Cities that belong in other states

[Crawford]

I'd argue Cleveland tore itself down to a greater extent than Detroit. Detroit, overall, is more vacant, but that's due to late 20th century market abandonment, not really top-down urban renewal.

Cleveland went batshit crazy with urban renewal. There was a downtown project called Erieview that erased everything between Euclid Ave. and the lake. There's a corridor from downtown to the eastern suburbs that erased everything in its path. The suburbanesque Cleveland Clinic sits on what used to be a second downtown.

Cleveland might also be the only major city without wealthy residential areas. Even Detroit has mansion neighborhoods and a few upper middle class enclaves.

[Docere]

Cleveland was the first major city to see "wealth flight." By the 1920s most of the wealthy were living outside city limits.

By 1931 66% of CLEVELAND BLUE BOOK entries lived in BRATENAHL, Cleveland Hts., East Cleveland, and Shaker Hts.; Cleveland claimed 28% and Lakewood 6%. By 1981 84% lived in 10 eastern suburbs, 9% in Cleveland, and 7% in 3 western suburbs.

https://case.edu/ech/articles/s/suburbs

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd argue Cleveland tore itself down to a greater extent than Detroit.

That might be. I don't know enough specifics to say.

I was speaking in broader strokes about overall "urban loss".

And among the major legacy cities, Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis would be the top 3 using loss of households as a proxy.

Slice and dice them as you will.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd argue Cleveland tore itself down to a greater extent than Detroit. Detroit, overall, is more vacant, but that's due to late 20th century market abandonment, not really top-down urban renewal.

Cleveland went batshit crazy with urban renewal. There was a downtown project called Erieview that erased everything between Euclid Ave. and the lake. There's a corridor from downtown to the eastern suburbs that erased everything in its path. The suburbanesque Cleveland Clinic sits on what used to be a second downtown.

Cleveland might also be the only major city without wealthy residential areas. Even Detroit has mansion neighborhoods and a few upper middle class enclaves.

But that begs the question as to why the city government felt the need to tear down so much of the city. Sure there was probably a lot of city ineptitude and a failure to see the potential to bring back neighborhoods that were past their prime. But presumably there was also a lot of serious urban decay in Cleveland. Why was that?

I read the Case Western Reserve article on Cleveland suburbanization that Docere linked to. It describes suburbanization there as a multi-wave process in a metro whose population peaked fairly early. The metro continued to expand with bands of increasingly auto dependent, sparsely populated suburban development even as the metro population stagnated. So first Cleveland, and then even some of the inner ring suburbs began to decline. The flight to the suburbs was turbocharged first by an influx of immigrants to Cleveland from Southern and Eastern Europe, and then by African Americans from the South. Suburbanites believed that they were fleeing the urban ills of the central core as embodied by those groups.

So Cleveland was the victim of a regional economy that stopped propelling population growth, coupled with a lack of geographic constraints to suburban expansion. Add in a strong dose of suburban hostility to the urban core. Not exactly an unusual story in American urban history, especially in the Rustbelt.

[pj3000]

It really all emanates from the fact that Cleveland's "industrial valley" is right smack in the middle of the city.

Foundries, mills, factories, refineries, and chemical plants... and we're not talking small operations. We're talking a top 5 steel producing area in the world by the 1950s.

Nasty, disgusting environment. No one with any type of money wanted to be anywhere near it and they got the fuck out, as far as they could.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd argue Cleveland tore itself down to a greater extent than Detroit. Detroit, overall, is more vacant, but that's due to late 20th century market abandonment, not really top-down urban renewal.

Detroit killed off a ton of neighborhoods with top-down urban planning. I don't know the history of Cleveland well enough to draw a comparison, but it's very hard for me to imagine that Cleveland was much worse than Detroit.

Detroit has also torn down like 100,000 buildings in the past decade. The city has likely torn down enough buildings since 2010 to support a 1 million person city.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't know the history of Cleveland well enough to draw a comparison, but it's very hard for me to imagine that Cleveland was much worse than Detroit.

Detroit had pretty extensive urban renewal, but it was almost entirely within Grand Blvd. and it was basically areas east (Black Bottom) and west (Skid Row) of downtown. The core was intact. Cleveland essentially erased half its downtown and then erased its secondary commercial center. Imagine if Detroit had decided to clear all land east of Woodward downtown and flatten New Center.

In the end, Detroit ended up more vacant, bc white flight was essentially 100%, the region is somewhat sprawlier/more decentralized and the riot/uprising was so much more destructive. Cleveland's West Side never really had much flight and is poor but intact. Cleveland's East Side is every bit as vacant as Detroit.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd argue Cleveland tore itself down to a greater extent than Detroit. Detroit, overall, is more vacant, but that's due to late 20th century market abandonment, not really top-down urban renewal.

Cleveland went batshit crazy with urban renewal. There was a downtown project called Erieview that erased everything between Euclid Ave. and the lake. There's a corridor from downtown to the eastern suburbs that erased everything in its path. The suburbanesque Cleveland Clinic sits on what used to be a second downtown.

