Most/least favored cities in your state/province

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Here in Quebec my city of Gatineau is generally considered the armpit of the province. Though plenty of people still move here because the economy is good. I think perceptions might be slowly changing.

Quebec City is the darling city. Though the people have a rep for being a tad pompous. But the city is very very nice by NA standards.

In Montreal, they always made fun of Drummondville in the Anglo Montreal media. I still think of Drummondville as one of the Armpits of Quebec. But really it is probably Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. What a fucking armpit that place is.

We have nothing in Canada on the scale and level of decrepitude as East St. Louis. The worst that I can think of and have personally experienced would be a few parts of North Winnipeg, East Hastings in Vancouver, and the worst parts of Regina. i can't think of any place in Quebec that is anywhere nearly as hopeless looking as East St. Louis.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It looks like they've cleaned some things up and demolished a lot of irreplaceable buildings, but it is not "well maintained" by any stretch of the imagination. It is one of the most deteriorated places in the entire state of Michigan.

I wouldn't call it the most deteriorated place in Michigan. When did you even last step foot in Highland Park? a street view of a single building in bad shape doesn't give you an accurate idea of the whole city.

Still not near East STL or Gary, two places you're obviously not at all familiar with. Highland Park is still full of people who live there, still has businesses and grocery stores, bars, etc. You sitting here acting like they dont exist is quite frankly, gross.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by The North One

I wouldn't call it the most deteriorated place in Michigan. When did you even last step foot in Highland Park? a street view of a single building in bad shape doesn't give you an accurate idea of the whole city.

I've set foot in there recently.

Originally Posted by The North One

Still not near East STL or Gary, two places you're obviously not at all familiar with. Highland Park is still full of people who live there, still has businesses and grocery stores, bars, etc. You sitting here acting like they dont exist is quite frankly, gross.

I'm sure that exists in Gary and EStL. Why are you acting like the people who live in those places don't exist?

[edale]

When I randomly dropped into a streetview of Highland Park, it looked a world better than ESL. The commercial corridor is largely intact, though many of the storefronts/buildings are vacant. They also have fast food restaurants and strip malls- not great from an urban perspective, but at least a sign of economic activity, which appears to be completely lacking in ESL.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4047...7i16384!8i8192

The residential area I dropped in on looked decent, too. The homes are handsome, though you can see abandonment and decay scattered in:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3972...7i16384!8i8192


It seems like there are actually plenty of other spots in Detroit that look more like the utter devastation of ESL. Places like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3703...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3760...7i16384!8i8192

[Crawford]

Those Highland Park strip malls replaced grand department stores, and large prewar structures, still standing 20 years ago. So they're basically a catastrophe.

The Aldi strip mall replaced this:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/army_a...1964/lightbox/

But yeah, HP is in somewhat better shape than ESL, as it was always a wealthier town, with better bones. HP had outstanding schools until the 1970's; ESL was drowning in racial violence 50 years earlier. But the pace of decline in HP is pretty shocking.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

It seems like there are actually plenty of other spots in Detroit that look more like the utter devastation of ESL. Places like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3703...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3760...7i16384!8i8192

highland park has that completely bombed-out look in spots as well:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4011...7i16384!8i8192

[edale]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

highland park has that completely bombed-out look in spots as well:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4011...7i16384!8i8192

Yeah, I saw that when others linked to it. So sad to see. It looks like a troubled community, for sure, but it doesn't appear to be a totally lost cause. East St. Louis looks like it was wiped off the map completely. Like the Lower 9th Ward post-Katrina.

Somewhat related, I wonder if Cairo looks as shitty as it does due to flooding. Just looking at its location on the map gives me anxiety. That little peninsula of land surrounded by two massive rivers that regularly flood? Seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

highland park has that completely bombed-out look in spots as well:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4011...7i16384!8i8192

Yeah, it definitely does. I don't think anybody would deny that.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by edale

It seems like there are actually plenty of other spots in Detroit that look more like the utter devastation of ESL. Places like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3703...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3760...7i16384!8i8192

Your first streetview has good neighborhoods around it like Boston Edison, so while that particular street doesn't look great you can be in an normal neighborhood in a few blocks, there's also a grocery store nearby and I know of some big apartment renovations in that area happening as well. East STL just goes on and on with little normal scenery nearby.

