Great Lakes Cities

[shappy]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

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 )

This is probably true. There appears to be far more commonality with those cities than with Cleveland or Detroit.

On the topic of Queen st, I see similarities with Penn in Pittsburgh. Both very long and serve a number of neighbourhoods, similar scales and sometimes architecture. Can’t think of a better analogue in the US (maybe something in Chicago?)

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Ontario might not even exist as a separate entity from Quebec under this scenario.

Originally, it and what later became Quebec were part of the same entity which was simply known as Canada. Then as the population of the western part of the then-Canada grew due to immigration from Britain, a decision was made to split it off from the predominantly French territory (present-day Quebec) to the east.

In the absence of a geo-political impetus for an influx of British settlers into what it today Ontario (squeezed in between French Quebec and the US border), it's highly possible it would just be another region of whatever became of Quebec.

Of course we don't know what the US would have done with the "French" issue.

I imagine Toronto would be like a Milwaukee up there, small but with decent bones, Ottawa would be inconsequential, Montreal is the big question but I envision a semi-isolated but beefy Philadelphia level city retaining some degree of Quebecois flavor like Creole New Orleans or Louisiana Cajuns.

[Centropolis]

like rural Paw Paw French in Missouri (decendents of Quebec settlers, not from Louisiana) who retained their culture and language until the 20th century, and the Cajuns, the outlying areas would be the slowest to assimilate in Quebec while lile I mention above Montreal would almost certainly operate on an English OS like New Orleans with declining numbers of French (and more Spanish) speakers at home.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by shappy

This is probably true. There appears to be far more commonality with those cities than with Cleveland or Detroit.

On the topic of Queen st, I see similarities with Penn in Pittsburgh. Both very long and serve a number of neighbourhoods, similar scales and sometimes architecture. Can’t think of a better analogue in the US (maybe something in Chicago?)

agreed -

Penn

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4515...7i16384!8i8192

Southside (Carson Street)

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4287...7i16384!8i8192

these seem the closest examples in terms of street scaling to Queen west

[Centropolis]

the general massing and materials is more similar in my opinion.

contemporary urban commercial corridors are less material in this conversation from a historical perspective - i think - as the industrial efficiency of american retail and economic development which had no place for large swaths of small floorplates - perceived to be slow to access by automobile (had to sell those cars too) to serve a broad middle class - were eviscerated for all but basically the urban working class and immigrant communities and a sliver of upper middle and upper class (if they were lucky) in most midwestern urban cores.

to canadas (and other parts of the u.s.) benefit there wasnt this hyper-industrial mindset to turn tearing down the city into another industrial sector and to maximize commercial and real estate activity at all costs.

stlouispublicradio.com

[north 42]

Originally Posted by The North One

Street-views are usually dated by a year or so. Most of Woodward's major holes are either being filled right now (Woodward West under construction) or about to be with high-rise proposals (The Mid, City Club apartments, etc.), all mixed use. I don't think Woodward is that far off from High Street even right now, but it's about to be a clear winner very soon here.

Woodward already looks more impressive to me than that High Street Street View.

[kool maudit]

Woodward is a non-starter. It's a mile wide. It can have a short, monumental section right downtown with skyscrapers and proto-skyscrapers around it, but that's just a City Beautiful flourish, it's not a day-to-day urban reality.

I really like Detroit, but those arterials are just broken. They'd need trams and continuous streetwalls of at least six storeys to even get in the game, and 1) that's not happening and 2) it would work out to "weird part of Berlin" at best.

[kool maudit]

The truth about the Great Lakes form is that is was incredibly fragile. It needed so much furious growth and crowding to work at all, because the scale was so off.

These cities were like those planes that can barely fly without electronic stabilization... the scale of these hugely oversized office blocks existing at the nexus of the these ultra-wide, ultra-long streets, with hastily built frame housing tying it all together... they were almost more like advertisements for American prosperity than they were functioning cities.

These things happen.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Ontario might not even exist as a separate entity from Quebec under this scenario.

Originally, it and what later became Quebec were part of the same entity which was simply known as Canada. Then as the population of the western part of the then-Canada grew due to immigration from Britain, a decision was made to split it off from the predominantly French territory (present-day Quebec) to the east.

In the absence of a geo-political impetus for an influx of British settlers into what it today Ontario (squeezed in between French Quebec and the US border), it's highly possible it would just be another region of whatever became of Quebec.

I dunno. Even discounting the Hudson Bay Company regions of modern Quebec+Ontario, that's a pretty damned big area to comprise an entire U.S. state. Plus the early U.S. more or less forced other states like Virginia to give up their western land claims to make way for new states. So I think it some portion of it would likely eventually be a new state - or more than one. Maybe our southern Ontario would be an Anglophone state, while the more northerly portions (Kingston, Peterborough, and points north) would be Francophone.