Cleveland might also be the only major city without wealthy residential areas. Even Detroit has mansion neighborhoods and a few upper middle class enclaves.

I don't think there's anyway this can be true. While Cleveland has some pockets of urban prairie, there's absolutely no comparison to the vast swaths of them that blanket much of Detroit.

The Woodward corridor doesn't seem much different than Cleveland's Euclid corridor on the east side. Both have some remnants of the past, but were largely torn down in the name of urban renewal. Public housing projects, medical campuses, college campuses...largely the same situation in both cities. I think both cities had extensive urban renewal in/near their downtowns, too. Here's Erieview in Cleveland, and here's South/West downtown Detroit. Pretty much the same type of low density industrial/commercial.

I'd say Cleveland and Detroit have similar levels of urban renewal, but Detroit has lost far more of its neighborhoods due to neglect and abandonment. While I agree with pj3000 that the presence of industry had a lot to do with it, I also think it was somewhat inevitable due to the incredible growth both cities experienced, followed by an abrupt reversal of fortune. Both Cleveland and Detroit experienced crazy growth for several decades, and planners incorrectly assumed that growth would continue. When Erieview was torn down, planners intended that area to become a higrise centric, high density area. Well, the growth stopped, and people started fleeing the city in droves, so obviously those plans weren't going to work. Only one highrise was built- Erieview Tower

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Detroit had pretty extensive urban renewal, but it was almost entirely within Grand Blvd. and it was basically areas east (Black Bottom) and west (Skid Row) of downtown. The core was intact. Cleveland essentially erased half its downtown and then erased its secondary commercial center. Imagine if Detroit had decided to clear all land east of Woodward downtown and flatten New Center.

In the end, Detroit ended up more vacant, bc white flight was essentially 100%, the region is somewhat sprawlier/more decentralized and the riot/uprising was so much more destructive. Cleveland's West Side never really had much flight and is poor but intact. Cleveland's East Side is every bit as vacant as Detroit.

This just isn't true. No way. Look at aerial images of both and try to find a single Cleveland neighborhood that looks like this. And that's just one example...you can find dozens more like this around Detroit, as I'm sure you know. The most abandoned neighborhoods in Cleveland are still significantly more inhabited and intact than Detroit's prairie neighborhoods. Not to say they're healthy by any stretch, but they aren't completely abandoned. This is probably the most prairie area of Cleveland, for comparison.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

I don't think there's anyway this can be true. While Cleveland has some pockets of urban prairie, there's absolutely no comparison to the vast swaths of them that blanket much of Detroit.

Again, I'm not talking about relative abandonment, I'm talking about relative extent of postwar urban renewal policies.

For example, NYC and Boston had massive postwar urban renewal, much moreso than Detroit. Moses-era NYC and Logue-era Boston went crazy with urban renewal. And New Haven is often cited as the greatest per-capita recipient of urban renewal expenditures. But NYC, Boston and New Haven don't really have present-day abandonment. And Detroit's epic abandonment is almost entirely a post-1980 phenomenon, long after urban renewal era ended.

Detroit isn't largely abandoned due to postwar federal urban renewal policies. even if there's an indirect relationship. It's more due to almost total racial turnover and extreme regional sprawl. The few scraps of Detroit that didn't have white flight (SW Detroit) have minimal abandonment, and a poor white-black-Mexican-Arab mix, kinda like Cleveland's West Side.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

This just isn't true. No way. Look at aerial images of both and try to find a single Cleveland neighborhood that looks like this

The East Side of Cleveland definitely has Detroit-levels of abandonment. It's eviscerated.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The East Side of Cleveland definitely has Detroit-levels of abandonment. It's eviscerated.

Show me aerials to prove it. It has small pockets of prairie, and plenty of pockmarked neighborhoods, but it has nothing approaching the scale of Detroit's prairie neighborhoods.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Detroit isn't largely abandoned due to postwar federal urban renewal policies. even if there's an indirect relationship. It's more due to almost total racial turnover and extreme regional sprawl. The few scraps of Detroit that didn't have white flight (SW Detroit) have minimal abandonment, and a poor white-black-Mexican-Arab mix, kinda like Cleveland's West Side.

Same for Cleveland. Also, I think you're really understating the amount of urban renewal that took place in Detroit. Freeway building was a form of urban renewal. Tearing down neighborhoods to build massive factories was a form of urban renewal. Public housing developments are another big form of urban renewal. Detroit did all three of these things in spades, and to a greater degree than Cleveland, I'd argue.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The East Side of Cleveland definitely has Detroit-levels of abandonment. It's eviscerated.

The area just east of Downtown Buffalo seems worse than Cleveland, at least from Google Maps. Ditto for north St. Louis. Looks worse.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

Show me aerials that prove it.

I've traveled all over the East Side. Just Google around. Spitting image of any black neighborhood in Detroit, excepting NW Detroit.

