PHILADELPHIA-Many people might think of the metro area here as "post industrial," punctuated by a landscape of vacant warehouses and factories. That’s not true at all, though, according to speakers here at the Urban Land Institute’s Urban Marketplace conference.

Members of an industrial panel had numbers to back up the fallacy that industrial activity left the city along with the major manufacturing outfits that closed decades ago. About 104,000 people, or one fifth of Philadelphia’s population, are employed by an industrial business, creating $323 million in annual tax revenue. Additionally, city officials expect 2,422 acres of industrial development to take place in the city over the next 20 years.

"We’re not a post-industrial city any more," said Prema Katari Gupta, real estate director of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. "The industrial sector is still a vibrant part of the city’s economy."