^ On the other hand, for some reason, one of my favorite watering holes, the Zig came up on the left side of the screen. It is several miles from the strip mall.

More trouble for those living in newer sprawl.

 

AP IMPACT: Chinese drywall poses potential risks

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090412/ap_on_re_us/chinese_drywall_11

 

In this April 8, 2009 photo, Mary Ann Schultheis stares at the air conditioner AP – In this April 8, 2009 photo, Mary Ann Schultheis stares at the air conditioner in the second story of …

By BRIAN SKOLOFF and CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writers Brian Skoloff And Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writers – 2 hrs 37 mins ago

 

PARKLAND, Fla. – At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.

 

Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people.

 

 

More

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090412/ap_on_re_us/chinese_drywall_11

holy cow. what was in that stuff?

I haven't been yet, the reason the other one isn't showing up is that it might be newer or just under the radar.

I saw this on the news while running at the Y. The couple featured had to tear down their entire home and start over.

Hell yes!

 

Mises Economics Blog

Austrian Trade Cycle Theory -- The Video

April 30, 2009 8:24 PM by Greg Ransom

 

Newly constructed home in Victorville, CA north of Los Angeles being demolished by the Guaranty Bank of Irvine. From the news story:

 

    A Guaranty Bank official, Real Estate Officer Dean Smith .. said it was a choice of pumping their own money into property site improvements and additional money to bring the home up to code or tear down the 16 homes ..

 

    Our only option is to either proceed with putting more than a million bucks into the land, which we've already taken a huge hit on and lost a lot of money, or, we tear down the houses, Smith said.

What a waste.

I agree, but it is something that I have predicted in the past. The destruction of suburbia, but in this instance, it was due to foreclosures and neglect. I was hoping for something along the lines of, "we are tired of our auto-dependent neighborhoods and desire something better."

What a waste.

 

They should tear down every tacky home that close resembles the "homes" in that video!

I just don't understand how you can plop down 300k for some shit like that?!

As heard on Marketplace http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/13/pm_nad_housing/#

 

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Next American Dream

Homes built for a new American Dream

 

 

Home developers are morphing designs to match the needs of homeowners in a new economy. Kai Ryssdal talks to Elizabeth Moule, an architect in Pasadena, Calif., who's using the subprime crisis as an opportunity to re-think how homes are built.

 

...continued...

 

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/13/pm_nad_housing/#

Kai Ryssdal is the newsreader who, a few years ago, did some of the sloppiest journalism I've ever heard on public radio. After Bush henchmen fired David Gunn as Amtrak head in 2005, Ryssdal, trying to be cute, did this ha-ha-ha story about the search for a replacement. The entire premise was: Gee, who would want to be in charge of a mismanaged business that is part of a dying industry in a country where everybody was looking at a future with cars instead of a past with trains.

 

He basically made a joke not just of Amtrak, but of the entire rail industry and the concept of railroads. It was irresponsible, ignorant and grossly unfair.

Ryssdal wears his slick-idiot persona well. He's a more youthful public radio equivalent of Ted Knight's character on the Mary Tyler Moore show. There was a lot good going on in this piece, though.

^ True. Notice I didn't say biased -- just ignorant. But even ignorant people can see the writing on the wall and sometimes come to their senses.

TIME TO BUILDOZE DYING CITIES ????

 

(wonder which Ohio cities are on his 'list of 50'..)

 

http://www.impactlab.com/2009/06/14/shrink-to-survive-proposals-to-tackle-economic-decline/

 

‘Shrink to Survive’ Proposals to Tackle Economic Decline

 

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.  

 

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

 

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

 

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Interesting that the article mentions a Brookings study identifying cities that are ripe for shrinking. That's in sharp contrast to Brookings' efforts in Ohio, which are focused on getting more money (ie, a fair share) for cities and revitalization:

 

Oops. Here's the link:

 

http://greaterohio.org/blog/

The reason there's a taboo on discussing American decline is because it begs the question of why the decline is happening, and why it's disproportionately hitting certain regions and industries.  I think bulldozing cities before figuring this out is unwise.  You don't prune a plant that's dying, you investigate what the problem is.  Maybe it's an issue of water or light or fungus that you can't solve with a knife.  "Shrinking" without addressing the reasons for shrinkage is defeatist in the extreme.

