15. Pulling into the parking lot of the South Philadelphia Sheraton, a person is usually struck by the unlikely combination of the landscapes comprising the neighborhood. The hotel sits close to a 4-lane highway that parallels the Delaware River, across which you can see the murky land of New Jersey. There is an empty derelict button factory across the highway, spooky to pass by on foot because it is full of howling ghosts. But right next door to this abandoned building is Penn's Landing, a festive combination of fairgrounds, shops and restaurants intended for tourists. People seldom walked on the sidewalks in this stretch of the city -- the parking structures fed directly into the shops and fairgrounds, but if one were to stroll alongside the highway, one would come to an area of gas stations and discount stores with their signs written in Spanish, eventually bleeding into a recently gentrifi...