Would IL have benefitted by concentrating urban development in its central region?

[Steely Dan]

^ gotcha.

Kinda hard to believe that east st. Louis was the #4 municipality in the state back then.

Today it doesn't even crack the top 125.

What a slide.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Rockford probably belongs in that group too.

Disregarding Chicagoland and however you wanna parse out the metro east from the STL urban area, these are the largest urban areas in IL.


2010 UA population:

Rockford: 296,863

Quad Cities: 280,051*

Peoria: 266,921

Springfield: 161,316

Champaign: 145,361

Bloomington: 132,600

Decatur: 93,863


(*) Shared with Iowa; roughly half of it is on the Illinois side of the big river.

I actually forgot about Rockford, and havent spent much (or any other than driving through to Wisco) time there unlike most other Illinois metro areas.

[Centropolis]

The Metro East is incredibly dispersed and thus doesnt feel like 800k or whatever it is. At one time it was kind of centered on East St. Louis but for the most part (Belleville/Alton/etc notwithstanding) has always existed as disparate industrial satellites and company towns of and free from the early environmental regulations of St. Louis (many of the streets even laid out by St. Louis City Engineers).

[Xing]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

The Metro East is incredibly dispersed and thus doesnt feel like 800k or whatever it is. At one time it was kind of centered on East St. Louis but for the most part (Belleville/Alton/etc notwithstanding) has always existed as disparate industrial satellites and company towns of and free from the early environmental regulations of St. Louis (many of the streets even laid out by St. Louis City Engineers).

I was pretty depressed going home and seeing so many abandoned and closed buildings, probably a result of the pandemic. The one bright spot was Belleville. They fixed up the central part of the city in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Old buildings are breathing new life. There’s outdoor dining, new street lights, sidewalks, and stores I don’t even recognize. There’s also a pride fest now? Holy shit! When did the culture of the city make this big 180?

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Xing

I was pretty depressed going home and seeing so many abandoned and closed buildings, probably a result of the pandemic. The one bright spot was Belleville. They fixed up the central part of the city in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Old buildings are breathing new life. There’s outdoor dining, new street lights, sidewalks, and stores I don’t even recognize. There’s also a pride fest now? Holy shit! When did the culture of the city make this big 180?

Belleville is a gem. My mom lived there and took the bus to downtown STL in the early 70s maybe? When I moved back to St. Louis in the aughts I’d take metrolink to Belleville and back for pub crawls in the pre-uber era, lol.

[Centropolis]

A random reminder of the Illinois Terminal Railroads subway and El
operations from St. Louis.

subway in downtown stl

https://ceramembersblog.files.wordpr...01/cera337.jpg

el station in north st louis


https://ceramembersblog.files.wordpr...01/cera338.jpg

looks like it tied St. Louis and the Metro East up to Bloomington.

[Centropolis]

sorry, i fucked that up. anyway they’d string the cars together like regular rapid transit.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

The Metro East is incredibly dispersed and thus doesnt feel like 800k or whatever it is.

Even that 800K is somewhat dubious in my opinion.

The census bureau mashes together 8 counties to make up the IL portion of the STL MSA, but 5 of those counties are extremely rural.

In a more real sense, the metro east consists of 3 counties:
Madison, St. Clair, and Monroe, with a total 2020 population of 557,138.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Wigs

:

That's interesting about the central Illinois triangle. I never realized all of those cities aligned like that. It would be prudent to market it as one region to hopefully one day turn into a powerhouse like say a Midwest Raleigh-Durham.

While it might be tempting to make comparisons to NC's very successful Research Triangle, the distances involved between the two sets of cities are very different.


as the crow flies, center to center:

raleigh to durham: 21 miles

durham to chapel hill: 10 miles

chapel hill to raleigh: 24 miles


vs.

springfield to champaign: 78 miles

champaign to peoria: 81 miles

peoria to springfield: 61 miles



The 5 IL "triangle cities" are simply too far away from each other to build any real singular synergy like the NC research triangle has been able to do.