Originally Posted by Acajack

Of course we don't know what the US would have done with the "French" issue.

Looking at Louisiana, it remained officially bilingual until the Civil War, when the Reconstruction-era government began to promote English. It really wasn't until the 1920s that French began being actively suppressed (around the same time language shift started in communities across the U.S.) . There was also the added complication that Cajun French is much more divergent from standard French than Quebecois is - meaning there was little impetus to preserve it.

Quebec coming into the U.S. would almost certainly mean less anglophones in the short run. You'd see Yankees moving into the Eastern Townships area as they did with Canada, but you wouldn't see any major settlement of loyalists after the ARW, and likely a reduced settlement of people from England in the early 19th century (America did get a good many migrants from the UK during this period, so it would not be zero). On the other hand, Louisiana got fairly substantive French immigration during the early 19th century, meaning Quebec under the U.S. could see the same dynamic. In the longer run there may be a boom in non-Francophone immigrants into Montreal, but it's hard to see a situation similar to what happened in Louisiana where anglophones become demographically dominant, simply because the best farmland was already occupied by Quebecois.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Bourdain had some solid Cleveland praise too:

"I love Cleveland. It's one of my favorite American cities. There's something very majestic about it: the architecture, the outsized vision of its dreams and builders, and its run-down state. I find that very compelling, a place where I WANT to go. It's a very quirky place, and if there's one thing I love, it's quirkiness.

If you live in Cleveland and love Cleveland, I think you're a person I'll get along with."

- Anthony Bourdain




So, Bourdain was a great laker at heart.

Despite its myriad warts, it's a good region.

And he was right to like its cities and its people.

Bourdain seemed to value authenticity above all else, so no surprise that he fell for the kinds of places that were unapologetic about their appearances or personalities. They recently uploaded one of his series to youtube, and I was watching the Sicily episode. Right at the beginning the boutique hotel owner tells him hes going to take him on the fishing trip that they do for all the guests to catch the seafood they use for dinner. As hes swimming around with a snorkel right near the tourist beach, the boat driver is tossing frozen seafood into the water and the guide is pretending like they just caught it

It basically soured his mood for the rest of the episode, as it was as inauthentic as you could imagine.

[Crawford]

Yeah, there are no non-core, pedestrian-friendly sections of Woodward. Too wide. Detroit ruined the major arterials 80-90 years ago, actually well before white flight and urban decay. In urban planning terms, it was generally bad to be wealthy in the mid-century era.

There are some preserved retail arterials, however. Hamtramck, an enclave within Detroit, was hostile to outsiders, thus preserving its Polish ethnic character through the 1980's, and now serves as a Muslim enclave. Poor but no abandonment and vibrant streets. Hamtramck was traditionally much poorer than Detroit so couldn't widen its arterials or engage in other "renewal" schemes.

Hamtramck is really the only fully intact geography of non-gentrified, working class Detroit:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3961...7i16384!8i8192

After Hamtramck, Vernor, in Southwest Detroit is probably the most intact working class corridor. Vernor had similar characteristics. Hostile to outsiders (esp. AAs), poor and neglected. Was hillbilly mid-century, now Hispanic. But streetscape is mostly preserved, and if you squint, it could be a neighborhood arterial in Chicago or Toronto:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3177...7i16384!8i8192

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I dunno. Even discounting the Hudson Bay Company regions of modern Quebec+Ontario, that's a pretty damned big area to comprise an entire U.S. state. Plus the early U.S. more or less forced other states like Virginia to give up their western land claims to make way for new states. So I think it some portion of it would likely eventually be a new state - or more than one. Maybe our southern Ontario would be an Anglophone state, while the more northerly portions (Kingston, Peterborough, and points north) would be Francophone.



Looking at Louisiana, it remained officially bilingual until the Civil War, when the Reconstruction-era government began to promote English. It really wasn't until the 1920s that French began being actively suppressed (around the same time language shift started in communities across the U.S.) . There was also the added complication that Cajun French is much more divergent from standard French than Quebecois is - meaning there was little impetus to preserve it.

Quebec coming into the U.S. would almost certainly mean less anglophones in the short run. You'd see Yankees moving into the Eastern Townships area as they did with Canada, but you wouldn't see any major settlement of loyalists after the ARW, and likely a reduced settlement of people from England in the early 19th century (America did get a good many migrants from the UK during this period, so it would not be zero). On the other hand, Louisiana got fairly substantive French immigration during the early 19th century, meaning Quebec under the U.S. could see the same dynamic. In the longer run there may be a boom in non-Francophone immigrants into Montreal, but it's hard to see a situation similar to what happened in Louisiana where anglophones become demographically dominant, simply because the best farmland was already occupied by Quebecois.

