Detroit's before and after

[muppet]

I prefer the US ones tbh (insofar as both are working class/ precariat terraces), they look larger and the fact they have roof windows and more chimneys (heating for every room) show them as higher spec builds when they started off. It's much easier to see them being upgraded into heritage homes too (the ones in the street opposite are possibly Parisian with their mansard roofs). The ones in northern UK were much more fascistic in street after street of mass produced slums, without ANY differentiation for miles.

In short the destruction this side of the pond wasn't that bad sometimes, although endless gems got bulldozed alongside.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

I very much agree with you, and so does my pre-war skyscraper bucket list: https://www.listchallenges.com/the-u...yscrapers-list

It goes:

• 46% - New York
• 16% - Chicago
• 5% - Detroit
• 3% - Miami

Nice list -- you've got the Carbon and Carbide Building double listed, though (Hotel St. Jane).

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Exactly. Of course freeways are *A* problem, but not the main issue.

We can still build quality cities surrounding interstates. I think Chicago does this well downtown. It can be done. Sure, they suck and people don't like to walk over them, but things can be done to make it more pleasant:

Here is a bridge over a massive interstate in Atlanta

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7768...7i16384!8i8192

It's not just the space they take up or that they form barriers, but the induced demand is arguably a bigger effect, resulting in unsustainable sprawl, increased mileage (=pollution) and huge amounts of space required for parking in city centers.

[PHL10]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Yeah, I'd argue that Detroit has the best collection of pre-war towers outside of NYC & Chicago (and even if you disagree, we can all agree that detroit is at least in that conversation).

Agreed.

[iheartthed]

Here's a photo of Hastings Street through Paradise Valley in the 1940s. Paradise Valley was the neighborhood directly north of Black Bottom, and it was also destroyed by the construction of I-75:



More historical photos of this area in source: https://www.freep.com/picture-galler...ide:7321154002

[MolsonExport]

sorry for the detoured comment, but Manchester looks great in those photos.

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

It can never be really repaired. That new infill is banal, mass assembly modernist garbage that you see in every city. The beauty that Birmingham, Cincinnati, Coventry, Detroit, Glasgow, Rotterdam, Saint Louis, etc. had is gone and we have to settle not for beauty but for functional boxes that fill in the gaps. A shame.

That's a tad dramatic. The beauty that Cincy, Detroit, and St. Louis "had" is not gone. It's thinned, for sure, but not gone. Cincy still has some of the finest architecture in the US. Over the Rhine is aesthetically unmatched in the Midwest, including Chicago. As mentioned, Detroit still has the most enviable collection of pre-war skyscrapers outside of Chicago. And although St. Louis' north side has been largely decimated, the south side and central corridor—not to mention some of the inner suburbs—are still awash in gorgeous old brick neighborhoods like this:






























All photos by sc4mayor at urbanstl.com: https://urbanstl.com/st-louis-a-city...es-t12085.html



Sure, a lot of recent architecture is cheap garbage, but not all of it. And there are lots of opportunities in these cities for attractive juxtapositions of old and new.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

That's a tad dramatic. The beauty that Cincy, Detroit, and St. Louis "had" is not gone. It's thinned, for sure, but not gone. Cincy still has some of the finest architecture in the US. Over the Rhine is aesthetically unmatched in the Midwest, including Chicago. As mentioned, Detroit still has the most enviable collection of pre-war skyscrapers outside of Chicago. And although St. Louis' north side has been largely decimated, the south side and central corridor—not to mention some of the inner suburbs—are still awash in gorgeous old brick neighborhoods like this:

How much does a typical row house go for in St. Louis? Any of those houses would be worth several million dollars if it were in Brooklyn .

[Crawford]

STL has some fantastic rowhouse bones, and some really interesting enclaves. Everything seems a bit too "stretched-out", though. The roads, the street frontages, etc. are a bit too generous to generate hardcore urban intensity. Like if they built everything 25% tighter it would make all the difference.

