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  #21  
Old Posted May 26, 2022, 5:26 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by pdxtex View Post
Michigan is full of nice small towns. Dexter, Chelsea, Plymouth, Northville. Clarkston, Mt. Pleasant, Midland, Marquette, Traverse City, South Haven. Tons. Traverse City is arguably the nicest city in Michigan if leisure is your goal.
Plymouth, Northville and Clarkston are Detroit suburbs. They're basically McMansion sprawl with a cute historic main street. Northville is really affluent, upper class sprawl. Plymouth a bit more modest, Clarkston moreso.

Dexter and Chelsea serve roughly the same role for Ann Arbor.

And I wouldn't call Midland or Mt. Pleasant quaint. Marquette has a really nice, intact core, but not particularly touristy or quaint. Strangely downtown Marquette has (or had) a great New Orleans po-boy shop & accompanying French Quarter-style bar. It also has a nice working harbor.
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  #22  
Old Posted May 26, 2022, 5:44 PM
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I'm surprised nobody from Chicagoland mentioned Woodstock.

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  #23  
Old Posted May 26, 2022, 6:01 PM
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Peoria seems close to the worst-case scenario for a mid-sized Midwest city TBH. A few surviving blocks downtown, ringed by highways, and then ringed by ruined neighborhoods. The whole area to the west of Downtown seems like it was urban renewed to make a giant industrial park (pretty clearly post-WW2 road pattern), and the residential neighborhood just to the northeast seems to have been destroyed by blight (70% or so vacant lots). There's still some vitality around Bradley University, but I wouldn't call the area "urban" at all - it's pretty classic/boring early 20th century streetcar suburban, with a crappy business district full of parking lots.

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Layfayette, IN. Seems like it has a nice downtown, which blends seamlessly into the surrounding neighborhoods. There's even a few blocks of rowhouse-like stuff.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 26, 2022, 6:41 PM
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One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Layfayette, IN. Seems like it has a nice downtown, which blends seamlessly into the surrounding neighborhoods. There's even a few blocks of rowhouse-like stuff.
central Lafayatte is quite nice with a postcard perfect courthouse square.

it's just a bit of a shame that Purdue got sited on the other side of the wabash over in lackluster West Lafayette.

from memorial mall, the heart of campus, over to the courthouse in downtown Lafayette, it's over a 1 mile long walk, and with the wabash right in the middle creating a physical manifestation of the town/gown barrier, Lafayette unfortunately doesn't get as much of the synergistic benefits of being home to such a major university had the campus been located more directly downtown adjacent, such as an ann arbor arrangement.
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  #25  
Old Posted May 26, 2022, 7:55 PM
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Wooster, Ohio has done a nice job with their downtown. It's also never lost population. You also have a well-respected college adjacent to downtown with Ohio State's agricultural campus there, too. Many beautiful, turn-of-the-century homes just north of the downtown area. The county fairgrounds are within walking distance of downtown. Doesn't get much more Midwestern than that! It's also surrounded by Amish Country. J.M. Smuckers (Smuckers, Jif, Folgers, and many more) has its HQ in the neighboring village of Orrville.



From: https://www.woosteroh.com/planning

Last edited by aderwent; May 26, 2022 at 8:05 PM.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 26, 2022, 8:37 PM
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I've posted in a thread similar to this about Granville, Ohio. A beautiful New England-style town just east of Columbus. Home to Denison University, it's in a topographically pleasing area formerly home to the Fort Ancient culture. Alligator Mound is right in town with the larger Newark Earthworks of the Hopewell Culture in the neighboring Newark; a Columbus suburb of more than 50,000 with a rapidly improving downtown itself. Granville finds itself at a crossroads. It's in a county developing manufacturing at a staggering pace in the Midwest's fastest growing metro. Meanwhile it wants to remain the quaint, exclusive, rural town it is.



From: https://www.discounthotels.com/usa/o...granville-ohio



From: https://mobile-cuisine.com/off-the-w...uck-ordinance/
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  #27  
Old Posted May 26, 2022, 10:24 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Plymouth, Northville and Clarkston are Detroit suburbs. They're basically McMansion sprawl with a cute historic main street. Northville is really affluent, upper class sprawl. Plymouth a bit more modest, Clarkston moreso.

Dexter and Chelsea serve roughly the same role for Ann Arbor.

