Detroit's before and after

[edale]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

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

it's certainly quite nice, but it's not busting any density records.

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).

That's a good description of how density is distributed and felt in Cincinnati. Basically all of the green space in this aerial, especially on the west side, is undevelopable hillside:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ci...!4d-84.5120196


Prior to the inclines opening up the hilltops for development, everyone was crammed in the basin, which kind of snakes northward (along present day I-75). This is why you can find some of that OTR-ish style in non-core neighborhoods like Northside, which is ~4.5 miles from downtown (further from downtown than Clifton):

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1633...4!8i8192?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1631...4!8i8192?hl=en

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

Prior to the inclines opening up the hilltops for development, everyone was crammed in the basin, which kind of snakes northward (along present day I-75). This is why you can find some of that OTR-ish style in non-core neighborhoods like Northside (4.5 miles from downtown):

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1633...4!8i8192?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1631...4!8i8192?hl=en

my cousin and her family live in northside. great neighborhood, i love it. we gotta plan a trip down there to visit them one of these days now that covid is winding down.

that said, even in northside (like in the vast majority of non-basin cincy), the population density isn't terribly high. the two core tracts of northside are 5,800ppsm and 5,400ppsm respectively.

but the structural density, street width, and fine-grained, pedestrian-oriented nature of the main drag (hamilton ave), backed-up with cozy little side streets of vintage narrow lot SFHs, make it a wonderful family-friendly city neighborhood.

cincy's northside neighborhood is a perfect example of population density stats not telling the whole story.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

my cousin and her family live in northside. great neighborhood, i love it. we gotta plan a trip down there to visit them one of these days now that covid is winding down.

that said, even in northside (like in the vast majority of non-basin cincy), the population density isn't terribly high. the two core tracts of northside are 5,800ppsm and 5,400ppsm respectively.

but the structural density, street width, and fine grained nature of the main drag (hamilton ave), backed-up with cozy side streets of narrow lot SFHs, make it a perfect family-friendly city neighborhood.

Oh yeah, density is not the same as OTR, for sure. Just some similar street scenes in the commercial district due to Northside being older than Clifton, despite being further from the core.

The only areas in the Cincy area that might compare somewhat to OTR density would be maybe parts of Covington or Newport? Even that is somewhat of a drop off, I'd imagine. Lower Price Hill offers some glimpses of what was, but it's mostly been decimated by industry, urban renewal, and abandonment:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1032...2!8i6656?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1034...2!8i6656?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1043...4!8i8192?hl=en

[Manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

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

Yep, that second one was supposed be Metropolitan Tower, also in Chicago.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

Lower Price Hill offers some glimpses of what was, but it's mostly been decimated by industry, urban renewal, and abandonment:

ouch.

i've never explored that little corner of cincy, i'm only vaguely familiar with the more conventional neighborhood on top of price hill: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1106...7i16384!8i8192

[The North One]

Originally Posted by edale

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1032...2!8i6656?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1034...2!8i6656?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1043...4!8i8192?hl=en

Wow that little piece of Cincy is so isolated. A little urban bubble, wonder what it's like living there.

It was probably fully connected to the city at one point. Crazy to think Cincinnati had endless blocks of this 19th century very intimate narrow street urbanism. A rarity outside of the East Coast, almost European, 70-80% gone now.

[Centropolis]

*milwaukee cropdusts the thread with a beer farht*

^ yeah, guess we've been negligent regarding Milwaukee. At ~6100K ppsm it's got strong density for a mid-sized Midwestern city.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

^ yeah, guess we've been negligent regarding Milwaukee. At ~6100K ppsm it's got strong density for a mid-sized Midwestern city.

Years ago, I made a thread summing up Midwestern metros by population over 10k per square mile in the 2010 Census. Chicago is an obvious outlier -- but Milwaukee is the next city on that list.

Chicago - 2,584,931
Milwaukee - 252,711
Minneapolis - 183,441
Cleveland - 98,090
Detroit - 70,371
St. Louis - 64,143

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

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.

Almost all of that area was added after 1915. In fact, most of it was added in an annexation that occurred in 1916, which was the first time that the border of the city extended to 8 Mile Road. That was all mostly farmland when it was added, and most of the city that exists today outside of the Grand Boulevard was developed in the 1920s or later.

I make that point not to say it was more dense than another city at that point in time. My point is that if you want to understand what Detroit felt like in the 1910s and 1920s then use that density to find a city of similar density in 2021. This same point could also be made about a number of other cities that grew rapidly during this era, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, or St. Louis.

[Steely Dan]

^ sorry, I don't buy it.

At all.

An early 20th century US city that roughly doubled in land area and population at the exact same fucking time?

I FIRMLY believe that a very significant chunk of the that new population was on that new land area.

You're entirely free to hold onto your theory, but it doesn't come close to passing the sniff test for me.

Time to agree to disagree.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ sorry, I don't buy it.

At all.

An early 20th century US city that roughly doubled in land area and population at the exact same fucking time?

