What midwestern city seems most “urban” to you (except Chicago)?

[Centropolis]

st. louis also has light rail subway downtown (and other places as well as elevated), but i generally agree with your assessments.

[The North One]

I'm sorry but Minneapolis's sterile downtown with little to no store fronts is a joke and the skyway isn't something you can just shrug off, it's street-vibrancy killing terrible urban planning. And it's boxy skyline is not the best outside of Chicago.

If we're talking just downtowns alone what makes Minneapolis so functional? It's just as dependent on the car as Cincy and Cleveland and I'd consider both of those much more fleshed out and walkable downtowns. How is a lack of dead/blight zones relevant when there's nothing really great to work with in the first place? Maybe if Minn still had it's gateway district but that's long gone and never to return.

[Chef]

Originally Posted by The North One

I'm sorry but Minneapolis's sterile downtown with little to no store fronts is a joke and the skyway isn't something you can just shrug off, it's street-vibrancy killing terrible urban planning. And it's boxy skyline is not the best outside of Chicago.

If we're talking just downtowns alone what makes Minneapolis so functional? It's just as dependent on the car as Cincy and Cleveland and I'd consider both of those much more fleshed out and walkable downtowns. How is a lack of dead/blight zones relevant when there's nothing really great to work with in the first place? Maybe if Minn still had it's gateway district but that's long gone and never to return.

When was the last time you were in Minneapolis? You seem to take every opportunity you can to badmouth it but you perceptions seem to be based on the city it was 20 or 30 years ago. The downtown population has nearly doubled in the last 20 years and Warehouse District and Downtown East have gone from seas of surface parking to functional neighborhoods with pedestrians and storefronts. Hennepin Ave and the Nicollet Mall almost always have significant street life unless they are torn up for construction or it is freezing cold.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I didn't mean to imply that Latino areas "don't count" or something. But Latino neighborhoods tend to have higher population densities at a given structural density than white neighborhoods due to a higher average household size. I mean, if you have a unit taken up by a family of four and a grandmother rather than a single couple without kids, it will result in a much higher population density if repeated across an entire census tract.

Neighborhoods which are dense due to large household size don't pack the same urban punch as neighborhoods with equivalent density but low household size. The peak urban neighborhoods in Chicago and LA have roughly equivalent density, but the Chicago examples are more classically urban.

Originally Posted by eschaton

By 1900 basically the only part of the country new rowhouses were being built was the "rowhouse belt" - particularly in Philly, Baltimore, and DC.

Rows were part of the local Mid-Atlantic vernacular to the present, really. At least from Wilmington to Brooklyn, there are working class rows built to the present. Much of Staten Island and NE Philly consist of 1970's-era rows.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, I don't see how Cleveland wasn't a row house city. San Francisco is a row house city and it was built 2,500 miles away from the northeast. And most of San Francisco was built during the 20th century because the city was almost completely destroyed in 1906.

San Francisco is basically the only place on the West Coast - hell, the only place significantly west of St. Louis - you find anything resembling a rowhouse. You don't find them even in the oldest sections of Oakland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Portland, or Seattle. They're just entirely absent. Part of this may be a function of age, since SF was an older city, and in areas which aren't part of the "core" rowhouse belt rowhouses tended to drop out of fashion as the preferred style of construction more quickly.

It's not true however that San Francisco is a rowhouse city in its entirety. Lots of the older portions of the city have houses separated by a few inches to a few feet.

It's also not true that the earthquake (and resulting fire) destroyed everything. Areas like Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights, Cathedral Hill, Haight-Ashbury, Potero Hill, Noe Valley, and much of The Mission survived with little damage. San Francisco has a lot of surviving wood-framed homes built between 1840 and 1906 in Italianate, Stick, and Queen Anne styles.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Row houses weren't exactly rare in Detroit, either. And they were built there throughout 20th century... Although the stuff built in the 90s and later is pretty fugly.

Row homes were always rare in Detroit. There's a difference between a scattered rowhouses and neighborhoods which are 90%+ comprised of rowhouses. Detroit never had anything like this.

