Cool cities theory rebutted? Cleveland and Detroit

[Detroitnerd]

I guess I'm curious why the Indianapolises, Houstons, Jacksonvilles, and Columbuses of the world don't have these things, then.

I think that's where we get into an economic-governmental component of the argument. Right now, fuel is still relatively cheap, federal subsidies often go the wrong way. It's like that joke about the U.S. Embassy in Australia having a $400,000 machine to ensure the toilet water spins in the correct, American way. These larger municipalities are influenced by what's cheaper and easier, and, for much of America, it's still cheaper and easier to run things as though it were still 1961.

If someone lives on a farm threatened by encroaching suburban development 30 miles from downtown, I doubt he cares much about the blighted inner city whether or not his residence is considered within the city limits of Columbus.

Maybe. Then again, there are some people who still farm on Staten Island, which is technically part of New York City. I wonder if they disdain the city? Kind of difficult to say, not knowing them or having any info. What are your thoughts on this?

[DC48080]

Bad troll ... no goats!

Discussing anything with you is pointless. You seem to feel that you are an expert on everything you discuss. You cannot accept that people have different opinions than you do. You cannot accept when your "sacred cows" are shown to be flawed. When faced with such things you name call. Any credibility you may have had is diminished by such acts.

Childish tantrum indeed!

[Detroitnerd]

BTW, here's somebody talking about what they perceive the benefits of cities without suburbs would be:

http://757hamptonroads.com/2010/01/1...a-book-review/

And, for the red-faced, angry-as-hell, you-will-take-home-rule-when-you-pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-fingers set, here's something so that you can just copy-and-paste without the painful thinking required to devise a cogent counter-argument:

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/colu...by-david-rusk/

[BShea]

Perhaps you should do a live remote from E 93rd and Miles, and tell us how much more terrific Cleveland is than when you lived there in the 1970s. I guarantee you, however, that you will find:

Crime
Nasty city buses
Slummy neighborhoods
Being unable to walk just about anywhere
An absolute shithole

I can do that from any major city in the country, especially Rust Belt cities, so what's your point? I can find you slums in San Francisco and Seattle.

You want to cherry pick examples to:
1. Try to distract from an utterly absurd assertion [[amid the usual sneering insults) that somehow the 1970s Cleveland that was in receivership and the butt of national jokes was better than Cleveland today.
2. Try to create a straw man because I nor anyone else suggested Cleveland was perfect or entirely fixed.

It's easy to create straw men and distortions to make your points. I get that.

You may be the only human being on this planet insisting Dennis Kucinich's Cleveland was superior to today's version of the city. Keep fighting the good fight, I guess.

[ghettopalmetto]

I can do that from any major city in the country, especially Rust Belt cities, so what's your point? I can find you slums in San Francisco and Seattle.

You want to cherry pick examples to:
1. Try to distract from an utterly absurd assertion [[amid the usual sneering insults) that somehow the 1970s Cleveland that was in receivership and the butt of national jokes was better than Cleveland today.
2. Try to create a straw man because I nor anyone else suggested Cleveland was perfect or entirely fixed.

It's easy to create straw men and distortions to make your points. I get that.

You may be the only human being on this planet insisting Dennis Kucinich's Cleveland was superior to today's version of the city. Keep fighting the good fight, I guess.

Talk about absurd cherry-picking. YOU, Bill, have claimed that Cleveland is much better off because of the massive publicly-funded Projects it has constructed in the past 30 years in the immediate area of Public Square. Please demonstrate how this has improved life for the residents of Cleveland.

Show us the population growth.
Show us the increases in wages and employment.
Show us the gains in education.
Show us the increases in property values.
Show us the gains in tax revenue.
Show us the decreases in crime.

And, above all, show us how the publicly-funded gimmicks, er, "attractions" are the root cause of these outcomes.

I reckon an esteemed journalist such as yourself would possess the diligence, objectivity, and resourcefulness to provide PLENTY of data that supports your wild-ass guess assertion.

[BShea]

Robert McNamara relied purely on numbers to tell us America was winning the Vietnam War. How did that work out? Quality of life in a city is not a purely numerical measurement. I'm not going to take your equivalent of the body-count debate because it's just one part of the overall Cleveland reality.

Are you suggesting those Cleveland projects should not have been done? None of the residential and retail construction -- well outside of Public Square -- should have been done? Really? Do tell.

