HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
     
     
  #1  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 2:59 AM
Steely Dan's Avatar
Steely Dan Steely Dan is offline
devout Pizzatarian
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Lincoln Square, Chicago
Posts: 29,634
Historical Ring Cities

this thread is about satellite cities from the 19th century or prior.

chicago has 4 older ring cities from the 19th century that have since been gobbled up by latter-half 20th century sprawl.

what's kinda weird, though, is the almost perfect symmetry in their distances from downtown chicago.



- Waukegan, IL (pop. 89,321): ~35 miles NNW of downtown chicago (incorporated in 1849)

- Elgin, IL (pop. 114,797): ~35 miles WNW of downtown chicago (incorporated in 1854)

- Aurora, IL (pop. 180,542): ~35 miles WSW of downtown chicago (incorporated in 1845)

- Joliet, IL (pop. 150,362): ~35 miles SW of downtown chicago (incorporated in 1852)



all 4 of these cities started out as independent places; not subordinate to chicago in their early development in the 19th century. they are not "burbs" in the traditional sense.

but it is interesting to me that all of them seemed to form at roughly the same time and distance from the big alpha city in a near-perfect ring, and were then consequently consumed by sprawl.


does your metro area follow a similar pattern of a ring of older, larger, but historically independent cities that have been swallowed up?
__________________
"Missing middle" housing can be a great middle ground for many middle class families.

Last edited by Steely Dan; Oct 14, 2021 at 6:26 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #2  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 3:08 AM
JManc's Avatar
JManc JManc is offline
Dryer lint inspector
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Houston/ SF Bay Area
Posts: 37,783
Houston has very few but Galveston, Pasadena, Pearland, Texas City and Sugar Land to name a few. There are others as well but other than Galveston, most might have been founded in the 1800's as separate communities with their own histories but incorporated much later and became suburban Houston.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #3  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 1:51 PM
Kenneth's Avatar
Kenneth Kenneth is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 264
Detroit inner satellites are: 25miles out
Mt Clemens, Pontiac, Plymouth, Flat Rock
Detroit has outter satellites: 50 miles out
Port Huron, Flint, Ann Arbor, Toledo
__________________
No one place is better han the next
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #4  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 2:10 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: New York
Posts: 9,782
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenneth View Post
Detroit inner satellites are: 25miles out
Mt Clemens, Pontiac, Plymouth, Flat Rock
Detroit has outter satellites: 50 miles out
Port Huron, Flint, Ann Arbor, Toledo
I would consider Monroe to be the satellite instead of Flat Rock. Monroe was incorporated in the early 19th century.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #5  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 2:50 PM
sopas ej's Avatar
sopas ej sopas ej is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
Posts: 6,846
Los Angeles has quite a few; the big ones that pop out in my mind are Pasadena, Glendale, and Long Beach, all founded in the 19th Century (though Glendale incorporated as a city in 1906), but many of the towns surrounding Los Angeles started out independently from Los Angeles. Some of them were bona fide agricultural towns, and some of them started out as real estate developments that were in cahoots with the expanding Pacific Electric streetcar system.

Some of these small towns had aspirations of becoming bigger cities, though, even bigger than Los Angeles. Alhambra is one of them. The context is that in the late 1880s, though LA was the county seat of LA County, it still basically was a small town amidst agriculture. Alhambra wanted to create a "Greater Alhambra," and early on started annexing land, and wanted to create a sewer farm outside of its city limits; the people living next to the sewer farm said "Oh HELLZ no" and that's how the cities of Monterey Park and Montebello were created; their incorporations prevented the sewer farm from being built.

Long Beach also started annexing land, and did those sneaky "shoestring annexations," which would encircle large acreages of undeveloped land or agricultural land. When the Lakewood Park Corporation started building acres of tract homes on a former lima bean field encircled by some of Long Beach's shoestrings, Long Beach had plans to annex that development, but instead, the residents formed the city of Lakewood. Pasadena also did somewhat of a shoestring annexation into the mountains north of it, to insure sources of water (many communities allowed themselves to be annexed by the city of LA to access LA's DWP water). Here's Pasadena's city limits; you can see two sections that snake up into the San Gabriel Mountains: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pa....1445155?hl=en

Of course in the early 1900s, LA did a shoestring annexation so that it could annex San Pedro for the Port of Los Angeles.

