As crime increases, faculty and students have left the area for Center City and the suburbs. Street life has diminished, especially at night. The University's Escort Service takes still more people off the street. The housing stock deteriorates. Streets are not cleaned properly.
Property values decline.
Those of us who live in West Philadelphia have witnessed this progressive deterioration and see no end to it unless some action is taken. But added police and improved street lighting go only a little way to solve the underlying economic and social problems. We can turn the University to the East and to the South as the Master Plan proposes. Only a multipronged plan will work. More than thirty years ago, Provost Goddard and President Harnwell must have had such ideas in mind when they encouraged the construction of the University Mews.