Philadelphia builds like two different cities stacked on the same map. In a tight ring of neighborhoods around Center City, cranes and rowhouse infill have been near-constant for half a decade. Across most of the rest of the city — the Far Northeast, the lower Northwest, much of the Southwest — a new house is a rare event.
That is not an impression. It is what the city's own building-permit record shows. We pulled every residential new-construction permit Philadelphia's Department of Licenses & Inspections issued from January 2019 through December 2024, sorted them by ZIP code, and divided by how many homes already stand in each ZIP. The result is a clean measure of building intensity — how much new construction a neighborhood is absorbing relative to its size.
How we counted this
- Source: City of Philadelphia L&I building permits, via OpenDataPhilly. All permits typed “New Construction” and flagged residential, issued Jan 1, 2019 – Dec 31, 2024.
- Normalization: permits per 1,000 existing housing units, using total housing units per ZIP (ZCTA) from the U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2022 5-year estimates.
- We count permit records, not dwelling units. Unit counts are filled in on only about 15% of permits, so we don't rely on them. One permit may be a single rowhouse or, less often, a larger building — meaning the densest multifamily ZIPs are, if anything, undercounted here.
- What this is not. A permit is a plan, not a finished building. And this is a map of activity, not of prices or value — we make no claim here about what construction did to home values. (We tested that question separately; the data did not support a reliable answer, so we are not publishing one.)
The ranking: new construction per 1,000 homes, 2019–2024
| # | Neighborhood (ZIP) | Building intensity | Per 1k | Permits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 19122 South Kensington, Norris Sq | 436 | 4,164 | |
| 2 | 19125 Fishtown, East Kensington | 433 | 5,439 | |
| 3 | 19146 Point Breeze, Grad Hospital | 278 | 5,976 | |
| 4 | 19121 Brewerytown, Sharswood | 261 | 4,972 | |
| 5 | 19133 Fairhill, Hartranft | 126 | 1,362 | |
| 6 | 19123 Northern Liberties, Callowhill | 125 | 1,271 | |
| 7 | 19127 Manayunk | 97 | 311 | |
| 8 | 19145 Newbold, Girard Estates | 97 | 2,066 | |
| 9 | 19134 Kensington, East Tioga | 94 | 2,351 | |
| 10 | 19148 East Passyunk, Whitman | 81 | 1,822 | |
| 11 | 19128 Roxborough | 77 | 1,487 | |
| 12 | 19147 Queen Village, Bella Vista | 77 | 1,602 | |
| 13 | 19137 Bridesburg | 71 | 253 | |
| 14 | 19118 Chestnut Hill | 61 | 312 | |
| 15 | 19119 Mt Airy | 54 | 748 | |
| 16 | 19104 University City, Mantua | 45 | 1,018 | |
| 17 | 19129 East Falls | 44 | 259 | |
| 18 | 19130 Fairmount, Spring Garden | 43 | 758 | |
| 19 | 19132 Strawberry Mansion | 28 | 497 | |
| 20 | 19144 Germantown | 26 | 588 | |
| 21 | 19114 Academy Gardens | 26 | 376 | |
| 22 | 19143 Kingsessing, Cedar Park | 22 | 694 | |
| 23 | 19103 Rittenhouse | 20 | 392 | |
| 24 | 19131 Wynnefield | 19 | 422 | |
| 25 | 19106 Society Hill, Old City | 18 | 175 | |
| 26 | 19139 Cobbs Creek | 16 | 369 | |
| 27 | 19115 Bustleton | 14 | 218 | |
| 28 | 19138 West Oak Lane | 11 | 162 | |
| 29 | 19116 Somerton | 11 | 159 | |
| 30 | 19136 Holmesburg | 10 | 145 | |
| 31 | 19154 Parkwood | 10 | 129 | |
| 32 | 19107 Washington Sq, Chinatown | 8 | 82 | |
| 33 | 19151 Overbrook | 7 | 107 | |
| 34 | 19140 Nicetown, Hunting Park | 6 | 140 | |
| 35 | 19152 Rhawnhurst | 6 | 84 | |
| 36 | 19153 Eastwick | 5 | 31 | |
| 37 | 19150 West Mt Airy | 5 | 51 | |
| 38 | 19111 Fox Chase, Lawncrest | 5 | 127 | |
| 39 | 19126 West Oak Lane N | 5 | 33 | |
| 40 | 19135 Tacony | 5 | 66 | |
| 41 | 19141 Logan | 4 | 70 | |
| 42 | 19124 Frankford | 4 | 113 | |
| 43 | 19142 Elmwood, Eastwick | 4 | 49 | |
| 44 | 19149 Oxford Circle | 3 | 58 | |
| 45 | 19120 Olney | 2 | 66 |
Bars show new-construction permits per 1,000 existing homes. “Permits” is the raw six-year count. Covers 45 residential Philadelphia ZIP codes with Census housing-unit data.
