Ready for some graphic stimulation? Temple University has just released a colorful new book, with dozens of maps that are sure to jitter your pulse with some cold hard facts.

Philadelphia will likely continue as a media darling for at least a few more minutes. Meanwhile, there's fresh evidence that the continued decline of its surrounding urban neighborhoods is strangling Philadelphia's cultural leadership in the region. Technical, creative and immigrant workers, fearful of inner-city violence, are opting instead for the 'burbs. Blight flight is creating a brain drain, as the city's creative capital flees for greener places.

That's one conclusion I take away from the dozens of maps and graphs in "Where We Stand: Community Indicators for Metropolitan Philadelphia" (also known as the Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project, or MPIP)—a comprehensive, $1.2 million study, now beginning its third year. Financed by the William Penn Foundation, a score of scholars tore into census data and conducted their own surveys to gauge the health of the 350-plus communities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that surround Philly. You can get one free through www.temple.edu/mpip.

What's shocking at first, is how researchers have redrawn the map of where we live. Forget about county lines. On top of the surrounding counties—Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem—imagine a series of concentric circles, with the city of Philadelphia in the middle. And in the very middle of that is Center City, looking like a speck in a sea. Researchers found Center City so fundamentally different from the surrounding inner-city communities that it is one of just 15 "Established Town"-type communities in the region. (Other such towns are Narberth, Media, Milbourne, Radnor and Thornbury—which seems only to highlight just how unique Center City is.)

Around Center City, MPIP's maps show several massive inner-city communities. Including West, Southwest and North Philadelphia, as well as Camden, these inner-city neighborhoods isolate Philadelphia physically and culturally from the rest of the region. And researchers found the division is going to get worse.

Many, especially immigrants, are shunning this ring of urban centers for the outer reaches of the region. They're moving to newer middle-class suburbs, like parts of Chester County. Suburban sprawl, of course, kills agriculture and harms the environment. But developing rural areas also offer the young, the foreign-born and others climbing upward their first foothold in the American Dream. And while the MPIP shows that Philadelphia still boasts a hefty supply of the young, the foreign and the upwardly mobile, many are shunning the city entirely.

Meanwhile, many now living in the inner city also want out. Joining the traditional white flight are blacks, Latinos and Asians. From 1990 to 2000, as much of the region grew wealthier, real income in inner-ring neighborhoods declined. For many, the only way to get a leg up was to get out. And for many, it's worked. In many of the region's suburbs, the median income of African-American households was actually higher than the incomes of white residents living in the same community. And the same generally held true for Latinos and Asians.

But the biggest reason given for moving, surprisingly, is not economic. In the Philadelphia region, safety is the number one reason for moving (76 percent), followed by housing costs (70 percent) and good schools (59 percent). Moving in search of lower taxes actually ranked among the bottom (32 percent).

Manufacturing jobs left for the 'burbs long ago. But what's surprised MPIP researchers is data showing the wide dispersal of high-tech and creative economy jobs (art, design, fashion and publishing) throughout the region. I believe this has profound implications. Dying urban neighborhoods often revive when such outsiders move in. But inner-ring ghettos are failing to attract the rich mix of artists and immigrants who have traditionally revived the inner-city neighborhood. Fearing violence, locked out of the pricey Center City market, potential urban pioneers are heading for the hills.

What's encouraging in the MPIP study is that those left behind are still fighting. Urban-center dwellers are just as active as suburbanites in building their communities. They contact government officials and attend block-association meetings about as much. There is one big difference: Inner-ring citizens attend about half as many city board meetings (13 percent) as suburbanites. Why? Unlike many suburban townships, Philadelphia holds board meetings, such as the zoning board, during the day. That's convenient for developers and their lawyers, certainly, but not for ordinarily people with jobs. Are you listening, City Hall?

It's a depressing vision of Center City as an tiny island of prosperity in a sea of poverty. But the future needn't be so grim. Creative workers can be wooed back. Through low-interest loans, neighborhoods can be recapitalized. Even inner-city dwellers, the MPIP suggests, are still willing to invest their own money in their communities. They say they'd pay higher taxes for good schools and effective policing. As the MPIP graphically demonstrates, inner-city residents are willing to fight and pay to keep their community from becoming a no-man's-land.