East/west divide seems to be a thing in most western cities (but not US)

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Docere

In Toronto there was a lot of industry in both the east and west. It was the north that was most desirable. Yet I still often hear this "prevailing winds/affluent west/poor east" hypothesis applied to Toronto.

This is interesting because it messes up the natural geography argument where (within the city at least) there doesn't seem to be much of a penalty for increased distance from the lake, though maybe that's because of its more industrial history previously? Looking at a regional scale here too though, western suburbs are more affluent than the eastern ones and the east definitely has more of a working class reputation with the car factories, etc.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by PhillyRising

I guess it's a good thing there is no East Philadelphia!

We have an "East Chicago" in Chicagoland, but it's just over the border in NW Indiana, sandwiched between Hammond and Gary.

And apropos of this thread, it's home to Indian Harbor, the largest integrated steel mill in North America.

It's Eastward location means that its air pollution, along with the air pollution produced by the two other nearby giant steel mills (Gary Works & Burns Harbor) and the humongous BP oil refinery (largest in the US outside of the gulf coast) in NW Indiana, are carried away from Chicagoland by the prevailing winds.

The "prevailing winds" theory certainly wasn't the main reason why the steel industry coalesced down there instead of up on the ritzy north shore, but it certainly didn't hurt.



Together, the three NW Indiana steel mills pictured below produce over half of the nation's primary steel made from raw iron ore.


Indiana Harbor (Cleveland Cliffs):


source: wikipedia



Gary Works (US Steel):

(to give a sense of scale to these steel mills, the ship channel pictured below is over 1 mile long)


source: https://www.wbaa.org/post/steelworke...utcry#stream/0



Burns Harbor (Cleveland Cliffs):


source: wikipedia

[Docere]

That's some deep rust belt there.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

This is interesting because it messes up the natural geography argument where (within the city at least) there doesn't seem to be much of a penalty for increased distance from the lake, though maybe that's because of its more industrial history previously? Looking at a regional scale here too though, western suburbs are more affluent than the eastern ones and the east definitely has more of a working class reputation with the car factories, etc.

There's a western bias to growth in the GTA for sure. About 2 million in the suburban regions of Peel and Halton to the west and 700,000 in Durham Region to the east (1.2 million to the north in York Region). The west is also a much bigger employment center, the Durham suburbs are mostly bedroom communities.

The western suburbs range from affluent Oakville and Port Credit to working class Brampton and Malton.

Much of Durham is Greenbelt and less developed.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

That's some deep rust belt there.

Yeah, but with the main difference that the giant steel mills in NW Indiana never closed. They just got automated to hell and back, now only requiring 1/10th of the labor needed to make steel compared to "the good old days".

That was still obviously devastating to the local economy of The Region, in much the same way had the mills closed altogether.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

-Montreal's "east" end is really to the north of the "west" end - prevailing winds wouldn't significantly impact them. The more important factor is that like London, the east is downriver, and thus, where the port and resultant industry located.
.

Montreal had heavy industry all over the city: east, west, north, south and central, but the dirtiest industries like oil refineries were and are still in the east along Autoroute 40 (Montréal-Est).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

-For Ottawa though, there doesn't seem to be as much of an obvious reason as to why west is richer than east. Still, it was never really a city with much heavy industry so the prevailing winds wouldn't have had much impact.

Historically, east end Ottawa was where French Canadians were mostly concentrated and they were quite a bit poorer. East end Ottawa also had more Irish who were also poorer than WASPs back then.

These two groups were also present to some degree in the inner west of Ottawa around LeBreton Flats which is also where a lot of the heavy industry Ottawa once had was located. (None of this exists anymore.)

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Docere

That's some deep rust belt there.

And that where ore becomes steel. We cannot lose this perfect spot to make iron from its raw ore. No other place in the USA can do this now.


We need to foster it and not offshore these mills anymore.

Just for our own personal protection against a potential WWIII experience.

If it ever got to a nucellar exchange

SE Chicagoland would get pummeled and all of its homeborn mills and workers would just evaporate.


Chicagoland likely has dozens of targets. Possibly hundreds of targets, no one would be safe...


Lets hope it never gets that bad.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Montreal had heavy industry all over the city: east, west, north, south and central, but the dirtiest industries like oil refineries were and are still in the east along Autoroute 40 (Montréal-Est).

Still to my point, Montreal-"Est" is really more like Montreal-Nord, cartographically speaking.

[edale]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

This makes sense, and if you zoom out to look at the larger metro area it's even clearer that local geographic factors play a key role in land values/wealth, especially now there's so much less polluting industrial activity at all in North American cities.

Zooming out from Vancouver proper, to the north you have the North Shore's affluence near the water and crawling up the hill side, Coquitlam to a lesser extent as an upper-middle class suburb to the east (especially up its hill), while the southeastern suburbs are the least affluent ones as basically prairie sprawl (except for South Surrey/White Rock - straddling a freeway and near the water!). As a Pittsburgh-like city with a downtown far from the geographic centre of the region, distance plays an important role too.

I've never thought of Pittsburgh as being a city where downtown is far from the geographic center of the region. In fact, it feels pretty central. Detroit comes to mind as a city that has a downtown toward the edge of the metro. Maybe St. Louis, too.

[edale]

Ohio's 3C cities have favored quarters on the eastern sides of the cities/metros.

The City of Cleveland's east side is largely poor and no longer the home to wealth as it once was, but the most desirable parts of the metro are still on the east side. There's a little old money enclave along the eastern lakeshore called Bratenahl, and then you have Shaker Heights and parts of Cleveland Heights which are wealthy inner ring suburbs. To the east of that, you have Beechwood, Hunting Valley, Cuyahoga Falls...which is now the wealthiest part of the metro.