Shoestring annexations were made illegal in California in the 1950s, after 2 very notable shoestring annexations: Santa Barbara did a shoestring to annex its airport, and San Diego did it to annex San Ysidro, to be on the international border. What makes these shoestring annexations particularly notable is that the shoestring goes under water!

Santa Barbara:

ahstamant.com

San Diego; the shoestring goes through San Diego Bay:

sandiego.gov
__________________
"I guess the only time people think about injustice is when it happens to them."

~ Charles Bukowski
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #6  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 4:32 PM
LosAngelesSportsFan's Avatar
LosAngelesSportsFan LosAngelesSportsFan is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 7,838
Quote:
Originally Posted by sopas ej View Post
Los Angeles has quite a few; the big ones that pop out in my mind are Pasadena, Glendale, and Long Beach, all founded in the 19th Century (though Glendale incorporated as a city in 1906), but many of the towns surrounding Los Angeles started out independently from Los Angeles. Some of them were bona fide agricultural towns, and some of them started out as real estate developments that were in cahoots with the expanding Pacific Electric streetcar system.

Some of these small towns had aspirations of becoming bigger cities, though, even bigger than Los Angeles. Alhambra is one of them. The context is that in the late 1880s, though LA was the county seat of LA County, it still basically was a small town amidst agriculture. Alhambra wanted to create a "Greater Alhambra," and early on started annexing land, and wanted to create a sewer farm outside of its city limits; the people living next to the sewer farm said "Oh HELLZ no" and that's how the cities of Monterey Park and Montebello were created; their incorporations prevented the sewer farm from being built.

Long Beach also started annexing land, and did those sneaky "shoestring annexations," which would encircle large acreages of undeveloped land or agricultural land. When the Lakewood Park Corporation started building acres of tract homes on a former lima bean field encircled by some of Long Beach's shoestrings, Long Beach had plans to annex that development, but instead, the residents formed the city of Lakewood. Pasadena also did somewhat of a shoestring annexation into the mountains north of it, to insure sources of water (many communities allowed themselves to be annexed by the city of LA to access LA's DWP water). Here's Pasadena's city limits; you can see two sections that snake up into the San Gabriel Mountains: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pa....1445155?hl=en

Of course in the early 1900s, LA did a shoestring annexation so that it could annex San Pedro for the Port of Los Angeles.

Shoestring annexations were made illegal in California in the 1950s, after 2 very notable shoestring annexations: Santa Barbara did a shoestring to annex its airport, and San Diego did it to annex San Ysidro, to be on the international border. What makes these shoestring annexations particularly notable is that the shoestring goes under water!

Santa Barbara:

ahstamant.com

San Diego; the shoestring goes through San Diego Bay:

sandiego.gov
Very interesting. Had no idea the Pasadena city limits extended above la Canada and past the 2 into that part of the Angeles National Forest.. There is no water source in that area so I wonder why
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #7  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 5:26 PM
sopas ej's Avatar
sopas ej sopas ej is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
Posts: 6,846
Quote:
Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan View Post
Very interesting. Had no idea the Pasadena city limits extended above la Canada and past the 2 into that part of the Angeles National Forest.. There is no water source in that area so I wonder why
My guess is maybe the Devil's Gate Dam and the Arroyo Seco.

Also, for a while I always wondered why JPL uses a Pasadena address. I guess it's in that general area.
__________________
"I guess the only time people think about injustice is when it happens to them."