IMHO we need to distinguish between the historic building vernacular (rowhouses) and the modern type (townhouses). Townhouses became the standard in the U.S. when it comes to the "missing middle" between single-family homes and apartments in the late 20th century. They can now be found basically everywhere, and say nothing about the historic built vernacular of an area. In much the same way, houses which are brick on all sides are now more common in the south (due to lower labor costs) even though the southern vernacular was not traditionally brick.

[chris08876]

Kansas City, MO is pretty cool. A nice urban area or urban island per say relative to its proxies. A cute mid-sized city.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I didn't mean to imply that Latino areas "don't count" or something. But Latino neighborhoods tend to have higher population densities at a given structural density than white neighborhoods due to a higher average household size. I mean, if you have a unit taken up by a family of four and a grandmother rather than a single couple without kids, it will result in a much higher population density if repeated across an entire census tract.

oh yeah, i certainly don't disagree with any of that. the structural density of SW milwaukee residential vernacular is nothing mind-blowing or anything, but the fact that there are 19 contiguous census tracts down there with densities in the 15,000 - 25,000 ppsm range means that there are enough bodies to keep those traditional commercial streets much more intact than they otherwise would be if those neighborhoods had just slowly emptied out in a more typical rust-belt fashion. that's the only point i was trying to make.

Originally Posted by eschaton

Boston made a very early turn away from brick rowhouses though. It was basically done building them by the 1870s, when the common "middle density" vernacular in New England shifted to wood-framed "triple-deckers" It's why Boston suddenly changes from being a predominantly brick to a mostly frame city as soon as you get to neighborhoods like South Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, etc.

interestingly, chicago is like the bizzaro boston in that regard. chicago was ridiculously heavy on the wood-fame until the whole enchilada burned to the ground in 1871. after that, chicago became on of the most brick heavy cities in the nation outside of the eastern seaboard.

and just like boston, chicago built a shit-ton of "triple-deckers" from 1870 - 1930, but it built them almost exclusively out of brick and called them "3-flats".

Originally Posted by eschaton

Some of the older brick homes were solid brick all the way though, but around that time they began constructing them as a single layer of brick on top of a frame house, which lowered the construction cost of building a brick house considerably.

chicago was building solid 3-wythe brick bungalows and flats up until the '50s because of the city's fire paranoia. and even after that, builders just switched to brick veneer with CMU back-up, again because of the city's stringent fire codes.

Originally Posted by Chef

When was the last time you were in Minneapolis? You seem to take every opportunity you can to badmouth it but you perceptions seem to be based on the city it was 20 or 30 years ago.

i wouldn't give too much consideration to TNO's little rants.

i don't think anyone else on this forum does.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by edale

Perhaps, but there are very few traces of anything remotely similar in Cleveland. Here are some typical scenes from Cleveland's inner most, and oldest neighborhooods (Ohio City and Tremont):

Ohio City typical residential:
1) https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4852...7i13312!8i6656

2) Ohio City commercial district:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4850...7i13312!8i6656

Tremont:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4821...7i13312!8i6656

Cleveland has demolished SO much of its historical building stock, that it really is hard to imagine what once was there. But based on my knowledge of the city, it never really had much in the way of row houses or dense, 'east coast' style development. Its oldest residential neighborhoods are mostly wooden Victorian Era homes. Ohio City has some very cute, pleasant, and historic areas, but it's just a different typology than what you'd find in east coast cities. They did have a very impressive 'Millionaire's Row' on Euclid, but those were huge detached mansions, and basically all of them have been torn down.

