Declining Metro Areas

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It's not really odd. The Detroit area is much wealthier and a comparatively much bigger immigration magnet. The region functions more like a Sunbelt sprawler than a typical Eastern metro. In contrast to Buffalo and Pittsburgh, the region has tons of McMansion sprawl and Edge City stuff. The auto industry has always been a huge magnet.

Buffalo and Pittsburgh are more traditional Eastern cities, and there's very little sprawl of recent vintage. Both cities have stronger city propers, with not much going on in suburbia, relatively speaking.

A lot of Detroit looks like Dallas, not just in built form, but demographics. Endless McMansions with tons of South Asians and Arabs, giant freeway-like surface arterials, megachurches, drive-thru everything, bleak, relatively treeless townships relentlessly consuming farmland. Places like Canton Township, Novi, Lyon Township, Commerce Township, Rochester Hills, etc. Kinda a Dallas-Toronto sprawl mashup, minus the Dallas Mexicans and the Toronto apartment blocks.

Pittsburgh just looks like the biggest city in Appalachia, Buffalo is basically just another Upstate city and both kinda feel frozen in place outside the healthier cores. This is a good thing, BTW. Nice to not have 100 Sams Clubs and endless McCrapBoxes.

Fun fact from the other thread, which I didn’t know until doing this: Pittsburgh was one of the first major cities in the United States where the collar communities were more populous in sum than the city itself.