Maps of The Good, The Bad, and the Up-and-Coming parts of your city.

[Columbusite]

How is your city's urban core doing overall? To get us started here is a map of Columbus'. And please, be as honest as possible/don't try to sugarcoat too much as far as what constitutes "up-and-coming" which is probably the vaguest category here. For example, if just one new restaurant opened up on a blighted strip in recent times that's an anomaly at this point and not an upward trend yet worthy of up-and-coming status.

[hudkina]

Detroit:

baddetroit by hudkina, on Flickr

[Thundertubs]

Originally Posted by hudkina

Detroit:

Well played.

[Cirrus]

Intriguing idea for a thread!

DC basically has three zones, defined by Rock Creek Park and the Anacostia River (shown in black). The blue zone is "West of the Park" and is uniformly gentrified and expensive. The red zone is "East of the River" and is uniformly poor. The yellow zone is unnamed and mixed. It would be extremely difficult to map because it tends to change quickly from block to block, with little pockets of wealth or poverty seemingly at random (but usually in relation to the proximity of Metro). Generally speaking the closer you are to downtown or Rock Creek Park, the nicer it is.

[EuphoricOctopus]

Originally Posted by hudkina

Detroit:
baddetroit by hudkina, on Flickr

LOL!

[Strange Meat]

There are no "bad parts" of Denver.

[min-chi-cbus]

Denver is soooo perfect!

[Cirrus]

It's true that Denver doesn't have a ghetto, but it certainly has a favored quarter.

That's the term for this, by the way. Favored Quarter. Just about every city has a 1/4 circumference "pie slice" that is noticeably welathier than the rest. In Washington it starts downtown and goes northwest. In Denver it starts downtown and goes southeast.

[mhays]

I'm not doing a map for Seattle. But generally, the north 60% has more money than the rest. Anything along or above Lake Washington or Puget Sound (i.e. the entire east and west boundaries) is high end, even if close to fairly poor areas in the south. A good view is a big factor in any area, particular if the view is water such as Lake Union or Green Lake.

Our map would look much more varied than the large quadrants for other cities.

[Cirrus]

Here we go. Favored Quarter maps for DC and Denver. Denver's also shows Boulder, which has its own favored quarter that faces in the direction of Denver.

[Strange Meat]

I mean, that's generalized, because I'd also add the whole area between 285 and 470 near Ken Caryl as blue, also, in the smaller Denver map, I think it goes north of 20th now (dude, the way the area north of the ballpark is changing is ridiculous), and totally ignores Highland. Plus 6th Ave all the way to Quebec is REAL nice.

[Strange Meat]

Originally Posted by min-chi-cbus

Denver is soooo perfect!

Go ahead, find our ghetto. When I moved here after living in Philly, a few people told me about neighborhoods that scared them (blond yuppie white girls, mind you), and, it was a joke. There are no scary neighborhoods here. There are a few "just don't be a dumbass" parts of town, but nothing that I'd call remotely bad. When you say bad part of town, I think of an area like North Philadelphia. Parts of Eastern DC. Parts of Baltimore. Detroit. Parts of the LA area. You know, areas where random ass shootings happen. The sun going down doesn't mean you should get out of any part of town here. Hence, no bad parts.

[arkhitektor]

Salt Lake is probably a lot like Denver, in that it has no neighborhoods that are truly bad.
In general, desirability is high in the canyons and foothills on the north and east side, and moves in a gradient toward far less desirable areas west of I-15 and south of I-80:



Since my wife and I are looking for a new house right now, here is my version of a map in terms of the results from a map-based search for a 3+ Bed, 2+ Bath home in Salt Lake City, with an example of a home in each price point:

[Columbusite]

Very interesting to see the different cities and I love the SLC maps with housing pics and prices to match.

As for the favored quarter theory I think it certainly holds some water. In Columbus it's the north and northwest (very DC-like).

Columbus' bad urban neighborhoods vary in a number of different ways, but by and large have little worth making the trek out and as a result Columbusites think anything not due north or northwest is one big gangland. Drug related gang shootings do occur on the greater east side (including northeast and southeast areas) where the most homicides occur and where you can buy a house for cheap, but I know of two people who bought starter homes in the worst neighborhood in the city on the northeast side, South Linden, and one had his place broken into three times last summer and the other, well, she owned firearms and once had to lose a group of guys following her around from a rundown carryout to avoid them knowing where she lived. So as you can see it's bad in different ways. Where improvements have begun is mostly just east of Downtown where the housing stock is the best with a couple of small clusters of new retail.

The south and west sides are bad due to the dregs of small town Ohio and Appalachia forming a rather large portion of the population; we didn't exactly end up with people that they'd be missing any time soon. You know who I'm talking about, loud trashy neighbors with junk in their yard who punch their dogs (invariably pitbulls) for barking. Over on these sides of town there are less empty storefronts and not as many shootings, but you also get a contingent of meth heads and prostitutes on the west side along with businesses that won't attracts visitors like a whole slew of bars that local Yelpers are too scared to even set foot in, although I did get the ball rolling with one. The (due) south side has seen improvements whereas the west side has not. The northern 1/3 was gentrified thanks to the highly desirable all-brick German Village, while revitalization of the middle 1/3 has taken root in Merion Village (which is due more to proximity to GV rather than it's own aesthetics), and the last 1/3 is Steelton which has more than it's fair share of scary backwater folk for a rather small area.

While not nearly as bad as those in a top ten big city it can still try your patience if you choose to live in these areas, to say the least. Actually, a walkscore map will also clearly show which side of the city is favored.

[AusHou]

Originally Posted by Strange Meat

There are no "bad parts" of Denver.

Maybe Denver has changed, but back when Stapleton was open, the drive from the airport to downtown was through some very bad looking areas. Hope that's all changed.

[awholeparade]

Originally Posted by AusHou

Maybe Denver has changed, but back when Stapleton was open, the drive from the airport to downtown was through some very bad looking areas. Hope that's all changed.

It has. When i moved here (3 years ago) i moved to the edge of 5 Points, right next to the hospitals, which meant that i drove directly through 5 Points to get to my apartment, and i was thinking to myself, "Man, what a beautiful neighborhood, full of so many awesome buildings!" So, a few weeks pass, i hear about this "ghetto" area a few times throughout the few weeks, and then it hit me, the ghetto area that they were talking about is the neighborhood that i thought looked beautiful.

[osmo]

Question about Denver. Where are the 'less desirable' area then? Like if Denver proper has no such spots than what suburban center are they located in?

[wong21fr]

Originally Posted by osmo

Question about Denver. Where are the 'less desirable' area then? Like if Denver proper has no such spots than what suburban center are they located in?

Aurora. It's the suburb that would be considered the "ghetto", though it's another one that ha got it's really shitty areas and then the affluent areas as well.

[CGII]

[fishrose]

^^^
This is the best one so far!