Perhaps, some of these places got too big. They had a boom-bust economy that wasn't sustainable for the long term.

In that case, we should either stop building entirely until we've identified what's sustainable, or we should decide once and for all that if we've already built a city somewhere, it's sustainable because we insist on sustaining it.  It is crazy to abandon prefectly good cities due to fickle political/industrial shifts.  These are not mysterious forces of nature forcing our hand-- Detroit is still habitable-- these are human decisions that can be evaluated, criticized, challenged and changed.

 

Halving the density of a place like Flint, let alone Detroit, is thoroughly pro-sprawl.  Notice that nobody is talking about "shrinking" any exurbs.  Yet the exurbs are clearly what needs bulldozed, along with places like Phoenix... to let them stand while destroying large swathes of urbanity is to clearly state an exurban direction for our society.

^ I totally agree. In my opinion, it's a waste of resources and money. Bulldozing, rather than reinvesting in some of these areas, or figuring out ways to encourage growth, seems to be the easy way out. We're talking about cities that already have the capacity to support thousands of people. So, it's more economical to keep building new exburbs fifty miles from Phoenix or Atlanta rather than trying to encourage growth in Flint or Detroit? I equate failing regions of the country to a failing brand of a large corporation. Before you sell the brand, or just drop the brand altogether, the corporation should try to find value in the failing brand before giving up on it. In my opinion, this analogy applies to the industrial midwest.

i think you guys are looking at this the wrong way.  We are getting ready to begin on this in Cleveland with the implementation of the Cuyahoga County Landbank and I am actually quite excited about the possibilities.  Think of it as clearing away the bad to make room for the good.  In some ways this actually encourages growth by evening the playing feild with suburbs.  Obviously you have to be extremely careful in determining which structures to remove.  But in addition to the many historic homes and buildings in Cleveland, we certainly also have plenty of areas full of low quality "worker homes" that are past their shelf life.  A lot of these areas are chalk full of foreclosures, abandonment, and neglect.  It costs just as much money for cities to maintain and service these areas as it does the beautiful homes on Jay Avenue in Ohio City.  Gangs and squatters tend to find their way into abandoned and foreclosed homes.  Some of the areas are so bad that it pretty much prohibits any investment from coming back in.  Clear away the trash.  In some locations clearing away a few problem properties in a neighborhood will help.  The spaces left can be use for mini parks, urban gardens, even infill projects.  Some areas will have so much to clear there will only be a few homes left.  In these areas it may make sense to help with relocation of the individuals and clear the entire area.  The city saves on services, and in addition you create a greenfield landbank which you can be used to help lure investment just like suburbs and exurbs do.

 

EDIT:  There is also a great opportunity to deconstruct a lot of these homes and recycle great building materials.

^All well put.  Also, please note that these strategies are not reducing the population density- people having been doing that themselves by voting with their feet in response to current conditions.  These strategies merely try to rationally respond to population changes that are highly unlikely to reverse themselves in the near term.  As McC points out, by rationally responding, we can make the city nicer and more likely to prosper and even grow again some day.

^ I agree.  Knock down all of these dilapdated homes you see in many parts of town and make it a park - or just simply leave it as available, empty land ready for future development.  Then hopefully a developer sees an opportunity and instead of something new being developed in Avon, Medina, or Bainbridge, you see parts the city of Cleveland restored.

^ You guys make some valid points.

That's certainly the hope, but I'm skeptical we will get large, usable chunks of land out of this, or that the parks and community gardens that we get out of it will be well sited.  It's going to be considerably expensive to consolidate any area because of the holdouts and the expense of removing or replacing infrastructure.

Well the landbank appears to be very well funded...  we'll see how it actually shakes out.

 

But like I said in some areas it could be as easy as a few problem structures that were unsalvageable... good example say w. 45th street in ohio city.  They recently cleared a handful of sites and have a very much used community garden, and now a developer has 4 sites that he is marketing new homes for sale.

