Is it easier to urbanize sunbelt boomtowns or (re)urbanize old rust belt cities?

[Double L]

Why is it so out of the ordinary for rust belt cities to have good economies? That is not exclusive to the sun belt.

The question to me isn't who has the best economic trend because that can sway. A good infrastructure of previously successful urban infrastructure will alway be there.

I vote rust belt.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

to me, sidewalks are a pretty integral component of classifying an area as urban core.

At least in North America... I guess that's true. But I admitted that the central 40 square miles of Nashville were only semi-urban (although lack of sidewalks seems fairly unusual until you go beyond the gridded areas), my point was they could become urban with infill, adding sidewalks, etc.

i'd probably also include the presence of non cbd neighborhood scale mixed use structures. otherwise, a separation of uses is at its core a quite suburban phenomenon.

You mean like this?
https://www.google.ca/maps/@41.51948...mA317vB5Xw!2e0

Plenty of that in the rust belt, sunbelt too. I suspect that in the older neighbourhoods of both the sunbelt and rust belt, you had quite a lot of urban shopping streets that have become transformed into auto-oriented strips. But they can be urbanized again with new mixed use development. The way these auto-oriented strips are located, they're still pretty accessible by foot/transit

It's not nearly as bad as some of the big shopping developments like the ones you'd see at highway interchanges: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Tow...a2aa0165442d02

This is much easier to urbanize imo
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Gal...cd6b65afc58d93

The fact that they're well connected to the adjacent streets and are located on roads with transit (usually) helps quite a bit.

also, a perfect grid can only take you so far, and is better in theory. for example, boston has an insane pre-war suburban grid but is full of urbanity.

It doesn't have to be a perfect grid, it just has to be relatively well interconnected streets with arterials that are relatively straight for a good distance to allow surface transit to run efficiently. That's why I distinguished between the semi-gridded areas of Nashville and the thoroughly suburban cul-de-sac street network. This is important because for a sunbelt city, the street network is probably the most difficult thing to change.

[Doady]

Cul-de-sacs can be pedestrian-friendly. The key is people can walk in the straightest line possible to their destination to minimize walking distances. If the cul-de-sac or other non-grid pattern provides pedestrian access, it makes no difference. The important thing is small blocks. Sometimes grid can get in the way to. Imagine if all roads/sidewalks are either north-south or east-west, and you're trying to go directly NE, SE, SW, or NW. The grid just gets in the way.

That said, I never heard of neighbourhoods with cul-de-sac or crescent patterns being redeveloped, let alone urbanized. It seems permanent. In Toronto area, the new suburbs have cresents, but grid-like. Who knows what will happen in the fiture.

Btw, grid is a relatively new thing too. Before the grid, it was the "organic" street layout, which was created by pedestrians, rather than planners. A lot of European cities have that. Any really old cities really. Parts of Quebec City, St. John's and Boston also have this type of layout. Maye the south part of Manhattan too, it is hard to tell.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Doady

Btw, grid is a relatively new thing too. Before the grid, it was the "organic" street layout, which was created by pedestrians, rather than planners. A lot of European cities have that. Any really old cities really. Parts of Quebec City, St. John's and Boston also have this type of layout. Maye the south part of Manhattan too, it is hard to tell.

Those are still "grids" - just not rectilinear ones. Rectilinear grid plans have nonetheless been used in cities for over 4,000 years though.


Mohenjo-daro




Babylon




Sirkap




Chengzhou




Roman city plan

[Doady]

Yeah sure. I meant grid is new in terms of being the standard. Cul-de-sac is not new either, but now it is standard. Before grid, it was organic.

Personally don't think that the downtown St. John's or Boston or Vieux-Quebec could be considered grids, but that's just me. They look like organic patterns to me.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Doady

Cul-de-sacs can be pedestrian-friendly. The key is people can walk in the straightest line possible to their destination to minimize walking distances. If the cul-de-sac or other non-grid pattern provides pedestrian access, it makes no difference. The important thing is small blocks. Sometimes grid can get in the way to. Imagine if all roads/sidewalks are either north-south or east-west, and you're trying to go directly NE, SE, SW, or NW. The grid just gets in the way.

