Great Lakes Cities

[north 42]

Originally Posted by jpdivola

If feel like Toronto has seen so much large scale development that it overshadows it's historic architecture. But it is still a fairly solidly built city and has lots of attached housing and walk up apartment buildings. Outside Chicago, it's hard to find areas densely built areas like Cabbagetown or the Annex in the GL region.

That’s really a big part of it, if Cleveland or Buffalo had the same amount of development that Toronto had, it would be much harder to find all of the historic parts.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by jpdivola

If feel like Toronto has seen so much large scale development that it overshadows it's historic architecture. But it is still a fairly solidly built city and has lots of attached housing and walk up apartment buildings. Outside Chicago, it's hard to find areas densely built areas like Cabbagetown or the Annex in the GL region.

The advantage Toronto has to make up for being late to the game is that it has retained almost all of its historic stock. It's pretty rare for any North American city, let alone an interior Great Lakes city, to have a stretch like Queen West that represents a 5km long prewar retail corridor uninterrupted by parking lots, vacant lots, or boarded up shops.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by benp

It's not down half - 2020 Metro estimate is 1,125,637, down 16.5% since its peak, with most of that drop occurring before 1990. Only an estimated 10k drop since 2010, and final Census numbers may show something different as the State count came in 800k higher than estimates.

edit: I guess you were looking at the 1920 number and not the 2020 number...

added more figures.
Buffalo was already 500k person Metro by 1900, when the city of Buffalo was the 8th largest city in America.
Impressive by North American standards

Buffalo Metro (Erie+Niagara county)
1890: 385,472
1900: 508,647
1910: 621,021
1920: 753,393
1930: 911,737
1940: 958,487
1950: 1,089,230
1960: 1,306,957
1970 (peak): 1,349,211
2020 est: 1,125,637

The city of Buffalo peaked in 1950 at 580,000 in a tiny 40.38sq miles land area, for an average density of almost 14,500 ppl/sq mi

2020 city of Buffalo estimate: 254,479
Ask anyone like benp, the remainder of the 2020s looks bright. Constant rehabilitation projects (mixed-use, apartments, condos, townhouses) happening all over the city, including former grain elevators being turned into apartments.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by jpdivola

If feel like Toronto has seen so much large scale development that it overshadows it's historic architecture. But it is still a fairly solidly built city and has lots of attached housing and walk up apartment buildings. Outside Chicago, it's hard to find areas densely built areas like Cabbagetown or the Annex in the GL region.

Torontos bones are more like a first wave inland U.S. city like Pittsburgh, or intact St. Louis with a supercharger than a Great Lakes city with the brick, narrower streets and kind of a wacky street setup. Yeah the vernacular is sometimes different but sometimes its just the way its arranged …semi-detached vs rows vs not attached at all (St Louis had far more rows pre-1950, likewise theres semi-detached housing in Toronto that is basically identical to a SFH vernacular present in PGH and STL )

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

If Canada had been annexed by the US, it's likely the territories would be sparsely populated, if at all.

Maybe not. If the U.S. gets Quebec in the American Revolutionary War, there is less impetus for the Erie Canal, as goods from the Great Lakes can all head out via the St. Lawrence. It might result in a bigger Montreal, and a smaller NYC.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

The advantage Toronto has to make up for being late to the game is that it has retained almost all of its historic stock. It's pretty rare for any North American city, let alone an interior Great Lakes city, to have a stretch like Queen West that represents a 5km long prewar retail corridor uninterrupted by parking lots, vacant lots, or boarded up shops.

True. Trans-national differences, like lack of white flight, no school district issues, greater investments in transit, few urban highways, somewhat lower household incomes/buying power, somewhat higher share of immigration, all probably contributed to a better neighborhood urban form, on average.

The U.S. has been screwing up retail corridors for nearly a century. Detroit basically doubled the width of its major arterials starting in the Great Depression. Imagine if Yonge, Dundas, Queen, King, Bloor were all twice as wide, and they ripped out one side of prewar retail to make it happen. Then imagine they rip out the streetcars, 90% of the existing residents flee, and the feds build 8-lane freeways paralleling the corridors.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Maybe not. If the U.S. gets Quebec in the American Revolutionary War, there is less impetus for the Erie Canal, as goods from the Great Lakes can all head out via the St. Lawrence. It might result in a bigger Montreal, and a smaller NYC.

They still would've needed a canal to get around the rapids. The Seaway wasn't opened until the 50's. There's also no point really in shipping something to Montreal when the majority of the population is further south. People need economic reasons to move somewhere, and if Canada and the U.S. were all under the same immigration laws in the 19th & 20th centuries, there wouldn't really be much reason to go north of the Great Lakes except for small farming communities and resource extraction. Montreal (and then Toronto) developed a sizeable economy by housing Canadian banks that financed Canadian mining operations, Canadian railways, manufacturing, etc. If they were all one country these activities probably would've just been absorbed by the larger established centres in Chicago and New York.

