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

[ChiSoxRox]

Aside from all the data, I'll answer the thread question.

1910: St. Louis, then Cincinnati

Dense, brick urbanism that still leave lovely, if hollow, ghosts today.

1950: Detroit, then Cleveland.

Art deco downtowns, pulsing radial avenues, houses to the horizon. Shame what was in store.

Now: Twin Cities, then Cleveland

The Twin Cities have those still intact, walkable streetscapes and have the numbers needed to be bustling. Cleveland is roughshod, but downtown and University Circle still hit urban critical mass to buzz. Milwaukee is a tad too small, despite its density retention. Columbus is definitely one to watch though.

[Chef]

20 years ago the Twin Cities had a lot of gaps in its urban fabric that prevented it from feeling like it had a cohesive urban form. It still has some of that but the growth of the past decade and a half has stitched a lot of it back together with urban format midrises that have been built in large numbers in the city. I think the scale of 21st century urbanist development is what separates it from other Midwestern big cities (besides Chicago).

There are still some gaps but it is only one more development cycle away from having a cohesive urban footprint over a relatively large area. There are a lot of neighborhood nodes that are one or two developments away from being fully urban. These are some streetviews that show the "work in progress" nature of Minneapolis' densification:

Uptown:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9481...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9482...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9483...7i16384!8i8192

Warehouse District:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9836...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9845...7i16384!8i8192

Northeast:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9882...7i16384!8i8192

Dinkytown:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9810...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9814...7i16384!8i8192

Loring Park:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9667...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9676...7i16384!8i8192

Stadium Village:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9737...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9739...7i16384!8i8192

Whittier:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9536...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9555...7i16384!8i8192

The city is basically urbanizing right now.

[Omaharocks]

I'd put Minneapolis as most urban after chicago, with Milwaukee not far behind.

Milwaukee doesn't have the brick charm of a cincy or St. Louis, but seems the most cohesive, with continuous high density and a significant amount of walkable urbanism in the east side, bayview, south side, and even heading west all the way to Wauwatosa.

Honestly, I don't think Cleveland even ranks. The bones are still there in downtown from it's former glory, but there are few intact walkable urban centers outside of downtown, and everything is so disjointed. The potential is there, but it's far behind many other midwest metros at this point.

[Steely Dan]

^ yeah, I think I'd put Milwaukee over Cleveland for it's more intact neighborhood commercial corridors.

But there does seem to be consensus building for the twin cities pulling ahead of the pack a bit at #2 now with its continued and impressive urbanization efforts.

[ChiSoxRox]

Fair enough, I may have been too favorable on Cleveland. I was pleasantly surprised by Ohio City and the Superior-Euclid downtown triangle, and University Circle is one of my favorite Midwest pockets. Points for heavy rail service between them. Case Western is a name I have in mind for a post doc. Reviewing on Streetview, downtown still has a bad case of parking lot-itis, and the East Side between Cleveland State and CWR is quite a gap.

To be fair to Milwaukee, it might be overshadowed by Chicago even in my mind. Next time I am in Chicago, I should hop up the Hiawatha for a few days.

[craigs]

Cleveland has a monumental, gorgeous downtown. And it has a couple of vibrant corridors, and significant clusters. It has gold standard bus rapid transit, as well as light rail and heavy rail. It has great institutions. But in addition to having solid downtowns, good light rail and bike infrastructure, and good institutions spread around the region, the Twin Cities win this thread because that region has a more extensive and intact urban fabric.

[MonkeyRonin]

St. Louis and Cincinnati have the best legacy urbanism, but at a significantly reduced scale & cohesion from what once existed.

Minneapolis and Columbus have the best modern urbanism and seem to be the all-around healthiest, but their legacy stuff isn't quite as substantial as the others.

Milwaukee has the most intact traditional urbanism, but was never quite as urban to begin with as most of the other cities.

Cleveland and Detroit have the best downtowns & some cool outlying neighbourhoods, but are missing cohesive inner cities.

Chicago is - of course - the only one that has it all.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

St. Louis and Cincinnati have the best legacy urbanism, but at a significantly reduced scale & cohesion from what once existed.

Minneapolis and Columbus have the best modern urbanism and seem to be the all-around healthiest, but their legacy stuff isn't quite as substantial as the others.

Milwaukee has the most intact traditional urbanism, but was never quite as urban to begin with as most of the other cities.

Cleveland and Detroit have the best downtowns & some cool outlying neighbourhoods, but are missing cohesive inner cities.

Chicago is - of course - the only one that has it all.

sounds on the money for today to me.

of course as you roll back father time the pinball cities bounce around a bit.

another positive thing about cleveland, that also makes it appealing in its way, is the somewhat quirky landscape with the valleys, streets, waterfront and crooked rivers and even the odd local weather (ie., eastside only lake effect snow). certain people tend to be drawn to that kind of character thing, which gives it lots of potential.

of course other places have their own charms, but that is the cleves.

[jpdivola]

From a functional urbanism standpoint, I don't see how it could be anything other than MSP.

Although, I have often wonder had Detroit developed with a vernacular like St. Louis, would the city have held up a little better and be something more like Philly?

[Steely Dan]

From ChiSoxRox awesome work calculating weighted population densities (WPD) for MSAs over in the census results thread, here are the Midwest MSAs over 1M people pulled out and ranked by WPD.


