What if Detroit, Chicago (and other Northern cities) never fell?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

but st. louis lost what, dozens of fortune 500 headquarters to various factors? it was sort of the dallas of its time, a major corporate hub between the coasts.

i don't know how many F500 HQs st. louis has lost over the decades, but it still has a respectable number, as do several other midwest metros.

chicago: 34
twin cities: 16
detroit: 10
st. louis: 9
cincinnati: 8
milwaukee: 7

to put those numbers into perspective, here are some of the sunbelt F500 heavy hitters:

dallas: 23
houston: 22
atlanta: 16
south florida: 8
charlotte: 6
phoenix: 6



additionally, the midwest also seems to have more one-off F500 HQs in random smaller cities than other regions, like kellogg in battle creek, MI, whirlpool in benton harbor, MI, state farm in bloomington, IL, john deere in moline, IL, marathon oil in findlay, OH, cummins in columbus, IN, hormel in austin, MN, and many others without name-brand recognition sprinkled across the region.

that harkens back to an earlier era when economic activity was more evenly distributed between the alpha/beta cities and smaller places.

[Zapatan]

Since when did Chicago fall? The Detroit comparison is pretty unfair IMO

Chicago is a huge city, only part of which resembles Detroit

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

that would have been something.

very hub and spoke a la chicago's el (though without the actual "hub" of the loop), which makes sense given the similar urban pedigrees/geographies.

the only line i don't fully understand is the light blue route that circumvents downtown altogether, though it probably has to do with new center being its own center of gravity, something which chicago never developed.

Even at peak, Detroit never really had the density to need more than a big streetcar network. Most American cities except NYC/Boston/Chicago/Philly were like this pre-war, it's just that Detroit grew huge geographically so it rose to the top of the pile.

The subway proposal, as far as I can tell, did not come about because Detroit outgrew its streetcar system, as in NYC/Boston/Chicago/Philly, but as a response to the growing problems of auto traffic in the 1920s that fouled up the streetcars. If Detroit ever had capacity problems with streetcars, they must have occurred 20-30 years later than the other cities, after cars had become available as an alternate means of transport - similar to Los Angeles.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Even at peak, Detroit never really had the density to need more than a big streetcar network. Most American cities except NYC/Boston/Chicago/Philly were like this pre-war, it's just that Detroit grew huge geographically so it rose to the top of the pile.

The subway proposal, as far as I can tell, did not come about because Detroit outgrew its streetcar system, as in NYC/Boston/Chicago/Philly, but as a response to the growing problems of auto traffic in the 1920s that fouled up the streetcars. If Detroit ever had capacity problems with streetcars, they must have occurred 20-30 years later than the other cities, after cars had become available as an alternate means of transport - similar to Los Angeles.

Timing is the reason that Detroit didn't get its subway. Subways were built in the U.S. mostly around 1900 or after 1970. Detroit didn't even have 300,000 residents in 1900, when subways were being built elsewhere, nor was it even in the top 10. NYC, Chicago, and Philadelphia were all over 1M residents when their els/subways were built in the 1890s/1900s, and they were the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, largest cities. Boston was the fifth largest city.

[dc_denizen]

meanwhile in detroit...

https://detroit.curbed.com/2019/10/2...estate-vacancy

The healthiest market in metro Detroit? Industrial real estate.
With a vacancy rate of just 2.1 percent and major projects in the works, industry is still an essential part of the region

Luxury condominiums, hotels, and historic redevelopments may get the most attention, but it’s actually industrial real estate that is the healthiest market in metro Detroit.

According to the 2019 third quarter report from real estate analysis firm CBRE, vacancy rate for industrial space is at 2.1 percent in the region. Compare that to office space, where the vacancy rate is at 14.2 percent—and that’s after nearly a decade positive gains.

“The darling of the real estate industry is industrial right now, that’s for sure,” Lauren Scarpace, senior vice president of CBRE’s Detroit office, told the Detroit Free Press. “They bring lots of jobs, lots of tax base to the area. There’s a lot of big national developers looking to start up industrial parks in the metro Detroit market right now.”

