What was your city like in the 1990's?

[destroycreate]

Urban revival dare I say really only begun for mainstream America somewhere around 2001-2002. I can remember as a teenager during those years, watching my hometown of San Diego literally transform with a new highrise seemingly every month.

But thinking further back to the 90's, I recall downtown San Diego was incredibly sketchy. Aside from 5th avenue where the Gaslamp is, it was a sea of parking lots and suspicious "hotels". I feel like nobody had really yet taken interest in revitalizing the core, and the surrounding streetcar suburbs (i.e. North Park which is now transformed) were pretty derelict. Overall it was a suburban, overly pleasant paradise with little going on in my opinion.

So I'd love to hear what your cities were like before the present day trends took off. Before yuppies felt safe enough to move in, before the juice bars, before the artisanal coffee & cupcake shops, before the newly painted bike lanes; when your downtown was more a haven of artists or vagabonds. With all this new life in our cities, I often wonder--what the hell did people do in their cities before!? I'm especially curious about NYC, which sounds like it was still a crime haven at least for the earlier part of the decade.

I'll add some pictures later when I get to work

[jd3189]

NYC in the 90s(late 90s at least) for me had an old/new city feel outside of the main parts of Manhattan. Was more residential and nestled away from much of the world that did not know about it. It had its own cultural communities, such as hip hop, and was pretty calm, or was getting calmer after the crack epidemics and other violence of the 70s and 80s. Now, I see the city rapidly changing all over the boroughs and now richer outsiders are taking advantage of this. It's good for the city, but it won't be the same as it was in the 90s.

I don't have any pictures other than some from when I was a child living in suburban Queens.

[dave8721]

Not the greatest decade for Miami. From a run-in with category 5 Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the subsequent closing of the Air Force Base crushing the economy of the southern half of the area for most of the decade to the racial and ethnic strife which peaked in the 1999-2000 (see Gonzalez, Elian and the 2000 Presidential Election fiasco) and continued white flight. At least the crime went down from the cocaine wars of the 70's and 80's and the sports teams were still decent (haven't been since). The late 90's did see the first few residential towers go up around downtown since the early 80's.

[brickell]

Miami 1992.

[dave8721]

I lived in Boston for the 2nd half of the 90's which was when it was in the process of fully gentrifying most of the core. Kenmore Square (where I lived) was being cleaned up, the Big Dig was in full swing, the china town/combat zone was being "sanitized". I preferred the 1995-1996 version to the 2000-2001 version at the time when I was in my late teens-early 20's, but the current 30-something year old me probably prefers the current sanitized city.

[mhays]

Seattle was well into the urban infill trend. The population bottomed out in 1986, but the trend got going much earlier...the late decade was when the inflow became larger than the outflow and smaller household sizes.

For greater Downtown, early in the 90s was very different from later in the 90s. Late in the decade was one of Downtown's biggest booms ever. The retail core had a big revival with the relocated Nordstrom, Pacific Place, etc. Safeco Field was built. The residential and office booms was pretty large.

In the 1990s we adopted a new comprehensive plan to focus growth into "urban villages," which were generally the old denser districts and commercial (but not industrial) zones. Back then places like Downtown Ballard were very low density. Even places with decent walkable retail were generally surrounded by large patchworks of parking. Today we're maybe 50% through the transition to denser forms for these zones, though obviously more in some places than others.

In the 90s we had a lot of one-story commercial, auto sales, supermarkets, etc., in these zones. Increasingly these uses are stacked today, or come with housing on top.

[Xelebes]

The same as it was in the 1980s. A bit more rusting though.

[kool maudit]

the mid-1990s was the era in which a worldview that had percolated throughout the 80s and gained a real cultural foothold in the early '90s was replaced by the one which gave us the 2000s. shorthand? nirvana and ma$e, or nirvana /limp bizkit and public enemy/ma$e.

montreal was a sleepy, rusty city that was a kind of paradise for a certain cultural subtype. my 1000 square foot, beautifully lit and molded apartment cost $320/month. st-laurent had maybe one bar where people would show up in pointy shoes and driving ferraris. now it has a great deal of that. it's somehow glossier, and full of rude health.

my city's change happened in such a way that it magnified another, greater change.

as someone born in 1978, i kind of grew up with a foot in each world.

[MolsonExport]

The Queen's hotel. Hard to believe, but I remember when that place was open. I am getting old fast.

[Chef]

Minneapolis was genuinely dangerous in the '90s. Its homicide rate in 1996 was higher than Philly's or Chicago's today. I used to hear gunshots on a regular basis. Lake St on the south side was extremely seedy, it had a ton of storefront brothels. There were street preachers with megaphones. Drive by shootings. I was common to see the police walking around with guns drawn. It had an '80s era New York kind of feel to it.

There were also a lot of store front brothels downtown and around the Capitol. Back then the only other American city I had seen with so much obvious prostitution was Washington DC.

When I moved here in the late '80s I found it odd how different the city was from its reputation. It was thought of nationally as a slightly uptight urban Lake Wobegon but in actuality it was a very permissive and also chaotic place that was seemingly on the edge of spinning out of control.

Then as the economy continued to run at high gear for an extended period, and authorities cracked down on obvious law breaking, things seemed to start to calm down towards the end of the decade.

[pdxtex]

downtown portland in the 1990's was sketchy. there were gutter punks, dirty dogs, hobos and hookers. 2014, its still sketchy with more gutter punks, dirty dogs, tons of hobos, drug addicts..... but less hookers and tons of tourists.! the pearl district didnt exist yet, it was still a wasteland of dusty warehouses, a giant aging brewery and lots of light industrial. it had lots of character though! chinatown honestly hasnt changed much, if anything its even sketchier now then it was 20 years ago. i dont necessarily pine for the days of my own private idaho and drugstore cowboy portland, but i do a little. it was a little gritier then than it is now, but its still weird, clinically or purposeful.