Chicago....9,011.9 ppsm

Milwaukee....5,023.7

Detroit....3,906.9
Minneapolis....3,784.4
Cleveland....3,676.9
Columbus....3,605.8

St. Louis....2,738.0
Cincinnati....2,658.2
Kansas City....2,561.4
Indianapolis....2,457.3
Grand Rapids....2,413.3


Source: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...postcount=3048

[the urban politician]

In the Midwest, I have the most experience seeing St Louis and Milwaukee, as well as Detroit.

I’ve seen Cleveland but not extensively. Never been to Minneapolis or Cincy.

So with this great disadvantage, I would say that Milwaukee has the most intact urbanism of the places I’ve seen, although a Cleveland has the grander downtown of the two. St Louis has the wonderful charm, but it’s urbanism seems to come in scattered pieces—you don’t have that continuous urbanism like you see in Milwaukee going up the lakefront.

I’m sure Minneapolis still wins hands down based on pics I’ve seen, current momentum, and what I’ve heard.

Is Indianapolis building a lot of urban districts these days?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by jpdivola

From a functional urbanism standpoint, I don't see how it could be anything other than MSP.

Although, I have often wonder had Detroit developed with a vernacular like St. Louis, would the city have held up a little better and be something more like Philly?

Detroit's issues were not its prewar built form. Looking at Philadelphia's map, the development of freeways through the city appears to have been very limited compared to what happened in Detroit. Detroit was thoroughly saturated with freeways over a very short period of time, and they were routed through what were the city's most densely populated neighborhoods at the time.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

From ChiSoxRox awesome work calculating weighted population densities (WPD) for MSAs over in the census results thread, here are the Midwest MSAs over 1M people pulled out and ranked by WPD.


Chicago....9,011.9 ppsm

Milwaukee....5,023.7

Detroit....3,906.9
Minneapolis....3,784.4
Cleveland....3,676.9
Columbus....3,605.8

St. Louis....2,738.0
Cincinnati....2,658.2
Kansas City....2,561.4
Indianapolis....2,457.3
Grand Rapids....2,413.3


Source: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...postcount=3048

On a similar note, I've managed to carve out city limit figures for weighted density.

Chicago: 21,235.2 ppsm
Minneapolis: 11,057.0
Milwaukee: 9,506.4
St. Paul: 7,803.4
St. Louis: 6,834.8
Cleveland: 6,523.5
Detroit: 6,213.4

Now, city limit comparisons aren't as fair as MSA comparisons IMO, but a nice confirmation that Minneapolis proper has pulled comfortably ahead of Milwaukee proper. In the MSA figures, the Twin Cities get knocked lower by how sprawly their suburbs get, while Milwaukee has one of the more compact suburban rings.

[Steely Dan]

I would be curious to see the combined WPD of Minneapolis and St. Paul together.

That might make for an interesting comparison with Milwaukee because Milwaukee is 96 sq. miles and the two twin cities together are 106 sq. miles.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I would be curious to see the combined WPD of Minneapolis and St. Paul together.

That might make for an interesting comparison with Milwaukee because Milwaukee is 96 sq. miles and the two twin cities together are 106 sq. miles.

Twin Cities combined: 9,689.9 ppsm

Milwaukee: 9,506.4

That's a difference of under 2%!

Maybe over the holidays, I'll try to calculate the 2010 weighted densities. With both Twins growing and Milwaukee shrinking, they very likely swapped positions in 2020.

[Steely Dan]

^ cool, thanks for doing that.

Very interesting how close they are.

And yeah, they almost certainly swapped places 2010 - 2020.

[a very long weekend]

Cleveland is very nice, but the answer to this (if it counts as mid-west) is Pittsburgh, which is the greatest non-Chicago town until you get over the Rockies.

[Steely Dan]

^ Pittsburgh is a great city, with lots of good quality neighborhood urbanism, but I don't think you'll find many folks around here that would place it in the "Midwest" camp.

And native Pittsburghers themselves are stridently adamant in their belief that their city is "NOT MIDWEST!!!!!!!"

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ Pittsburgh is a great city, with lots of good quality neighborhood urbanism, but I don't think you'll find many folks around here that would place it in the "Midwest" camp.

And native Pittsburghers themselves are stridently adamant in their belief that their city is "NOT MIDWEST!!!!!!!"

When I moved to Pittsburgh 16 years ago, I naively (as someone from the Northeast Corridor) thought of it as being midwestern. I was quickly corrected by locals, and now defend its non-midwesternness.

I think the bug that people have regarding this is due to the sports rivalry with Cleveland. People here have no issue if you call Pittsburgh Appalachian, for example, so it's not as if they are tied to a Northeastern identity.

But another contributing factor is it doesn't really share a lot of cultural commonalities with nearby parts of the Midwest. Cleveland may only be a two hour drive away, but it's a classic Great Lakes city, with nasal accents, wood-framed detached houses, wide streets, and a monumental downtown. None of this is similar to Pittsburgh at all. Pittsburgh does have cultural commonalities with the Lower Midwest, but the nearest major city with some commonalities is Cincinnati, and that's on the opposite side of Ohio.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I think the bug that people have regarding this is due to the sports rivalry with Cleveland. People here have no issue if you call Pittsburgh Appalachian, for example, so it's not as if they are tied to a Northeastern identity.

The Appalachians are part of the northeast, so that makes sense.