But maybe, when the whole city looked like that, it was enough.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

How much does a typical row house go for in St. Louis? Any of those houses would be worth several million dollars if it were in Brooklyn .

Depends on the neighborhood and the condition, but in the most desirable 'hoods they can go for ~400–600K. Obviously, St. Louis doesn't have the "advantage" of being a borough of NYC.

Originally Posted by Crawford

STL has some fantastic rowhouse bones, and some really interesting enclaves. Everything seems a bit too "stretched-out", though. The roads, the street frontages, etc. are a bit too generous to generate hardcore urban intensity. Like if they built everything 25% tighter it would make all the difference.

But maybe, when the whole city looked like that, it was enough.

At its peak St. Louis City's density was ~15K/sq. mi. And a lot of that density was due to overcrowding of flats. The city just wasn't built to be as dense as NYC or Chicago. Most of St. Louis is/was in the 2-3 story range. The taller stuff (cast-iron warehouses, tenements, Federalist-style rows, etc.) was in and around downtown, but the majority of that has been lost. In any case, I tend to prefer "high" Midwestern density over high Northeastern density. I'm not a fan of wide streets, but I am a fan of moderate building heights and setbacks in residential neighborhoods.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

At its peak St. Louis City's density was ~25K/sq. mi.

what year was that?

here are density stats i could find for the major midwest cities in 1950, when most of these cities were at their all-time population peaks (except for the ones that went on major post-war annexation binges - indy, columbus, KC, and milwaukee)



1950 U.S. Census - 10 largest midwest cities, ranked by average density:

- Chicago: 3,620,962 / 207.5 sq. miles = 17,450 ppsm

- St. Louis: 856,796 / 61.0 sq. miles = 14,046 ppsm

- Detroit: 1,849,568 / 139.6 sq. miles = 13,249 ppsm

- Milwaukee: 637,392 / 50.0 sq. miles = 12,748 ppsm

- Cleveland: 914,808 / 75.0 sq. miles = 12,197 ppsm

- Minneapolis: 521,718 / 53.8 sq. miles = 9,697 ppsm

- Columbus: 375,901 / 39.4 sq. miles = 9,541 ppsm

- Indianapolis: 427,173 / 55.2 sq. miles = 7,739 ppsm

- Cincinnati: 503,998 / 75.1 sq. miles = 6,711 ppsm

- Kansas City: 456,622 / 80.6 sq. miles = 5,665 ppsm

^ sorry! typo! i was just spit-balling but meant to type 15K, not 25K.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

what year was that?

here are density stats i could find for the major midwest cities in 1950, when most of these cities were at their all-time population peaks (except for the ones that went on major post-war annexation binges - indy, columbus, KC, and milwaukee)



1950 U.S. Census - 10 largest midwest cities, ranked by average density:

- Chicago: 3,620,962 / 207.5 sq. miles = 17,450 ppsm

- St. Louis: 856,796 / 61.0 sq. miles = 14,046 ppsm

- Detroit: 1,849,568 / 139.6 sq. miles = 13,249 ppsm

- Milwaukee: 637,392 / 50.0 sq. miles = 12,748 ppsm

- Cleveland: 914,808 / 75.0 sq. miles = 12,197 ppsm

- Minneapolis: 521,718 / 53.8 sq. miles = 9,697 ppsm

- Columbus: 375,901 / 39.4 sq. miles = 9,541 ppsm

- Indianapolis: 427,173 / 55.2 sq. miles = 7,739 ppsm

- Cincinnati: 503,998 / 75.1 sq. miles = 6,711 ppsm

- Kansas City: 456,622 / 80.6 sq. miles = 5,665 ppsm

Detroit's peak population density is a bit tricky. The city was furiously annexing rural townships between 1890 and 1930, so the official census population at 1910, 1920, and 1930, included a lot of undeveloped farmland. For instance, Detroit's population density dropped by 1.7k ppsm between 1920 and 1930, despite the city adding over half a million people that decade.

