Blowing In The Wind: Why Do So Many Cities Have Poor East Ends?

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Cleveland, urbanistically, doesn't really look like anything in the Northeast Corridor. Typical Great Lakes look. That said, there are some cultural similarities, IMO.

It depends on how you define "urbanistically".

You (and everyone else on here) would be hard-pressed to differentiate many urban streets in Cleveland from ones in Hartford, Newark, or Providence, for instance.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by pj3000

You (and everyone else on here) would be hard-pressed to differentiate many urban streets in Cleveland from ones in Hartford, Newark, or Providence, for instance.

No, they look pretty different. Of course, I could find streets that look similar, but overall, there are obvious differences.

I can find plenty of streets in, say, LA that could pass for streets in, say, New England, but that doesn't mean that Vermont and Southern CA have similar vernaculars.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Crawford

No, they look pretty different. Of course, I could find streets that look the same, but overall, there are obvious differences.

I can find plenty of streets in, say, LA that could pass for streets in, say, New England, but that doesn't mean that Vermont and Southern CA have similar vernaculars.

Sure, of course there are differences. But again...

You (and everyone else on here) would be hard-pressed to differentiate many urban streets in Cleveland from ones in Hartford, Newark, or Providence, for instance.


And, in comparison, I'm pretty certain this forum would readily be able to tell the difference between streets in LA vs. New England.

[Docere]

Returning more to topic, it makes sense in a way that the east side was once wealthier than the west side of Cleveland precisely because it was more affluent people that had more means to flee a deteriorating city. I presume this occurred in other US cities as well.

[Docere]

One city with a poor east that I don't think has been mentioned is Buffalo. It used to be where working class Poles lived, now it's the poor predominantly African American part of town.

The rich in Buffalo used to live on the west side around Delaware Avenue (if that's counted as "the west" - some would say Delaware/Elmwood corridor is its own central corridor of sorts). Further west is more multicultural working class with some gentrification I think.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Southwest Detroit is technically east and would fit the pattern of being "east." It just happens to be west of the arbitrary east/west dividing line due to the curvature of Michigan's east coast. Southwest Detroit is literally as far east as you can go without falling into a body of water.

This.

Too bad for Windsor, however.

[Reverberation]

All things being equal, the most valuable land is always upstream and/or upwind from a given city. Real Estate 101.

[Docere]

Here's some income maps for some Canadian cities. The affluent west/poorer class east applies in Montreal, Hamilton, Calgary and Vancouver; Halifax and Winnipeg have north-south splits (with the south being more affluent).

http://neighbourhoodchange.ca/docume...-cmas-2012.pdf

[CastleScott]

Most of Denver's industry is both northeast and north in the metro-the Purina Dog food plant, 3 oil refineries, the ConAgra and ADM's flour mills, a large Catapillar plant, the Safeway stores processing plants/warehouse plus other medium and large industrial complexes. Oh almost forgot Denver once had one of the biggest stockyard and meatpacking complexes outside Chicago and Kansas City, btw if some of you have traveled to Denver and took the new A-Train from the airport to downtown you go right smack through industrial northeast Denver-Amtrak goes through those same areas as well. I remember as a kid the TV weatherman or weatherwoman would say in the winter months-the wind is out of the northeast with the stockyard/refinery smell so snow is just an hour away. Just something I remember growing up in metro Denver. Denver's eastside actually has an upper middle class African-American community.

Here in Sacramento most of the manufacturing complexes are on the southside and one of them is the Siemens plant where they build trains.

[Docere]

West isn't the best in Baltimore.

[austin242]

In Austin the Eastside is definitely the less affluent side of the city. When I was a kid we were told never to go east of Ih/35 (The basic divide between central and east). Things are changing due to Austin just becoming an all over affluent city but still if you go west things get gradually nicer and vice versa for east. It's due to all the hills, lakes, and protective and restrictive building codes to the west. Making the west more desirable. As for the east it's flat and boring. Good soil for farming but with the way the clay expands it makes even the roads on the Eastside a little rugged sometimes.

[grasscom]

This title makes me think: Be your own wind keeper Rachel

[McBane]

Back in the day, waterfront neighborhoods were industrialized and poor - the rich didn't want to live next to the water, it was polluted. So today's trendy Old City and wealthy Society Hill neighborhoods in Philly were dumps prior to the 1950's.

But in reality, everyone knows Philadelphia's "east side" is Camden, NJ, which I guess fits with the theme here.

[llamaorama]

My hometown is a reverse of the norm, I guess. East and South are more desirable than north and west. Nothing in the old days smelled bad or created pollution, there were just some cotton gins and a shoe factory IIRC.

All the big industrial sites around here are modern, built from the 1980's to the present. The only one I would avoid being downwind of is a turkey processing plant, ironically as the crow flies it happens to be close to a country club and a class-A mixed use /office district trying to attract biotech companies.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by McBane

Back in the day, waterfront neighborhoods were industrialized and poor - the rich didn't want to live next to the water, it was polluted. So today's trendy Old City and wealthy Society Hill neighborhoods in Philly were dumps prior to the 1950's.

But in reality, everyone knows Philadelphia's "east side" is Camden, NJ, which I guess fits with the theme here.

same as st. louis’s eastside being in a different state. all of the most polluting factories were located downwind of st louis, some of which ended up in a chemical soaked company town called monsanto. steel mills and oil refineries ended up in their own east side company towns yet again...

[Docere]

Among Canadian cities, Saskatoon is one of the few I can think of where the east is more affluent and the west is the more working class part of town.