[Double L]

Just like it is now, relatively.

[Chef]

Yeah, I forgot about the gutter punks. There were lots of gutter punks in Minneapolis. A lot of them were runaways living in abandoned buildings. Minneapolis was a big stop on the gutter punk circuit back then. They tended to go west in the winter and come back in the summer.

[Vlajos]

Chicago's turnaround really started in the 90s. In general things have been improving since.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by mhays

Seattle was well into the urban infill trend. The population bottomed out in 1986, but the trend got going much earlier...the late decade was when the inflow became larger than the outflow and smaller household sizes.

For greater Downtown, early in the 90s was very different from later in the 90s. Late in the decade was one of Downtown's biggest booms ever. The retail core had a big revival with the relocated Nordstrom, Pacific Place, etc. Safeco Field was built. The residential and office booms was pretty large.

In the 1990s we adopted a new comprehensive plan to focus growth into "urban villages," which were generally the old denser districts and commercial (but not industrial) zones. Back then places like Downtown Ballard were very low density. Even places with decent walkable retail were generally surrounded by large patchworks of parking. Today we're maybe 50% through the transition to denser forms for these zones, though obviously more in some places than others.

In the 90s we had a lot of one-story commercial, auto sales, supermarkets, etc., in these zones. Increasingly these uses are stacked today, or come with housing on top.

How was Seattle being the center of the US music scene in the early 90's viewed by Seattlites at the time? I'm sure it brought loads of 18-24 year olds hoping to make it big.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

downtown portland in the 1990's was sketchy. there were gutter punks, dirty dogs, hobos and hookers. 2014, its still sketchy with more gutter punks, dirty dogs, tons of hobos, drug addicts..... but less hookers and tons of tourists.! the pearl district didnt exist yet, it was still a wasteland of dusty warehouses, a giant aging brewery and lots of light industrial. it had lots of character though! chinatown honestly hasnt changed much, if anything its even sketchier now then it was 20 years ago. i dont necessarily pine for the days of my own private idaho and drugstore cowboy portland, but i do a little. it was a little gritier then than it is now, but its still weird, clinically or purposeful.

Is the prevalence of homeless people/gutter punks even more prominent than San Francisco? It's beginning to be a huge turn off living here, especially now that I live in the heart of it all. I have a huge heart generally, but my patience has worn thin.

#notinmybackyard

[the urban politician]

^ I didn't live in any one city throughout the 90's (I was basically at home in high school in the early 90's and in college in the mid-late 90's). Can't say, except that the very first real city that I ever lived in was Philadelphia from 1998-1999.

And it was definitely a bit grittier than it is now (although it has always remained a tad bit on the gritty side).

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Is the prevalence of homeless people/gutter punks even more prominent than San Francisco? It's beginning to be a huge turn off living here, especially now that I live in the heart of it all. I have a huge heart generally, but my patience has worn thin.

#notinmybackyard

honestly i have no clue. i never thought it seemed as bad downt there as ive heard, but most of my time in SF is spent up on nob hill, japantown and over in sunset. the only time ive been to haight ashbury there were just tons of tourists and the few times ive cruised through the tenderloin, it seemed as i expected. market street always seemed a bit sketchy in palpable way, but i dont usually hang out down there. portland street scene gotten more stabby in the last 10 years, so much so the cops have a gutter punk specific task force...ooooh scary....i think in general, the foot traffic downtown has grown immensely, so we also have 10x more tourists and tons of new residents. its a good time to be living around here.

[New2Fishtown]

The 1990s saw the earnest transition of Center City Philadelphia from something most suburbanites found scary into somewhere worth being (it was always worth being there, but you get the point). Perhaps most critically, a downtown Business Improvement District, the Center City District (CCD), was formed in 1990 and started tackling the fundamental issues of cleainliness, safety, public events, and physical improvements that the city could not afford to deal with on its own. This organization has grown into a national model and continues to deliver tremendous services and amenities to the downtown (we literally just yesterday celebrated the transformation of City Hall's Dilworth Plaza, a project managed and completed by CCD).

A wave of new skyscrapers that broke the previous height record of City Hall topped out at the very beginning of the decade, though the city declared bankruptcy in I believe '91 and didn't really start to turn until Ed Rendell's 8 years as Mayor from '92 onward. During his time, the PA Convention Center opened in the heart of downtown, refocusing the economy on convention tourism and clearing the way at the old convention center site for massive expansion of hospital and research space, which is still being built out today in the millions of square feet. The hotels that developed on the heels of the center allowed the city to host the RNC in 2000, which many saw as a major achievement and a symbol of the city's transition to a more service and hospitality based economy.

It was also a decade of hatching big plans, some of which never materialized, such as "fixing" Penn's Landing (the waterfront), and building a downtown Phillies stadium, but some became reality: building the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts (1997-2001) and redesigning the tourist hub of Independence Mall (didn't finish until the mid 2000s).

I distinctly remember a fall 1997 issue of Philadelphia Magazine announcing, "Center City's Back!" on the cover, with a full issue dedicated to the shocking discovery that there were great restaurants, galleries, and other things worth seeing downtown. This was the beginning of suburbanites returning to the city, not just as visitors, but as residents. The city did not record a net increase overall until the 2010 census, though Center City neighborhoods saw increases starting in the '90s. Another way to put it in perspective: my parents purchased the house I grew up in a block off of Fitler Square in 1985 for 150k. Today, the home would sell for above 1M.

[dc_denizen]

lol at Boston's "Combat Zone", I've heard that phrase a couple times over the years. WTF did that spring from anyhow?