~ Charles Bukowski
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #8  
Old Posted Sep 30, 2020, 2:22 AM
mrnyc mrnyc is offline
cle/west village/shaolin
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 11,586
Quote:
Originally Posted by sopas ej View Post
Pasadena also did somewhat of a shoestring annexation into the mountains north of it, to insure sources of water (many communities allowed themselves to be annexed by the city of LA to access LA's DWP water). Here's Pasadena's city limits; you can see two sections that snake up into the San Gabriel Mountains: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pa....1445155?hl=en
this is what columbus did and still continues to do to some extent, basically say ok you can access water, but you have to be annexed. meanwhile cleveland gave up their water rights for basically nothing and now its long surrounded by a bunch of crotchety minor fiefdom 'burbs all existing and duplicating services for no good reason. guess who the winners are here? that's right los angeles and columbus in ohio. the lesson is even in waterworld areas like the great lakes, water is always the key!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #9  
Old Posted Sep 30, 2020, 2:34 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: New York
Posts: 9,782
Cleveland-Akron seems more analogous to Detroit-Flint, except closer to each other.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #10  
Old Posted Oct 1, 2020, 2:24 PM
sopas ej's Avatar
sopas ej sopas ej is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
Posts: 6,846
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrnyc View Post
this is what columbus did and still continues to do to some extent, basically say ok you can access water, but you have to be annexed. meanwhile cleveland gave up their water rights for basically nothing and now its long surrounded by a bunch of crotchety minor fiefdom 'burbs all existing and duplicating services for no good reason. guess who the winners are here? that's right los angeles and columbus in ohio. the lesson is even in waterworld areas like the great lakes, water is always the key!
Yeah...

Los Angeles in the early 20th Century was very powerful in terms of water; this is why the San Fernando Valley, which originally was agricultural, allowed itself to be annexed by LA just for the water---with Burbank and San Fernando being the only independent municipalities in the SFV (I was never sure if Glendale is part of the SFV). Los Angeles built the LA Aqueduct, getting water from the Owens Valley in central California. But by the Great Depression, I believe, the MWD was created (Metropolitan Water District), which gets water from the Colorado River, and sells it wholesale to cities that contract with it, so by then, communities didn't have to rely on the City of LA anymore for water.

According to my city's (South Pasadena) website, its source of water is from: (1) groundwater pumped from wells in the Main San Gabriel Groundwater Basin, (2) surface water imported by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan) from the Colorado River, and (3) groundwater from the City of Pasadena.

Whole books have been written about the (often dramatic) story/stories of the quest for water in Los Angeles. I don't doubt that other big cities in the US have equally interesting stories about getting water for their growing populations.
__________________
"I guess the only time people think about injustice is when it happens to them."

~ Charles Bukowski
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #11  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 3:17 PM
Kenneth's Avatar
Kenneth Kenneth is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 264
Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I would consider Monroe to be the satellite instead of Flat Rock. Monroe was incorporated in the early 19th century.
I agree with you, saw it on the map, but didnt research statistics on Monroe. Monroe is so disconnected from Detroit that its never mentioned
__________________
No one place is better han the next
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #12  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 8:28 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: New York
Posts: 9,782
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenneth View Post
I agree with you, saw it on the map, but didnt research statistics on Monroe. Monroe is so disconnected from Detroit that its never mentioned
I would also add Windsor, ON, and Sarnia, ON, as Detroit satellites.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #13  
Old Posted Sep 26, 2020, 6:17 PM
north 42's Avatar
north 42 north 42 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Windsor, Ontario/Colchester, Ontario
Posts: 5,806
Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I would also add Windsor, ON, and Sarnia, ON, as Detroit satellites.
Windsor is more of a sister city than a satellite city as the two downtowns are directly across the river from each other, and both cities have their own metropolitan areas. To me a satellite city needs to be further away from the primary city.
__________________
Windsor Ontario, Canada's southern most city!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #14  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2022, 4:51 AM
The North One's Avatar
The North One The North One is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 5,489
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenneth View Post
Detroit inner satellites are: 25miles out
Mt Clemens, Pontiac, Plymouth, Flat Rock
Detroit has outter satellites: 50 miles out
Port Huron, Flint, Ann Arbor, Toledo
I'm not sure Ann Arbor fits in with outer satellites when it's only a bit further away from Campus Martius than Pontiac. Flint, Port Huron and Toledo, those cities are waayy out there.
__________________
Spawn of questionable parentage!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #15  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2022, 1:50 PM
Steely Dan's Avatar
Steely Dan Steely Dan is offline
devout Pizzatarian
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Lincoln Square, Chicago
Posts: 29,634
Quote:
Originally Posted by The North One View Post
I'm not sure Ann Arbor fits in with outer satellites when it's only a bit further away from Campus Martius than Pontiac. Flint, Port Huron and Toledo, those cities are waayy out there.
yeah, ann arbor doesn't neatly fit into either of those two rings, though it's creeping closer to the inner ring with the continued outward sprawl push from metro detroit.


