Foot traffic in the core of Center City rises through late 2022 and into 2023

A new report from Center City District/Central Philadelphia Development Corporation (CCD/CPDC) has found that pedestrian activity in the core of Center City continued to increase during the last quarter of 2022 and into the first two weeks of January 2023, as the volume of residents, workers and visitors of all types downtown continued to grow.

Center City District uses two independent sources of data to track these trends. First, CCD has installed sensors at 11 locations within the downtown commercial core. Three of these sensors in the main office district -- the 1700 block of JFK Boulevard and the 1600 and 1800 blocks of Market Street -- show a 25% increase in the average number of pedestrians from December 2021 to December 2022. The most significant increases are seen on Tuesdays (42%), Wednesdays (44%), and Thursdays (32%).

CCD’s other data source, Placer.ai, uses anonymized cellphone location data to estimate daily downtown foot traffic in a broader area from Vine Street to South Street, river to river. According to Placer.ai, Center City’s average daily population increased from a low of 113,600 in April 2020 to 326,000 in December 2022, which is 76% of the pre-pandemic December 2019 level.

This upward trend is due to factors including the steady stream of new residential development in and around Center City; the return of tourists, shoppers and regional visitors; and the return of non-resident workers of all types.

For more detail, download the 7-page report at- Pedestrian Vitality: Momentum Continues to Build.