 

while the larger scale stuff is a little tricky it's hardly impossible.  If basically this exact same thing can be done to make way for something like battery park, it can be done in a landbank scenario.  I would think a lot of people would want to move to more populated areas rather than be the only house on a street.

I agree with clearing out dilapidated homes, but the typical shrinkage plan involves not replacing them.  I see that differently than a land bank, whose purpose is to spur redevelopment.  Shrinkage plans are about removing large (formerly contiguous) areas of city from any possibility of urban growth or urban anything.  Is this pedestrian friendly or transit friendly, to break everything up with big empty spaces?  I don't see how.

 

Detroit could use a few parks, really.  But what are the chances these shrinkage zones end up "going back to nature" vs looking like permanent vacant lots?  I see too many "City Park" signs placed next to seas of grass distinguished only by a picnic shelter maybe, where giant mowers kill every sapling that appears.  That to me is not a park. 

the plan of shrinking is just to cluster areas together and clean out the rest.  Trust me, no city... Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, or anywhere else is going to clear land and then tell someone they can't build on it. That they would otherwise have a bunch of urban prarries.  But having a bunch of delapidated structures all over the place will 100% kill any chance of reinvestment you have.  people will stay away.  give them the opportunity of creating something completely new and they may take you up on it.

This article says that the list includes Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis. Not sure how reputable it is.

 

I'm a little uncertain about some of them. Detroit I can see and I know Philly's west is rough shape but is the city as a whole really in that much distress? Same with Pittsburgh. I hear nothing but glowing reviews about Pittsburgh.

 

 

Except the fact that Pittsburgh has lost nearly half of its population since 1950 and the city has been in fiscal crisis for more than a decade....

 

http://www.newgeography.com/content/00517-calling-pittsburgh-depression-proof-a-journalistic-felony

 

Calling Pittsburgh Depression-proof is a Journalistic Felony

by Bill Steigerwald 01/10/2009

A guest-post from Bill Steigerwald in Pittsburgh:

 

If the New York Times went to Berlin in 1936 to write a story about how that city was "Depression-proof," would it forget to mention that Germany was being run by a bunch of Nazis? If it went to Pyongyang tomorrow would it go ape over that city’s tidy orderliness without noting that North Korea was a totalitarian hellhole? If the Times bureau in Moscow reported on wheat production in Ukraine in 1933, would it overlook the government-designed famine that was killing - oops, sorry, let's not go there.

 

Seriously, is it too much to ask for a little Journalism 101 from America’s Rag of Record?

 

On Wednesday the Times, following a similarly lame piece of Chamber of Commerce journalism done by the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Nov. 23, did a glowing Page 1 story ("For Pittsburgh, There's Life After Steel" by David Streitfeld) about the Pittsburgh region's alleged imperviousness to the national recession.

 

You see, cities that have pioneered deindustrialization, shed huge chunks of population and shifted to service economies that run on curing sick people, college kids and government bureaucrats, as the former Steel City basically does, are now recession-proof, the rationalizing goes, because they’ve essentially been in low-grade recessions for decades.

 

......

FYI, I know people who have been in contact with Dan Kildee up in Flint.  Don't worry, he's not some evil villain who wants to level entire cities.  The point is there areas where one or two houses exist on a block where there were once 30.  If this scenario is multiplied across a neighborhood, you literally have a dozen or so homes occupying many blocks.  That's ALOT of wasted infrastructure.

 

The land banks are not some blind authority picking and choosing what goes.  They realize some of these homes have a 0% chance of being rehabbed.  As soon as the residents, by choice, are relocated to stronger neighborhoods those scattered homes and streets are demolished.

 

"is this pedestrian friendly or transit friendly, to break everything up with big empty spaces?"

 

Absolutely it is, 327.  In fact it's about the best urban redevelopment strategy in existence for dying cities!  The plan is to reconcentrate people into stable neighborhoods, and provide better transit and amenities.  The current situation has people scattered about, with few services in between.

 

"I see that differently than a land bank, whose purpose is to spur redevelopment"

What do you mean by that more specifically? 