The second one is kind of an odd corner but it's right by Milwaukee Junction which has had some major renovations like this https://playgrounddetroit.com/milwau...minated-mural/ and this https://www.dbusiness.com/daily-news...-neighborhood/ (ongoing right now) so it's not in the same position has East STL.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The Central West End, which is in the city of St. Louis, is probably the most desirable neighborhood psf in the entire metro. And Detroit certainly has a few nice neighborhoods in the city proper.

What are the examples of upmarket neighbourhoods inside Detroit city proper? I guess they are not comparable to this in St. Louis, right? Could Downtown Detroit be regarded as an upmarket residential area today?

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

St. Louis has more than a few desirable neighborhoods within city limits in the central corridor and on the south side. The Central West End, Skinker-DeBaliviere, Demun, Hi-Point, Franz Park, Clayton-Tamm, The Hill, Southwest Garden, Northhampton, Southhampton, St. Louis Hills, Princeton Heights, Tower Grove South and East, Compton Heights, Shaw, Soulard, Lasalle Park... and a number of others where demand and home prices are soaring, like Forest Park Southeast, Benton Park, Fox Park, and Botanical Heights. And that's not including the neighborhoods that are *just* over the city line but walkably contiguous with the city, like Maplewood, the Moorlands, Parkview, and Wydown-Skinker.

The Central West End probably has the highest density and the most money, but the others are solid neighborhoods ranging from working class to upscale where homes are perpetually in high demand. And I would say that a lot of the neighborhoods that I didn't specifically mention aren't un-desirable, but have issues to varying degrees and haven't yet seen the level of investment that some of the others have seen.

Much of the north side is another story, but there are still well-maintained and populated neighborhoods there as well, particularly on the near north side and along the northwest edge of the city.

Lots of good neighbourhoods there. Why the city population keep falling then?

Do people in St. Louis are moving to apartments Downtown looking for a more urban experience as it happening elsewhere?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

IDK I think the massive polluting steel mill is really holding Gary back more than anything else, otherwise it would be a much better choice for urbanists looking for cheap housing to start settling in especially since it's right on the lovely Indiana dunes. The steel mill kinda ruins that.

gary is too far from chicago to get urban transplants from the city. it's 25 miles from downtown chicago. and chicago iteslf already has dozens of sq. miles of forlorn neighborhoods on the southside chock-full of cheap housing that would have to fill up first before you saw much in the way of meaningful numbers of urbanists moving to gary (and gary really isn't all that urban of a place, any random southside neighborhood will have a much denser built form).

as for US Steel's Gary Works (the largest in the US), it, along with other associated industrial lands, occupies ~6.5 miles of Gary's 11 miles lake michigan shoreline. all told, it's about 8.5 sq. miles of land. it obliterated the dunes that were there when it was built over a century ago. and now, even it were to close, you'd be looking at decades-worth of environmental clean-up.

and that's not to mention that the #2 Steel plant in the US is located ~6 miles west of Gary along the lake at Indiana Harbor, and the #3 steel plant in the US is located ~10 miles east of gary at Burns Harbor (both now owned by ArcelorMittal). all told, NW Indiana holds half of the nation's BOF steel production capacity. HALF!

yes, steel production is a dirty, nasty business, the heaviest of all the heavy industries, but it has to be done somewhere. it's probably best to continue doing it where it's always been done.

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

What are the examples of upmarket neighbourhoods inside Detroit city proper? I guess they are not comparable to this in St. Louis, right? Could Downtown Detroit be regarded as an upmarket residential area today?



