Where Is The Rust Belt?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

Lol, classic. If we just expand the already large municipal boundaries to be even larger, Detroit would be more populous/wealthier/whatever. If the municipal boundaries were larger, those areas would have almost certainly been affected by the same white flights and abandonment that the rest of the city suffered.

But... That's exactly what L.A. did lol.

[Crawford]

That's kind of what most cities with large boundaries did. Basically every Sunbelt city, certainly places like Indy and Columbus.

But yeah, given the racial dynamics of Metro Detroit, if the expanded area was in Detroit Public School district, it probably would have been the same outcome. The Sunbelt cities tend to have county-based schools, which blunted white flight.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

That's kind of what most cities with large boundaries did. Basically every Sunbelt city, certainly places like Indy and Columbus.

But yeah, given the racial dynamics of Metro Detroit, if the expanded area was in Detroit Public School district, it probably would have been the same outcome. The Sunbelt cities tend to have county-based schools, which blunted white flight.

The state should've repealed the charter township law. That alone might have blunted it quite a bit, as it would've made the bar for sprawl higher. If that didn't work, they should've gone for the growth boundary.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

But... That's exactly what L.A. did lol.

but TNO wasn't talking about LA, he was talking about detroit in relation to chicago. i believe he was trying to make some kind of argument that chicago didn't experience as much population loss as detroit because it's a lot bigger in land area or something, but as my comparison with the SS of chicago showed, even when looking at a comparably-sized sub-section of chicago (and one that's taken it on the chin pretty hard in terms of population loss), the decline in chicago is still not close to that of detroit's.


and chicago did not annex its way out of post-war population loss the way that Indy and columbus did.

chicago did annex about 20 sq. miles in the '50s, but the vast majority of that was for the ORD "bubble" and some adjacent forest preserve land, very little of it was for actual new-build residential development.

[Crawford]

It is interesting that the North Side of Chicago never had a crisis point. Yeah, Lakeview/Lincoln Park were sketchy for a bit, Uptown is still a tiny bit sketchy, East Rogers Park has a mini-slum area, but the North Side, by and large, was always stable and desirable.

[Innsertnamehere]

One thing to remember is basically every major older US city saw a massive, massive decline in household sizes over the course of the 20th century. From what I remember even Manhattan is still below it's peak population in the late 19th century or early 20th century. The total number of units on the island is way, way higher, but population remains below.

On that chart posted, Philly is a great example. Despite dwelling counts increasing by 13%, total population still dropped by 23%.

Another interesting fact about Buffalo to me is that it was larger than Toronto until around 1950. It's a crazy thought today, as the cities are separated by only 2 hours of driving, and Toronto is about 5x Buffalo's size.. But the GTA did not pass the Buffalo Metro area until 1950 or so.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Buffalo is much more purely Rust Belt than Detroit.

But Buffalo also has a much healthier and intact core/city proper than Detroit.

Detroit feels more like a northern Houston or LA grafted onto a Rust Belt town. Massive tract sprawl, megafreeways and giant arterials, edge cities, etc. IMO Detroit developed a bit too late, and declined a bit too hard, to have a truly fixable core. Buffalo declined hard, perhaps harder, but didn't sprawl as much and retained more whites and wealth and prewar urbanity.

Detroit has rust-belt decline, but it also had the worst white flight of any major city in the country, which isn't something which is solely a rust belt phenomena.

White flight is also something - which you intimated in another post - where city/school district limits are really, really important. It's one of those cases where you just can't say "look at the metro, not the city." In contrast, rust belt stagnation/decline is an MSA-wide issue. Even the most stagnant rust-belt MSAs can get some high-growth exurbs, but it's robbing from Peter to pay Paul.

IMHO the core of the Rust Belt though is basically Buffalo-Cleveland-Detroit. All these cities share similarities when it comes to built form, metro demographics, culture, accent, close proximity, etc. Lots of other cities can be included, but they all have their own special elements which make them less quintessentially rust belt.

[edale]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

But... That's exactly what L.A. did lol.

LA didn't have nearly the same extent of white flight and core depopulation as Detroit and other Rust Belt cities. It's not comparable at all. LA's annexation is mostly tied to water rights, not expanding to avoid population loss. LA has always received a ton of immigration that replaced (and then some) the population loss that sprawl and suburbanization brought. Chicago also benefited from this. If a third of Detroit was Latino, ala Chicago, the regional narrative there would be a lot different.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

From 1950 (peak) - 2010 (post-war low), the city of chicago's population decreased by ~925K, so not that far off Detroit in absolute numbers, though nowhere near as extreme by percentage.