My understanding of the Youngstown 2010 plan, which may be a flawed understanding, is that development on any cleared-out area would be forbidden, at least in the near term.  Otherwise why don't they call it a redevelopment plan instead of a shrinkage plan?  That would certainly answer the complaints of defeatist thinking.  Instead they're talking about removing utility service.  That doesn't sound pro-development to me.  The idea of letting things go back to nature has been tossed around a lot, and this is not a quick or temporary process.  Nor is it a logical thing to consider, if there is any intent to re-urbanize the land within a generation.

 

This all strikes me as being different from the process of assembling a land bank which leads to Battery Park style projects.  That I can get behind.  The distinction I would draw is the intent and purpose of the demolition.  If it is to prepare for redevelopment, I see it as a land bank.  If it's to reconcentrate people in the better neighborhoods and leave the others empty indefinitely-- including taking steps to prevent development-- I view it negatively and as a shrinkage plan.  I also predict unintended consequences like new traffic bottlenecks and isolation of the surviving sections.

 

Re: Pittsburgh, it has similar fiscal problems and maybe even worse ones than we do.  But it looks remarkably better than Cleveland and it has way more street life and urban retail.  It still has upper class neighborhoods within city limits.  That has nothing to do with being depression-proof, it's a result of better planning decisions.

I suppose this could go here......

 

http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/06/too-stupid-to-survive.html

 

Too Stupid To Survive

By James Howard Kunstler

on June 15, 2009 6:16 AM

 

Coming home from the annual meet-up of the New Urbanists, I was already agitated from the shenanigans of United Airlines -- two-hour delay, blown connection -- when I waded into this week's New York Times Sunday Magazine for further evidence that our ruling elites are too stupid to survive (and perhaps the US with them).  Exhibit A was the magazine's lead article about California's proposed high-speed rail project by Jon Gertner.

 

 

The article began with a description of California's current rail service between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. A commission of nine-year-olds in a place like Germany could run a better system, of course. It's never on schedule. The equipment breaks down incessantly. A substantial leg of the trip requires a transfer to a bus (along with everybody's luggage) with no working toilet.  You get the picture: Kazakhstan without the basic competence.

 

The proposed solution to this is the most expensive public works program in the history of the world, at a time when both the state of California and the US federal government are effectively bankrupt.  By the way, I wouldn't argue that California shouldn't have high-speed rail.  It might have been nice if, say, in the late 20th century, some far-seeing governor had noticed what was going on in France, Germany, and Spain but, alas....  It would have been nice, too, if the doltish George W. Bush, when addressing extreme airport congestion in 2003, had considered serious upgrades in normal train service between the many US cities 500 miles or so apart. The idea never entered his walnut brain.

 

...

Pittsburgh's better street life has a lot do with different demographics and cultural factors than better planning. Pittsburgh did not experience  the same amount of "white flight" during the 60's and 70's as Cleveland or Detroit. Take a drive around the Hill District, Wilkinsburgh, Homewood, parts of East Liberty, Duquesne and Rankin and you will see similarities with the East side of Cleveland. However, these neighborhoods are relatively small compared to the East side of Cleveland, and they're not clustered together. We want to compare Pittsburgh to Cleveland, when in all honesty they're not that similar. Detroit and Cleavland are more similar culturally, especially when it comes to African-American cultural.

^ agreed.  geography / topography I think plays a good deal into it as well.

^ Exactly. I lived there for four years and my wife is from there. Pittsburgh has some advantages that helped it keep vibrant in some neighborhoods. Metro Pittsburgh does not offer the same kind of suburbs that surround Cleveland and Detroit . Therefore, Squirrel Hill is their Cleveland /Shaker Hts. I think the biggest thing is some of their poorer neighborhoods are small and scattered, rather than a whole side of town.

sir2gees I think you're actually thinking what I'm thinking.  Maybe not.  The east side of Cleveland wasn't always a bunch of bad neighborhoods clustered together.  The nicer parts of Pittsburgh didn't go the way of Glenville, and there has to be a reason.  I would contend that Cleveland and Detroit's "white flight" problems were directly caused by planning decisions.  One key planning decision in Cleveland was not allowing blacks to cross the river.  I know this isn't seen today as being within the sphere of "urban planning," but what else can you call it when they aggressively segregate a city on purpose? 

