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

[Buckeye Native 001]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

of the major interior river cities where the other side of the river is in an entirely different state (STL, KC, memphis, Louisville, cincy), cincy seems like it fared the best with covington/newport.

Newport isn't Gary or East St Louis, but it was in pretty rough shape for a while in the mid-to-late 20th century. Huge mob presence until the 1960s but none of the industrial abandonment like the steel mills or other kinds of factories.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I mean, is Downstate IL an obvious tourist draw? No doubt there are some interesting locales, but most of Downstate is just an endless cornfield for industrial farming.

Yes, deep southern IL has some elevation and forest, but that's a long way from Chicagoland, much further from very pretty scenery in MI and WI.

I’ve only seen far southern IL marketing campaigns on TV in far southern Illinois. The forested/touristy/hilly area is really small in comparison to the Missouri Ozarks (and doesnt have the prolific wide spring fed rivers nor the Lake of the Ozarks/Table Rock/Branson shit) and western KY has KY lake which is a pull (away from southern IL). Southern IL doesnt have a larger metro area or three fueling tourist economies. Up North/Wisco/Ozarks/KY-TN are all drawing dollars away from IL.

[Centropolis]

Illinois is basically an extractive colony for Chicago-all roads and rails converge on Chicago like big long fingers. From black soil agriculture and its immense support economy, to huge quantities of high sulfur flatland coal (still being shipped down the Mississippi to China (?) from near St. Louis) to (at one time) yellow pine and rarish mineral extraction in the far south.

[Centropolis]

Not to mention that a couple of the sizable central Illinois cities are company towns for these gargantuan Caterpillar facilities and the smaller businesses that solely exist to service them, etc. Being a company town of a successful manufacturer will get you a few hundred thousand but not Millions unless you’re Detroit I guess.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by TWAK

Cairo is certainly a place that would be great for a city game like skylines or Sim City 4. Not sure about real life though and Richland, WA is similar in position.

There’s a custom DLC map in Cities Skylines for Cairo you can download on the Steam Workshop.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I imagine a 10% growth/decade Chicago would have sprawl somewhere and this might hit Gary eventually.

Chicago sprawl follows a favored quarter pattern to the north and northwest, with a bit to the west as well. The south past the city is mostly empty, and building suburban subdivisions where people have to drive to the Loop to work while passing through urban decay and crime is a hard sell especially when the vast majority of moneyed peoples are over an hour away on the opposite side of the metro. Also, Gary is the saddest place I have ever been to more than once.

[wwmiv]

Delete

[edale]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

Newport isn't Gary or East St Louis, but it was in pretty rough shape for a while in the mid-to-late 20th century. Huge mob presence until the 1960s but none of the industrial abandonment like the steel mills or other kinds of factories.

Newport and Covington aren't without their issues, but yeah, they are in a totally different league than cities like East St. Louis, Gary, etc. Both have lots of great urbanism, wealthy neighborhoods, viable business districts, etc.

Newport actually did have a steel mill on the banks of the Licking River, though! Newport Steel Corp made steel in the SW portion of the city until 2001. You can see it here.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Yup, I'm an idiot and forgot about that. I remember parts of Monmouth Street looking pretty rough in the early to mid 1990s.

If not for the Ohio, Covington along Madison Avenue looks sort of like an extension of Cincinnati.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Chicago sprawl follows a favored quarter pattern to the north and northwest, with a bit to the west as well. The south past the city is mostly empty

chicagoland absolutely sprawls more to the north, northwest and west than it does to the south, but to say that "the south past the city is mostly empty" is woefully incorrect.

the south cook county burbs + will county are home to 1,402,805 people.

and the two core counties of NWI (lake & porter) are home to additional 671,915 people.

so while chicagoland may not sprawl as much south of the city as it does in the other directions, with over 2 million folks calling the I-80 corridor portion of the metro area home, it is definitely not "mostly empty".

here's Steger, a southland burb that's a full 12 miles south of 138th street: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4519.../data=!3m1!1e3

a couple miles south of Steger is where the cornfields begin.

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by goat314

Honestly, I think Illinois would benefit from making the Metro East (St. Louis area) stronger. That area of the state has a large airport with capacity, an Air Force base, a Unesco World Heritage site (Cahokia mounds), major logistics infrastructure, light rail access to a major city, plenty of developable land etc. It's really a shame that the area is stagnant at best and don't get me started on East St. Louis.

I'd be down for Illinois annexing the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Just saying.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...i-anymore.html

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the metro east has got to be one of the most disjointed and uncentered significant sub-regions of a major MSA in the country.

ESL's nearly 80% population drop from 1950 peak is one of the worst urban implosions in american hostory.

and when they did build a large airport there, they built it 20 miles east of the river, close to absolutely nothing and no one.

Back in the 1950s and early 60s, it didn't used to be that way. Belleville and Edwardsville were the further out county seats while East St. Louis, Granite City, and Alton were the major population centers right by the river. Now they've experienced decades of population decline, and the population has sprawled further and further east to this very day, leaving a hollowed out core along the river.