Well long cul-de-sacs mean that there is only one direction destinations can be in where they won't greatly increase walking distances. And truly urban cities will have destinations in more than one direction. Even with short cul-de-sacs, if you have a lot of them, they effectively create large blocks, like the NE side of Mockingbird Lane in Mississauga. So you want a limited number of cul-de-sacs, and they have to be small. You could have pedestrian only connections between them, but then they're not true cul-de-sacs. Even that's not perfect though, since they're likely to have little pedestrian traffic from non-locals, for similar reasons to mega-block housing projects (which you also technically can walk through). How big of a problem that is depends on the context, like low income communities need eyes on the street more.

That said, I never heard of neighbourhoods with cul-de-sac or crescent patterns being redeveloped, let alone urbanized. It seems permanent. In Toronto area, the new suburbs have cresents, but grid-like. Who knows what will happen in the fiture.

Maybe Shepard East, kind of? Northdale (North of Laurier in Waterloo) has a couple cul-de-sacs and some fairly large blocks (though generally grid-like). Development was initially limited to the main roads but it's now spreading into the whole neighbourhood, even the cul-de-sacs have been rezoned though they haven't gotten any proposals yet. We'll see how urban the result is... Waterloo didn't do a very good job at negotiating obtaining ROWs to add connections between Lester and Philip, but I guess they're still a couple properties they can try (but much less than on google maps, most of those bungalows are gone!). Northdale is pretty unusual for a mid-20th century (originally mostly) SFH neighbourhood though, since it's pretty much all students, most of which are car free.

Edit: actually James Street, technically not Northdale but closer to Uptown got a couple new high-rise student buildings. One on the corner of James and King, but the other is behind that, entirely on the cul-de-sac.

Btw, grid is a relatively new thing too. Before the grid, it was the "organic" street layout, which was created by pedestrians, rather than planners. A lot of European cities have that. Any really old cities really. Parts of Quebec City, St. John's and Boston also have this type of layout. Maye the south part of Manhattan too, it is hard to tell.

They were mostly shaped by desire lines, so yeah, that's fine since they're obviously going to be well connected and in touch with where people want to go.

[fflint]

It's not "cul-de-sacs," it's "culs-de-sac."

[KevinFromTexas]

I would think it would be easier to re-urbanize rust belt cities. The reason being, if you have neighborhoods that have had many of its buildings demolished and there are now vacant lots with nothing going on, then you pretty much have a clean slate to work with. Plus the street grid system is more practical for urban development. The only thing that would stand in the way would be economic health to stimulate such an event. As for sunbelt cities, if it's non street grid neighborhoods it's not as conducive for urban development. The other thing is the sunbelt like it or not is still booming, so you'll have few properties that have become rundown and vacant. You'll still have a lot of lots with businesses, even corporate national chains that are more difficult to convince to leave if they're still making a profit there. Typically the only thing that forces them out is higher property taxes or a new landlord that decides they're going to knock down the buildings and start fresh.

[Doug]

Re-urbanizing the Rust Belt would be near impossible in the absence of growth. Would rust belt cities bulldoze certain areas and concentrate others? High land costs and long commutes generally encourage urbanization. The rust belt has neither.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Double L

Why is it so out of the ordinary for rust belt cities to have good economies? That is not exclusive to the sun belt.

The question to me isn't who has the best economic trend because that can sway. A good infrastructure of previously successful urban infrastructure will alway be there.

I vote rust belt.

Because their economies were built largely on economic drivers that are no longer relevant, or at least not as relatively important as they once were.

Cities were located near transportation links or resources that were important for a manufacturing economy. Pittsburgh, for instance, grew into a steel and manufacturing hub because of proximity to coal mining in western PA and WV, and the river provided a transportation link.

Services industries can be located more or less anywhere, with some caveats (e.g., proximity to research universities, as in the case of the life sciences sector in Boston). Critical mass is important, which creates a natural trend toward concentrating more activity in fewer, larger cities. There's a reason Chicago is the most successful, wealthiest city in the Midwest... it was the biggest at the end of industrialization, with the most cultural and recreational offerings. The success of Chicago over the last couple of decades is inextricably linked to the stagnation of other Midwest cities... it just takes a larger and larger slice of the pie. If an investment firm or big law firm or Big 4 accountancy is going to have a Midwest presence, to be close enough for reasonable travel to clients around the Midwest, chances are they choose to locate in Chicago. New York has the same effect on the Northeast (and indeed the country as a whole... it's the center of everything in several important economic centers).

The Sunbelt has been successful because of weather, cheap housing, and other things that attract residents, as opposed to industry... and the economic activity just follows the bodies.

