# Philadelphia, United States

Canonical destination: bctl:philadelphia
City profile: https://bestcitytolive.com/city/philadelphia
API snapshot: bctl-destinations-47f0620be1025f8fa455
Catalog version: 2026-10-29

An editorial research destination catalog, not a best-city ranking or official Civometra quarterly result. Projected urban-footprint context is separate from municipal statistics, reviewed guides and V1 index evidence.

Profile: evidence-profile · guide-research-pending
Guide review: Not reviewed; local guide research pending.
A source-backed urban evidence profile. Local arrival, neighborhood, safety and service guidance has not been reviewed; no editorial guide date is assigned.

## Source-defined urban context
- Source footprint: 8029 · Philadelphia
- Constituent source names: Philadelphia; Camden
- Source country labels: GADM United States; UN WPP United States of America
- Edition: GHS-UCDB R2024A V1-2; morphological reference 2025
- Projected population (2025): 2286396.408 persons; original source literal 2286396.408
- Source footprint area (2025): 654 km2; original source literal 654
- Derived projected density: 3496.018972477064 persons/km2 = 2286396.408 / 654
Publisher 2025 population projection from GHS-POP R2023A and morphological urban-footprint area; density is their ratio. Not a current census count, municipal population or livability score. Shared footprints repeat one contextual measurement, not independent city estimates.

Morphological urban centres are not municipalities or commuting functional urban areas. These contextual records are excluded from Civometra scoring.
Reference point: 39.97921576648668, -75.15593055782061. Publisher urban-footprint centroid transformed from ESRI:54009; contextual source point, not a separately reviewed city-center pin or municipal boundary.

## Original source and reproduction
Mari Rivero et al. (2024). GHS-UCDB R2024A – GHS Urban Centre Database 2025. European Commission, JRC. doi:10.2905/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd. V1-2.
Publisher: European Commission, Joint Research Centre
Original dataset: https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd
Original methodology: https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/documents/GHSL_UCDB_R2024_V1_2.pdf
Population model: https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/2ff68a52-5b5b-4a22-8f40-c41da8332cfe
Original archive: https://bestcitytolive.com/data/source-frames/ghsl-ucdb-general-v1_2-bc879d823205.zip
Original archive SHA-256: bc879d82320504f89df2041b7936221c8239cd808abe93980493aed062b4f3d6
Native geometry WKB SHA-256: a22e16702fef75f2e2afd68e8a2ca840fffb8c3dbe21242dc5a32d10aaee6f6f
Native geometry validity: true; unchanged source validity is not scoring or boundary approval.
Source retrieved: 2026-10-26; retrieval is not an observation or guide-review date.
European Commission reuse notice: reuse authorised with source acknowledgement; underlying third-party terms remain applicable.

Shared physical source: ghsl-ucdb-r2024a-v1-2:8029
Other destination bindings: None in this catalog.
Repeated bindings to the same physical source footprint are not independent urban estimates.

## Ranking and guide coverage
No new overall score, ordinal rank, winner or official quarterly result is supplied. Inclusion is an editorial research choice, not assessed city merit.

No inherited score, V1 assessment or reviewed local dossier is assigned to this added destination.

## Renter housing context
### Philadelphia — Philadelphia city, Pennsylvania
- Period: 2025 ACS one-year; Census place 1600000US4260000; city-place.
- Published 30.0%+ GRAPI category share: 51.29889128905545% = 100 × 164810 / 321274 computed-ratio housing units.
- Excluded/not computed: 24286 of 345560 total renter units (7.028012501446927%). Excluded units are not treated as unburdened.
- Source table: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/summary_file/2025/table-based-SF/data/1YRData/acsdt1y2025-b25070.dat; retrieved 2026-10-30T00:51:18.586970+00:00.
- Original table SHA-256: f7259df745990893dfa6f18af3b4cb60c65f8410e66bf25678a98bc7b0739587.
- Original 90% count margins of error are retained; derived percentage MOE, confidence interval and covariance are unknown. Long computational decimals do not imply measured accuracy.
This estimate covers renter housing units in Philadelphia city, Pennsylvania. It uses the native Census place for ACS 2025, not the whole metropolitan area or JRC urban footprint. The named place and state are matched exactly to the original 2025 geography metadata; no boundary equivalence or scoring permission is inferred.
ACS household money income includes wage and salary amounts before tax deductions, and net self-employment income. It is not disposable or after-tax income.
Census calculates the gross-rent-to-income ratio for each housing unit and rounds it to the nearest tenth before publishing the categories. Our share aggregates those categories, rather than dividing unrelated medians or using unrounded household microdata.
Underlying measurements: U.S. Census Bureau. BestCityToLive derives the category aggregation; no overall rank or model admission is supplied.
Complete source collection: https://bestcitytolive.com/api/v2/research/us-renter-burden.json

## Machine-readable resource
https://bestcitytolive.com/api/v2/destinations/philadelphia.json
Destination content SHA-256: 0af3f5eaa43e40c39b1d459688b6e1dd23b64428ab0204951f1229d591220dc5

Source acknowledgement and the original publisher terms apply. This API grants no new rights over third-party measurements. BestCityToLive owns its original editorial selection, code and derivations, not the underlying JRC or U.S. Census Bureau observations.