And I wouldn't call Midland or Mt. Pleasant quaint. Marquette has a really nice, intact core, but not particularly touristy or quaint. Strangely downtown Marquette has (or had) a great New Orleans po-boy shop & accompanying French Quarter-style bar. It also has a nice working harbor.
Plymouth was settled in the 1820s. Anyway my greater point is Michigan is filled with oodles of small towns from the 1800s with nice business districts. Id say our alma mater is surprisingly quaint. Battle Creek maybe not so much.
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  #28  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 3:25 AM
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Sandusky looked pretty depressed to me, unless there's been some radical change in the last 15 years. I remember taking a side trip to a pretty dead downtown last time I went to Cedar Point. Looks like a typical Eastern Great Lakes industrial small city.
To answer your question, Sandusky has had a radical change in the last 15 years and is far more vibrant and "hip" than it used to be in, say, 2005. But this shouldn't be surprising as the urban-renaissance has hit pretty much everywhere.
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  #29  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 2:30 PM
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Plymouth was settled in the 1820s. Anyway my greater point is Michigan is filled with oodles of small towns from the 1800s with nice business districts. Id say our alma mater is surprisingly quaint. Battle Creek maybe not so much.
If you look at the prewar Detroit interurban map, all of the rail hubs have/had a 19th century town center. Below is the map from 1919. All of the hubs have a shaded box around them:



source: https://detroitography.com/2014/12/1...an-lines-1915/
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  #30  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 10:05 PM
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America was more urban 100 years ago. Sad man.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 5:07 AM
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America was more urban 100 years ago. Sad man.
Well, remember that fully 49% of Americans lived in rural areas in 1920 (with 51% in urban areas). In 2020, only 19.3% lived in rural areas. It is fair to say that America was more urban--and more rural--100 years ago.
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  #32  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 3:41 PM
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I'd nominate the following cities:

Muscatine, IA:Muscatine, Iowa by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr

Stillwater, MN (along the St. Croix River in eastern part of metro Twin Cities):Looking north on Main Street, Stillwater, Mn by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr

Red Wing, MN ( a small city with bluffs along the Mississippi River):Red Wing, Minnesota by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr

LaCrosse, WI: This Mississippi River city has a great collection of older buildings in their downtown--a little reminiscent of PittsburghDowntown LaCrosse, Wisconsin by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr

Duluth, MN:historic Duluth buildings by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr

Chillicothe, Ohio:Chillicothe, Ohio by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr

Wooster, Ohio (Charming little College town, with an attractive downtown):Liberty Street, downtown Wooster, OH by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr

Wapakoneta, Ohio (Hometown of Neil Armstrong, but also has great collection of older buildings):Downtown Wapakoneta, Ohio by Todd Jacobson, on Flickr
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  #33  
Old Posted May 29, 2022, 10:27 PM
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Ohio has a ton of quaint little college towns: Granville, Oxford, Athens, and Gambier to name a few
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  #34  
Old Posted May 29, 2022, 10:57 PM
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What about Winona? It looks pretty nice from above at least ..
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  #35  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 12:18 PM
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I have anyways thought Ottawa IL looked pretty nice, especially the area around the main courthouse square. Rockford also has very good bones downtown, though certainly a good amount of destroyed areas as well.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 6:59 PM
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I have anyways thought Ottawa IL looked pretty nice, especially the area around the main courthouse square. Rockford also has very good bones downtown, though certainly a good amount of destroyed areas as well.
Yeah the smaller towns along the I&M canal (Morris, Ottawa, LaSalle, Lockport) all have niceish downtowns.
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  #37  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 11:20 PM
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What about Winona? It looks pretty nice from above at least ..
The Mississippi River corridor from the Twin Cities down to St. Louis is full of little river gems.

Burlington, Iowa (the B in BNSF)

On the tiny end: McGregor, Iowa
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  #38  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 2:45 AM
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What about Winona? It looks pretty nice from above at least ..
Winona has some good bones but its downtown is fairly run down. It has some good topography though. I took some photos there in 2014:







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  #39  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 4:54 PM
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I can't comment firsthand, but people have told me that Cape Girardeau, MO is supposed to be nice. . . maybe someone who's actually been there can confirm?

. . .
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  #40  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 5:08 PM
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One thing I'm noticing in the suggestion is "cute as a button" downtown commercial areas are quite common. However, the level of urbanism typically dies back even a block from the downtown area. Typically you see either a sort of no-man's land of parking lots, or quasi-suburban (or even real suburban) residential neighborhoods with detached single-family homes, complete with front yards, 20+ foot setbacks from the street, etc.

I realize you're not going to get rowhouses across much of the Midwest, but what are some good examples of historic, highly urban residential neighborhoods in smaller cities? Someplace with tight urban streets, minimal setback from the street, multi-family walkups, etc.?
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