Much of metro Detroit is filled with auto suppliers looking to be in close proximity to production facilities run by General Motors, Ford, and FCA. But there’s also plenty of logistics companies here as well, eager to be located near an international crossing, freeways, and airport hub.

And there’s some major projects recently finished or currently in the works.

Most notably, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is investing $2.5 billion in expanding its Mack Avenue facilities in Detroit, which it says will create nearly 5,000 new jobs.

But there’s also Amazon, which is looking to build a $250 million distribution center on the site of the former Pontiac Silverdome. Waymo is redeveloping the former American Axle & Manufacturing facility to build autonomous vehicles for $13.6 million. FANUC America just opened a 461,000-square-foot robotics facility in Auburn Hills.

John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press also noted that, “Mayor Mike Duggan has proposed eliminating one of the two runways at the Coleman A. Young International Airport (the former City Airport) and using the space for a new industrial park in the city

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

If it wasn't for the weather, Chicago would have a population of 30 million. . .

. . .

Honestly, probably closer to 20 million - CSA - with a projection of 30 million by the end of this century.

1] Land - check
2] Plentiful source of cheap fresh water - check
3] Agriculture close by - check
4] Centrally located - check

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

Since when did Chicago fall?

It fell from 2nd most populated city to 3rd place overall.

It peaked in population in 1950 at a time when it's metro area was a fraction of what it is today. It lost nearly 1 million people from it's peak to all time low in 2010.
1950 3,620,962
1960 3,550,404
1970 3,366,957
1980 3,005,072
1990 2,783,726
2000 2,896,016
2010 2,695,598
2018 2,705,994

Chicago is still quite less than it was in the year 2000. It's starting to claw it's way back though.

-----

Today's Chicago city has lost quite a bit of ground in terms of population share in it's region and the rest of the United States.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Subways were built in the U.S. mostly around 1900 or after 1970.

Interestingly, chicago's two main subway lines, the state street subway and the Dearborn street subway weren't built until the 1940s. Prior to that, chicago's train system was all elevated, with some at-grade sections in the outer neighborhoods/burbs (some of which still remain).

[hipster duck]

In a "normal" scenario for an American city outside of the rust belt/northeast, I'd expect Detroit to probably be more a larger version of a Minneapolis than a smaller version of Chicago, but with maybe more high-quality urbanism in key areas than MSP has now.

It would probably be 40% black, not 80% black. There would probably be one north-south freeway into downtown, but not two, and the Fisher freeway would probably not cut across the north end of downtown. Indeed, downtown would have probably naturally spilled over into the surrounding midtown neighborhoods to the north.

The area bounded by Cass Corridor, Brush Park and New Center would probably be the most urban neighborhood in the Midwest outside of Chicago - like a Lincoln Park equivalent. There would probably have been the construction of one of those WMATA/BART/MARTA-type metros in the 1970s, but the area would still be very auto-centric and sprawly.

Detroit proper would have lost some population, but would probably have about 1.4 million, instead of less than 700k. Metro Detroit would probably have 7 million, or so.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i don't know how many F500 HQs st. louis has lost over the decades, but it still has a respectable number, as do several other midwest metros.

chicago: 34
twin cities: 16
detroit: 10
st. louis: 9
cincinnati: 8
milwaukee: 7

to put those numbers into perspective, here are some of the sunbelt F500 heavy hitters:

dallas: 23
houston: 22
atlanta: 16
south florida: 8
charlotte: 6
phoenix: 6



additionally, the midwest also seems to have more one-off F500 HQs in random smaller cities than other regions, like kellogg in battle creek, MI, whirlpool in benton harbor, MI, state farm in bloomington, IL, john deere in moline, IL, marathon oil in findlay, OH, cummins in columbus, IN, hormel in austin, MN, and many others without name-brand recognition sprinkled across the region.

that harkens back to an earlier era when economic activity was more evenly distributed between the alpha/beta cities and smaller places.

i exaggerated, st louis had 23 in 1980, so not quite “dozens” more. fortune 500 corporations loomed large over st louis in those days, though, like dallas today.

back in the day when a fortune 500 was headquartered in st louis it ALSO had manufacturing there too, like olin brass (ammunition) and monsanto (both things are still sort of true) but the headquarters were/are in class A white collar districts and manufacturing down by the river or in illinois (downwind).

