Suitcase Cities

[Joey D]

I started this thread to see some examples of "suitcase cities," in existance.

About three years ago, someone from New York effectively labeled my city (Wilmington,) as a suitcase city. I sort of knew what he meant, and was a bit offended at first, but as I examine it, it is true.

After he pointed this out, I did notice a few things about where I lived:

1. Downtown bustles by day, however the sidewalks curl up early, and the shops, and almost all commerce is done downtown by 7 p.m.

2. Most of the population downtown evacuates the city after 5 p.m. not to return again until the morning.

3. On weekends, demographics change totally, and a totally different (and lesser,) group of people roam downtown shopping at what remains open after our riots 30 years ago.

4. Other than 9-5 M-F, most other areas of the city are busier than the downtown itself.

5. Other than 9-5 M-F, the rest of the city and the suburbs are exponentially busier and more congested than any part of the downtown.

I really notice the difference when I go to cities like Philadelphia and New York, and see how many people come back to the city on weekends to shop, dine, and be entertained. People also come downtown especially for the nightlife, which is to be expected.

What is strange is that there are much, much smaller towns which keep a much better ratio of people downtown, or on main street after hours, and on weekends.

Any body have any more examples of these "suitcase cities," which fill up during the workdays, yet vacate into a ghost town on nights and weekends?

What are the various reasons? In this city, riots destroyed many businesses downtown, and threw the downtown economy into a slump, causing business owners to close early/leave, and allowing crime to creep into the area. Because of this, people were discouraged to go downtown and felt safer shopping someplace far from downtown, ie: shopping malls, shopping centers, and the etcetera.

I'm thinking:

Wilmington
Albany
Miami (sorry, unless downtown has changed in 2 years,)
Newark, NJ

[passdoubt]

Harrisburg
New Brunswick, NJ

Really a lot of capitals/county seats have this problem... to an extent a lot of the Sunbelt cities, like Houston, are much like this too.

[crisp444]

Miami? Definitely not. Downtown's residential population is exploding and it isn't just a place to go to work and then leave. People with money are moving in and new restaurants and stores have followed... even more will soon come. I have personally gone to bars/clubs/restaurants in downtown Miami / Brickell and in my opinion there is NO shortage of people there afterhours.

[village person]

I'd say Jacksonville, FL's a suitcase city. HOWEVER, downtown has a large residential population that remains there 24/7.


(The homeless.) :banana:

[MidtownMile]

These are trends. With suburban sprawl comes this phenomenon. Only when the residential and/or the party crowds come in did you see anyone in the city proper at night. Even some major cities such as Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis, etc. saw this phenomenon. However, my generation is fueling a return to the city proper. We like living in town, but we want the ease and opportunities of the suburbs. Mixed use is the new (albeit old) wave, so I think a lot of these cities will return to the live-work-play intown mantra.

[Evergrey]

Harrisburg


I disagree... perhaps appropriate for many years... but downtown HBG has developed a significant nighttime pulse in recent years...

[Xelebes]

Edmonton during the 80's and 90's. It wasn't given the nickname Deadmonton for nothing.

Over the last couple years, things have been improving a bit. We're hoping the Sobeys opens on the old Cecil Hotel lot.

It was caused by a downturn in the local economy and the digging up of the rails for the LRT (instead of tunneling, which would have been the smart thing to do.)

[Dalreg]

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan actually has a downtown with lots of activity after normal business hours. There are tons of restaurants, pubs, bars, nightclubs, theatres etc. downtown. The city actually has a fairly decent amount of residents in the downtown, mainly along the river.

It is not a suitcase city!

[MolsonExport]

In my USA travels, I found Minneapolis and Saint Petersburg to be ultimate suitcase cities.

The Unsuitcase city exemplars were New York, Boston and New Orleans.

[brickell]

Even in those places (mostly downtown NYC, not midtown), the business districts are relatively empty in my experience. They have downtown districts that are full residential, yes, but is that just an accident of development and do the two overlap?

A simplification would be to breakdown "downtown" into a few major purposes: business and government, cultural, retail, entertianment and nightlife, residential.

I can't think of any examples off the top of my head that have all 5 in close proximity, even if they are all in "downtown".

Miami has changed but it's still far from being an after hours kind of place. I'd check again in 2 more years. The main problem has been the proximity of South Beach, which effectively takes the entertainment and nightlife part out of the equation.