It might offend people who care about the latter cities, but the simple fact is that there are some places that tend to be at the top of everyone's list of places to live if money/career/etc were not issues, and others that are basically where you'd live only because family is there, or you're not in a position to uproot your life, or have to move to for a specific job (as a legacy of the past), etc. There are a lot of cities that simply wouldn't be created from scratch today.

[bobdreamz]

Most people forget that Miami is a "Sunbelt" city:



it was "gridded" from day one and in the above photo resides about 6 million people in the metro.
If we can "Urbanize" the Everglades I'm sure other sunbelt cities can too!

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by bobdreamz

Most people forget that Miami is a "Sunbelt" city:



it was "gridded" from day one and in the above photo resides about 6 million people in the metro.
If we can "Urbanize" the Everglades I'm sure other sunbelt cities can too!

miami is a special case: that photo exhibit a.

[iheartthed]

Re-urbanizing Rust Belt cities would require a change in political attitude that I don't think is quite there yet. Places like Detroit would have begun to re-urbanize decades ago if it weren't for political forces working against that. The Sun Belt may not have those political impediments.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Re-urbanizing Rust Belt cities would require a change in political attitude that I don't think is quite there yet. Places like Detroit would have begun to re-urbanize decades ago if it weren't for political forces working against that. The Sun Belt may not have those political impediments.

the sunbelt gets things built in general * in spite* of political impediments. when you are working in an economic vacuum, they are laid bare. regardless, some rustbelt cities *are* reurbanizing, at least in their favored quarters.

[Kenmore]

In 40 years it will be all about the water

so in the long run, rust belt

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

the sunbelt gets things built in general * in spite* of political impediments. when you are working in an economic vacuum, they are laid bare. regardless, some rustbelt cities *are* reurbanizing, at least in their favored quarters.

Yeah, I think all Rust Belt cities can point to at least a neighborhood or two as sign of resurgence. Speaking specifically of Great Lakes + St. Louis, I don't think the Rust Belt is in for a coastal style urban renaissance until they start managing land use patterns better. I don't think any of them do that to the degree of the coasts, including Chicago... Though Chicago obviously does it better than the others in the region.

[ardecila]

Chicago doesn't do land use any better than the rest of the Midwest. We rely on a legacy transit system built around 1900 to push people into the core, but there is almost no check on sprawl. We killed one sprawl inducing beltway (Prairie Parkway) only to see another (Illiana) take its place. If our economy was growing at the rate of Atlanta's, we would sprawl all the way to Iowa. We allow strip malls and huge parking lots right next to train stations, and only recently have a handful of city neighborhoods and suburbs begun to use this land to its potential.

I'm more impressed by places like Columbus, which manage to have strong urban growth in the core like Chicago, despite not having a single rail transit line. Obviously that means there must be a higher level of parking everywhere, but from what I saw, it is very thoughtfully designed and integrated into the city.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Chicago doesn't do land use any better than the rest of the Midwest. We rely on a legacy transit system built around 1900 to push people into the core, but there is almost no check on sprawl. We killed one sprawl inducing beltway (Prairie Parkway) only to see another (Illiana) take its place. If our economy was growing at the rate of Atlanta's, we would sprawl all the way to Iowa. We allow strip malls and huge parking lots right next to train stations, and only recently have a handful of city neighborhoods and suburbs begun to use this land to its potential.

I'm more impressed by places like Columbus, which manage to have strong urban growth in the core like Chicago, despite not having a single rail transit line. Obviously that means there must be a higher level of parking everywhere, but from what I saw, it is very thoughtfully designed and integrated into the city.

Yeah, I'm by no means an expert on Chicago, but I got the sense that the transit in Chicago is what keeps it from going off the rails (pun intended) as it has done in some other Midwest cities.

[nei]

Originally Posted by memph

Regarding the Rust Belt having denser bones, there's a difference between Baltimore and the typical Rust Belt city.

1950 Urban Area Weighted Densities

I think you had Vancouver at a weighted density of around 10k/sq mile in 1950, fitting in with other sunbelt cities. It obviously got more dense and more urban since then. Los Angeles' urbanity might be described as unsusual, but nonetheless it's a sunbelt city that urbanized and became denser.

I suppose rust belt cities could urbanize as well. Some Canadian Great Lakes cities are of a similar form and build era as American rust belt cities but have undergone some urbanization.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

In 40 years it will be all about the water

so in the long run, rust belt

^^^also, this.....