Great Lakes Cities

[lio45]

Originally Posted by ChrisLA

I know Dallas pretty well, I would visit family quite often. Downtown Dallas, looks nothing like downtown LA. If anything I always felt like it resembles a mid-western city around the core. I can’t speak on Houston since I’ve only been through the airport. I can say judging from photos, they look nothing alike.

I'd agree with you for Dallas (core feels a bit Midwest), but I've always found the CBDs of LA and Houston to be shockingly similar. I haven't been to LA in a decade, though, so keep that in mind.

This: https://www.google.ca/maps/@34.05284...2!8i6656?hl=fr

Versus this: https://www.google.ca/maps/@29.75990...2!8i6656?hl=fr

is what my memories approximately look like for each, for the CBD. Shiny glass towers, few pedestrians, not that much street level retail...

[Segun]

^ I think you missed this in LA:

https://goo.gl/maps/RtUDG1VVTwm

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Atlanta is a city tucked beneath a forest with a lot more sparse, exurban-looking sprawl. Dallas is built on flat, open plains with no major mountains or national forests nearby.

Visually, Atlanta has much more in common with suburban DC than any of the major Sun Belt cities outside of Charlotte.

Yeah, I never said they were exactly the same. Topographically speaking, they aren't the same but they're both auto-centric Sprawl Belt cities with strip mall-filled, McMansion suburbs as far as the eye can see. Dallas doesn't have a coastline nearby but it doesn't mean it's not similar to Houston.

[IrishIllini]

I agree cities of the south and west are also similar. I was going to make a comment about Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston.

Satellite images for the Great Lakes cities are very similar. Their downtowns are typically on or near a river, they have an unrelenting grid that thins out into curvelinear suburban streets and then country roads. This is all at varying scales, but the template is the same.

To me the sunbelt is just marketing speak for the south. I wouldn’t say the west coast is the sunbelt. Very different regions from my perspective.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

I love how LA people get so offended by the idea that LA could possibly look or feel like any other place in the Sun Belt. "How dare you compare us to a place like that!"

LA is like other places in the Sun Belt. It's not clearly distinct like New Orleans or Miami Beach. Sorry, though it is big and unique enough that you can't just say it's just another Sun Belt city.

LA at its most iconic, distinctive level is easily distinguishable from any Sun Belter outside California. Residential streets lined with skyscraper-tall palm trees, towering purple mountains (snowcapped in the winter months), ugly power lines, Spanish Colonial/Craftsman/MCM architecture, etc. collectively dot the landscape to create a sense of place that's unequivocally dissimilar to what you'll find in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, or Miami. The only close comparisons are, quite obviously, San Diego and Santa Barbara.

How is this any more of a stretch than claiming that Jacksonville has a better skyline than Toronto?

[ThePhun1]

That's every city. Every city is distinguishable from anywhere else at its most iconic level, granted LA is more so than any Sun Belt city.

[ardecila]

Most American cities look pretty similar apart from some stylistic differences, and even then it’s really only on residential blocks. Especially when you get into downtowns and the former industrial districts around them. Commercial architecture has been pretty consistent across the country throughout every era, which is why Portland’s Central Eastside looks like St Louis’ Midtown looks like New Orleans’ Warehouse District.

If you’re expecting the kind of diversity seen in Europe, where an Italian city, a Swiss city and an English city look utterly different, well, that’s not going to happen, we never had the language or political barriers that led to the creation of all those different styles. American cities have always moved pretty much in lockstep with the same trends.

[Kenneth]

Cleveland is the only Lakes city that has two very noticeable distinct topographies. The eastside is rugged and very hilly, and the westside is flat as a pancake

[spidey7312]

This thread is about the Rust Belt, not the Sun Belt. Let's get back on topic please

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

Detroit has a lot of brick buildings. I'm sure even more were lost. Toronto has a good amount of brick housing, I think. Milwaukee and Cleveland are light on the brick construction. I'm surprised Milwaukee is given its proximity to Chicago.

american great lakes cities were shaped by their proximity to the great clear cutting of the northwoods...millons of board feet of dirt cheap, high quality lumber. it’s chicago that’s the outlier for reasons already discussed, especially since the great stockpiles and lumber markets were IN chicago.

toronto was shaped by other forces, including that chunky, bricky 19th century later british colonial or late british colonial derived vernacular you see across the planet in the former empire.

[TownGuy]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ you should probably add buffalo, Hamilton, and rochester.

Chicago is noticeably brickier than the other US great lakes cities because fire.

Also, chicago and detroit are pretty dead flat, but the others all have much more varied topography with deep ravines, lakeshore bluffs, valleys, rolling hills etc.

Now, no one is gonna mistake them for San Francisco or Hong Kong, but only chicago and detroit exhibit that true pancake flat topography.

Yeah Toronto's topography is pretty nice actually but definitely underappreciated. Most Canadians think of it as a flat concrete jungle but there is a lot more than that going on.

Most know of the Toronto islands but the bluffs and ravines are little known, generally


Scarborough Bluffs by Philip Dunn, on Flickr


Misty Morning ~ Glen Stewart Ravine by ~EvidencE~, on Flickr



Don Valley Brickworks by mooncall2012, on Flickr


2017.07.18. Toronto by Péter Cseke, on Flickr


Scarborough Bluffs Of Toronto by Greg's Southern Ontario (catching Up Slowly), on Flickr

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Segun

^ I think you missed this in LA:

https://goo.gl/maps/RtUDG1VVTwm

No, I didn't miss it at all. At the time of my visit though it felt disconnected from the west part of the CBD, where the big towers were. Really nice pre-war intact commercial artery, felt exotic because I did not see another white there that day and everything was unilingual in Spanish (mostly cheap stores, too). I am assuming in the decade since then it probably became a bit more multicultural, it has the bones to be a great (quality) shopping district for all Angelenos.