[McBane]

Agreed. Well not so much with regards to Midtown, Downtown, particularly the Financial District is totally dead after 5 and on weekends. The development of (residential) Battery Park City has helped a little bit, but even they tend to shop/dine in the neighborhoods to the north (SoHo, TriBeca, the Village and Chinatown).

Even Philly has this to a degree. Our CBD also known as Market West is actually pretty small (though there are many other office towers that blend in with surrounding Center City neighborhoods). Situated along Market, JFK and to an extent, Arch between 15th and 24th, it doesn't have many residents and hardly any restaurants/shops that stay open later than 6. These residents typically have to go south to Chestnut/Walnut or east to Market East.

I think the difference between the CBD's in NYC, Philly and others is that their CBD's are surrounded by happening areas where all the residents live.
The key is being able to distinguish between the CBD and downtown. For some cities the CBD and downtown are one and the same (Houston, Phoenix) while other cities (NYC, Philly) can separate the two.

Philly's CBD (Market West) is a suitcase city but when you look at its downtown (Center City) as a whole, it is no way a suitcase city: 3rd largest downtown population, 88,000 people with over 100,000 expected by 2010.

[passdoubt]

I disagree... perhaps appropriate for many years... but downtown HBG has developed a significant nighttime pulse in recent years...
There is "nightlife"... but I think you'd have difficulty doing anything in downtown Harrisburg other than going to a bar, club, restaurant after 6pm. It's become more of a nightlife destination, but it's still not much of an organic community.

I was in Hburg waiting to catch a bus connection at the train station on a Sunday afternoon and could barely find anything open. I ended up getting pizza at a place on 2nd street, after walking past all the closed businesses and empty streets.

[MNMike]

hmm, I think some people could classify Minneapolis as such, especially compared to say Chicago, NYC, Boston, and so on, but I know Minneapolis is not the "ultimate" suitcase city by any stretch. There are tons of restaurants open downtown in the evenings to keep people busy after most of the stores close (most of the major stores close between 7 and 9pm). After that there is live theater, movies, sporting events, concerts, and so on. As a matter of fact I was in Donwtown Minneapolis last night after i got off work(wednesday) at 9pm and the streets were packed with people coming and going from shows, movies, stores and restaurants. Scenes like this are pretty common most evenings now that I think about it, so I take back my first statement...Minneapolis is not a "suitcase" city. We haven't captured a huge weekend shopping crowd yet, but stores open and there are shoppers, and always something to do(its definately not hard to find things open as described in the first post). 10-15 years ago Mpls could have been called "suitcase" probably.

Basically theres alwasy something going downtown to draw people... after the office workers leave the stores are open another couple of hours so they can pick up some stuff...then we go more to a restaurant crowd(people coming in before their movie/show/sporting event begins, or just for a night on the town) to one of the MANY restaurants from sports bars to white tablecloth...Downtown Minneapolis is where 90% of the popular restaurants in the city are. then you have the nightlife crowd which is really pretty impressive for a city our size. So yes, the financial district empties out, but thats common in pretty much every american city. "Downtown" stays active. St. Paul however, is more of the so called "suitcase city".

PS. as side note, one of the things noted in the first post was about traffic...and lack there of on weeknights/weekends. In downtown Minneapolis and the roads leading IN, Traffic jams are a common sight most any night after rush hour, particularly headed into the "theater district". I see this becase I am downtown pretty much every day between 3pm and 11 pm. All that said, it could certainly be more active...but for the midwest, we do well:)

[MayorOfChicago]

It all depends on where you are. I mean Chicago's loop area has hundreds of thousands of people in it during work hours, but is a ghost town after 8pm. Why wouldn't it be? It's dozens and dozens of massive OFFICE BUILDINGS. Same with the financial district of NYC or the central cores of other cities. It's where people work in offices, not live or play for the most part. Go right across the river from the loop all the way up north and it's packed, places between Armitage and Irving Park are pretty busy 24 hours a day between bars and restaurants.

It's not really fair to rag on cities for having central cores that clear out after working hours. Of course having dense residential areas right next to downtowns makes it all look and feel more livable. Some cities have rings of interstates basically cutting off the business district from the rest of the city. These places seem to be REAL ghostowns after hours.

[BnaBreaker]

Well, if that is the criteria, then i'd say that most cities are suitcase cities.

[MNMike]

agreed, american cities tend to seperate out the financial district, and theres no reason for that to be active at night.