Contrast this to Cincinnati, which has a much different development pattern in its core neighborhoods:
1) https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1108...7i16384!8i8192

2) https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1134...7i16384!8i8192

3) https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1089...7i16384!8i8192

yes and no.

this is true about boston red brick row housing blocks, cle never had that. and also very true being hard to imagine what was there.

but otherwise -- what was there along with the wood frame were other downtowns, brick apt buildings. and warehouses. lots and lots of them. its true you cant even imagine it anymore in the city because they are gone. look at the lots next this one, doesn't that say it all? the rest is gone, so its easy to forget this was also typical peak cleveland.



another example is the old little hollywood neighborhood in hough, which once was a contender for peak midwest neighborhood density outside of chicago. all brick apt bldgs and zero wood frame housing there. its all wide empty lots and suburban style redevelopment around there now. below is picture of some of it marked for teardowns after the 1968 riots era.




as for today -- you can still get some idea of what was in cle if you go to cleveland hts and lakewood, but generally those are nicer versions.
and of course you can still see it here and there in east cleveland...in all its ruin porn glory.

[edale]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Ok, I'll play. So "development pressures" is your thing?

Why then, for example, did Providence and Hartford and Springfield and Rochester and Buffalo, and then Cleveland and Detroit, not develop into "rowhouse cities"? These places were among the larger (and largest) cities in the nation (and rapidly developed) from the mid-1800s to early 1900s (the "rowhouse era", if you will).

And during this same era, why then did significantly smaller places (which didn't have nearly the population nor growth/development pressures) like Reading and Allentown and Bethlehem and Harrisburg and Lancaster and Frederick become "rowhouse cities"?

I'm not ignoring big cities and I'm not focusing on small cities. I'm talking about the bigger cities of the day... go ahead and look up population and growth numbers for places like Providence, Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, etc. in the era.

And I've never suggested that this typology isn't primarily found in the Northeastern US. I agree with that, but the Northeast is also largely characterized by a detached housing typology.

I'm willing to admit that there is a cultural, perhaps ethnic tie in to the prevalence of rowhouses, and that some regions were more naturally drawn to that style of development than elsewhere. But I also think it's pretty clear that big cities that boomed early in the US have the most rowhomes, regardless of whether they're in the Mid Atlantic, New England, or Midwest. Look at the 10 biggest cities by decade and see if you pick up on the trend. Let's start in 1850:

1850

1. New York
2. Baltimore
3. Boston
4. Philadelphia
5. New Orleans
6. Cincinnati
7. Brooklyn
8. St. Louis
9. Spring Garden, PA (now part of Philly)
10. Albany

1860
1. New York
2. Philadelphia
3. Brooklyn
4. Baltimore
5. Boston
6. New Orleans
7. Cincinnati
8. St. Louis
9. Chicago
10. Buffalo

1870
1. New York
2. Philadelphia
3. Brooklyn
4. St. Louis
5. Chicago
6. Baltimore
7. Boston
8. Cincinnati
9. New Orleans
10. San Francisco

1880
1. New York
2. Philadelphia
3. Brooklyn
4. Chicago
5. Boston
6. St. Louis
7. Baltimore
8. Cincinnati
9. San Francisco
10. New Orleans

1890
1. New York
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. Brooklyn
5. St. Louis
6. Boston
7. Baltimore
8. SF
9. Cincinnati
10. Cleveland

1900
1. New York
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. St. Louis
5. Boston
6. Baltimore
7. Cleveland
8. Buffalo
9. SF
10. Cincinnati

1910
1. New York
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. St. Louis
5. Boston
6. Cleveland
7. Baltimore
8. Pittsburgh
9. Detroit
10. Buffalo

Cleveland and Detroit boomed much later than the Northeastern cities + Cincinnati and St. Louis. NYC, Philly, Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago (pre-fire), Cincinnati...these were the biggest cities for much of the mid to late 1800s, and these are also the places that had the largest concentration of brick rowhouses. By the time Cleveland and Detroit grew up, there was less of a pedestrian focus as a means of transport, as early streetcars and vehicles had emerged, and the development of those cities show it.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Row homes were always rare in Detroit. There's a difference between a scattered rowhouses and neighborhoods which are 90%+ comprised of rowhouses. Detroit never had anything like this.