Again, you distort. Can you please have a conversation without resorting to lies and distortion? That there was a rebirth in Cleveland is stone-cold fact. No one is arguing on this planet -- except you -- that there has not been improvement in the city compared to the 1970s. I, nor anyone else, has suggested the fixes are done and there are not other problems. In fact, I pointed out some in my original post. What major rust-best city hasn't experienced job and population loss? Where did I say there were not continuing problems?

You try to frame this conversation by insisting that I said Cleveland is basically perfect and all problems are fixed. Seriously, quit distorting, man up and converse like an adult, mkay?

I would be absolutely delighted to know how YOU would have rebuilt Cleveland. Please regale us.

[BShea]

In 2005, The Economist ranked Cleveland and Pittsburgh jointly as American's top most liveable cities.

http://web.archive.org/web/200604280...66&ref=pr_list

Are the folks at the Economist in the pay of the Cleveland chamber of commerce? Are they NFL sleeper agents trying to rekindle the Browns-Steelers rivalry? Or are they just to be dismissed as ignorant rubes who don't know anything, or at least not as much as the esteemed message board urbanist Ghettopalmetto.

Maybe Cleveland topped the list every year of the 1970s, eh?

Edited to add that Cleveland was 45th globally in the 2008 EIU report, which was 11th: http://store.eiu.com/product/475217632-sample.html

[ghettopalmetto]

Seriously? How can you have a "rebirth" when you lose 40% of your population. When you lose major employers like BP, LTV Steel, and National City Bank? When your main street disappears in a poof with May Company, Dillards, and Woolworths all gone [[while the suburbs churn out ever-more craptastic plastic malls). When people with any means whatsoever continue to flee to the suburbs?

Bill, look beyond Public Square. Entertainment Gimmicks don't make a city. You, of all people, should know that. Cleveland, like Detroit, is dying, and the people running the show in either case have not a clue what they're doing. The quicker we acknowledge this, the quicker we can actually focus on solutions that work, instead of worrying about what television and the New York Times Travel Section are saying.

What, in your opinion, makes Cleveland so "reborn"???

[Detroitnerd]

Maybe you both are saying the same thing, actually.

I feel that way about Detroit, that there are all these great entertainment venues downtown, but they're not going to "revitalize" Detroit. Maybe they'll change some perceptions about Detroit, or about "going downtown," that will prove positive in the long run, but I'm not banking on them being a silver bullet.

Meanwhile, I can think of several neighborhoods I would have lived in in Detroit int he 1970s but not today. I do think we're funding downtown at the expense of neighborhoods, for instance.

Anyway, I'm entertained. Do go on.

[BShea]

Seriously? How can you have a "rebirth" when you lose 40% of your population. When you lose major employers like BP, LTV Steel, and National City Bank? When your main street disappears in a poof with May Company, Dillards, and Woolworths all gone [[while the suburbs churn out ever-more craptastic plastic malls). When people with any means whatsoever continue to flee to the suburbs?

Bill, look beyond Public Square. Entertainment Gimmicks don't make a city. You, of all people, should know that. Cleveland, like Detroit, is dying, and the people running the show in either case have not a clue what they're doing. The quicker we acknowledge this, the quicker we can actually focus on solutions that work, instead of worrying about what television and the New York Times Travel Section are saying.

What, in your opinion, makes Cleveland so "reborn"???

I'm still waiting for you to say what you would have done differently, since it's evident you would not have supported revitalization of The Flats and Warehouse District, the stadiums, Tower City, Gateway/Forest City, the Rock hall or science museum, hotels, over the past two decades.

Did you live there in the 1970s?

What would you have done in their place?

[BShea]

Maybe you both are saying the same thing, actually.

I feel that way about Detroit, that there are all these great entertainment venues downtown, but they're not going to "revitalize" Detroit. Maybe they'll change some perceptions about Detroit, or about "going downtown," that will prove positive in the long run, but I'm not banking on them being a silver bullet.

Meanwhile, I can think of several neighborhoods I would have lived in in Detroit int he 1970s but not today. I do think we're funding downtown at the expense of neighborhoods, for instance.

Anyway, I'm entertained. Do go on.

I agree. There are parts of Cleveland that have collapsed in the past 30-40 years. But so much more has been improved -- and the civic pride feeling, which is difficult to put a value on -- is completely different today.

No one is suggesting the work is over, or everything has been worked on. I didn't say that, despite GP's need for distortion to support his weird theory that Dennis Kucinich's bankrupt Cleveland is better that anything since. I guess America was a better place under Jimmy Carter, too, and I'm a lone minority in being glad that era is over.