 

Don't forget that Shaker Heights could easily have been within city limits, but it was designed by avowed racists.  This move of theirs denied significant tax money to Cleveland over the years, while Squirrel Hill doesn't seem to mind being in Pittsburgh.  City borders and financial structures were all initially planning decisions at one time.  They still are, even if we've allowed a racist legacy to make our decisions for us up to this point.  By the way, I love that the east side's upscale shopping mecca is called Legacy Village.  What "legacy" are we talking about, when we're building a retail center that far from downtown?

 

Another planning snafu which hit Cleveland and Detroit, but largely not Pittsburgh, was the inclination to displace black populations with freeway construction.  This contributed to massive riots in Cleveland and Detroit but not nearly so in Pittsburgh, which is known for having better than average race relations.  Since that time, planning decisions in Cleveland and Detroit have revolved around destroying the urban fabric and replacing it with halfass suburb.  Pittsburgh has not done this, and retains much more of its historic building stock.  These are all planning decisions handled differently in different places.  Pittsburgh's decisions have caused less sprawl, while Clevleand and Detroit have made sprawl a number one goal.  They've reduced themselves to a product that doesn't appeal to suburbanites or hipsters, or anyone else.     

327,

Homewood and East Liberty did go the way of Glenville and Collinwood.  According to my wife, Pittsburgh does not have better than average race relations. Remember, Cleveland had the first African-American of a large city, and we are currently on our third. My mother-in-law is convinced the city of Pittsburgh would never elect an African-American mayor. In my opinion, the reason why we didn't see riots in Pittsburgh is because the city has a lot less African-Americans than Detroit or Cleveland. African-American culture is not nearly as strong in Pittsburgh as it is Cleveland and Detroit. I think Allegheny County has a little under 150,000 African-Americans compared to over 350,000 in Cuyahoga County and over one million in Wayne County. Like I said in my last post, African-Americans are scattered throughout Allegheny county rather than grouped on one side of town. Also, the topography in Pittsburgh made it much more difficult to sprawl than in Cleveland. Putting a freeway in Pittsburgh requires either building a tunnel or going over a hill, so I think Pittsburgh had to be anti-sprawl out of necessity rather then planning.

I would agree that due to topography Pittsburgh has much less sprawl than other Midestern Cities.  If you look on a map you can see that there were very limited areas to actually place freeways, basically through a valley.  And these areas would have been natural transit corridors.

Exactly. Dense developments clustered in Pittsburgh's valleys because it was easier to build there than it was on the hills. The density is still there in many cases but often not in very good condition.

I'll take poor condition over gone.  I grant that Pittsburgh may historically be more homogeneous than Cleveland.  I also grant that mountains make for tough freeway construction. 

 

But I would still rank intentional restraint on demolition and urban retail availablility above those factors in terms of differences in sprawl.  Does anyone in Pittsburgh offer the Monroeville Mall as a reason to not have any retail in downtown or Oakland?  Or as a tacit justification for levelling an entire neighborhood retail district? 

 

I'm sure it's less saturated with suburban retail than Greater Cleveland is, but that's kind of my point.  These were all conscious human decisions, not mathematical laws or acts of God.  They're no more permanent than any other human decisions, and we do not have to live with them for one minute more than we choose to.  We don't need mountains to stop tearing down our building stock, and we don't need mountains to justify redeveloping vacant areas with street life in mind.  Chicago doesn't have mountains and that's never seemed to hold them back.

 

Greater Pittsburgh-- I think they officially call it "Pittsburgh and its Countryside," which is far more charming than saying Cleveland+ [some other unappreciated cities]-- could have allowed five times as many malls and strip plazas as they needed.  But they didn't, and we did.  They could have given over their neighborhoods to Urban Renewal.  But they didn't, and we did.  They could have torn down most of their multistory structures and tuned major commercial steets into endless vacant lots.  But guess who did that, and who didn't?  These decisions cannot be blamed on plate tectonics.  Nobody's standing behind us wearing a shirt that says "FLAT LAND" holding a gun to our head.