Since we're apparently doing "rustbelt taffy-pull" v8.0, I'll just post this again.



These are what I consider to be the textbook large rustbelt cities.

Honestly on the ground here in Pittsburgh, the 26% decline in household sizes gets across the "feel" of the level of decline a lot better than the 55% population loss.

There's absolutely blight and urban prairie in Pittsburgh, which (unsurprisingly) is focused on historically black neighborhoods (Hill District, Greater Homewood, Beltzhoover, California-Kirkbride, etc.) There's also a few "white slums" as well with almost as high levels of abandonment (Esplen, Spring Garden) and some notable areas where major highway projects, closures of public housing, and expansions of industrial zones depopulated big sections of the city en masse. But the areas you'd really notice that houses are missing comprise maybe 1/4th to 1/3rd of the land area (and unlike somewhere like St. Louis or Cleveland, they're scattered across the city in pockets, not mostly on one "side").

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

One thing to remember is basically every major older US city saw a massive, massive decline in household sizes over the course of the 20th century. From what I remember even Manhattan is still below it's peak population in the late 19th century or early 20th century. The total number of units on the island is way, way higher, but population remains below.

On that chart posted, Philly is a great example. Despite dwelling counts increasing by 13%, total population still dropped by 23%.

Another interesting fact about Buffalo to me is that it was larger than Toronto until around 1950. It's a crazy thought today, as the cities are separated by only 2 hours of driving, and Toronto is about 5x Buffalo's size.. But the GTA did not pass the Buffalo Metro area until 1950 or so.

Many Hamiltonians I've noticed (not you) for some reason tend to think Buffalo is a lesser city than Hamilton.
When the truth is Buffalo was once the 8th largest city in America and one of the wealthiest at the turn of the 20th century.
Canadian cities were quite small at the time, by comparison.

1900 U.S. Census
Rank City State Population Notes
1 New York New York 3,437,202
2 Chicago Illinois 1,698,575
3 Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1,293,697
4 St. Louis Missouri 575,238
5 Boston Massachusetts 560,892
6 Baltimore Maryland 508,957
7 Cleveland Ohio 391,768
8 Buffalo New York 352,387
(First appearance since 1860)
9 San Francisco California 342,782 (Last appearance in top 10. Last census before earthquake and fire)
10 Cincinnati Ohio 325,902
___________________________________________
1901 Canada Census
Rank City Population
1 Montreal, Quebec 267,730
2 Toronto, Ontario 208,040
3 Quebec, Quebec 68,840
4 Ottawa, Ontario 59,928
5 Hamilton, Ontario 52,634
6 Winnipeg, Manitoba 42,340
7 Halifax, Nova Scotia 40,832
8 Saint John, New Brunswick 40,711
9 London, Ontario 37,981
10 Vancouver, British Columbia 26,133

Even Montreal was tiny compared to a bunch of American cities at the time
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_United_States_census

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

But... That's exactly what L.A. did lol.

The last big annexation by LA was in 1915 and the San Fernando valley was mostly farmland back then so it wasn't like NYC annexing Brooklyn for example. It was more like the city planning ahead and anticipating future growth with the development of new water resources (with real estate investors who had the inside track making a fortune in the process).

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by edale

Lol, classic. If we just expand the already large municipal boundaries to be even larger, Detroit would be more populous/wealthier/whatever.

edale, ya know, Buffalo is really a city of over 3 Million people if you combine the Buffalo and Rochester CSAs, add Erie PA and the Niagara region, Ontario, Canada

Buffchesteriagara

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by badrunner

The last big annexation by LA was in 1915 and the San Fernando valley was mostly farmland back then so it wasn't like NYC annexing Brooklyn for example. It was more like the city planning ahead and anticipating future growth with the development of new water resources (with real estate investors who had the inside track making a fortune in the process).

Yeah, the San Fernando Valley really increased LA proper's area, but there were still more annexations/consolidations after 1915. Basically, LA's boundaries were pretty much set by the 1930s, with smaller annexations here and there to straighten out the outer boundaries and absorb some unincorporated islands within the boundaries of the city of LA.

Here, watch LA grow! http://www.igotcharts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/LAgrowing.gif

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Yeah, the San Fernando Valley really increased LA proper's area, but there were still more annexations/consolidations after 1915. Basically, LA's boundaries were pretty much set by the 1930s, with smaller annexations here and there to straighten out the outer boundaries and absorb some unincorporated islands within the boundaries of the city of LA.

