The Philadelphia Field Project uses Philadelphia as a case study for an interdisciplinary reesearch initiative on urban poverty in the United States. Conventionally, poverty is defined as an "economic" problem that can be corrected through more jobs and higher incomes; however, history shows that such "solutions" have offered little help to the long-term resolution of the problem. Instead of asking why households do not make more income, suppose we ask the substantive question of why poor households have problems with adequate nutrition, housing, transport, health care, and so on.
The answers we get to these questions are different from those that use the conventional approach. Consider commuting costs as an example: such costs depend on the geographical distribution of residences and jobs, available modes of transport, insurance rates. Finding ways to reduce transport costs of inner city residents, of course, is another way of increasing their "effective" income. We can do this by studying transport patterns in great detail in the Philadelphia "space economy" and helping to initiate an action program based on such research.
