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Gordon Park north of I-90 on the lakeshore is now part of the Cleveland Metroparks Lakefront Reservation, which incorporates many formerly individual Cleveland city parks along Lake Erie, and so Gordon Park has lost much of its individual identity. What the City of Cleveland today calls Gordon Park is 46 acres south of I-90.
The Metroparks mostly promote the East 72nd St. fishing wall, boat launch and picnic area, and the Lakefront Bikeway, not identifying these amenities as Gordon Park, but this is just the part of Gordon Park north of I-90. Does Pittsburgh have any parks with fishing walls? Gordon Park north of I-90 also is the home of the Inter City Yacht Club, an African American marina and yacht club.
What is a fishing wall? Is it just that stone lake edge where people can stand and fish?
If so, yes we have a places where you can stand and fish in Pittsburgh.
To overgeneralize, household size might have taken a city down 1/3. If a city dropped by 2/3, the other half would be fewer households -- 50% fewer.
Not true for Pittsburgh at least. I did the math years back, and if it gained approximately 110,000 people it would have the same number of households today as it did in 1950.
A fair amount of the household density was "planned loss" as well - things like highways, urban renewal, etc. Relatively little was due to blight, and that's concentrated in like 1/4th of the city.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheProf
Not true. Since at least 1890, and probably before, Cleveland's population has always been larger than Pittsburgh's. Today, though having shrunk a lot in the last 4 decades, Cuyahoga County still slightly edges out Allegheny County, 1,243,857 to 1,223,048, per the most recent census estimates.
Are you taking into account that the North Side of Pittsburgh was an independent city (Allegheny) until 1907? By the time it was annexed it had 130,000 people. Pittsburgh + Allegheny continually had more people than Cleveland in the 19th century.
Certainly if you compare all of Allegheny County to all of Cuyahoga County, Pittsburgh was the bigger metro till 1960.
I like Cleveland, and I think it has Pittsburgh beat by several metrics, including nightlife in Downtown, presence of useful rail transit, a vibrant and visible black middle class, and a much more organic mix of residential and commercial uses in the oldest neighborhoods like Ohio City and Tremont. And there are far more first-ring suburbs of Cleveland which have charming walkable downtown areas than you find in Allegheny County.
That said, it is not quite Pittsburgh's peer when it comes to urbanity. As others noted, white flight and urban renewal hit Cleveland much harder than Pittsburgh overall, and the downtown area is much more riddled with parking lots. Walkscore is lower, as is overall transit utilization. There is nothing akin to the East End (mostly Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, and Point Breeze) - a large, genuinely wealthy swathe of neighborhoods within city limits. University Circle is nowhere near the secondary urban node that Oakland is. And - just speaking subjectively - I don't think the built vernacular of Great Lakes cities (detached wood-framed homes set back generously from the sidewalk) creates as much of an urban vibe as the closely-packed rowhouse neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.
I do think in terms of urbanity, Baltimore is the closest to Pittsburgh. It's about a half-step higher, and it scores better on Walkscore and transit utilization - it's clearly superior in some ways. I do find it interesting that the wealthy white areas of Baltimore (the "white L" are basically similar in scope/population to Pittsburgh's East End. Functionally speaking, Baltimore is kinda like Pittsburgh with three times as much ghetto.
Metro size is a big factor here, but if we're just looking at individual cities....
Cleveland (pop. ~ 385,000) comes to mind. Buffalo (~ 258,000) also punches above it weight in that regard.
Some other possibilities include Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Madison, St. Louis, and Rochester.
Overall, many of these cities used to have larger populations and stronger economies that help found and support massive cultural amenities. Some of these cities have lost population (and economic support) in the past decades, but have held onto many of their longtime cultural institutions.
Pretty much this, minus Madison and add Cincinnati and Kansas City. This can help offer some idea of peers on a city proper level based off of Pittsburgh's official peak population: https://www.census.gov/population/ww...0027/tab18.txt
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Kansas City. I mean even Nashville has come up sever times which is not really even comparable to Pittsburgh IMO.
I guess this proves how off the radar KC is and how so few people know much about the city. Cleveland and St Louis both seem to punch above their size as well.
Not true for Pittsburgh at least. I did the math years back, and if it gained approximately 110,000 people it would have the same number of households today as it did in 1950.