As for the airport, its location has everything to do with Scott Air Force Base.

Originally Posted by Yuri

If Chicago started to grow again, then Gary could get some spillover as well.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the sprawl would occur in other parts of NWI long before any of that hypothetical growth meaningfully seeped into gary proper.

the huge elephant in the room here (and one that you may not fully appreciate as an outsider) is the racial dynamics at play.

Steely hit the nail on the head with the bolded bit. Generally speaking, predominantly African American neighborhoods in Chicago don't gentrify. This article is from 2014, but things haven't changed too much:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswi...gentrification

Things aren't very different here in St. Louis either. This is why you have dirt poor neighborhoods separated by one street (Delmar Boulevard) from some of St. Louis' most desirable neighborhoods. This is why you can see the line of historical white flight from north city into north county into St. Charles County as the African American population followed.

In the Metro East, this is why people like to call Belleville (the largest city in Southern Illinois) the next East St. Louis, as people freak out and move further east into O'Fallon and former cornfields because black people are moving up the hill into Belleville from East St. Louis and Cahokia Heights.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

No... Brownfields can stay contaminated for centuries or longer. The city of Detroit has been sitting on the Uniroyal Tire factory brownfield site for over 40 years, partly because the land has to be remediated before it can be developed. It is theoretically a prime piece of real estate as it is located on the city's waterfront right next to the bridge to Belle Isle Park, but no private developer can justify the cost to develop it.

The cost of remediation for the property will be well into the 10s of millions of dollars. This would be a large line item even in a city with high land values, like NYC. In a city like Detroit putting 10s of millions of dollars into remediating a piece of property is basically just charity work, since the land values don't support that investment.

The way to get around that is what happened in NYC:
1. Lobby to designate the area as a superfund site. When that happens, the federal government provides the $$$ to do the remedial work. This is what happened to Gowanus in NYC.
2. Market the site as some kind of "green initiative" "climate" "global warming" environmental thing, and hope for a non-profit grant or government funding from some kind of climate bill. You'd be surprised how many minute pet projects and grift manages to get on as a line item in those big Congress omnibus bills. For this, you'd have to lobby your congressmen to put it on the bill. Its still a lot cheaper than do the remedial work yourself.
^The issue is the project and land have to be big enough to justify years of this paperwork/political/lobbying circus. It may be worth it in NYC when billions of dollars are at stake, but not so much for other cheaper areas like Detroit.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Emprise du Lion

I'd be down for Illinois annexing the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Just saying.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...i-anymore.html

Sure, we can trade STL + STL County for Alexander County, so that Missouruh can consolidate the Cape Girardeau MSA.

[SIGSEGV]

One other consequence of having so many midsize cities in central Illinois is the insane number of interstate highways. Downstate Illinois is probably the most over-highwayed part of the country.

[Steely Dan]

^ I-57 past Champaign is wholely unnecessary.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ I-57 past Champaign is wholely unnecessary.

As are I-72 and I-74

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ I-57 past Champaign is wholely unnecessary.

I’m sure it was built just as the Illinois Central was built (to bypass St. Louis southbound to Memphis/NOLA) but funnily we rely on it to access Nashville/ATL from St. Louis when its abundantly clear that it was not designed for that.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Gantz

^The issue is the project and land have to be big enough to justify years of this paperwork/political/lobbying circus. It may be worth it in NYC when billions of dollars are at stake, but not so much for other cheaper areas like Detroit.

Gowanus is a goldmine. It's situated between two of the most expensive neighborhoods in the U.S. (Park Slope and Cobble Hill) and has a nice canal. And Park Slope and Cobble Hill are landmarked and NIMBYified so practically nothing can be built, pushing all the demand to Gowanus.

So, yeah, it's booming post-Superfund, but not sure if too many places would follow that example.

[Blitz]

A few weeks ago I was on Amtrak from St. Louis to Chicago and found it quite enjoyable going through cities like Springfield and Bloomington. The area has always reminded me a lot of Southwestern Ontario.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Gantz

The way to get around that is what happened in NYC:
1. Lobby to designate the area as a superfund site. When that happens, the federal government provides the $$$ to do the remedial work. This is what happened to Gowanus in NYC.
2. Market the site as some kind of "green initiative" "climate" "global warming" environmental thing, and hope for a non-profit grant or government funding from some kind of climate bill. You'd be surprised how many minute pet projects and grift manages to get on as a line item in those big Congress omnibus bills. For this, you'd have to lobby your congressmen to put it on the bill. Its still a lot cheaper than do the remedial work yourself.
^The issue is the project and land have to be big enough to justify years of this paperwork/political/lobbying circus. It may be worth it in NYC when billions of dollars are at stake, but not so much for other cheaper areas like Detroit.

Yeah, that last part. What's happening in Gowanus is stunning. I always think about Detroit whenever I'm at Industry City or looking at the towers popping up on the waterfront around there. The Packard Plant would have been perfect for Detroit's version of Industry City.