IMHO we need to distinguish between the historic building vernacular (rowhouses) and the modern type (townhouses). Townhouses became the standard in the U.S. when it comes to the "missing middle" between single-family homes and apartments in the late 20th century. They can now be found basically everywhere, and say nothing about the historic built vernacular of an area. In much the same way, houses which are brick on all sides are now more common in the south (due to lower labor costs) even though the southern vernacular was not traditionally brick.

Row houses were not rare in Detroit. Attached row houses were built all over the city throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and in varying styles. For example:

https://goo.gl/maps/5KHyKqjk4AXEvUDFA

And just across the street from it, what you call a townhouse:

https://goo.gl/maps/FBioR1K7r7kPKkuh6

Here's another newer group of row houses built in the early 2000s:

https://goo.gl/maps/ostyNkhCWDQgDrhh8

A couple blocks away from the new construction row houses, older group of row houses:

https://goo.gl/maps/j6iXR3ETH9Vs1Fdo8
https://goo.gl/maps/yytsME4c17jDWKVKA

Then there are these:
https://goo.gl/maps/8d7J2C9WQEW2GYzC9

https://goo.gl/maps/MjLWd7EL4miqbGtF7

https://goo.gl/maps/MrsJxEsTSNHfEh6y6

These are true town houses, btw:
https://goo.gl/maps/QnrTByL7m49s6YVQ9
https://goo.gl/maps/SMfeUFTMAgqt47cb6
https://goo.gl/maps/4VCn9AXXszHdN73N7

And this is what's left after the city demolished a huge chunk of the inner neighborhoods. Imagine what was there before when these areas were built out.

[mrnyc]

^ yeah cle has row housing scattered all over too -- but mostly that's also why apt blgs became more dominant during the cle/detroit booms. they were becoming more of a thing and are easier to build. and the wood frame homes also became much larger. the cities were getting more mobile and bigger.

[goat314]

If St. Louis was as healthy as say Minneapolis. It would be like the Boston of the Midwest. I think where St. Louis messed up is overall poor planning, not building a subway 100 years ago, and going overboard with urban renewal and highways. It literally had the worst urban renewal projects in the country. No reason the city shouldn't be at least 500k-600k strong today.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by goat314

If St. Louis was as healthy as say Minneapolis. It would be like the Boston of the Midwest. I think where St. Louis messed up is overall poor planning, not building a subway 100 years ago, and going overboard with urban renewal and highways. It literally had the worst urban renewal projects in the country. No reason the city shouldn't be at least 500k-600k strong today.

yeah, what could've been.......

another planning mistake might have been allowing downtown clayton to steal so much of downtown's thunder. st. louis is more pulled apart than boston, where the center has never been challenged.

a century old subway system along with a more robust and sustained commuter rail system like boston's probably would have gone a long way toward keeping downtown st. louis the one and only true center.

[IrishIllini]

Leveling the riverfront for the arch/park was also a mistake IMO. The Arch may be a point of civic pride, but the city erased everything that would have made the city more interesting today. Much of DT St Louis’ history is gone.

[the urban politician]

If only one other city in the midwest had had a rail transit system, the midwest could've easily had a preeminent "second" city like Boston or Philly.

However, many of you guys talk as if it's too late. It's never too late.

Mistakes have been made, but they are being remedied. Look at what's happening in Minneapolis (the clear front runner in urbanization). Look at what Detroit is doing.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by goat314

If St. Louis was as healthy as say Minneapolis. It would be like the Boston of the Midwest. I think where St. Louis messed up is overall poor planning, not building a subway 100 years ago, and going overboard with urban renewal and highways. It literally had the worst urban renewal projects in the country. No reason the city shouldn't be at least 500k-600k strong today.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yeah, what could've been.......

another planning mistake might have been allowing downtown clayton to steal so much of downtown's thunder. st. louis is more pulled apart than boston, where the center has never been challenged.

a century old subway system along with a more robust and sustained commuter rail system like boston's probably would have gone a long way toward keeping downtown st. louis the one and only true center.

yeah too many eggs in one industrial basket for cle.

clevelanders actually voted for a subway, but al porter, our own robert moses, put the kibash on the idea and put the money toward roads.

they almost had one again in the 1980s, the dual hub (downtown-university circle), but dithering and soaring costs it ended up being the brt healthine on euclid, which is very nice, but...