Around 1920, almost all of Detroit's population would've been inside of the Grand Boulevard loop. Using the 1920 census figure, the population density of that part of the city would've been roughly 24-25k ppsm.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

^ sorry! typo! i was just spit-balling but meant to type 15K, not 25K.

gotcha.

25K/ppsm seemed awfully high.

maybe when it was a little old french village of 12,000 people on a half-square mile of land or something like that back in the frontier days, maybe, but certainly not in our modern era.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Around 1920, almost all of Detroit's population would've been inside of the Grand Boulevard loop. Using the 1920 census figure, the population density of that part of the city would've been roughly 24-25k ppsm.

i don't buy that.



detroit 1910:

population: 465,766
land area: 39.3 sq. miles
average density: 11,852 ppsm



detroit 1920:

population: 993,678 (+527,912)
land area: 77.3 sq. miles (+38.0)
average density: 12,855 ppsm

source: http://www.drawingdetroit.com/detroi...ion-1806-1926/



so, over the course of the 1910s, detroit roughly doubled in population and land area (hmmmm...... how convenient).

it is completely unrealistic to think that all of those half million new people added to detroit in that decade were all smooshed into the old 39 sq. miles of city as it existed in 1910.

obviously a great, GREAT many of them would have been found spread across those new 39 sq. miles of land annexed into the city.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Around 1920, almost all of Detroit's population would've been inside of the Grand Boulevard loop. Using the 1920 census figure, the population density of that part of the city would've been roughly 24-25k ppsm.

trickiness aside, it seems unlikely it would have been higher than Chicago's 1920 density.

Edit: Steely said it better.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

1950 U.S. Census - 10 largest midwest cities, ranked by average density:

- Chicago: 3,620,962 / 207.5 sq. miles = 17,450 ppsm

- St. Louis: 856,796 / 61.0 sq. miles = 14,046 ppsm

- Detroit: 1,849,568 / 139.6 sq. miles = 13,249 ppsm

- Milwaukee: 637,392 / 50.0 sq. miles = 12,748 ppsm

- Cleveland: 914,808 / 75.0 sq. miles = 12,197 ppsm

- Minneapolis: 521,718 / 53.8 sq. miles = 9,697 ppsm

- Columbus: 375,901 / 39.4 sq. miles = 9,541 ppsm

- Indianapolis: 427,173 / 55.2 sq. miles = 7,739 ppsm

- Cincinnati: 503,998 / 75.1 sq. miles = 6,711 ppsm

- Kansas City: 456,622 / 80.6 sq. miles = 5,665 ppsm

Interesting that with the same footprint of 75 sq mi, Cleveland's population is roughly double that of Cincinnati, and therefore so is its population density.

However, on the ground at the neighborhood level, I imagine that Cincinnati was a more densely-built city, and thus felt like it in fact had the greater population density. I'm sure Cincinnati's topography resulted in significant parts of its 75 sq miles where nothing was/is built, and no one lives.

^ yeah, i expect the topography really brings down the average density. i know i've read somewhere before that Cincy had the highest neighborhood-level densities in the Midwest at one point.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I'm sure Cincinnati's topography resulted in significant parts of its 75 sq miles where nothing was/is built, and no one lives.

yes, the extreme topography of cincy puts a MAJOR dent in its average density, much more so than any other midwest city, by far.

also, cincy can be a bit schizophrenic at times. the downtown/OTR basin displays perhaps the best intact 19th century structural density that you can find anywhere in the midwest.

but that basin is only like 3 sq. miles of the city, head up into the hills and things start to get A LOT more conventional on the density front.

like, here's a generic intersection in clifton: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1455...7i16384!8i8192

that's certainly quite nice, but let's be honest, it's not busting any density records (and tract level densities bear that out).

and when you get out into neighborhoods on the far east, west, and north sides, things can get outright suburban in places.

and all of it is interspersed with steep hillsides and deep ravines that really chop up the urban fabric of the city and leave lots of leftover unused/underused spaces.

it's kind of like the anti-chicago (chicago being a huge flat featureless plain with an unceasing, pervasive street-grid that efficiently commodifies every last available square foot of land).