Lots of good neighbourhoods there. Why the city population keep falling then?

Do people in St. Louis are moving to apartments Downtown looking for a more urban experience as it happening elsewhere?

Black flight from the north half of the city is still driving the overall loss, but at least the 2020 census is projected to show the slowest decline since 1950. In many neighborhoods, household size is decreasing: 4-families converted to town homes, 2-families converted to single-family homes. On the other hand, the city's median income and the proportion of residents with higher ed degrees have been growing for a while now. Downtown continues to struggle compared to its peers but it's slowly adding units and residents as well.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

What are the examples of upmarket neighbourhoods inside Detroit city proper? I guess they are not comparable to this in St. Louis, right? Could Downtown Detroit be regarded as an upmarket residential area today?

Yeah, St. Louis has a much higher share of upmarket neighborhoods in city proper relative to overall metro area. But Detroit has a few, including a fairly large area of Northwest Detroit full of very nice homes, mostly occupied by black professionals. The neighborhoods are Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest, University District, and Green Acres.

Here's Sherwood Forest:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4347...7i16384!8i8192

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Lots of good neighbourhoods there. Why the city population keep falling then?

Most of St. Louis proper isn't in high demand. And population trends aren't a proxy for desirability. Most wealthy U.S. suburbs have flat or declining population, as family sizes drop and NIMBYs oppose new development. Also, St. Louis has lower immigration levels than Detroit.

[Laceoflight]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

In Montreal, they always made fun of Drummondville in the Anglo Montreal media. I still think of Drummondville as one of the Armpits of Quebec. But really it is probably Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. What a fucking armpit that place is.

We have nothing in Canada on the scale and level of decrepitude as East St. Louis. The worst that I can think of and have personally experienced would be a few parts of North Winnipeg, East Hastings in Vancouver, and the worst parts of Regina. i can't think of any place in Quebec that is anywhere nearly as hopeless looking as East St. Louis.

+1 for Drummondville. Croc magazine also made a lot of fun of the place.

At least Valleyfield is kind of cute, with its downtown, rivers and canals. Sept-Îles, on the other hand, looks like it was bombed and is probably the province's ugliest town, though its location is stunning.

[Darkoshvilli]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

In Montreal, they always made fun of Drummondville in the Anglo Montreal media. I still think of Drummondville as one of the Armpits of Quebec. But really it is probably Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. What a fucking armpit that place is

Ive heard Longueuil being made fun of alot. Something about being the mullet capital of Quebec.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Laceoflight

+1 for Drummondville. Croc magazine also made a lot of fun of the place.

At least Valleyfield is kind of cute, with its downtown, rivers and canals. Sept-Îles, on the other hand, looks like it was bombed and is probably the province's ugliest town, though its location is stunning.

Hotel Sept Iles is nasty looking. You are right about the stunning setting but the place is fugly otherwise (aside from that nice park along the gulf).

soul sucking sept iles: https://www.google.ca/maps/@50.21090...7i13312!8i6656

[AviationGuy]

Surprised this thread has been allowed to go on as long as it has. I guess SSP policy has changed?

[Buckeye Native 001]

It hasn't yet turned into a city vs city discussion yet, although there appears to be competition between East St Louis, Gary and possibly Highland Park over which looks the most apocalyptic after decades of decline and de-industrialization.

[KevinFromTexas]

In Texas, Austin fits into both of those categories. People either love it and move here or hate it and swear they'll leave. People either love the weather, built environment and scenery or hate the politics, traffic and housing costs. And we get a good bit of labeling as the San Francisco or Los Angeles of Texas. There's a lot of negativity toward Californians who chose to move here.

[Dariusb]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

In Texas, Austin fits into both of those categories. People either love it and move here or hate it and swear they'll leave. People either love the weather, built environment and scenery or hate the politics, traffic and housing costs. And we get a good bit of labeling as the San Francisco or Los Angeles of Texas. There's a lot of negativity toward Californians who chose to move here.

True.