Same also goes for North Side of St. Louis.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Detroit had pretty extensive urban renewal, but it was almost entirely within Grand Blvd. and it was basically areas east (Black Bottom) and west (Skid Row) of downtown. The core was intact. Cleveland essentially erased half its downtown and then erased its secondary commercial center. Imagine if Detroit had decided to clear all land east of Woodward downtown and flatten New Center.

In the end, Detroit ended up more vacant, bc white flight was essentially 100%, the region is somewhat sprawlier/more decentralized and the riot/uprising was so much more destructive. Cleveland's West Side never really had much flight and is poor but intact. Cleveland's East Side is every bit as vacant as Detroit.

I would argue that Detroit effectively nuked the west side of downtown with the Lodge and I-75. The city built the interchange right on the heart of Detroit's original Chinatown and completely broke the street grid going west out of downtown. All of those areas would have eventually developed as downtown continued to grow. The freeways actually broke the street grids in all directions going out of downtown, and pretty much ensured that the neighborhoods would be cut off from the core, but the damage going west seems especially bad.

Top-down decisions to level neighborhoods because some politician considers it a slum was a pretty disastrous trend for cities in mid-century America. If NYC had done the same thing, it would have destroyed what is today some of the most valuable real estate on the entire planet.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

This just isn't true. No way. Look at aerial images of both and try to find a single Cleveland neighborhood that looks like this. And that's just one example...you can find dozens more like this around Detroit, as I'm sure you know.

This is actually an example of a neighborhood that was destroyed directly as the result of a top-down urban planning project. The city of Detroit used eminent domain to buy the houses between Hamtramck and I-94 to sell to GM for them to build a new plant on the site of a Dodge factory they bought in the early 90s. Most of the area south of I-94 was left alone, but this was a heavily Polish neighborhood that stretched from Hamtramck down to about Warren Avenue. The areas both north and south of the plant withered after it was built, but Hamtramck was saved by an influx of immigrants in the 1990s while the area south of the plant never recovered. These two areas are just about two miles apart and would have looked very similar to each other in the early 1980s:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/C1DcFZ5A9fDVJJEG8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/FcUtoi8pZFQhttSZ7

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I would argue that Detroit effectively nuked the west side of downtown with the Lodge and I-75. The city built the interchange right on the heart of Detroit's original Chinatown and completely broke the street grid going west out of downtown. All of those areas would have eventually developed as downtown continued to grow. The freeways actually broke the street grids in all directions going out of downtown, and pretty much ensured that the neighborhoods would be cut off from the core, but the damage going west seems especially bad.

Top-down decisions to level neighborhoods because some politician considers it a slum was a pretty disastrous trend for cities in mid-century America. If NYC had done the same thing, it would have destroyed what is today some of the most valuable real estate on the entire planet.

Do you think if Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis haven't allowed freeways or kept them at San Francisco's levels, that alone would make them retain like 1/3 more people than they did (maybe more) and they could be counted today amongst the 'big US urban cities"?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Do you think if Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis haven't allowed freeways or kept them at San Francisco's levels, that alone would make them retain like 1/3 more people than they did (maybe more) and they could be counted today amongst the 'big US urban cities"?

I don't know enough about Cleveland or St. Louis to speak with authority, but freeways absolutely destabilized Detroit. Not only did the construction of freeways destabilize the real estate market in the city, the construction of freeways was also socially destabilizing. Freeway construction wiped out many of Detroit's ethnic enclaves (Chinatown, Black Bottom, even parts of Mexicantown although the neighborhood survived). Destroying Detroit's Black Bottom is also believed to have fed the conditions that led to the riots in 1967, roughly a decade after Black Bottom was destroyed.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't know enough about Cleveland or St. Louis to speak with authority, but freeways absolutely destabilized Detroit. Not only did the construction of freeways destabilize the real estate market in the city, the construction of freeways was also socially destabilizing. Freeway construction wiped out many of Detroit's ethnic enclaves (Chinatown, Black Bottom, even parts of Mexicantown although the neighborhood survived). Destroying Detroit's Black Bottom is also believed to have fed the conditions that led to the riots in 1967, roughly a decade after Black Bottom was destroyed.

I imagine if Detroit had like 1.2 million-1.3 million today, specially with less freeways, it would be urban and dense enough to be counted as a big urban city, with all the benefits that factor alone brings to a city in the US since the 2000's.

[Crawford]

If Detroit had fewer freeways, it obviously wouldn't have 1.3 million people. Maybe there would be a few more semi-intact neighborhoods, or white flight would have happened a few years later, but the overall trajectory wouldn't have changed much.

Urban freeways obviously suck, and are terrible for urbanity, but they aren't the reason Detroit is massively depopulated. There were urban freeways ripping through Brooklyn in the 1930's and 1940's, already, causing massive devastation, and those neighborhoods are intact today. And the East Side of Detroit, the most devastated side, has far fewer freeways than the West Side.