For instance, the research triangle cities are all close enough to each other to use RDU as their main airport, which has since developed into a major airport with LOADS of non-stop flights to cities all across the country, and even some overseas routes too! The IL triangle cities, on the other hand, each all have their own small and relatively insignificant little airport with extremely limited flight options to only a handful of domestic destinations (a couple of hub cities and a couple FL vacation cities).

[Wigs]

Steely, when I recently learned about the Central Illinois triangle I think I put on my Daniel Burnham sized fantasy hat and delusional-ly thought "wow, what a great opportunity to market this region as one" with a Central Illinois Triangle international airport and cluster of eds and meds, and whatever unique strengths this region in particular has.
What is the approximate population of this triangle region?

Lincoln, where I-55 and I-155 meet is the fantasy airport hub location. Charlotte is the CLT. This is CIT!




Can you recalculate the distances?

[Steely Dan]

Maybe they should build the airport in Atlanta.

Afterall, the one in Georgia has done pretty well with their airport.

Originally Posted by Wigs

What is the approximate population of this triangle region?

The 5 UAs (you know how I love those) add up to 800K, so if you include all of the corn people in between them as well, maybe around 1M total.

[Wigs]

Can't forget the corn people. Or the pig people. The ones that raise pigs or hogs, and the really rural folk that start to resemble them
My brother swears he made a rare encounter of "pig people" in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.

800k-1M is a nice sized region.
Which in your opinion are the best cities of the bunch?

[SIGSEGV]

I think almost everyone would say Champaign?

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I think almost everyone would say Champaign?

And with the universities (U of I and IL State) in the area and the legacy industries (Cat and Deere, as well as State Farm and the state capital), the much of the area could probably undergo a revival by attracting some high tech, manufacturing and logistic facilities if it had a decent airport within the vicinity.

[SIGSEGV]

Currently Springfield and Bloomington / Normal see 5 Amtrak trains a day (4 Lincoln Service, some of which continue to KC, 1 Texas Eagle) , while Champaign sees 3 (Illini/Saluki + CONO). Decatur and Peoria have 0, though there are some plans to reconstitute the Rock Island line to Peoria (which would also serve the I&M canal cities of Morris, LaSalle and Ottawa, as well as Starved Rock State Park).

I propose the following new service:

2-3 a day from Jacksonville to Chicago via Springfield, Decatur and Champaign. This brings Champaign to 5-6 / day and adds service to Decatur and Jacksonville, as well as giving Springfield additional Chicago frequencies.

It might be fun to entertain a route from the Quad Cities to Indianapolis via Galesburg, Peoria, Bloomington, Champaign, Danville and Crawfordsville, to fully connect the downstate triangle, but this would require restoration of the RoW or circuitous routing, and I doubt the parallel I-74 has any traffic at all outside of maybe Indianapolis

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Which in your opinion are the best cities of the bunch?

Champaign/Urbana is in the best shape because of UofI. Good things are bound to happen to your city when you're blessed with one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the Midwest.

Bloomington/Normal also seems to be doing ok, as long as they still have State Farm as their foundational corporation. And ISU is a very significant asset as well, even if it's not in the same league as UofI.

The others aren't doing so hot, with Decatur in particular really struggling in its post-ADM era.

Peoria is the largest of the five, and the best from a legacy city perspective. As the oldest European settlement in the state, with a founding by the French in 1691 (which is wicked old for this part of the country), it has the best bones to work with, but Caterpillar's departure was a pretty big blow for the city.

Had IL picked Peoria for the state capital back in the day, and also placed the flagship state university there, Peoria would have very likely blossomed into an IL version of Madison, but the state went with the dispersed model of spreading amenities around, much to central IL's long term detriment, IMO.


Oh well........ at least the state has Chicago.

[Xing]

^After making the incredibly boring drive, or train ride from Chicago, it becomes increasingly apparent that the depressed state of some Illinois towns tends to get worse the further from Chicago you are, ending in absolutely dreadful climax that is Cairo, Illinois(pronounced Kay-roe).

Oh, and btw, while you can get an awesome photo in front of a Superman statue, Metropolis, Illinois is nothing like the one in Superman. Lol.