Ontario had and has a number of things going for it geographically that led to its development, but the fact that it was land that the British really *needed* to settle, develop and populate (more or less regardless of those above factors) for geopolitical reasons certainly propelled its population a lot more than it probably would have in different circumstances - such as the absence of a border.

It's fairly certain that it would have drawn a certain number of Yankees, whose migratory flow would have followed a more direct east-west path across the Niagara River towards Michigan.

But would it be as populated as today and have an urban behemoth like Toronto at its heart - that's less certain.

Perhaps a city like London might have ended up being the big city in the region instead.

Or even Hamilton.

I dunno.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Woodward is a non-starter. It's a mile wide. It can have a short, monumental section right downtown with skyscrapers and proto-skyscrapers around it, but that's just a City Beautiful flourish, it's not a day-to-day urban reality.

I really like Detroit, but those arterials are just broken. They'd need trams and continuous streetwalls of at least six storeys to even get in the game, and 1) that's not happening and 2) it would work out to "weird part of Berlin" at best.

I've been to Detroit, but those streetviews really jumped out at me yesterday with how insanely wide the main streets are.

Avenida 9 de Julio in Bs As is pretty vibrant and cool when you're there (and actually way wider than Woodward) but it's backed up by so much in all of the streets behind and around it, something that just doesn't exist and probably will never exist in Detroit.

[dc_denizen]

In terms of the intersection of infill and a similar street feel, 14th street in DC is probably the closest thing in the US. the two cities have similar trajectories of a relatively small 19th century core thats been augmented over time with infill and new development from all eras

take this and move south all the way to downtown. even the 19th century residential neighborhoods on each side are similar in scale and style

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9349...7i16384!8i8192

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by Crawford

But streetscape is mostly preserved, and if you squint, it could be a neighborhood arterial in Chicago or Toronto:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3177...7i16384!8i8192

Yeah, this angle really says "Toronto" to me:



Reminds me of the area around Dupont a bit. Or maybe Dundas in The Junction?

[The North One]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

The truth about the Great Lakes form is that is was incredibly fragile. It needed so much furious growth and crowding to work at all, because the scale was so off.

Great Lakes cities were not really built to any different scale then the rest of the pre-war post-colonial United States. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by north 42

Woodward already looks more impressive to me than that High Street Street View.

Oh yeah, Woodward is definitely way WAY more impressive than High Street for obvious reasons. But I was focusing more on the continuity since that seemed to be the subject.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by The North One

Great Lakes cities were not really built to any different scale then the rest of the pre-war post-colonial United States. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

I can see an argument that Great Lakes cities are inhumane places to live, down in their bones, and they need to be constantly refreshed by immigration (foreign, domestic, white-collar, etc) but that applies to most American cities. It's just that Great Lakes cities have had to deal with the immigration tap being shut off, or on a trickle only, for decades.

If Los Angeles saw its economic fortunes decline in favor of Texas, as many conservatives fantasize, then it too would deal with the same problems as Detroit because the urban form isn't drastically different.

[kool maudit]

It's basically a question of insufficient residential density except in states of hyper-growth/crowding, so LA would definitely go that way.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Looking at Louisiana, it remained officially bilingual until the Civil War, when the Reconstruction-era government began to promote English. It really wasn't until the 1920s that French began being actively suppressed (around the same time language shift started in communities across the U.S.) . There was also the added complication that Cajun French is much more divergent from standard French than Quebecois is - meaning there was little impetus to preserve it.
.

That's certainly the case today, but I am not sure if that would have been true 100-200 years ago.

In 2021, Quebec has 100+ more years of the ubiquitous use of French in all aspects of society under its belt: government, education, business, media, etc.

But in the 1800s (even in the latter part of the century), would the departure from standard French in Louisiana have been much greater than in Quebec? I really don't know.

When I was in high school, we read this book below that was written by a woman who was born and raised and AFAIK lived her entire life in Louisiana. It's written in beautiful French, and was published in 1983. The author I believe passed away in the 1990s. Obviously she was an outlier for being that proficient in French but there are others, like singer Zachary Richard.

https://www.amazon.ca/-/fr/JEANNE-CA.../dp/2903157308

It's declined almost to the point of no return today, but if you back a century and half or so, I don't think that in terms of its quality, French in Louisiana started off in that much worse a position than French in Quebec or Maritime Canada did.