Cities where the "better side" became the "bad side"

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by emathias

In Chicago the South Side near the lake was the place to live for decades, but then turned bad. Also, the West Side want the best, but was very solid, upper middle class until white flight and race riots caused it to implode.

I find it amazing that anything along the Lake front would be bad or at least transition from a good to bad area.

Not being from Chicago and not having too much experience with the city, I don't know the ins and outs and history of the area too well.

[Prahaboheme]

In LA, Westlake / MacArthur Park was once a wealthy enclave. As the city moved westward, so too did the wealthy residents.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

very common pattern in north american cities that boomed during a particular time period. the midwestern american cities seemed to have been the most frenetic, as they seemed to not only discard, but overlay early twentieth century industrial and warehousing (or nothing) right over top-tier 19th century neighborhoods, like vandeventer place here in st. louis:



i imagine chicago did a lot of this...less common in the newer midwestern cities like cleveland i imagine.

Cleveland is probably one of the more dramatic examples of this, actually. Euclid Ave between Downtown and University Circle used to be called 'Millionaire's Row". Rockefeller and Co. all had huge, beautiful mansions there, and now there is barely any trace of its former glory. It was all cleared out, and now Midtown Cleveland is pretty barren and a bit of wasteland, though I think there is some minor development starting to occur there now.

[Centropolis]

indeed, millionaire row, cleveland:


clevescene.com


clevescene.com

[Crawford]

To be fair, the East Side of Cleveland is still the "good side"; it's just that the wealth moved further out.

All the fancy stuff is on the East Side. Private schools, nice stores, upscale services, etc. Doctors, law firm partners, etc. are living on the East Side, in places like Shaker Heights, Beachwood, Pepper Pike, Hunting Valley. etc.

West Side is blue collar and more gritty, but the black population moved east, not west, so there isn't a "zone of emptiness" like the East Side. But the West Side (within city proper), while intact, is far from "nice".

It could also be the same scenario as Detroit - people with money are more likely to move than working class ethnics, so the best neighborhoods experienced racial changes first. The WASPs and Jews of East Side Cleveland moved out at the first sign of perceived decay, because they could do so. The Slavs and Hungarians had no choice but to fight change.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It could also be the same scenario as Detroit - people with money are more likely to move than working class ethnics, so the best neighborhoods experienced racial changes first. The WASPs and Jews of East Side Cleveland moved out at the first sign of perceived decay, because they could do so. The Slavs and Hungarians had no choice but to fight change.

I think this is a better explanation. It's not so much that the good neighborhoods are predisposed to "go bad" as it is that working-class white neighborhoods were less apt to flip into becoming poor black neighborhoods.

As I said though, a major part of this is likely because of housing size too. Old Victorian mansions can be chopped into cheap rental apartments easily, while neighborhoods with lots of small single-family homes wouldn't really be able to house more people, and would have homeowner occupants who would be more apt to stay for longer.

Pittsburgh is not a city where this really happened, interestingly enough. The first neighborhood to turn into a black enclave (the Hill District) was mostly working class even when it was white. The neighborhoods which flipped to majority black during the mid 20th century were largely working class to lower-middle class, with the exception of East Liberty (which never went as far downhill residentially) and some portions of the North Side like Manchester (though since they were filled with Victorian homes, they went downscale decades before black people moved in).

Pittsburgh's "millionare's row" is mostly gone however. The estates which used to line Fifth Avenue on the Squirrel Hill/Shadyside border were knocked down in the mid 20th century to make way for apartment buildings (which ultimately became student rentals). And the estates further out, along Penn Avenue, were chopped up between 1920 and 1960 to make way for little subdivisions (save for Frick's old estate, which is now a museum). It's very, very hard for a multi-acre estate to survive in a dense urban area.

[Crawford]

Pittsburgh also had a smaller black population, so probably a lesser degree of population pressure/fear of change.

For Detroit, the Jewish neighborhoods were heavily duplexes and multifamily, and the working class ethnic neighborhoods were all one family detached, so housing typology likely played a role. Jews were more upwardly mobile and probably less overtly biased too.

Rents remained high when neighborhoods "flipped" and the new suburbanites earned comfortable rental income for decades. Detroit didn't really get large-scale abandonment until the 80's/90's, and it didn't hit outer neighborhoods till after 2000.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

anything can and does happen...unlike europe, we don’t need an actual war to radically disrupt settlement/urban patterns in the new world.

