Great Lakes Cities
In terms of built environment, architecture, geography, etc. Every major city on the Great Lakes is built on a grid. All have or had strong cores. They're all fairly flat. Is there any other region with such a defining development pattern?
Great Lakes Cities Chicago Cleveland Detroit Milwaukee Toronto |
^ you should probably add buffalo, Hamilton, and rochester.
Chicago is noticeably brickier than the other US great lakes cities because fire. Also, chicago and detroit are pretty dead flat, but the others all have much more varied topography with deep ravines, lakeshore bluffs, valleys, rolling hills etc. Now, no one is gonna mistake them for San Francisco or Hong Kong, but only chicago and detroit exhibit that true pancake flat topography. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
I agree cities of the south and west are also similar. I was going to make a comment about Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston.
Satellite images for the Great Lakes cities are very similar. Their downtowns are typically on or near a river, they have an unrelenting grid that thins out into curvelinear suburban streets and then country roads. This is all at varying scales, but the template is the same. To me the sunbelt is just marketing speak for the south. I wouldn’t say the west coast is the sunbelt. Very different regions from my perspective. |
Most American cities look pretty similar apart from some stylistic differences, and even then it’s really only on residential blocks. Especially when you get into downtowns and the former industrial districts around them. Commercial architecture has been pretty consistent across the country throughout every era, which is why Portland’s Central Eastside looks like St Louis’ Midtown looks like New Orleans’ Warehouse District.
If you’re expecting the kind of diversity seen in Europe, where an Italian city, a Swiss city and an English city look utterly different, well, that’s not going to happen, we never had the language or political barriers that led to the creation of all those different styles. American cities have always moved pretty much in lockstep with the same trends. |
Cleveland is the only Lakes city that has two very noticeable distinct topographies. The eastside is rugged and very hilly, and the westside is flat as a pancake
|
Quote:
toronto was shaped by other forces, including that chunky, bricky 19th century later british colonial or late british colonial derived vernacular you see across the planet in the former empire. |
Quote:
Most know of the Toronto islands but the bluffs and ravines are little known, generally https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2893/...1fa342d3_b.jpg Scarborough Bluffs by Philip Dunn, on Flickr https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2908/...8e845bcc_b.jpg Misty Morning ~ Glen Stewart Ravine by ~EvidencE~, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5600/...2438a8ef_b.jpg Don Valley Brickworks by mooncall2012, on Flickr https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4296/...88d0e13a_b.jpg 2017.07.18. Toronto by Péter Cseke, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5215/...5770d026_b.jpg Scarborough Bluffs Of Toronto by Greg's Southern Ontario (catching Up Slowly), on Flickr |
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
|
The Great Lakes have a certain look, yes.
New England has a certain look. The Mid-Atlantic cities have a certain look. Industrial cities in the Northeast have a certain look. When these places were built, travel and transport were slow and expensive, and so regional vernaculars proliferated much as they had in the Old World for thousands of years. When you go South and West, the cities are generally less distinctive because they're newer, and were built after everything started to look like everything else. Modern suburbs all look the same, whether they're in suburban Chicago, Atlanta or Dallas. Toll Brothers or KB Homes only have so many designs. There are exceptions of course, like Florida's thing for Spanish Revival architecture, but that's deliberate rather than the result of a local vernacular that developed organically. |
Quote:
The closest equivalent to Georgian architecture in the US is the 'Federal' style (mixed later with what in Britain is called Regency-style architecture), which was prevalent just before and after independence from Britain. The Victorian and Edwardian periods came long after America was a colony. America has lots of Victorian architecture, and it is referred to as such. By the Edwardian period American and British architecture had completely diverged, and American architects at the time were doing anything from Beaux-Arts to Prarie School to Arts & Crafts to Spanish Colonial Revival buildings. And of course, the first skyscrapers, which developed their own vernaculars. Actual Colonial-style architecture was unique to the American colonies and based on the materials that were available (or not available), which meant wood rather than brick or stone, and in many cases very few and small windows (because glass had to be imported from England). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...onnecticut.JPG |
Quote:
I have them in my backyard including around my swimming pool and they're pretty neat as background vegetation. (They're also gorgeous fire engine red in the autumn.) Now if only they didn't try to take over the entire yard... |
Any city largely built out before 1940 has a distinctive look.
That's why SF, despite being on the west coast, is nothing like a Sunbelt city. What's not being discussed is how land was platted in the prewar era. The long, narrow lots is what allows cities like Chicago to have newer infill that still looks dinstinctive compared to 99% of what's being built in America. |
Quote:
Also the Plains cities, which were reaching their stride exactly around 1940(IIRC, maybe I'm wrong). They are also just smaller and there's more variation in prosperity and a lot of divergence based on their modern circumstances. Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Amarillo, Lubbock, Tulsa, parts of Kansas City, Omaha, Des Moines, Denver, Abilene, Wichita Falls, Midland-Odessa. Albuquerque is a hybrid between this and a southwest/rocky mountain style. Saskatoon, Winnepeg, Calgary, and Edmonton may or may not qualify too. Also if you want to stretch things, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Modesto, Stockton, etc. Shared attributes: *A really booming resource based economy in the early and mid 20th century. You can feel through the buildings that there was this time of immense optimism and progressivism towards the future. Like vocational high schools that are palatial art deco masterpieces. Also an embrace of technologies of the era. For example some of the first modern airports, and Wichita still has some aviation industry. *1930's-1950's high rises and civic buildings that blur the lines between late art deco and early contemporary buildings. More flw influence than mies. Oil money or big ag/banks is to thank for that. *Endless neighborhoods of late 1950's ranch style houses which have a flow-y street grid pattern, usually close to the urban core. *Huge grimy industrial zones. Not so much manufacturing or steel like out east and by the lakes, instead big spooky old grain elevators and feed mills and slaughterhouses and oil refineries and warehouses. Often a giant rail yard somewhere near downtown. *Everything is a grid. Sometimes numbered streets and letter avenues persist into the new suburbs and extend way out beyond the metro edge into rural areas. |
Quote:
|
Quote:
(I sure know who's backyard it is when it's time to do the maintenance...) |
All times are GMT. The time now is 10:46 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.