Jersey, every new job downtown is another reason to want to live nearby. Today’s cohort of parents overwhelmingly grew up in suburbs but enthusiastically migrated to (or remained in) cities after college. It’s easy to default to one’s own childhood experience and assume that it’s the only option, particularly when considering the tradeoffs that can come with city life. But the opportunity lies in the fact that there is a multi-generational presence for urban living, and Greater Center City is better positioned than most places in the U.S. to seize on this and provide an experience that is not only adequate for growing families, but truly appealing.
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A Walkable Childhood
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Center City Insights
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