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  #61  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:08 PM
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Cincinnati is where it is because of geologic anomaly known as the "upper alluvial plain" that is a relic of the retreating Wisconsin glacier from the last Ice Age. What this means is the plain upon which the town (and now downtown) was built sits about 30 feet higher than the rest of any other flood plain for 100+ miles in either direction.
Which was/is VERY important considering the Ohio river's long history of massive flooding.
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  #62  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:15 PM
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Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago View Post
Ignoring hundreds of years of urban development and historical regional rule, it always puzzled me why Frankfurt am Main wasn't located 25km west on the Rhein-Main intersection across the river from Mainz. . . the whole area functions fairly well as a regional urban agglomeration today, but I always thought it would have been a bigger city - possibly the biggest city - in Germany if the municipalities of Mainz, Frankfurt and Wiesbaden were all closer together. . .

. . .
Good point. Frankfurt's prominence has always been political or financial; there's no physical reason for it to be where it is instead of closer to the Rhine.
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  #63  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:28 PM
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If it was on the Rhine instead of the Main would they call it Rhinehattan instead of Mainhattan?
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  #64  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:31 PM
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Originally Posted by The North One View Post
What are you talking about?? How is it cut off from surrounding population? Like as if it's on an island or something? Nothing you said here makes any sense.
I think I made the point pretty clearly. It is located on the periphery of the metropolitan area. This is an unusual orientation for the central hub of a major city.
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  #65  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:39 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I think I made the point pretty clearly. It is located on the periphery of the metropolitan area. This is an unusual orientation for the central hub of a major city.
Any metro area that's on some sort of border (including oceans and lakes) will have its downtown core "on the periphery".

Detroit looks exactly like Toronto, the curve of the "unbuildable/inaccessible area" is almost perfectly identical, even including its cardinal points orientation; if you laid one on top of the other you'd see they're physically identical. They can't sprawl south nor southeast, but they do sprawl north and northwest.
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  #66  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:44 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I think I made the point pretty clearly. It is located on the periphery of the metropolitan area. This is an unusual orientation for the central hub of a major city.
I mean, it's bounded by water and the Canadian border to the south, and the metro area similarly had no room to expand east because of Lake St. Clair/Lake Erie/Canada.
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  #67  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:53 PM
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Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007 View Post
If downtown Detroit had been located here downtown Windsor (or some other big city) would probably have ended up here. Then in addition to the Detroit metropolis hugging the western shore of Lake St Claire, you could have metro Windsor hugging the southern shore of Lake St Claire.
Metro Windsor already hugs the southern shore of Lake St. Clair, all the way out to Chatham Kent.
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  #68  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 3:55 PM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
Any metro area that's on some sort of border (including oceans and lakes) will have its downtown core "on the periphery".

Detroit looks exactly like Toronto, the curve of the "unbuildable/inaccessible area" is almost perfectly identical, even including its cardinal points orientation; if you laid one on top of the other you'd see they're physically identical. They can't sprawl south nor southeast, but they do sprawl north and northwest.
That's not really true. NYC, L.A., San Francisco, Miami, and maybe Boston and Seattle, are all located on coasts but have developed area radiating in most directions away from downtown.

Also, as I said above, Toronto and Chicago are located on coasts that are more straight so development goes out from downtown more evenly in either direction.
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  #69  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:07 PM
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if we pretend that Windsor is just more great lake, and adjust all of the shores to a generally east-west orientation, downtown Detroit's location relative to the rest of its city/metro doesn't appear to be radically different from the other major great lakes cities.


these are all same scale:










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  #70  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:11 PM
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^Detroit looks much more curved to me in those photos. You can also see it in how the street grid in all of those other cities is more clearly oriented to the coastline than it is in Detroit.
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  #71  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:15 PM
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Originally Posted by softee View Post
It would be pretty awesome if Toronto and Buffalo were across the Niagara River from each other on the South shore of Lake Ontario.
Personally I like the idea of Toronto being where Hamilton is. Better, larger harbour, the escarpment would make the city really unique, closer to the US and buffalo, more land around it to sprawl out as the lake doesn't cut off 1/2 the land in the radius around the core, closer to 1/4, marginally better climate, etc.