Here, watch LA grow! http://www.igotcharts.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/LAgrowing.gif

Los Angeles could at least have annexed the western half of LA basin to have a better, sensible shape.

[Wigs]

I like how people make Detroit and LA comparisons when LA county alone is 10M people and the MSA is 13M!
The entire State of Michigan is under 10M.

And if you've driven around LA county it seems like LA never ends as it's a continuous "blob" from say Long Beach in the South to DTLA to the San Gabriel Valley in the East to the San Fernando Valley in the West.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It is interesting that the North Side of Chicago never had a crisis point. Yeah, Lakeview/Lincoln Park were sketchy for a bit, Uptown is still a tiny bit sketchy, East Rogers Park has a mini-slum area, but the North Side, by and large, was always stable and desirable.

Not sure what you mean by 'crisis' but it has had challenges. Much of uptown, edgewater and rogers park were very sketchy for years and years.
There was trend (in the 60s? or 70s?) to knock down old houses and small units on many streets, particularly Kenmore and Winthrop Avenues to build 4+1 apartments (3-4 stories apartments with a parking garage on the 1st level), and many of those apartments became undesirable. Near north, areas west of Michigan and Chicago Avenue, were sort of run down and had the infamous Cabrini Green housing project. But yuppies, artists and LGBT+ in search of cheaper housing started moving into some of the areas, and developers followed. They did not abandon the city like they did in some of the other rust belt cities like Detroit. I am not sure about the other rust belt cities, but Chicago did attract a lot of younger newcomers, like college grads, corporate staff, and people moving from smaller midwest towns, and many stayed in the city.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

LA has always received a ton of immigration that replaced (and then some) the population loss that sprawl and suburbanization brought. Chicago also benefited from this. If a third of Detroit was Latino, ala Chicago, the regional narrative there would be a lot different.

the point about chicago greatly benefitting from a giant tsunami of latino immigration (and to a lesser extent asian immigration) cannot be stressed enough.

so many formerly white ethnic neighborhoods across chicago were saved by being "back-filled" by those immigrants as the ethnic whites bolted for the burbs/started dying off, a process that's still continuing on the SW side and NW side as gentrification in the core is pushing latinos further out into bungalow belt neighborhoods that are simultaneously becoming less white as the older white ethnics are moving out/dying off.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

LA didn't have nearly the same extent of white flight and core depopulation as Detroit and other Rust Belt cities. It's not comparable at all. LA's annexation is mostly tied to water rights, not expanding to avoid population loss. LA has always received a ton of immigration that replaced (and then some) the population loss that sprawl and suburbanization brought. Chicago also benefited from this. If a third of Detroit was Latino, ala Chicago, the regional narrative there would be a lot different.

L.A. had a LOT more developable land in the city limits than Detroit did, which is how L.A. continued to grow during the suburbanization era. Forget white flight. The only way for Detroit to have continued growing after 1950 would have been to build up.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the point about chicago greatly benefitting from a giant tsunami of latino immigration (and to a lesser extent asian immigration) cannot be stressed enough.

so many formerly white ethnic neighborhoods across chicago were saved by being "back-filled" by those immigrants as the ethnic whites bolted for the burbs/started dying off, a process that's still continuing on the SW side and NW side as white gentrification in the core is pushing latinos further out into outer neighborhoods that are simultaneously becoming less white as the older white ethnics are moving out/dying off.

Detroit and St. Louis missing the 70s and 80s immigration wave really hurt those central cities. No doubt we'd be looking at a St. Louis with about 550k and a Detroit with at least a million today, if they had gotten a solid Latino and/or Asian influx in the last 50 years. Probably would have considerably bigger metros as well.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by goat314

Detroit and St. Louis missing the 70s and 80s immigration wave really hurt those central cities. No doubt we'd be looking at a St. Louis with about 550k and a Detroit with at least a million today, if they had gotten a solid Latino and/or Asian influx in the last 50 years. Probably would have considerably bigger metros as well.

I'm familiar with the dynamics from Pittsburgh, and I think it's more that the cities missed out on immigration due to a lack of jobs than missing out on jobs due to a lack of immigration.

Essentially, the nexus of Latino/Asian communities in urban cores formed where there was sufficient economic demand to attract them in the 1970s and 1980s. After that, it was sort of self-sustaining, because immigrants would follow friends and family members to cities which already had established communities, even if the overall economy later floundered.