[ctman987]

Hartford, CT can definitly be listed as a suitcase city. More then 100,000 people work in downtown Hartford and thousands enter the regions highways to get to work in the city (usually downtown or in neighboring Asylum Hill) only to leave at the end of the day. During the day thousands can be seen walking around and conducting business.

There are efforts underway to change around that 9-5 problem. More then 2,000 residential units are being added to downtown alone. Slowly people are returning to Hartford. But mainly downtown is a 9-5 place.

There are some exceptions. Late night downtown's bars are hopping with some of the area's finest restaurants, bars and clubs located in downtown Hartford.

Also certain events draw people downtown such as Hartford Wolf Pack hockey games, a concert at the Hartford Civic Center or parade through the heart of the city.

Also every city has an area of downtown (if it is large enough like NYC) to be considered "suitcase." I go to school in NYC and there are areas that are hopping all day and night such as Times Square for example and The Village (thanks to NYU). But areas like the seaport and the Financial District (wall street area) can be dead late at night and / or after business hours. The Seaport is a beautiful area with great views and some great shops and restaurants. It shuts down early though...although many big cities have trouble attracting people to their waterfront 24/7 such as Philadelphia for example - (Ive been to Philly, an amazing and bustling city EXCEPT for Penns Landing which was great but quiet). The financial district has some housing now but does not have enough people to support retailers and a lot of restaurants and coffee shops that will stay open till very late at night.

[Agent Orange]

I'd say Jacksonville, FL's a suitcase city. HOWEVER, downtown has a large residential population that remains there 24/7.


(The homeless.) :banana:

Ditto for Tampa. Gotta love the vibrant urbanity of Florida cities (save for Miami Beach.)

[pdxtex]

i'll get roasted for saying metro detroit is america's ultimate collection of "suitcase" cities because unless you have business or relatives there, nobody flies to michigan for fun. which is probably too bad because it is in fact a fun state. you just need a car and a good map.

[Joey D]

I'm not discerning any part of a downtown from another part of a downtown in the same city. Some downtowns of cities generally lose the majority of their daytime population when workers leave, and commerce is generally a joke thereafter.

I'm not talking about the financial district at 4 AM. It is to be expected that Wall Street will be empty at that time. However, up in SOHO, the Village, and Times Square, not to mention Harlem, and many places in Queens and Brooklyn will have nightlife, and action around this time of night.

I am talking about cities whose downtowns thrive during the day, yet are COMATOSE during night hours and during weekends. The other attribute to this being that these people who work downtown during the day don't live/play anywhere in the surrounding city, yet far away in the suburbs, providing a totally different population in the city after they leave.

We've all been to one of these towns.

[passdoubt]

agreed, american cities tend to seperate out the financial district, and theres no reason for that to be active at night.
Well, yeah, there is a reason. Segregation by time-of-day is a pretty inefficient use of land and creates ridiculous transportation problems. The idea that we should have places in our cities/metros that are dead zones at certain hours, while it's been pretty mainstream throughout most of the 20th century, is not really logical. Miketoronto is a strong supporter of segregating downtown office districts and bedroom suburbs, and I've tried to have this discussion on his threads a number of times.

Let's simplify things for the sake of making illustration easy. You have a movie theater, an apartment building, and an office building. They're all located at opposite ends of town. Every morning, everybody in town wakes up and drives their cars down the highway from the apartment building toward the office building to go to work. At the end of the day they all drive back. On the weekend, they all drive to the movie theater. Traffic is bad for these people. Meanwhile, nobody is going from the office building to the apartment building in the morning, nobody is going from the apartment building to the office in the evening, and nobody is going to the movie theater during the week. Those lanes are sitting empty and unused.

Another town has the same population and same highway capacity, but instead, it has 3 mixed-use buildings that have ground floor movie theaters, offices on the middle floors, and apartments on top. Obviously everybody doesn't work in the same building where they live, so most people set off driving to the building where they work each morning. With the same highway capacity, these people have less traffic! Some go from building1 to building2, some go from building3 to building1, etc etc. The highways get used in each direction! (Substitute subway/train/whatever, same argument)

As a bonus, more efficient use of parking infrastructure too. The parking garages attached to these mythical buildings in the first town sit unused at night in the office building, unused all day in the apartment building, and unused all week at the movie theater. In the second town, peak hours for the various uses are complementary to each other and can be shared easily.

