Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I'll disagree. I would say most U.S. downtowns don't feel generic to me. They may be deeply flawed in various ways, and some may suck, but most have a distinct sense of place. Downtown Miami, or downtown Baltimore, to take two examples, may be extremely flawed, but also don't feel much like generic cities in Middle America. I can't really think of any American downtown that looks exactly like Miami or Baltimore. In Cincy I wake up and have to remind myself whether I'm in Cincy, KC, Indy, Minneapolis or St. Louis.
I stay at the Hilton on the main square in Cincy every few months, and (speaking for the CBD only) it strikes me as utterly generic. Skywalks, chain hotels, chain restaurants, parking lots, blank walls, quiet streets, stadiums, "stadium village". Cincy as a whole seems like it has lots of unique and interesting neighborhoods, but I don't think the downtown offers much that can't be found in any other mid-sized Midwest metro. Obviously I'm just approaching this from a visitors perspective, and with all the attendant biases.
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I
get the criticism but I disagree with the Baltimore example. Aside from the Inner Harbor (which every city has, to some degree; Cincinnati with The Banks; Cleveland with The Flats; Pittsburgh with Station Square; St. Louis with their Ballpark Village; KC with P+L; etc), I can't think of something "unique" about downtown Baltimore over Cincinnati, St. Louis, or blah blah. Baltimore also is chain restaurants, parking lots, blank walls, quiet streets (which every downtown in America has), stadiums, etc. Downtown Cincinnati, like Baltimore, has endless historic low-rise structures, few parking lots, and lots of one-way tight streets. I mean, if streets like this are "generic" compared to, say, downtown Miami (which again, have all of the latter [and I actually like downtown Miami, for the record]), then I adore generic.
And keep in mind, I'm the type of person who doesn't generally take people downtown on tours as the city has far many more neighborhoods of note to see. Alas, I'm done with this convo (I do hate this whole vs. thing but if I see inaccuracy, you know I'm not afraid to spill the tea).