Seeing subway lines running up the escarpment would have been fun too.
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  #72  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:18 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
^Detroit looks much more curved to me in those photos.
sure, it's not as straight-edged as, say, chicago's lakeshore, but as i said before, the relationship of downtown Detroit to the rest of its city/metro doesn't appear to be radically different from the other major great lakes cities.

it's a downtown on the very edge of its MSA. yeah, it ain't Columbus or Indy, but it's not that much of an outlier arrangement, especially considering that all of the other major great lakes cities follow a generally similar pattern.
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  #73  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:25 PM
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Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere View Post
Personally I like the idea of Toronto being where Hamilton is. Better, larger harbour, the escarpment would make the city really unique, closer to the US and buffalo, more land around it to sprawl out as the lake doesn't cut off 1/2 the land in the radius around the core, closer to 1/4, marginally better climate, etc.

Seeing subway lines running up the escarpment would have been fun too.
Why is Toronto where it is? Or, to reframe the question, why is Toronto the big city instead of any of the other Lake Ontario cities?
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  #74  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:29 PM
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Another alternate location for Detroit could be at the southern end of the Detroit River, maybe around here or here. Then the metro could spread to the south, and merge with metro Toledo and create a bi-state metropolis. Windsor could be here and you could have a really cool mega-long suspension bridge across the Detroit River somewhere around here.
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  #75  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:32 PM
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What a bizarre but fun topic. For Atlanta I always thought it too bad that the city wasn't located on the Chattahoochee which runs on the eastern edge of the city. Not a big river, but very pretty in many parts just to the north of the Perimeter. The only river now running through Atlanta is the I85/75 connector; a riverwalk would be much nicer.
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  #76  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:37 PM
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Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007 View Post
Another alternate location for Detroit could be at the southern end of the Detroit River, maybe around here or here. Then the metro could spread to the south, and merge with metro Toledo and create a bi-state metropolis. Windsor could be here and you could have a really cool mega-long suspension bridge across the Detroit River somewhere around here.
I like Detroit on Grosse Ile and Windsor on Fighting Island. Make an international Gotham.
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  #77  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:39 PM
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northern nevada and northern indiana would be good places for a big city.
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  #78  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:51 PM
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Originally Posted by dave8721 View Post
Downtown LA seems like it would fit nicely where Downtown Long Beach is.
I agree. For a country with thousands of miles of coastline, it surprises me that we only have arguably 10 major waterfront metros, 3 of which are in the great lakes.
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  #79  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:52 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
sure, it's not as straight-edged as, say, chicago's lakeshore, but as i said before, the relationship of downtown Detroit to the rest of its city/metro doesn't appear to be radically different from the other major great lakes cities.

it's a downtown on the very edge of its MSA. yeah, it ain't Columbus or Indy, but it's not that much of an outlier arrangement, especially considering that all of the other major great lakes cities follow a generally similar pattern.
Resurfacing original comment:

Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Aesthetically I like it where it's at, but I think downtown Detroit would be better off if it developed in a location that is not as cut off from surrounding population. Because of the border, it has about the worst location that you could conceive of bad relative to the regional population. All of the big Great Lakes cities have a similar problem, but Detroit's might be the worst due to the curvature of the river/coast line. Chicago, Toronto, Milwaukee, and Cleveland could develop pretty symmetrically along the coast going away from downtown.

Most other cities don't have isolated downtowns. Even on the coasts, all of the downtowns took root away from the coast with developable land in most directions away from downtown.
I said that all of the Great Lakes cities have the phenomenon but that downtown Detroit appears to have the worst orientation. If Windsor were in the U.S. this wouldn't be an issue because the sprawl could radiate out more evenly away from downtown.
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  #80  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2022, 4:55 PM
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Originally Posted by pdxtex View Post
I agree. For a country with thousands of miles of coastline, it surprises me that we only have arguably 10 major waterfront metros, 3 of which are in the great lakes.
im suprised downtown portland isnt on the colombia river.
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