(CNN) -- Growing up in rural northeast Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia of my childhood was like the Moscow of Chekhov's "Three Sisters" -- the promised land, an emergency exit from my semi-provincial life in Wilkes-Barre. During school trips to see the Liberty Bell or Constitution Hall or the art museum, Philadelphia unfolded like a weird and wonderful tapestry of U.S. history, spanning the colonial era through the post-industrial age. This is the city that gave us Benjamin Franklin, Margaret Mead and Noam Chomsky. It's a town unashamed of the working-class grit that bleeds through the cracked sidewalks of every neighborhood, from Germantown to South Philly to Mantua.
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As part of our Destination USA series, we pit rival cities and let you vote which is best
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The final city smackdown is a battle of the underdogs: Philadelphia vs. Detroit
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Michael Saba explains why Philly is "more than the sum of its touristy trappings"
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Fight for your city! Show us why you think Detroit or Philadelphia is better on CNN iReport
They're almost an act of rebellion, a defiant kiss-off to the collapse of industry that devastated the rest of @placeholder and saw the population of Philly shrink by a quarter.