Here's an interesting photo I saw on SSP, evidently Clevelumbus posted it there...

 

http://www.deviantart.com/view/26645296/

Now that is a nice looking Cleveland.

yes, but with office vacancy rates around 75%!

That pic almost makes me want to cry, it's so beautiful.  We can always imagine.

great visions.. lead to great things!?

^exactly, the first step is creative vision and ideas. i did not like the new fantasy towers individually very much, but oh yeah i liked the density factor.

were's ameritrust? how did we get the comcast center, and why do we look even more like a poor mans charlotte?

actually I think we have a nice skyline, based on direction.  From the Lake, Northeast (i-90) or the south(I-490 or I-480) Downtown looks nice.  From west..it looks bleak, since all the building are like dominoes and the three towers on Public Square hide the buildings (to the east) behind them,with exeption to the Erieview buildings.  Even flying over Cleveland the city look impressive compared to other cities, since we have an east coast dense layout.

 

Granted..I would love to see a highrise hotel on public square, the two additional towers in the original TC proposal, that should have been built over the parking facility on Huron and Progressive tower.

From west..it looks bleak, since all the building are like dominoes and the three towers on Public Square hide the buildings (to the east) behind them,with exeption to the Erieview buildings.  Even flying over Cleveland the city look impressive compared to other cities, since we have an east coast dense layout.

 

:weird:

 

It's more Great Lakes in style than "east coast."  But that's a good thing, as Cleveland is one of the best examples of Great Lakes-style cities in the country.

From west..it looks bleak, since all the building are like dominoes and the three towers on Public Square hide the buildings (to the east) behind them,with exeption to the Erieview buildings.  Even flying over Cleveland the city look impressive compared to other cities, since we have an east coast dense layout.

 

 

 

:weird:

 

It's more Great Lakes in style than "east coast."  But that's a good thing, as Cleveland is one of the best examples of Great Lakes-style cities in the country.

 

No I mean our street layouts.  The city especially the 70 block radius of public square - very dense

^Well, in street-layout, it's also very Great Lakes (as the Great Lakes were gridded).

 

If anything, many East Coast cities aren't gridded (Philadelphia [not talking Center City/South], DC, Boston, Providence, etc).

i think it is interesting that cleveland only goes in 2 directions

Cleveland's grid is really more notional than anything.  Take a serious look at a map of Cleveland and notice the layout of the main streets.  Look at the orientation of the various grid "fragments".  Count how many streets really go straight through for any great length.  Cleveland isn't so much a broken grid as it is a shattered grid.  It's as if someone drew a gridded city on a mirror, threw a bunch of rocks at the mirror, and then said, "there's our street layout". 

 

Actually, what happened is that Cleveland never had a master plan when it was developing out beyond the original plats (also not strictly rectilinear).  The original plats only extended a couple of blocks from Public Square.  As developers purchased land in the outlying lots, they built gridded subdivisions off of our main roads, which are mainly based on old Indian and stagecoach trails.  The gridded subdivisions were oriented to allow them to get the maximum number of lots out of the parcels that they own.  The parcels were oriented off of those non-rectilinear main streets.  New street placement was determined by the developer's interest in maximizing return, not on connecting streets together in any sort of cohesive fashion. 

 

The result is that Cleveland's street system often seems like a grid, but it is full of boundaries where one subdivision runs into another that wasn't gridded in the same way.  Look carefully at a map of Cleveland and notice all the places where streets jog over, where block patterns switch orientation, and where grids intersect at awkward angles.

^Interesting.

i think it is interesting that cleveland only goes in 2 directions

 

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying

i think it is interesting that cleveland only goes in 2 directions

 

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying

 

 

well, cleveland sits on lake erie. it was built outward along the lakefront in both directions from downtown, but not away from the lake.

 

if you picture a graph, where the x axis would be the shore, and everything below 0 is lake erie, cleveland's growth would look like:

y< x²

 

strangely enough, cincinnati would look like y=x², (y=x² - 1  if counting northern kentucky)

 

 

 

combine the two and it would be complete! 8-)

i think it is interesting that Cleveland only goes in 2 directions

 

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying

 

 

well, Cleveland sits on lake Erie. it was built outward along the lakefront in both directions from downtown, but not away from the lake.

 

if you picture a graph, where the x axis would be the shore, and everything below 0 is lake Erie, Cleveland's growth would look like:

y< x²

 

strangely enough, Cincinnati would look like y=x², (y=x² - 1  if counting northern Kentucky)

 

 

 

combine the two and it would be complete! 8-)

 

Cleveland did grow southeast and southwest, but OK...... Mr. mathematician  LOL

^broadway and w25th get no love -- and what about the river and the industrial valley that cleves the land? yes virginia, there is a south, just because there are mostly old factories and a big park there does not mean it do not exist.