The handful of blocks LA has with skyscrapers on them were to me very reminiscent of Houston's, far more than any other city I know in fact.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

Detroit has a lot of brick buildings. I'm sure even more were lost. Toronto has a good amount of brick housing, I think. Milwaukee and Cleveland are light on the brick construction. I'm surprised Milwaukee is given its proximity to Chicago.

Milwaukee is heavily frame due to its proximity to the hardwood stands being rapidly leveled in order to build Chicago. It's also heavily German and there is a long tradition of skilled German carpenters. There is actually a ton of original wood siding and craftsmanship still exposed in Milwaukee. For whatever reason almost every frame building in Chicago has been resided, but most still have their original siding in some parts of Milwaukee.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

toronto was shaped by other forces, including that chunky, bricky 19th century later british colonial or late british colonial derived vernacular you see across the planet in the former empire.

The US has it too but it goes by the more palatable description of 'colonial' rather than Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, etc.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

I agree cities of the south and west are also similar. I was going to make a comment about Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston.

Satellite images for the Great Lakes cities are very similar. Their downtowns are typically on or near a river, they have an unrelenting grid that thins out into curvelinear suburban streets and then country roads. This is all at varying scales, but the template is the same.

To me the sunbelt is just marketing speak for the south. I wouldn’t say the west coast is the sunbelt. Very different regions from my perspective.

Parts of the West Coast are in the Sun Belt, excluded the north west for obvious reasons.

All of these places are considered the Sun Belt. It's not just speak for the south. The southern states have their own identifier, it's called "The South". Same for the Western states and interior western states that are not in the Sun Belt.

California: Anaheim, Bakersfield, Fresno, Long Beach,
Los Angeles, Oakland, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino,
San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco
Nevada: Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Reno
Arizona: Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Scottsdale,
Gilbert, Tempe, Peoria, Surprise, Yuma, Flagstaff
New Mexico: Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe
Oklahoma: Lawton, Oklahoma City, Tulsa
Texas: Amarillo, Arlington, Austin, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso,
Ft. Worth, Houston, Irving, Laredo, Lubbock, Plano, San Antonio
Louisiana: New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport
Alabama: Birmingham-Hoover, Mobile, Huntsville
Mississippi: Jackson
Georgia: Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah
Tennessee: Chattanooga, Clarksville, Knoxville, Memphis, Nashville
Utah: St. George
Arkansas: Fayetteville, Little Rock
Florida: Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Miami,
Orlando, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee, Tampa, West Palm Beach
North Carolina: Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Durham, Fayetteville, Wilmington
South Carolina: Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, Myrtle Beach

It is a huge geographical area and for some to say they're all similar is quite a stretch of the imagination.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by isaidso

The US has it too but it goes by the more palatable description of 'colonial' rather than Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, etc.

yeah...i’m thinking of a specific 19th century overly formal look that i can’t really describe in commercial “commonwealth” architecture that stands out. i’d guess that this look would actually be more prominent in montreal commercial buildings than toronto.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Milwaukee is heavily frame due to its proximity to the hardwood stands being rapidly leveled in order to build Chicago. It's also heavily German and there is a long tradition of skilled German carpenters. There is actually a ton of original wood siding and craftsmanship still exposed in Milwaukee. For whatever reason almost every frame building in Chicago has been resided, but most still have their original siding in some parts of Milwaukee.

st. louis saw intense german immigration and is very heavily/primarily (both in look and quantity) brick. i think they just ended up working with the materials available. milwaukee had easy access to old growth timber, st. louis is surrounded by thick layers of high quality (for pottery/brick) clay deposits (on the missouri side...illinois is that black soil of course).

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by spidey7312

This thread is about the Rust Belt, not the Sun Belt. Let's get back on topic please

The title asked which region was most uniform, so it wasn't necessarily about the Great Lakes/Rust Belt. He should have been more specific if that's the direction he wanted to go in.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

I'd say Oakland does more than San Francisco.

I agree with this comment. LA and Oakland feel like cousins, but SF feels a lot different.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Parts of the West Coast are in the Sun Belt, excluded the north west for obvious reasons.

All of these places are considered the Sun Belt. It's not just speak for the south. The southern states have their own identifier, it's called "The South". Same for the Western states and interior western states that are not in the Sun Belt.

California: Anaheim, Bakersfield, Fresno, Long Beach,
Los Angeles, Oakland, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino,
San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco
Nevada: Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Reno
Arizona: Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Scottsdale,
Gilbert, Tempe, Peoria, Surprise, Yuma, Flagstaff
New Mexico: Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe
Oklahoma: Lawton, Oklahoma City, Tulsa
Texas: Amarillo, Arlington, Austin, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso,
Ft. Worth, Houston, Irving, Laredo, Lubbock, Plano, San Antonio
Louisiana: New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport
Alabama: Birmingham-Hoover, Mobile, Huntsville
Mississippi: Jackson
Georgia: Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah
Tennessee: Chattanooga, Clarksville, Knoxville, Memphis, Nashville
Utah: St. George
Arkansas: Fayetteville, Little Rock
Florida: Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Miami,
Orlando, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee, Tampa, West Palm Beach
North Carolina: Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Durham, Fayetteville, Wilmington
South Carolina: Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, Myrtle Beach

It is a huge geographical area and for some to say they're all similar is quite a stretch of the imagination.

SF and LA are a little pre-Sun Belt, but I know most people lump them in together because of the warmer climate. But those two cities boomed before the proliferation of air conditioning, and their survival isn't really dependent on it like that of other Sun Belt metropolitans. Especially SF.