A ring around Center City is doing most of the building
The top of the list is not spread across Philadelphia. It is a cluster of neighborhoods circling Center City, most of them in the middle of well-documented gentrification: South Kensington and Norris Square (19122) at 436 permits per 1,000 homes, Fishtown and East Kensington (19125) at 433, Point Breeze and Graduate Hospital (19146) at 278, and Brewerytown and Sharswood (19121) at 261. In raw numbers, Point Breeze's ZIP issued the most permits of all — nearly 6,000 — but Kensington and Fishtown are building faster relative to their size.
Step back and the concentration is stark. The five busiest ZIP codes contain about one in ten of the city's homes, yet they account for more than half of every residential new-construction permit issued citywide over six years. New housing in Philadelphia is not a citywide phenomenon. It is a neighborhood-level one, happening in a handful of places where land, zoning, and buyer demand have lined up.
Why intensity, not raw counts. A big ZIP will rack up more permits simply because it is big. Dividing by existing homes reveals which neighborhoods are actually being reshaped by construction — and that is where the small, dense ZIPs of the lower-North river wards rise to the top.
The other Philadelphia, where almost nothing goes up
The bottom of the table is just as telling. Olney (19120) saw roughly 2 new-construction permits per 1,000 homes across the entire six years. Oxford Circle (19149), Frankford (19124), Logan (19141), and the Elmwood section of Southwest Philadelphia (19142) all sit near the floor. Most of the Far Northeast — Rhawnhurst, Fox Chase, Somerton, Bustleton — barely registers.
These are not empty places. They are dense, established residential neighborhoods, many of them rowhouse and twin-home districts built generations ago. What they share now is near-total stillness in the new-construction record: the existing housing stock is what residents have, and it is what they will keep having.
What this map is good for — and what it isn't
Building intensity is a useful signal precisely because it is concrete. It tells you where capital and construction labor are physically going, block by block, with no guesswork. If you are weighing a purchase, it is worth knowing whether your block sits in a neighborhood that will look materially different in five years, or one that will look much the same.
But read it for what it is. High permit volume is not a verdict on whether prices will rise — new supply cuts both ways, and we deliberately make no price claim here. A permit is also not a finished home; some lapse, some take years. And ZIP boundaries only approximate neighborhoods. The honest summary is narrow and solid: this is where Philadelphia filed to build, and where it didn't, from 2019 through 2024.
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Check an addressSources & method. Building permits: City of Philadelphia, Department of Licenses & Inspections, via OpenDataPhilly (permits typed “New Construction,” residential, issued Jan 1 2019 – Dec 31 2024; counted as permit records). Housing units: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 5-year estimates, total housing units by ZIP Code Tabulation Area. Intensity = permits per 1,000 housing units. Figures describe permit-filing activity by area and are not a valuation, rating, or assessment of any individual property or person. Data accessed May 2026.