You do realize that this is a gross stereotype...

First off, your world is really nothing much new at all.

Second, Eugène Haussmann never needed any war to completely demolish medieval Central Paris to implement his own plan made up of broader streets, like today's legit boulevards and avenues.
That was in the 1850s/60s, not so old considering how old mankind can be.

Your "new world" was even there already, and ripped it all off as usual.

I swear Le Corbusier had plans to demolish Paris again, but thankfully, wasn't allowed to do so.
It would've been a crime against humanity.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

To be fair, the East Side of Cleveland is still the "good side"; it's just that the wealth moved further out.

All the fancy stuff is on the East Side. Private schools, nice stores, upscale services, etc. Doctors, law firm partners, etc. are living on the East Side, in places like Shaker Heights, Beachwood, Pepper Pike, Hunting Valley. etc.

West Side is blue collar and more gritty, but the black population moved east, not west, so there isn't a "zone of emptiness" like the East Side. But the West Side (within city proper), while intact, is far from "nice".

It could also be the same scenario as Detroit - people with money are more likely to move than working class ethnics, so the best neighborhoods experienced racial changes first. The WASPs and Jews of East Side Cleveland moved out at the first sign of perceived decay, because they could do so. The Slavs and Hungarians had no choice but to fight change.

Yes, the east side of metro Cleveland is where the wealth is. It's also not an accident, I suspect, that Cleveland's cultural institutions are on the East Side of the city.

And yeah, West Side is only the "better side" in a relative sense, within the city limits of Cleveland.

[Docere]

Come to think of it, I believe the South Bronx was once the "better" part of the Bronx when it was known as the West Bronx (Grand Concourse etc.)

Irving Howe for instance moved with his family from the West Bronx to the East Bronx in the Depression due to economic circumstances.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

Come to think of it, I believe the South Bronx was once the "better" part of the Bronx when it was known as the West Bronx (Grand Concourse etc.)

Yes, the West Bronx was considered the "better half". The Jews of the Grand Concourse and Highbridge were much more prosperous than the Jews and Italians of East Tremont and Belmont.

Even today, the housing stock is much better around the Concourse and points west, and these areas were never abandoned, not even in the worst years (though they certainly declined). There was a presence of elderly Jews on the Concourse till the 80's.

A lot of these formerly fancy prewars are undergoing gut renovations and attracting millennials. I have two friends who recently bought co-ops on the Concourse, one with a kid. These buildings have fantastic bones. They had elevator attendants, ballrooms and the like, till the early 70's.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by mousquet

First off, your world is really nothing much new at all.

well aware, although perhaps never enough. i was speaking in the pejorative way family members might speak in contempt of each other.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

I find it amazing that anything along the Lake front would be bad or at least transition from a good to bad area.

Not being from Chicago and not having too much experience with the city, I don't know the ins and outs and history of the area too well.

Hard to believe or not, there are and have been Lakefront adjacent parts that aren't great or are actually even bad. In general, they are the parts furthest from downtown and the section that is technically adjacent to the Lake but separated from it by a lot of train lines and the most expressway-like sections of Lake Shore Drive.

Given you admit you know little about Chicago, I'm not sure why you choose to believe your own assumptions over people who actually have lived here for decades.
http://chicago.homicidewatch.org/hom...map/index.html

[Docere]

Originally Posted by softee

Jarvis Street and the surrounding area in Toronto's Downtown East was once considered (in the 19th century) the residential area for the wealthy elites, 100 years later it was considered (and still is to a somewhat lesser degree) one of the sketchiest parts of the city.

That's more of a specific area that an entire section or "side" though.

Given Toronto's reputation as an "inverted doughnut" it's notable that such a big "skid row and projects" area exists so close to the CBD (though there are gentrified residential pockets there). The gentrification of the core largely bypasses the area and skips over the Don River.

In the west end, Parkdale also saw its status decline in the 20th century but again that's more of a neighborhood than a whole section.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by emathias

Given you admit you know little about Chicago, I'm not sure why you choose to believe your own assumptions over people who actually have lived here for decades.
http://chicago.homicidewatch.org/hom...map/index.html

I think you misunderstood me.

I was saying "I find it hard to believe" - as a figure of speech.

I was not saying I find it hard to believe that somebody said this, and that I absolutely disagree with that even though I don't know anything about it.