[the urban politician]

^ Once again, too much talk of lamenting the past among midwest city folks here.

Yes, a lot was lost, but a lot is also being built/rebuilt. I don't think it's over.

The midwest is building its "Boston" (or Philly) as we speak. I'm not sure right now what it is, but like I said, I think it's likely Minneapolis

[mrnyc]

^ yeah but also coming up to date -- the fancy cle brt line is not that old lol.

also i really don't see how you can talk about places like cle and stl without dipping into the past and what happened or went awry, unlike mpls where booming is all new to them.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

interestingly, chicago is like the bizzaro boston in that regard. chicago was ridiculously heavy on the wood-fame until the whole enchilada burned to the ground in 1871. after that, chicago became on of the most brick heavy cities in the nation outside of the eastern seaboard.

Pittsburgh basically went through four distinct phases when it came to brick/frame.

1. The basic rule in Pittsburgh in the 19th century was housing was built out of brick if it was built for rich or middle class people, or was built on flat land by the rivers. In contrast, if it was built up on a hill, it was almost invariably frame. A lot of this came down to the 20% price differential between frame and brick, coupled with the sheer cost of hauling brick up steep slopes. So you ended up with something of a divided landscape, with brick rowhouses in the flatlands by the river, and detached frame houses dotting the hillsides above.

2. Around 1900-1910 there was a localized building boom which basically exhausted the ability of the clay pits to keep up with brick demand. Thus many houses built during this period (save for the wealthy) were frame, even if in areas which otherwise would seem conducive to brick construction.

3. Then, immediately following this period, you have a major shift to brick, with the ubiquitous foursquares and localized form of bungalows (which are mostly brick on the first story) appearing everywhere. Pittsburgh's suburbs continued to be built out almost entirely in brick well into the 1970s.

4. Then of course, the modern turn away from brick in the late 20th century, as builders became cheapskates and didn't want to pay bricklayers what the work cost.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

and just like boston, chicago built a shit-ton of "triple-deckers" from 1870 - 1930, but it built them almost exclusively out of brick and called them "3-flats".

Three flats are almost entirely absent from Pittsburgh, though there are a few streets which have both these and six flats. There's a localized form of two-flat which was very common in the 1920s, but otherwise that typology is unknown here.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Row houses were not rare in Detroit. Attached row houses were built all over the city throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and in varying styles.

Again, I never argued they were absent, just they didn't predominate anywhere.

I mean, you can find isolated rowhouses lots of places. Columbus has a lot of stands, but no real "rowhouse neighborhoods." There's isolated examples in areas as far afield as Atlanta, Minneapolis, New Haven, and Dubuque. That doesn't make any of these rowhouse cities - just cities with some rowhouses.

[Florida Guy]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yes and no.

this is true about boston red brick row housing blocks, cle never had that. and also very true being hard to imagine what was there.

but otherwise -- what was there along with the wood frame were other downtowns, brick apt buildings. and warehouses. lots and lots of them. its true you cant even imagine it anymore in the city because they are gone. look at the lots next this one, doesn't that say it all? the rest is gone, so its easy to forget this was also typical peak cleveland.

another example is the old little hollywood neighborhood in hough, which once was a contender for peak midwest neighborhood density outside of chicago. all brick apt bldgs and zero wood frame housing there. its all wide empty lots and suburban style redevelopment around there now. below is picture of some of it marked for teardowns after the 1968 riots era.

as for today -- you can still get some idea of what was in cle if you go to cleveland hts and lakewood, but generally those are nicer versions.
and of course you can still see it here and there in east cleveland...in all its ruin porn glory.

Lots of historical density shots of Cleveland neighborhoods can been seen here:

https://publishohio.com/neighborhoods-east/
https://publishohio.com/neighborhoods-west/