I FIRMLY believe that a very significant chunk of the that new population was on that new land area.

You're entirely free to hold onto your theory, but it doesn't come close to passing the sniff test for me.

Time to agree to disagree.

If there were even 100,000 people in a municipality outside of Detroit's boundaries in 1910 it would show up on a census.

Highland Park, MI's, 1920 density was 15.6k ppsm. Neighboring Hamtramck's 1920 density was 23k ppsm. These places were on the outskirts of Detroit's urban area at the time, but they were denser than the city of Detroit on paper.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by edale

Oh yeah, density is not the same as OTR, for sure. Just some similar street scenes in the commercial district due to Northside being older than Clifton, despite being further from the core.

The only areas in the Cincy area that might compare somewhat to OTR density would be maybe parts of Covington or Newport? Even that is somewhat of a drop off, I'd imagine. Lower Price Hill offers some glimpses of what was, but it's mostly been decimated by industry, urban renewal, and abandonment:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1032...2!8i6656?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1034...2!8i6656?hl=en

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1043...4!8i8192?hl=en

ADORE the middle one, it's astounding areas like that haven't already gone full Starbucks, though I'm sure it'll happen inevitably. Are the residents there old timers/ the same community?

[muppet]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

x








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.

I love how people are painting the gables, cornices etc with designs/ differing colouring - that's pretty rare in urbanism that homeowners take time out to differentiate them, over this side of the pond anyhoo

[dc_denizen]

I didn't realize Manchester has a US-style highway encircling the core

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ma...3!4d-2.2426305

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4705...7i16384!8i8192

this is an interesting neighborhood

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4551...7i13312!8i6656

[Proof Sheet]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

I didn't realize Manchester has a US-style highway encircling the core

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ma...3!4d-2.2426305

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4705...7i16384!8i8192

this is an interesting neighborhood

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4551...7i13312!8i6656

The road is known as the Mancunian Way. I think it has a 50 mph speed limit instead of the standard but rarely adhered to speed limit of 70 mph for most motorways in the UK.

That neighbourhood could be used for a long running british soap as the backdrop

For two years I lived and worked about 10 km away and had to be close to the 'interesting neighbourhood' as part of my job. Manchester has changed so much since the 80's when I spent more time there.

[edale]

Originally Posted by muppet

ADORE the middle one, it's astounding areas like that haven't already gone full Starbucks, though I'm sure it'll happen inevitably. Are the residents there old timers/ the same community?

Honestly I can't imagine a scenario where Lower Price Hill would ever become a gentrified Starbucksland type of neighborhood. It's quite isolated, and wedged between the base of a huge hill, the river, and heavy industry, a waste treatment facility,and a giant rail yard:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ci...!4d-84.5120196

It's less intense than it used to be, but the area still feels very gritty. As for the population, it's quite poor as you'd probably imagine. But it's actually mostly Appalachian, though in the last 20 years or so, it's become home to a decent community of immigrants from Central America, who have also settled in fairly large (for Cincy) numbers up the hill in East Price Hill. Appalachian dominated neighborhoods seem like some of the last places to gentrify in Cincinnati...I think this is true in Columbus too, and probably most cities with concentrations of urban Appalachians.

It is a bit of a relic of how the whole basin used to look before urban renewal, freeways, and 50+ years of decline. Quite sad to think of all that was lost, but even with so much gone, Cincinnati has more historic fabric than most US cities. No part of the basin was completely spared from the forces of urban renewal, though there are remnants of what was in nearly every part.

From Pendleton in the east:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1106...7i16384!8i8192

hillside tenements in northern OTR on the north:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1169...7i13312!8i6656

some solid rows in the West End:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1182...7i13312!8i6656

and the aforementioned Lower Price Hill on the extreme SW. Momentum has been swinging in the right direction in Cincinnati for the past 10 years or so, as the city population has slowly started to increase again for the first time since the 1960s. I'm hopeful that's what is left of the core can mostly be saved, and some new infill can help to begin to correct the mistakes of the past. Which is basically what I believe is happening in Detroit's core, and what I hope continues there, too!

[IrishIllini]

Bummer the Midwest lost pretty much every historic urban environment outside of Chicago. Had Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Detroit hung on, the Midwest would have arguably more attractive urban environments than anywhere else in the US. The neighborhoods that have survived are great.

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

Bummer the Midwest lost pretty much every historic urban environment outside of Chicago. Had Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Detroit hung on, the Midwest would have arguably more attractive urban environments than anywhere else in the US. The neighborhoods that have survived are great.

I believe Milwaukee is mostly intact - heavily segregated- but still not as much urban blight as other midwestern cities. I am surprised that Baltimore has not done well in that regard, since it sort of anchors a very prosperous region.

[Fresh]

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1169...7i13312!8i6656

Are these buildings in these kind of neighbourhoods occupied at all?

Awesome looking place, it's a real shame if they're abandoned - I wish America could find a middle ground where normal people live in these places but they're not gentrified beyond recognition.