I could do without the southern suburbs though (the stuff south of 480, between 71 and 77), all the good stuff is east and west.

http://www.nhlink.net/neighborhoodtour/nt.php

 

Take a look at the boundaries for the neighborhoods (click on neighborhood, click on map under contents), along with when the areas were annexed, and it will give you a better idea of why the grid is so 'shattered'.

were's ameritrust? how did we get the comcast center, and why do we look even more like a poor mans charlotte?

 

To me Charlotte seems like a shopping mall with skyscrapers, looking at charlotte for just the skyscrapers it's quite impressive but when I see it through GoogleEarth you can see the obvious differences between the cities.

^Charlotte's skyline is much smaller than Cleveland's.  Or have they built a bunch of towers in the best 12 months? 

^Charlotte's skyline is much smaller than Cleveland's.  Or have they built a bunch of towers in the best 12 months? 

 

NO THEY HAVENT

I could do without the southern suburbs though (the stuff south of 480, between 71 and 77), all the good stuff is east and west.

 

Come on, thats where I live. 

"Charlotte's skyline is much smaller than Cleveland's.  Or have they built a bunch of towers in the best 12 months?"

 

Charlotte currently has the following under construction - as in cranes are in the air as we speak:

210 Trade Street - 53-floor residential, 600+ ft.

 

The Avenue - 36 floors, 396 ft.

 

Trademark - 23 floors, 300 ft.

 

There are quite a few other towers proposed as well.

 

As I've said before - I would rather see the parking lots in Cleveland filled with 10-12ish story residential buildings rather than one supertall tower.

I agree, but I do like the second and third towers you've shown.

^broadway and w25th get no love -- and what about the river and the industrial valley that cleves the land? yes virginia, there is a south, just because there are mostly old factories and a big park there does not mean it do not exist.

 

broadway and w25th would be included in my equation, at the edges.

and yes, i know of the factories and all that in the south, but as far as the street grid being discussed...

well Mayday.....humm

 

I was in Charlotte and didnt see any of those bldgs.  Who knew???

 

If anything, many East Coast cities aren't gridded (Philadelphia [not talking Center City/South], DC, Boston, Providence, etc).

 

DC was the original gridded city in the U.S., as per the L'Enfant Plan (don't let the diagonal avenues throw ya).  New York, up to that point in time was semi-gridded in what is now lower Manhattan, but didn't develop the rectangular grid throughout the island until the 19th century.

 

I don't think there is such a thing as a "Great Lakes" layout. Cleveland's layout is more like a New England town, in that its origin is on a central public square.  This makes sense, considering that the land was owned by a company from Connecticut.  The long avenues traversing the city are merely extensions of the streets traversing or radiating from the square.  Detroit's layout was originally based on a plan by Judge Augustus Woodward, who adopted elements of L'Enfant's plan for the District.  Chicago's layout is more akin to Manhattan, considering that after the Great Fire of 1871, the city became industrialized (mechanized, if you will) and adopted a regimented grid.

 

 

 

 

New York, up to that point in time was semi-gridded in what is now lower Manhattan, but didn't develop the rectangular grid throughout the island until the 19th century.

 

and then they totally threw that manhattan grid plan out the window as the outer boroughs were developed! only psychotic schizoprehenics could have invented the queens street plans. ugh.

DC was the original gridded city in the U.S., as per the L'Enfant Plan (don't let the diagonal avenues throw ya).  New York, up to that point in time was semi-gridded in what is now lower Manhattan, but didn't develop the rectangular grid throughout the island until the 19th century.

 

I don't think there is such a thing as a "Great Lakes" layout. Cleveland's layout is more like a New England town, in that its origin is on a central public square.  This makes sense, considering that the land was owned by a company from Connecticut.  The long avenues traversing the city are merely extensions of the streets traversing or radiating from the square.  Detroit's layout was originally based on a plan by Judge Augustus Woodward, who adopted elements of L'Enfant's plan for the District.  Chicago's layout is more akin to Manhattan, considering that after the Great Fire of 1871, the city became industrialized (mechanized, if you will) and adopted a regimented grid.

 

I'd argue that Philadelphia was the original gridded city (meaning, Center City; four squares, etc) but original boundaries do not exist.  I should've clarified that what I meant by gridded structure was a north-south/east-west axis.  Washington DC has gridded streets but many are at a tilt, particularly the eastside of the District.

 

"Great Lakes-style" layout is simply taking Burnham-esque boulevards (re: wide) with particular "endless" sightlines and either teminating the main roads into a downtown (re: Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Chicago [to an extent, with Milwaukee Ave, etc]) or a completely gridded system (re: Chicago, minus the diagonals).  Great Lakes is moreso apperance, if anything.

 

But if we want to get technical, almost every North American city has somewhat of a grid system in their borders (even Charlotte).