Cities that have more in common than not

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Looking at Steely's chart, for instance, we see that Cleveland was once a very large metro area comparable to San Francisco or Montreal.

The nature of its decay, however, which involved not only the removal of (many) physical structures, but also the removal of transit and human activity in general from large swathes of the city, means that its history as a very large metro has effectively been destroyed, and would not be apparent in basically any way to a non-city enthusiast visitor to SF, Montreal and Cleveland, save perhaps the existence of a few strangely large and elaborate institutional and apartment buildings in the outer city.

Very true, most older US cities have experienced a shocking amount "urbanism loss".

So while chicagoland was roughly 5x bigger than metro toronto in the pre-war era, the difference isn't nearly as stark in 2021 because chicago lost vast swaths of its high quality pre-war urbanism to urban decay. Toronto had very little "urbanism loss", on a relative basis, and as you outlined above, it was even able to build upon its functional urbanism in the immediate post-war era because vast swaths of the city weren't being wholesale evacuated by its own citizens

Here's a pic of 63rd and halsted (the "downtown of the southside") in chicago back in the day:


Source: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/stat...ebuilders.html



Unless you want to cry, do NOT go streetview it today.