 

People I know from far-out Pittsburgh exurbs always say they're from Pittsburgh, while people from suburbs of the other two cities in question specify some sort of Heights of Park or Village, even if that info means nothing to their audience.  Our sprawl problems, just like Detroit's, come from within. 

Pittsburgh doesn't have anywhere near the suburban retail that Cleveland does... Actually I don't think anywhere does.  59 municipalities within one county all fighting for their own share of the tax pie takes care of that.  I believe Pittsburgh 1. works on some sort of borrough system, 2. Even then I think there's only something 33 (roughly half of what cleveland has) townships, burroughs, and cities in allegheny county.  And you simply can't understate the topography.  It forces people and retail into dense clusters.  Whereas places like cleveland were just surrounded by acre upon acre of extremely cheap and easily developable cornfields.    They really are apples to oranges cities.

^McCleveland, I totally agree. Yes, Cleveland has made some terrible decisions. I often wonder if our manufacturing base never disappeared would we be having this conservation about sprawl and urban development? I mean, when your losing its easy to find your mistakes. 327, you are right. There is a hell of a lot more pride in the metro Pittsburgh than Cleveland. I attribute that to the "woe-is-me" syndrome the hangs over NEO. Pittsburghers have one common thread the binds them and makes them proud: The Pittsburgh Steelers. I know this sounds trivial, but this stuff goes along way. Name one event over the last 40 years that NEO can rally around and say we're proud of? Nothing. Southwestern PA has had the same economic decline as us, but they also found pride in the Steelers. We can't hang our hat on anything. Our sports teams underperform, our city has lost population , we became the butt of national jokes, and the list goes on. Also, there are a lot of things NEO has that Southwestern PA doesn't have. Let's not make this into the typical Cleveland sucks and we need to be like xyz city. Yes, we have a lot of work to do, but there are still positive things about our region.

I love America, even if it does dumb things, and the same goes for Cleveland.

 

I offer comparisons only to help it get where it's going... a place where, frankly, many comparable cities already are.  I don't believe our problems are all that unique.  Unfortunately our degree of self-loathing is a little odd.  I'm part of that as much as anyone else.  Positive motion will generate positive thoughts.  If we keep our eyes on the ball, we can solve that mean ol' retail imbalance, and we can rebuild our neighborhood cores.  We've beaten every great empire the world has thrown at us.  I believe we can undo urban sprawl. 

^Good point. Pittsburgh's industrial economy bottomed out 20 years ago. In my opinion,  Cleveland's industrial economy bottomed out at the end of the last recession.

Guess who still makes steel?  Cleveland does.  And I mean real steel, made from scratch.  All that steel from down south is rubbish.  Pittsburgh, meanwhile, wants to be a higher-tech Columbus.  Gittin' there, but going broke in the process despite all it has going for it.  I hope what happened here never happens to them.  No good can come of it.

 

The best thing Cleveland can be is post-this, whatever we want to call it.  The dark ages.  Then we can move on to the next thing.  It does look like everyone under the sun is going for the bio angle... that has to be clear to everyone by now.  I mean, do we really think we're being inventive here?  Come on. 

 

This post isn't about that.  We're always looking for the next big thing, all these struggling cities, trying to buy people back in, when the simple solution might be to put some clean clothes on and wash our hair.  Maybe all these bad decisions are what people ran from to build the suburbs.  When they stop, and the approach materially changes, the exodus can reverse... spurred along by common sense, fuel panic, and positive trends in urbanism that are already underway. 

 

But the carnage of the old cities has to stop.  People like Pittsburgh because it's still there.  That's the reason. 

 

And the thing about those pretty mountains is: twenty minutes later, you hate them.  Right about the time you smell your transmission, or you get messed up at yet another triangle.  That's why Zeus decided to make Chicago and Cleveland bigger than Pittsburgh.  They make more sense as cities.  There should be twice as much urban awesomeness in Cleveland as in Pittsburgh, given the size, and the port, and yes, the relative flatness.  There was and there can be again. 