[Detroitnerd]

Well, when Phillip Morris bought Kraft foods, they paid a premium of several hundred million dollars for the good will alone. I think it's hard to put a price on good will [[even corporations seldom do), but there's something to what you say.

If Detroit and Cleveland were cities of "great neighborhoods," then I could see an observer thinking the last 30 or 40 years have been an utter failure. If it's the downtown we put a premium on, then it's totally different. A matter of perspective?

As for James Earl Carter, well ... the best of a bad bunch, IMHO.

[ghettopalmetto]

Based on my own observations, Cleveland's tack for "rebirth" has been not unlike Detroit's: Lure suburbanites into town to spend their money for an evening of entertainment. If you ask me, "lure" is nothing more than a synonym for "trick".

Both cities are historically an amalgamation of neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods consisted of residents with strong ethnic ties, centered on churches and schools, and had a self-sufficient community. It's no mistake that each neighborhood once had its own commercial center, with locally-owned businesses whose customers lived within a short walk.

Beginning in the 1980s, some genius in Cleveland decided that after decades of middle-class flight of jobs and residents, which had destabilized the neighborhoods, could be replaced by temporary expenditures on food and entertainment by nonresidents. Detroit began to copy this idea outright--as Cleveland had previously copied it--when Coleman Young proposed casinos, followed by the new stadiums. There's just one problem with it--when people drop money on dinner or a ballgame, they GO HOME TO THE SUBURBS at the end of the night. They don't have a presence in the city, aren't paying taxes, don't have kids in the schools, don't go to church in the city, aren't spending money on daily needs in the city. In other words, the stakeholders have disappeared with a vengeance. You can't replace that with 3-hour visits.

My tack for Cleveland, or Detroit for that matter, would be the same thing I've been beating on for the 12 years I've been posting on these forums. You focus on the neighborhoods, and make them attractive places to live for people who have choices. American cities have faced complex problems over the past seven decades, and are often outgunned by myopic state and federal policies [[as they are in intellectually disinterested states like Ohio and Michigan). You're not going to fix the school systems overnight. You're not going to solve crime overnight, if ever.

What a place like Cleveland or Detroit has lost, and currently lacks, though, is a stable middle-class population. And you look at where the young, educated, TAXPAYING people with high incomes are going--places like Chicago, DC, Philadelphia. It makes you stop and think why people would go to such places. After all, it's not the cost of living. It's not the taxes. It's not a lack of crime, terrific schools, or even good weather. It's because these are *pleasant* places to live. There are things happening. You can walk from your residence to the corner store, grab a bite to eat, meet your neighbors, have a coffee and pick up a newspaper within a short stroll of your home. These are cities of neighborhoods, with front porches, tree-lined streets, thriving neighborhood commercial strips, good transit service... in other words, they have WHAT CLEVELAND AND DETROIT HAVE SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYED IN THE NAME OF PROGRESS.

Jobs, or the availability thereof, are key. My tack toward any sort of redevelopment, then, would not be to throw enormous tax breaks at One Giant Corporation and "hope" something happens. I'd gear a program toward encouraging small neighborhood-oriented businesses: drugstores, hardware stores, grocery stores, coffee shops, newsstands, small restaurants. Extend loans to entrepreneurs, with favorable interest rates for residents. Change the God damned zoning regulations to permit walkable, mixed-use development. After all, people who want Strongsville or Troy are going to move to Strongsville or Troy. Establish programs to encourage home maintenance, such as low-cost tool and equipment rental, and educational programs. Get rid of stupid and redundant bureaucracy like the Department of Public Lighting and use the money to plow the damned streets in the winter, cut the damned grass in the parks, and present a city that has a little bit of pride. Instead of spending millions of dollars to intervene in the real estate market, use the money for streetscaping along residential commercial strips. In other words, you remake the city the way it USED TO BE, before we got these brilliant ideas to demolish urbanity to build malls and parkingplexes and playgrounds for suburbanites.

Sure, I probably would have built Jacobs Field, but I wouldn't have ever touted it as some kind of economic savior [[which Tom Chema of Gateway Economic Development Corp. did when the Sin Tax went on the ballot in the early 1990s). And I certainly wouldn't have used a prime piece of industrial land on the Cuyahoga to build a plastic regional shopping center with tax breaks to national chains, when there are plenty of locally-owned businesses that can use the leg up.

[texorama]

OP here ... a couple of points.