[Innsertnamehere]

It would look more like southern Ontario. It’s about the best comparison of Midwest type environments that never declined. A slow progress forward of mostly manufacturing based employment. Detroit would be a little different, but I imagine places like Toledo and Lansing and whatnot would look more like Waterloo and London.

[Crawford]

London has a major university and feels healthy, with a decent core. The Southern Ontario towns without universities pretty much look like Rustbelt Michigan and Ohio towns. Windsor and Sarnia have very depressed downtowns. Sarnia's core is much worse than Port Huron.

Lansing looks/feels rather different from Toledo, because of the university and state govt. It isn't super-prosperous like Ann Arbor, but somewhere in the middle. Toledo might be the "rustiest" Great Lakes metro. It feels like 1980.

[dc_denizen]

Which is odd given the massive Jeep plant in Toledo producing more vehicles than ever

[Docere]

London was never really a heavy manufacturing town - it seems more akin to Lansing or Grand Rapids than to Toledo.

Kitchener-Waterloo is more in the GTA orbit, hard to think of a US counterpart.

[Crawford]

Toledo isn't a "bad" town. It has a great art museum and zoo, better than metros 5x bigger. It has some really nice older suburbs. You can live extremely well as a professional.

This is Ottawa Hills. Really beautiful neighborhoods, obviously built for the wealthy:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6699...7i16384!8i8192

It just has a feeling like time stopped. Everything feels a bit out-of-date. The home prices are circa 1980 too.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

In a "normal" scenario for an American city outside of the rust belt/northeast, I'd expect Detroit to probably be more a larger version of a Minneapolis than a smaller version of Chicago, but with maybe more high-quality urbanism in key areas than MSP has now.

It would probably be 40% black, not 80% black. There would probably be one north-south freeway into downtown, but not two, and the Fisher freeway would probably not cut across the north end of downtown. Indeed, downtown would have probably naturally spilled over into the surrounding midtown neighborhoods to the north.

The area bounded by Cass Corridor, Brush Park and New Center would probably be the most urban neighborhood in the Midwest outside of Chicago - like a Lincoln Park equivalent. There would probably have been the construction of one of those WMATA/BART/MARTA-type metros in the 1970s, but the area would still be very auto-centric and sprawly.

Detroit proper would have lost some population, but would probably have about 1.4 million, instead of less than 700k. Metro Detroit would probably have 7 million, or so.

I think this is mostly reasonable. If Detroit had responded like other former industrial hubs, it would have declined about 30% before starting to rebound. It would have bottomed out in the 1990s around 1.3M and be around 1.4M now, which means the overall density of the city would be just over 10k ppsm. It would easily still be the second largest collection of "urban" neighborhoods in the Midwest.

[softee]

Originally Posted by Crawford

London has a major university and feels healthy, with a decent core. The Southern Ontario towns without universities pretty much look like Rustbelt Michigan and Ohio towns. Windsor and Sarnia have very depressed downtowns. Sarnia's core is much worse than Port Huron.

Most Southwestern Ontario towns have that Midwestern, Michigan or Ohio look. Southeastern Ontario towns are much more Northeastern looking, places like Perth or Brockville don't look rustbelt and would seem at home in New England. The Greater Golden Horseshoe is in between these two regions and has its own thing going on.

[Docere]

Ontario is huge and stretches from New York State to Minnesota, and includes territory along the easternmost and westernmost Great Lakes (Ontario and Superior). Obviously there's going to be a lot of variation.

[Docere]

From memph's blog, population of Ontario urban cores, 1956-2011:

http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.co...1956-2011.html

[dc_denizen]

there does seem to be a difference (SW vs SE)

downtown Sarnia

Downtown Sarnia by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

Downtown St Catherines

Downtown St. Catherines (St Paul Street) | Centre-ville de St. Catherines (rue St. Paul) by Municipal Affairs and Housing, on Flickr7