It has. My younger cousin goes there and she's renting a off campus with a few other girls. It's not the safest place in the world, but it's much better than it used to be. Some parts of Philly have been undergoing quite a bit of revitalization lately, thanks (at least in part) to a tax credit that provides an incentive to rehab old buildings and build new ones.

Temple is in North Philly, which isn't part of the city center, (the aptly named Center City). I've been living in Philly for a few years, and never felt the slightest bit unsafe walking around in Center City, even late at night. That being said, it's still a city that had near 2 million people living in it at one time, and now has about 1.5. Razing some of the blighted areas sounds like a pretty good idea.

Quote from the original Cringley article: >Over the decade from 1994-2004 the major telephone companies profited from higher phone rates paid by all of us, accelerated depreciation on their networks, and direct tax credits an average of $2,000 per subscriber for which the companies delivered precisely nothing in terms of service to customers. That's $200 billion with nothing to be shown for it. Exactly the sort of funny math and vague accounting that the MPAA or RIAA uses when it comes up with it's latest round of looney toons figures about piracy and its impact on their respective industries. How the hell can Cringley possibly know the value of accelerated depreciation on a telecom's network? And yet I've heard it quoted for years with no other sources than the Cringley article. I've got no doubt that something seriously fishy went on, but we'd be all over that 200 billion claim if someone else were to make it.