distance from Campus Martius, as the crow flies:

Mt. Clemens: 20 miles
Flat Rock: 21 miles
Plymouth: 22 miles
Pontiac: 25 miles

Ann Arbor: 36 miles

Toledo:53 miles
Port Huron: 55 miles
Flint: 57 miles



toledo, port huron, and flint, are all a bit too far out to really fit the notion of a significant older (pre-war) ring city that has now been fully engulfed by the sprawl of a MUCH larger neighbor, in the way that waukegan, elgin, aurora, and joliet all have been assimilated into chicagoland.
__________________
"Missing middle" housing can be a great middle ground for many middle class families.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #16  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2022, 2:27 PM
skysoar skysoar is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2018
Posts: 238
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
yeah, ann arbor doesn't neatly fit into either of those two rings, though it's creeping closer to the inner ring with the continued outward sprawl push from metro detroit.


distance from Campus Martius, as the crow flies:

Mt. Clemens: 20 miles
Flat Rock: 21 miles
Plymouth: 22 miles
Pontiac: 25 miles

Ann Arbor: 36 miles

Toledo:53 miles
Port Huron: 55 miles
Flint: 57 miles



toledo, port huron, and flint, are all a bit too far out to really fit the notion of a significant older (pre-war) ring city that has now been fully engulfed by the sprawl of a MUCH larger neighbor, in the way that waukegan, elgin, aurora, and joliet all have been assimilated into chicagoland.
Yes somewhat like Rockford being too far out to be a Chicago ring city. Also i did not know Chicago had that many suburbs, along with Los Angeles or perhaps New York it has to be tops.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #17  
Old Posted Sep 25, 2020, 10:45 PM
PoshSteve's Avatar
PoshSteve PoshSteve is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Cleveland OH!
Posts: 187
Cleveland's would be Painesville (27 miles NE, founded 1800), Elyria (30 W, 1817), Lorain (30 W, 1807) and Akron (30 S, 1825) - apart from Lorain which borders Elyria, all are county seats of the neighboring counties, all about the same distance away, and all founded around the same time as Cleveland (1796). Now we are all connected by glorious sprawl too.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #18  
Old Posted Sep 29, 2020, 2:40 PM
westak westak is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: The Rubber City
Posts: 214
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoshSteve View Post
Cleveland's would be Painesville (27 miles NE, founded 1800), Elyria (30 W, 1817), Lorain (30 W, 1807) and Akron (30 S, 1825) - apart from Lorain which borders Elyria, all are county seats of the neighboring counties, all about the same distance away, and all founded around the same time as Cleveland (1796). Now we are all connected by glorious sprawl too.
Akron is NOT a ring city of Cleveland.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #19  
Old Posted Sep 29, 2020, 3:17 PM
pj3000's Avatar
pj3000 pj3000 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Pittsburgh & Miami
Posts: 7,544
Quote:
Originally Posted by westak View Post
Akron is NOT a ring city of Cleveland.
Local Akronite (Akroner?) pride feelings aside, I think Akron has most defintiely become a “ring city” of Cleveland... part of the whole Northeast Ohio sprawl, of which Cleveland is the hub from which it has spread to engulf Akron, et al.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #20  
Old Posted Sep 29, 2020, 3:47 PM
westak westak is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: The Rubber City
Posts: 214
Quote:
Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
Local Akronite (Akroner?) pride feelings aside, I think Akron has most defintiely become a “ring city” of Cleveland... part of the whole Northeast Ohio sprawl, of which Cleveland is the hub from which it has spread to engulf Akron, et al.
Can you tell me what Lorain/Elyria or Painsville have in common with Akron? How is Akron comparable at all to those cities other than being close to Cleveland?

What ring cities have their own :

Zoo
Two State Universities
Hospital System
Children's Hospital
Art Museum
Syphony Orchestra
Airport
Etc....

Due to Sprawl the Akron area and Cleveland area are neighbors but it's not a sattelite or ring city, like a Waukegan to Chicago or Lorain to Cleveland.

Last edited by westak; Sep 29, 2020 at 5:44 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 10:15 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.