A fair amount of the household density was "planned loss" as well - things like highways, urban renewal, etc. Relatively little was due to blight, and that's concentrated in like 1/4th of the city.
Are you taking into account that the North Side of Pittsburgh was an independent city (Allegheny) until 1907? By the time it was annexed it had 130,000 people. Pittsburgh + Allegheny continually had more people than Cleveland in the 19th century.
Certainly if you compare all of Allegheny County to all of Cuyahoga County, Pittsburgh was the bigger metro till 1960.
Most cities gained households. Because when you move out of mom and dads you create a new household (maybe with a spouse) so 2 households become 3 with no population growth.
The decline in household size without the cooresponding increase in households represent when they move out of Mom and Dads they leave Pittsburgh or maybe even Greater Pittsburgh. That’s decline.
Not true for Pittsburgh at least. I did the math years back, and if it gained approximately 110,000 people it would have the same number of households today as it did in 1950.
A fair amount of the household density was "planned loss" as well - things like highways, urban renewal, etc. Relatively little was due to blight, and that's concentrated in like 1/4th of the city.
Are you taking into account that the North Side of Pittsburgh was an independent city (Allegheny) until 1907? By the time it was annexed it had 130,000 people. Pittsburgh + Allegheny continually had more people than Cleveland in the 19th century.
Certainly if you compare all of Allegheny County to all of Cuyahoga County, Pittsburgh was the bigger metro till 1960.
The poster stated he was talking about metro area, which was misleading because he noted the cities, themselves, then mentioning metro areas after the fact... I'm not disagreeing that Allegheny county, itself, may have ranked ahead of Cuyahoga County during some 20th Century censuses. It seems like Pittsburgh is surrounded by a number of really old satellite cities/towns from the 19th Century, whereas Cleveland's burbs are generally much younger... In fact, even by 1920, there was a very small Cuyahoga County population outside Cleveland, and only 3 or 4 established suburbs: East Cleveland, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, and maybe, a small-scale Euclid (which exploded with industry after WWII.
In 1920 the Van Sweringen brothers were just getting Shaker Heights underway which had at the time IIRC just 1,700 residents (which grew by 10 times in a decade). Cleveland, itself, was massive those days (nearly 900K residents), but few lived outside its borders then.
-Cleveland Museum of Art > Carnegie Museum of Art
-Cleveland Orchestra > Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
-Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre > Cleveland Ballet Company
-Cleveland Zoo > Pittsburgh Zoo
-Greater Cleveland Aquarium (Cleveland) > PPG Aquarium (Pittsburgh)
-Playhouse Square (Cleveland) > Pittsburgh's Cultural District
-Oakland (Pittsburgh's secondary CBD) > University Circle (Cleveland's secondary CBD)
-Little Italy (Cleveland) > Bloomfield (Pittsburgh's "Little Italy")
-Pittsburgh City Neighborhoods (More or Less) > Cleveland City Neighborhoods (More or Less)
-Cleveland Suburbs (More or Less) > Pittsburgh Suburbs (More or Less)
-West Side Market > Pittsburgh's Strip District
-Pittsburgh's Market Square > Cleveland's Public Square
-East Carson Street (Pittsburgh's nightlife hub) > East 4th Street (Cleveland's nightlife hub)
-Cleveland MSA's Quality-of-Life for African-Americans > Pittsburgh MSA's Quality-of-Life for African-Americans
-Appeal of Lake Erie + Lakefront Development/Access = Appeal of Pittsburgh's Three Rivers + Riverfront Development/Access
-Pittsburgh Skyline > Cleveland Skyline
-Downtown Cleveland (borders as defined) > Downtown Pittsburgh (borders as defined)
-"Greater" Downtown Pittsburgh (i.e. adding North Shore, Strip District, South Shore) > "Greater" Downtown Cleveland (i.e. adding The Flats/West Bank)
-PPG Paints Arena (Pittsburgh) > Rocket Mortgage Field House (Cleveland)
-PNC Park (Pittsburgh) > Progressive Field (Cleveland)
-FirstEnergy Stadium (Cleveland) > Heinz Field (Pittsburgh)
-Cleveland Light Rail > Pittsburgh Light Rail
-Pittsburgh BRT (East, West, and South Busways) > Cleveland BRT (HealthLine)
-Pittsburgh Surface Buses > Cleveland Surface Buses
-Cleveland Traffic Flow > Pittsburgh Traffic Flow
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