Great news for Cleveland and the region in general!
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Originally Posted by Jonboy1983
 That may be some folks association, but there are numerous others who consider Western PA as part of the midwest. I realize it is physically in Appalachia, but I just don't like associating Pittsburgh with it.
Besides, it's part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis... Maybe I should've just said it's part of that... |
People who consider Western PA as part of the ridiculously-broadly termed "Midwest" are people who are generally from cites which are right on the East Coast and they consider anything not right on the East Coast or within a couple hours drive "midwest". It's an embarrassing display of geographic ignorance (not to mention historical ignorance) that never ceases to amaze me. Funny that such "urbane" and "cosmopolitan" East Coast denizens who as a group view themselves with superiority display the same ignorant perceptions of the rest of the nation that many in places like Texas and Florida do.
Pittsburgh is considered a Northeastern Mid-Atlantic Appalachian city.
Also, I think the classification "Great Lakes megalopolis" is a major stretch in which to use use the term "megalopolis". Including vast portions of deeply rural Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in a megalopolis is beyond comprehension to me. It is nothing like the continuous stretch of urbanization that exists in the Northeast corridor.
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Originally Posted by gtbassett
Guys for the record, Cleveland and Pittsburgh are very related economically, demographically and geographically... It's not comparing apples and oranges to compare Pittsburgh and Cleveland, they're both former heavy industrial metros of roughly 2 million people with similar demographics and trends.
I have hope for both of these cities. The Rust Belt will inevitably be repopulated with young people looking towards a future with less automobile dependence considering many parts of these cities were built for and can sustain car free living.
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True, although Cleveland was and still is significantly larger than Pittsburgh with about half a million more people in the Cleveland area (and yes, 500K people is highly significant when talking about metro areas with under 3M people). Also, Cleveland is the hub of the much more cohesive NE Ohio region than Pittsburgh is of the very fractured SW PA region. They are similar cities in that they were (and still are) two of our most important industrial centers and in the same general region of the nation, but they are also very different in other measures.
Bolded part above... very interesting point. And as we hopefully move away from largely auto-dependent lifestyles, as you said the old rustbelt cities already have the infrastructure and design in place... meanwhile the sunbelt cities have to deal with decades of misguided suburban megasprawl which largely defines their cities, and have to build what cities like Pittsburgh and Cleveland already have.
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Originally Posted by mrnyc
and conversely, cleveland is thee eastern leaning midwestern city (ie., geography, the western reserve, the traffic circle layout of the tiny ne ohio farm towns, etc.).
the cleve is closely related to pittburgh and buffalo geographically and in their shared rust belt business hertitage, so even tho the three are such very different places, they are also rather tied up together.
personally i think the lakefront-related similarity of cleveland-erie-buffalo is more obvious today, but those old cleve-youngstown-pitts industrial heritage ties remain a strong bond too.
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Yeah, Cleveland is around the fuzzy border area of midwestern/northeastern. I do think Cleveland has more in common with cities to its east than to its west though, when looking at history, cultural ties, physical design, etc.
Cleveland could easily be a city in NY state... trading spots with Buffalo... and few outsiders would be able to note the real differences. It's also an interesting thing you bring up with the connections between cities in the region. The stretch along the lakeshore from Cleveland to Erie to Buffalo is a rather continuous chain... as is the stretch from Cleveland to Akron to Youngstown to Pittsburgh. The industrial heritages of both chains are highly similar, but the differing physical topographic features and direction the population chains move in impart very different cultural characteristics -- port city oriented and more "coastal" moving NE along the lakeshore and river city oriented and more "interior" moving SE towards Appalachia.