Basically, CBDs are way 80s. Put some fancy condos in those office buildings, and put some businesses in the burbs. Everybody wins. Lower commute times for workers. More eyes on the street in cities.

[Taller Better]

I remember Minneapolis being frighteningly this way.... at 6 o'clock the streets would start to empty out, and really only a very unsavoury element stayed downtown over night. But that was 24 years ago. I hope it has changed since.

[brickell]

I am talking about cities whose downtowns thrive during the day, yet are COMATOSE during night hours and during weekends. The other attribute to this being that these people who work downtown during the day don't live/play anywhere in the surrounding city, yet far away in the suburbs, providing a totally different population in the city after they leave.


If this is the case, then no Miami doesn't belong. There's plenty of activity in the close in neighborhoods as well as the Miami Heat and Performing Arts Center in downtown itself. Miami Beach being just a bridge away. It's a different city, but it's as much a part of the culture of "miami" as anything else.

[MtnClimber]

I remember Minneapolis being frighteningly this way.... at 6 o'clock the streets would start to empty out, and really only a very unsavoury element stayed downtown over night. But that was 24 years ago. I hope it has changed since.

downtown minneapolis has quite a few unsavory fellows downtown at night.

[MNMike]

uh, a lot changes in 24 years! lol

[Tex1899]

I was in San Francisco in '91...a tour guide said SF's daily population swells to about 1.5 million (the population was around 750k).

[otnemarcaS]

Same can be said for downtown Sacramento which has a lot of CA State office buildings and is alive during the weekdays. At night, different story although it's been improving recently. However, go past 15th or 16th st divider into the Midtown area with more stores, restaurants, shops, cafes, theater, nightclubs and just residential dwellings and there's a lot more activity during the day, night and weekends. Certainly more eclectic.

[Joey D]

Some beach towns really can't be considered when compared with other cities. Miami, for example, has two identities: one as a commercial city, and the other was a resort mecca, hence I don't consider Miami beach and Miami the same, although the two are dangerously close.

[cactus22minus1]

A bit smaller than other cities being mentioned... but my current location of Evansville, IN is a very good example. While not exactly thriving any time of the day, downtown seems completely evacuated at night. But with this city, the problem has been outside growth, and the death of downtown for 40+ years. They've made a lot of improvements in the past 3-4 years, and there are more and more residential developments downtown... but they've got a LONG way to go.

[kznyc2k]

Since my hometown of Albany was mentioned, I'll say that it is pretty much a Suitcase City. We have a booming nightlife, but it is typical in that its reach extends no further past the typical result of many bars and restaurants. Otherwise there are a whole lotta government employees who are just waiting for 5PM to roll into sight.

*But* like many cities today, things are steadily improving.

[mhays]

I was in San Francisco in '91...a tour guide said SF's daily population swells to about 1.5 million (the population was around 750k).

That's hard to believe. The 1.5 million probably applies to the number of people who at least visit the city on a given day. While maybe 200,000 or 300,000 non-city residents go in for work every day, a significant number commute the other way too. You can add tens of thousands of tourists. My guess would be a peak of about one million during workdays.

Tour guides...often people who reuse third-hand info they don't understand, or just make stuff up sometimes.

[samne]

difinitely Hartford.

Dowtown Buffalo is busy during the day with alot of vagrants remaining at night.

[Marcu]

Doesn't "suitcase city" refer to a city where people live for brief periods of time before returning, specifically college towns or military towns. Hence the name "suitcase". I think the proper term for cities discussed on this thread is commuter city.

[Tex1899]

Doesn't "suitcase city" refer to a city where people live for brief periods of time before returning, specifically college towns or military towns. Hence the name "suitcase". I think the proper term for cities discussed on this thread is commuter city.

Fort Hays State University is a suitcase campus. People pack up and head home on the weekends. Apparently Houston Baptist U. is the same.

[SSLL]

Canberra

[RockHillJames]

I wouldn't categorize Albany like that. I was impressed by some of the neighborhoods right on the edge of downtown. Maybe the government buildings and inhuman plazas...but there are some nice neighborhoods downtown.

I'm going to get flamed for saying this...but I drove around the CBD in Houston at 8pm one night and didn't see a living soul.

[Ronin]

Wouldn't it be called "Briefcase City" as opposed to suitcase?

[SuburbanNation]

During the 70s, 80s, 90s, st. louis seemed to be the ultimate 'suitcase'/ 'briefcase' city with a worker population second only to chicago in the midwest and a negligible resident population (with some exceptions)...now i dont know if this still stands with the rise of minneapolis, but downtown stl is still championed as the second "largest" CBD in the midwest. im not sure what is being quantified, really.