[edale]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

The advantage Toronto has to make up for being late to the game is that it has retained almost all of its historic stock. It's pretty rare for any North American city, let alone an interior Great Lakes city, to have a stretch like Queen West that represents a 5km long prewar retail corridor uninterrupted by parking lots, vacant lots, or boarded up shops.

Wow, I just took a streetview tour of Queen West, and it's a pretty damn impressive urban corridor. I think you Toronto forumers are being far too gracious in response to some of these claims. Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit all have nothing comparable to Queen West. Toronto and Chicago are head and shoulders above the rest of the Great Lakes cities, and it isn't remotely close. Quibbling over who has more historic fabric is meaningless when the one city is bursting at the seems with energy and people and the other group of cities are shells of their former selves and have major areas of abandonment and decay.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by edale

Wow, I just took a streetview tour of Queen West, and it's a pretty damn impressive urban corridor. I think you Toronto forumers are being far too gracious in response to some of these claims. Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit all have nothing comparable to Queen West. Toronto and Chicago are head and shoulders above the rest of the Great Lakes cities, and it isn't remotely close. Quibbling over who has more historic fabric is meaningless when the one city is bursting at the seems with energy and people and the other group of cities are shells of their former selves and have major areas of abandonment and decay.

Harsh considering Toronto wasn't subjected to the forces that resulted in those cities being shells of their former selves. Deindustrialization, suburbanization/white flight, and urban renewal didn't afflict Canadian cities like they did American ones.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Maybe not. If the U.S. gets Quebec in the American Revolutionary War, there is less impetus for the Erie Canal, as goods from the Great Lakes can all head out via the St. Lawrence. It might result in a bigger Montreal, and a smaller NYC.

I don't know what would have happened in Ontario (which relied heavily on immigration for its population growth during that era) but I am pretty sure the revenge of the cradle (la revanche des berceaux) would have happened in Quebec anyway.

This was a fairly long period where French Canadians had an extremely high birth rate. According to legend it was one of the highest ever recorded in modern times.

So regardless, it's likely Quebec would have had a pretty substantial population anyway.

Though how many would have stayed in Quebec is another good question.

Even with the border, it's estimated that just under half of Quebec's population moved to the US in latter part of the 1800s and the first part of the 1900s.

[edale]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

Harsh considering Toronto wasn't subjected to the forces that resulted in those cities being shells of their former selves. Deindustrialization, suburbanization/white flight, and urban renewal didn't afflict Canadian cities like they did American ones.

How is it harsh? These are mostly self-inflicted wounds. Americans chose to abandon their urban cores, bulldoze historic neighborhoods for freeways and urban renewal projects, etc. They made their choices, and have been living with the results since.

Of course there are outside forces at play that impact the trajectories of cities. Toronto benefited immensely from the collapse of Montreal as Canada's alpha city during Quebec's separatist movement. Canada also doesn't have a sunbelt, so Toronto doesn't have to deal with the "oh but the weather..." complaints northern cities in the US have to contend with. Canada also didn't create an underclass of slaves, followed by years of forced segregation intended to keep said population as an underclass, so they haven't had to deal with the ensuing issues that were created by that. A mix of choices and fate have led to cities being where and what they are today.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

Wow, I just took a streetview tour of Queen West, and it's a pretty damn impressive urban corridor. I think you Toronto forumers are being far too gracious in response to some of these claims. Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit all have nothing comparable to Queen West. Toronto and Chicago are head and shoulders above the rest of the Great Lakes cities, and it isn't remotely close. Quibbling over who has more historic fabric is meaningless when the one city is bursting at the seems with energy and people and the other group of cities are shells of their former selves and have major areas of abandonment and decay.

This is a bit exaggerated. Buffalo has a pretty strong, miles-long urban retail corridor, that would be notable even in Toronto. Detroit and Cleveland are massive outliers, even in the U.S. And architectural fabric matters to many. And Queen is easily the best neighborhood corridor in Toronto.

And even in Detroit and Cleveland, there are some halfway decent, reasonably intact, urban or streetcar suburban corridors. Cleveland Heights, parts of West Cleveland, Euclid around Case Western/Cleveland Clinic, Southwest Detroit, Dearborn, the Woodward corridor, all have corridors with some life. It isn't great, but it's far from nothing, and the bones are there.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by edale

Wow, I just took a streetview tour of Queen West, and it's a pretty damn impressive urban corridor. I think you Toronto forumers are being far too gracious in response to some of these claims. Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit all have nothing comparable to Queen West. Toronto and Chicago are head and shoulders above the rest of the Great Lakes cities, and it isn't remotely close. Quibbling over who has more historic fabric is meaningless when the one city is bursting at the seems with energy and people and the other group of cities are shells of their former selves and have major areas of abandonment and decay.

It's basically the easiest walking tour to suggest to any forumer visiting the city. Walk in a straight line down Queen starting at Jarvis and ending at High Park if you're up for the 7km adventure. You start in Queen east which is a little more built up on the edge of downtown, past the large Churches, go right through the northern edge of the Financial District, past City Hall, and then Queen West is just the classic eclectic Toronto urbanism. Streetcars and messy overhead wires, lots of mismatched building types and architecture all rubbing against each other, some interesting looking people, and you never have to worry about safety.

