I visited Philly a couple of times last year while staying in NJ. I was really impressed with the downtown area, it was clearly a nice city with tonnes of potential. Then we went for an excursion to somewhere on the west side of the river and wound up driving for a few miles through a hellscape of run down poor urban neighborhoods that were depressing, and frankly scary. It blew my mind that an area like that existed. It surprised me such a well laid out urban area right on the fringe of a major city would be in such bad shape, I expected it to be full of hipsters.
Let me guess, you're not from the U.S.? This is a fundamental thing with U.S. cities, the nice parts and the shady parts are so close, just blocks from each other in parts. In other places (with welfare, wealth redistribution, and suchlike), the gradient between the nice and shady parts of town is so much more gradual.
West Philadelphia is mostly students from Penn and Drexel, at least up until 45th St. or so. The "hipsters" you're talking about mostly live in south/east Philly (Italian market, fishtown areas). Both are being gentrified at an accelerating rate.
Philly is late to the gentrification that most other cities are dealing with, its going to take a bit longer for the really prime places to price out people who are willing to move into the seeder neighborhoods.
