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Originally Posted by eschaton
I do have to say there's a bit of an "otherworldly" aspect to the Lowcountry I didn't get with places further away from the coast. I mean, somewhere like Atlanta or Raleigh, even though it's hotter than where I live, doesn't actually look alien in terms of foliage or anything. It could be virtually anywhere else in the Eastern United States. In contrast, even though a lot of the houses in Charleston are reminiscent of Boston, and a lot of the houses in Savannah reminiscent of Philly, a quick look at the foliage will set you straight.
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Absolutely. Even in suburban areas with typical 70's-style ranch houses, having those mature oak trees interspersed gives the area a look and a vibe you won't find elsewhere. And the region typically does a good job of preserving those old trees in new neighborhoods too.
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I'm not saying it's a bad thing that Birmingham has a relatively large stock of older warehouses and commercial storefronts which can be re-purposed. But pretty much any city in America which had any construction prior to 1950 has a downtown area - or at least a commercial strip - which looks urban. To my mind the thing that separates urban cities from non-urban ones is what happens when you get out of the downtown area. Does it go right to detached single-family homes with yards, or is there a finely grained set of residential neighborhoods with various housing typologies?
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Outside of the old colonial-era cities, you go straight to detached SFH once you leave downtown in every Southern city. So when folks talk about a city like Birmingham having good bones, the reference is most likely to downtown proper only. And sure most cities that existed before 1950 have a downtown area with a basic urban form but not all have a similarly preserved historic commercial urban fabric, especially considering how unkind urban renewal was to cities. Also Birmingham has several smaller commercial districts spread throughout the area. Some exist as their own towns and others are part of the city itself. That's not the norm for most Southern cities, particularly one as young as Birmingham.