[danwxman]

Harrisburg
New Brunswick, NJ

Really a lot of capitals/county seats have this problem... to an extent a lot of the Sunbelt cities, like Houston, are much like this too.


Uh, Harrisburg is definetely not...unless you're talking about 10 years ago.

[danwxman]

There is "nightlife"... but I think you'd have difficulty doing anything in downtown Harrisburg other than going to a bar, club, restaurant after 6pm. It's become more of a nightlife destination, but it's still not much of an organic community.

I was in Hburg waiting to catch a bus connection at the train station on a Sunday afternoon and could barely find anything open. I ended up getting pizza at a place on 2nd street, after walking past all the closed businesses and empty streets.

The area around the train station is on the wrong side of the CBD (wedged between the train yards and awkward pedestrian unfriendly office towers) and is deadsville on the weekend, no doubt. But along 2nd street and through midtown you'll see plenty of activity on the weekends.

[Zerton]

[QUOTE=
I'm going to get flamed for saying this...but I drove around the CBD in Houston at 8pm one night and didn't see a living soul.[/QUOTE]

Dowtown Dallas and Houston are basically always empty. Dallas is veryvery active uptown and to the west however. I'm sure Houston is similar. The dowtowns have big vacancies.

Austin and San Antonio are very different. So many people dowtown.

[BG918]

I noticed that about Dallas and Houston's downtowns too, extremely busy during the day (so many office towers) and completely vacant at night except for bums. This is the CBD, other areas just outside the core have people around like the West End of Dallas. That's what I noticed.

At night in both Tulsa and OKC you won't find many people around. Some of the adjacent districts yes, but the actual CBD is empty at night.

[miketoronto]

It all depends on where you are. I mean Chicago's loop area has hundreds of thousands of people in it during work hours, but is a ghost town after 8pm. Why wouldn't it be? It's dozens and dozens of massive OFFICE BUILDINGS. Same with the financial district of NYC or the central cores of other cities. It's where people work in offices, not live or play for the most part. Go right across the river from the loop all the way up north and it's packed, places between Armitage and Irving Park are pretty busy 24 hours a day between bars and restaurants.


I dissagree. I have a book on the history of the loop, and it use to be more then just offices. It had streets with theatres, restaurants, major shopping, etc. It was busy 24/7. Its just over the decades its been put into a decline by the rise of Michigan Ave and suburban malls and entertainment. But it seems to be changing now into what it use to be, which was a 24/7 action packed place.


Anyway cities are always going to have quiet areas. Its not bad for a city to have areas that do quiet down. Not every street is going to be action packed at all times.

Its not like that anymore, but my mom and dad tell me stories about Toronto when it was a very conservative city, 40 years ago. My mom said you could go downtown on a Sunday and shoot guns down the street, you would see no one. And its because everyone had to be at home or in church and the police would send you home if you did venture out :)

[tecmsu06]

tampa for freaking sure

[jessie_sanchez]

Los Angeles is not a briefcase city IMO.

[kool maudit]

the police would send you home if you did venture out :)



anglo-protestant as toronto may have once been, the police did not enforce a city-wide curfew.

[SuperstarMark]

I'd halfway throw Pittsburgh into this mix. Barring nighttime activity on the South Side/Carson Street, showtimes in the Theatre District, and watering holes close to the stadium when there is a Steelers game, the majority of the Golden Triangle is dead come 6 pm.

[miketoronto]

anglo-protestant as toronto may have once been, the police did not enforce a city-wide curfew.

umm yes they did. My dad remembers it, documentaries I have watched on Toronto, have had old time residents recount many times how Toronto Police would send you home on a Sunday.

You were not even allowed to play in a park. Off back to home you were sent.

[Gerrard]

miketoronto = eats old people's excrement

[MolsonExport]

umm yes they did. My dad remembers it, documentaries I have watched on Toronto, have had old time residents recount many times how Toronto Police would send you home on a Sunday.

You were not even allowed to play in a park. Off back to home you were sent.

Hence the persistance of the notion (particularly in Montreal) that Toronto is not a fun place. Of course, it has changed beyond recognition since those Puritan days, when the Queen stared benevolently down upon the crowds at Maple Loaf Gardens.

[pip]

miketoronto = eats old people's excrement

???