1) I'm not sure Richard Florida can be so easily dismissed as many here are doing. He does have his supporting examples. Austin was a very sleepy Lansing-like town for many years, until a good music scene, specifically, attracted creative young people who in turn created jobs. The idea that the job engine has to come first and create big factories is retrograde, Coleman Young–like thinking. Of course you can cite counterexamples [[Jacksonville, which grew like mad and is not cool at all, is one). But the essence of the information economy is that it depends on the scenes Florida describes.

2) My rather mild-mannered post attempted to recognize the fact that yes, Cleveland has lost as many jobs as Detroit despite a more activist public policy, but that perhaps they've laid the groundwork for better things in the future. You drive down Euclid from the east side to downtown and you arguably feel a greater sense of potential than you do on Gratiot or Grand River.

Who knows? I like both places, basically, and hope they turn around.

[Pingu]

Maybe I didn't get the memo, but the last time I checked Cleveland existed for the sole purpose that Detroit would have something to look down on [[sorry Milwaukee, you couldn't even meet this dubious threshold).

[ghettopalmetto]

Maybe I didn't get the memo, but the last time I checked Cleveland existed for the sole purpose that Detroit would have something to look down on [[sorry Milwaukee, you couldn't even meet this dubious threshold).

Cleveland exists because a bunch of people from Connecticut owned land along the southern shore of Lake Erie [[the Western Reserve of Connecticut) and sent Moses Cleaveland to survey their holdings.

After the Ohio and Erie Canal was constructed, the rest, as they say, is history.

[Pingu]

Cleveland exists because a bunch of people from Connecticut owned land along the southern shore of Lake Erie [[the Western Reserve of Connecticut) and sent Moses Cleaveland to survey their holdings.

After the Ohio and Erie Canal was constructed, the rest, as they say, is history.

History, which included Bob Feller [[and Gordie Howe!!!), and the Outsiders, Eric Carmen and the Raspberries. I'm not saying Cleveland is nothing, I'm saying Cleveland is cool, but I'm saying Detroit is cooler, far cooler. There was only one cat who wore white socks in Jr. High. Last name? Cleve. Coincidence?

[illwill]

I really don’t see the comparison. In my humble opinion, I think Detroit is light years ahead of Cleveland and many other cities in this country. Detroit has such a solid and rooted foundation that it will always be able to stand on. Detroit has one of the richest cultures in the world.

Geographically, Detroit is better located than Cleveland. We rest on the boarder of Canada [[Windsor, Ontario/Toronto) and are only a short distance to Chicago. Three world class destinations all within a short drive and all on the Great Lakes. I believe Detroit is repositioning itself as a city that will soon support Chicago in helping to re-anchor the Great Lakes region as the “muscle” of U.S. as it had been in the past. Such as New York and Boston are on the East Coast. In fact, Detroit is reclaiming to be an asset to Chicago simply because Chicago has no other unique city nearby. I hope these two cities will work together to strengthen the Great Lakes region and once again be a major American Midwest dual attraction. It would be nice to see a bullet train connect the two cities. Chicago and Detroit have always been associated sort of like “step sisters” and it’s time we get back to putting our stamp on the map as a strong dominate power structure in the US.

Detroit is a city with innovators and the best artistic expressionist in the country. We’re friendly, hardworking and we have a very balanced personality. We’re strong and we’ve proven that we can go to any city and make it big time. We’re surrounded by top Universities, we have the best outdoor attractions, we have arts, sports, beautiful architecture and a diverse population.

Cleveland may have a mall, mass-transit and a few more lofts, but I certainly don’t read great articles about that city in the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-times or other international publications on a weekly basis, praising what a great city it is. I don’t think Cleveland has a stronger foundation than Detroit. There is just something very unique and very different about Detroit. We are the definition of culture. People love to seek out Detroit. I don’t think I’ve met to many people who are intrigued with the culture of Clevelanders.

I’m not knocking Cleveland, in fact hope they make a big comeback as well. I am a supporter of the Great Lakes and rust belt cities however, Detroit is making it’s mark as the next hot destination in this region. Unfortunately, not Cleveland. People make jokes about Detroit but never the less, we’re always in the headlines and people know who we are. When people come to Metro Detroit, they see it for themselves and more importantly they feel it in their souls that Detroit is a classical city that is unlike any other and they know there is something very special about our town.

[canuck]

That Richard Florida guy. I cant wait to get his autograph. His coolness factor is up there in the nineties.