I never really thought it was that divisive. I've always considered the American Great Lakes cities to have grander historic cores and building stock, better cultural institutions, and all the other signs of historical wealth. Toronto typically brings things like more vibrant pedestrian areas, lack of blight and urban "gaps", and architectural non-uniformity arising from it's very different growth trajectory.

[Camelback]

Originally Posted by Wigs

The city of Buffalo peaked in 1950 at 580,000 in a tiny 40.38sq miles land area, for an average density of almost 14,500 ppl/sq mi

2020 city of Buffalo estimate: 254,479

That's not too far off from 47 square mile San Francisco of 1980, population 679,000.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This is a bit exaggerated. Buffalo has a pretty strong, miles-long urban retail corridor, that would be notable even in Toronto. Detroit and Cleveland are massive outliers, even in the U.S. And architectural fabric matters to many. And Queen is easily the best neighborhood corridor in Toronto.

And even in Detroit and Cleveland, there are some halfway decent, reasonably intact, urban or streetcar suburban corridors. Cleveland Heights, parts of West Cleveland, Euclid around Case Western/Cleveland Clinic, Southwest Detroit, Dearborn, the Woodward corridor, all have corridors with some life. It isn't great, but it's far from nothing, and the bones are there.

Fair enough. I don't mean to say that Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee have nothing in terms of viable retail corridors. I can think of areas of each of those cities that are impressive and vibrant. In Detroit, Woodward between Downtown and New Center is already a pretty impressive corridor, and it's exciting to see all the continued investment along there. Cleveland certainly has some bustling, urban corridors such as Euclid downtown and in University Circle, W25th in Ohio City, etc.

But in terms of unbroken, continuous activity urban corridors, such as Queen West, you don't find that in the Great Lakes cities outside of Chicago. I'd argue the only other place you find something even remotely comparable in the entire Midwest is, oddly enough, Columbus's High Street. But that's basically the only game in town in Cbus, whereas Chicago and Toronto have myriad urban corridors that stretch for miles away from the core.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Maybe not. If the U.S. gets Quebec in the American Revolutionary War, there is less impetus for the Erie Canal, as goods from the Great Lakes can all head out via the St. Lawrence. It might result in a bigger Montreal, and a smaller NYC.

A substantially bigger Montreal and substantially smaller NYC. But there was no serious risk of this ever happening.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

In addition, it's just way easier to remuddle a frame building than a brick one, so what historic charm they may have had (ornamental trim, original porches, sometimes even original window dimensions) is easily removed to make way for ugly siding and vinyl windows.

not only that, but wood-frame structures tend to deteriorate a lot faster than true masonry structures when they enter prolonged periods of deferred maintenance. sure, brick structures need maintenance as well with periodic tuckpointings and roof repair, but in general, it seems like a brick structure typically ends up in better shape after 2 decades or so of no one touching it than your typical wood-frame house with siding.

also, brick tends to take on a nice patina with age over the decades, whereas a wood sided house needs constant painting/staining to keep it in nice looking condition.

Originally Posted by eschaton

This changed in the "interwar" period, when brick construction became cheaper nationwide due to the full transition of brick from a structural material to an ornamental layer on the outside of the building.

i believe i mentioned this before, but chicago was one of the exceptions to the above because of the city's fire-paranoia influenced building code. traditional 3-wythe brick flats and bungalows were still being built here into the 50's/60s, when brick veneer with CMU backing (not wood-frame) starting taking over due to costs.

[Wigs]

Buffalo is rare for a rustbelt city in that I'd say it has roughly 16 contiguous square miles of walkability. From the inner harbor near the Key Bank Arena where the Sabres play, all the way north past Hertel Ave to the city limits with Kenmore.

Just stay West of Main St. or you'll run into abject poverty and urban prairie.



benp, would this be a fair assessment?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

Wow, I just took a streetview tour of Queen West, and it's a pretty damn impressive urban corridor. I think you Toronto forumers are being far too gracious in response to some of these claims. Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit all have nothing comparable to Queen West. Toronto and Chicago are head and shoulders above the rest of the Great Lakes cities, and it isn't remotely close. Quibbling over who has more historic fabric is meaningless when the one city is bursting at the seems with energy and people and the other group of cities are shells of their former selves and have major areas of abandonment and decay.

for clarification, i was the one who started the whole "toronto is comparable to Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo" thing, but i was strictly talking about their roughly similar population sizes in the pre-war era.

i was making no comparisons between them about the on the ground realities of the cities today in 2021.

toronto is most definitely in a very different urban league these days, right up their with all of the other tier 2 usual suspects in the US/canada, after the one and only NYC. the only other great lakes city of a similar urban caliber today is obviously chicago. and of special interest to the nerds of this forum, they're the #2 and #3 largest skylines on the continent (and by a wide margin), again after the one and only NYC.

[Razor]

^ Toronto just needs to come up with a signature dish..A Toronto deep dish doesn't work, nor does a Toronto steak and cheese or Toronto Smoked meat sandwich.