 

 

People like Pittsburgh because it's still there.  That's the reason.

 

Good way of putting it.

 

But the carnage of the old cities has to stop.  People like Pittsburgh because it's still there.  That's the reason. 

 

 

Not the Pittsburgh I grew up being in awe of....

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-10-27-homestead-pa_x.htm

 

Please wait to see the picture change - this is a part of the 450-acre US Steel Homestead Works which closed when I was 19 years old in 1986, was demolished in phases over several years, and today is the site of the Waterfront retail site where things that used to be made in the U.S. are now sold to increasingly less wealthy Americans...

sir2gees I think you're actually thinking what I'm thinking.  Maybe not.  The east side of Cleveland wasn't always a bunch of bad neighborhoods clustered together.  The nicer parts of Pittsburgh didn't go the way of Glenville, and there has to be a reason.  I would contend that Cleveland and Detroit's "white flight" problems were directly caused by planning decisions.  One key planning decision in Cleveland was not allowing blacks to cross the river.  I know this isn't seen today as being within the sphere of "urban planning," but what else can you call it when they aggressively segregate a city on purpose? 

 

Don't forget that Shaker Heights could easily have been within city limits, but it was designed by avowed racists.  This move of theirs denied significant tax money to Cleveland over the years, while Squirrel Hill doesn't seem to mind being in Pittsburgh.  City borders and financial structures were all initially planning decisions at one time.  They still are, even if we've allowed a racist legacy to make our decisions for us up to this point.  By the way, I love that the east side's upscale shopping mecca is called Legacy Village.  What "legacy" are we talking about, when we're building a retail center that far from downtown?

 

Another planning snafu which hit Cleveland and Detroit, but largely not Pittsburgh, was the inclination to displace black populations with freeway construction.  This contributed to massive riots in Cleveland and Detroit but not nearly so in Pittsburgh, which is known for having better than average race relations.  Since that time, planning decisions in Cleveland and Detroit have revolved around destroying the urban fabric and replacing it with halfass suburb.  Pittsburgh has not done this, and retains much more of its historic building stock.  These are all planning decisions handled differently in different places.  Pittsburgh's decisions have caused less sprawl, while Clevleand and Detroit have made sprawl a number one goal.  They've reduced themselves to a product that doesn't appeal to suburbanites or hipsters, or anyone else.     

 

I disagree.  Chicago was and is as racist a city as there is (has Chicago had a black mayor?).  They threw bricks at Dr. King when he tried to desegregate.  Philly is racist as hell, and don't even get me started on Boston.  A majority of America's few bustling cities are infamous for their racial tensions.

 

Do you know which major city was the first one to have a black mayor?  Ding ding...Cleveland.  Maybe all the whites had guns up to their heads when they voted, for I have no clue how such racists would vote for Stokes.

 

I just completely disagree with the premise that because of Cleveland's segregationist planning, it went downhill.  Maybe things were better when they were segregated?  Not to speak progressive heresy, but one has to wonder.

 

People can ridicule Little Italy all they want for its unwritten rules (which, let me add, I think are wrong), but I think it has been key to its survival. 

 

Plus, you are completely overlooking the economics.  Cleveland depended on manufacturing, which is virtually gone.  So did Detroit.  The other major cities, not nearly as much.  Thus, Cleveland, Detroit, Akron, and Toledo's dependence on economics is the villain, not segregation.

 

**And please do not rebut with any charges of racism, because there aren't any.  I'm merely making observations and throwing out some uncomfortable possibilities.

That's why Zeus decided to make Chicago and Cleveland bigger than Pittsburgh. They make more sense as cities. There should be twice as much urban awesomeness in Cleveland as in Pittsburgh, given the size, and the port, and yes, the relative flatness. There was and there can be again.

 

Hell, the city of Toledo is now bigger than Pittsburgh after the last census revision (you can bet the two papers had a field day with that). Great Lakes will come back, they have to. No other cities make more sense- ports AND fresh water, so nuff said.

 

I concur 100%!

WOW...I never realized Toledo has a higher census population than Pittsburgh....Ohio truly is a great state for cities....so stop the sprawl now!