NYC (Nieuw-Amsterdam) and Albany (Beverwijck) were established by the Dutch and have had constant exposure to one another for 400 years. Schenectady is newer...and a whole lot shittier.

Yeah, Lower Hudson always struck me as more New England-ish but a lot of eastern NYS does...Utica eastward...

I find Kingston analogous to New Haven. Prestigious old university towns. Between 2 big cities(TO/MTL). Limestone architecture.

I do agree, but Cincy isn't Great Lakes. And it has basically the least typical Midwest vernacular. It makes sense to compare norms, not extremes.

Over-the-Rhine doesn't look anything like any Great Lakes city (or really any Midwestern city). I was comparing Northeast Corridor to Great Lakes, not Ohio Valley.

Burlington, Vermont kinda reminds me of Kingston. Small lakefront cities with a very vibrant core, and a significant university presence (though not a "pure" college town like Amherst or Ithaca).

Never thought of New Haven and Kingston being similar. At least when I was of college age, Yale's New Haven location was not appealing. Kingston's been seen as a pretty ideal university town by Canadians for a long time.

Whole neighborhoods which are dominated by brick rowhouses (and analogous "fake rowhouses" are confined to inner Boston in New England. In New York State, they're basically found in the Hudson Valley and nowhere else. It's a pretty sharp divide too, because while Albany and other nearby cities have them (Cohoes, Troy, Waterville, Rensselaer, etc) Schenectady mostly doesn't, with even the oldest neighborhood being mostly frame and almost entirely detached. You don't really see rowhouses further west in Upstate at all.

Cincinnati was basically the only place in the country outside of NYC and Boston where brick walk-up tenement housing was common in the 19th century. Parts of Over-The-Rhine look like the midpoint between say the Lower East Side and Philly or Pittsburgh.

Also Burlington also has the "between two big cities" thing - between Montreal and Boston (although Montreal is only half as far away as Boston).

Both old and colonial cities. Both on major corridors, 401 and I-95 between. Queens is like the Yale of Canada. Prestigious school where rich and powerful send their kids.

Good God, no. Not even close.

Queen's may have a "preppy" reputation but it's not really a world-class university and is barely known outside of Canada. It's more like the University of Virginia, which many laypersons may think is the "only public university that can be mentioned in the same breath as Berkeley" but among academics is less highly regarded than UCLA, Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, Illinois etc. UVA is just a good "pedigree" school with a selective undergraduate college (and wealthy student body) and good law and business schools but not a world renowned research powerhouse.

Socially, it seems that Queen's and Western share the "UVA" role in Canada.

Wow, Schenectady is quite amusing -- that's totally Albany-style housing (for working class neighborhoods), except detached!

Compare this to your link:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.6492...7i13312!8i6656

I think the only "elite" Canadian universities in a global sense would be McGill, Toronto and maybe UBC (and really only McGill is somewhat well-known by the masses, at least in the U.S.).

For whatever reason, even though Canada has lots of very good universities, they aren't particularly renowned. McGill seems to have a strong social status, but I thought the consensus was that UofT is more elite these days, and that hasn't translated (yet).

Waterloo is renowned.

Queens has a strong social status within Ontario/Canada.

Western is more selective than Queen's these days. When I was an undergrad it was the opposite.

In terms of feel, New Haven is probably closer to Hamilton than Kingston.

It's pretty hard to think of "Canadian equivalents" of American universities, since they're all public and serve a different mandate (I've done degrees in both countries).

What for example is the University of Toronto's US "equivalent"? Academically it ranks similar to UCLA and Michigan, but it's in the heart of one of NA's major cities (UCLA is a suburban campus, Michigan is in the American college town of Ann Arbor). Private prestige urban universities like Columbia, Chicago and Penn are much smaller, more private and more physically separated from their surrounding areas, while U of T flows into the city pretty smoothly (I suppose it's like NYU in that respect).

The physical locations are very different, but I would say Michigan and UCLA-type schools are the most similar (though the U.S. equivalents are somewhat more prominent globally).

I wouldn't say the UofT campus is like that of NYU. NYU doesn't have a campus, really; it has clusters of buildings interspersed within neighborhoods. There's no university quad or anything; you could be walking through NYU without knowing it.

UofT is a traditional college campus environment, but surrounded by urbanity.

Chicago is to Great Lakes cities what New York is to Eastern Cities in that it has Great Lakes architecture, but it's so densely populated, it can feel a bit claustrophobic at times, especially towards the Lakefront. Spacious and crowded at the same time. I'm pretty sure that Chicago has the most 3-4 story buildings in the country out of any city not New York.

I find huge parts of Boston and DC to be similar to Chicago, in terms of 3-4 story buildings and the way the landscaping defines the urban environment as much as the buildings. Chicago is very planned, you won't find power lines anywhere on the sidewalk for example. Also, Chicago uses a lot of sidewalk space for patches of grass and trees + the gangways.

A block of apartments in Brooklyn.
https://goo.gl/maps/qzoYsJFtnEr

Chicago apartment block.
https://goo.gl/maps/MXyB2mZAEas

Toronto is the only other Great Lakes city where the urbanity envelops the environment, giving it that big crowded city feel, but for different reasons. I think had Detroit continued to grow, it would have been similar in spots, but while Chicago streets are wide compared to the East Coast, Detroit streets are even wider.

That's Ridgewood, Queens. It kinda looks like it should be in North Brooklyn, but it's Queens.

^ No doubt. My mistake.

my favorite thing about chicago-style side street urbansim: all the fucking trees and greenery.

chicago side streets are some of the most pleasant streets to stroll through, IMO. urbs in horto.

but yeah, it does come off a bit less intense and comprehensive than east coast urbanism, because it is.

I had a coworker who moved to Pittsburgh from Chicago. She asked why the alleys have names here. I pointed out that there would be no way to deliver mail to the houses in the alleys otherwise. That we have houses in our alleys blew her mind, because in Chicago they're just used for utilities and trash pickup.

i don't know why her mind would be blown because chicago has alley houses too (they're called "coach houses" in chicago parlance), but they're not terribly common.

they've been outlawed by the zoning code since the '50s, so all that remain are older grandfathered units.


typical chicago coach houses:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8929...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8938...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9161...7i13312!8i6656