Cincinnati has retained wealth in its east side neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Mount Lookout, and its wealthiest suburbs are all on the east side, too. Indian Hill, which has big estates and no commercial zoning and is probably the wealthiest community in Ohio, actually started as a place for wealthy Cincinnatians to build 'country' homes away from the pollution and grime of the city.

Columbus' favored direction is probably north, but there's considerable money to the east there, too. Bexley is an independent city, but it's pretty close in to downtown...probably comparable to Shaker Heights (though not as nice). And Les Wexner built his own new money enclave of New Albany on the east side of the Columbus metro, which is now the wealthiest part of Columbus.

All of these cities were pretty industrial at one point, with Cleveland being far and away the most. But they all defy this prevailing wind/air pollution theory.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by bnk

No other place in the USA can do this

Not true. For now.

Cleveland Cliffs still operates integrated mills in Cleveland and Middleton, OH (between Cincy and Dayton).

And US steel still operates the integrated Mon Valley Works in the Pittsburgh area.

But yeah, the primary steel industry is certainly coalescing around the three giant integrated mills at the bottom of Lake Michigan as a sort of "last stand" for the US to domestically produce primary steel from raw mineral ore, which is still of vital national security interest, even if the vast majority of new steel made in the US is now produced from recycled scrap steel in electric arc furnace "mini-mills".

[Docere]

Originally Posted by edale

Ohio's 3C cities have favored quarters on the eastern sides of the cities/metros.

The City of Cleveland's east side is largely poor and no longer the home to wealth as it once was, but the most desirable parts of the metro are still on the east side. There's a little old money enclave along the eastern lakeshore called Bratenahl, and then you have Shaker Heights and parts of Cleveland Heights which are wealthy inner ring suburbs. To the east of that, you have Beechwood, Hunting Valley, Cuyahoga Falls...which is now the wealthiest part of the metro.

Cincinnati has retained wealth in its east side neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Mount Lookout, and its wealthiest suburbs are all on the east side, too. Indian Hill, which has big estates and no commercial zoning and is probably the wealthiest community in Ohio, actually started as a place for wealthy Cincinnatians to build 'country' homes away from the pollution and grime of the city.

Columbus' favored direction is probably north, but there's considerable money to the east there, too. Bexley is an independent city, but it's pretty close in to downtown...probably comparable to Shaker Heights (though not as nice). And Les Wexner built his own new money enclave of New Albany on the east side of the Columbus metro, which is now the wealthiest part of Columbus.

All of these cities were pretty industrial at one point, with Cleveland being far and away the most. But they all defy this prevailing wind/air pollution theory.

Indeed, the east side was actually the more affluent side of Cleveland historically, but do to wealth flight/white flight it became the poorer side. The wealth moved to the eastern suburbs. And yes you'd think the prevailing winds would be a thing in Cleveland of all places, given its very industrial character.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Still to my point, Montreal-"Est" is really more like Montreal-Nord, cartographically speaking.

Don't tell that to Montrealers. Montreal is a city where the sun rises in the south!

[mhays]

Seattle's favored quarter is definitely east, the Eastside. That's where the suburban corporations tend to be, including Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Costco. That's Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Issaquah, Sammamish, etc.

Parts of the core city are also favored, generally to the north and east, though hillsides over water are always expensive.

Kirkland deserves more PR around here. It's the namesake of Costco's in-house brand, it once made headlines for winning the Little League World Series (an ESPN documentary called "Little Big Men" might overstate its impact as a key event in post-Vietnam America), it's a growing tech center with two Google campuses, it'd beautifully located on Lake Washington, and it has one of the best secondary cores in the Northwest.

[Altoic]

Not so much east and west, but many cities in Florida have much more affluent parts in the southern portion compared to the north.

South Tampa is arguably the richer part of Tampa with Hyde Park and all of Bayshore. Seminole Heights and Tampa heights near Ybor city is known as the "ghetto" in Tampa. But recently much has changed with gentrification.

South of Miami's core is Coconut Grove, Pinecrest, & Ponce-Davis.

I'm not sure for Jacksonville & Orlando but I heard it's similar for Jacksonville.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by edale

I've never thought of Pittsburgh as being a city where downtown is far from the geographic center of the region. In fact, it feels pretty central. Detroit comes to mind as a city that has a downtown toward the edge of the metro. Maybe St. Louis, too.

You're absolutely right of course, my mental map was way off. Having Downtown bounded by rivers rather than bisected by it probably threw me off.

[Centropolis]

Like Chicago, in St. Louis the worst of the worst polluting industries were built east of the city in a different state (in built from scratch company towns often laid out by City of St. Louis engineers and planners) - steel mills, refineries, chemical plants - all three industries still operating on the Illinois side and still filthy. The A-B brewery which is on the far eastern edge of St. Louis City also has a strong smell. When the winds on rare occasion blow from the east, the odors spread across the region and everyone starts freaking out and complaining.

Map of wealth distribution:


city-data.com

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

Like Chicago, in St. Louis the worst of the worst polluting industries were built east of the city in a different state (in built from scratch company towns often laid out by City of St. Louis engineers and planners) - steel mills, refineries, chemical plants - all three industries still operating on the Illinois side and still filthy.

I didn't realize the Illinois side was mostly company towns. That actually explains a lot.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

Like Chicago, in St. Louis the worst of the worst polluting industries were built east of the city in a different state (in built from scratch company towns often laid out by City of St. Louis engineers and planners) - steel mills, refineries, chemical plants - all three industries still operating on the Illinois side and still filthy.

Do you know to what degree this was a conscious decision by st. Louis business leaders based on prevailing winds? or like Chicago, was it more just dumb luck that the area just over the nearby stateline with giant available tracts of land for heavy industries like steel and oil refining also just happened to be downwind of the city in a pleasant coincidence?