Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Buffalo is also in a state that has a large urban population overall and thus is more likely to be more attuned to policies that may affect people living in cities or at least be less antagonistic to such, plus it potentially gets a bit of a revenue from downstate since state expenditures upstate is proportionally higher than state revenue from upstate as there's a bit that trickles to upstate.
Pittsburgh seems the “obvious” choice to many, but there’s something about Pittsburgh I guess I don’t quite understand yet. It doesn’t jump out as an obvious choice.
The standouts in that list to me are Milwaukee and Cleveland.
Milwaukee benefits from its proximity to Chicago and the generally “sweet” reputation Wisconsin has. It’s decently laid out with some nice established neighborhoods.
Cleveland has been quietly improving itself for a long time, and the entire NE Ohio area is a region I was pleasantly surprised with, as was Ohio in general. Ohio seems like a place which is sort of representative of America in a way, sort of an “average American” place if you will, which isn’t awesome for everybody but I do see it’s appeal. And I feel like others would too.
Winter will hold most all of these back. People switching states who can live anywhere, are by and large not choosing wintry places.
Yeah, it's not that people move from Toronto to Buffalo. It's that when Begladeshi people in NYC are looking to move to lower CoL areas, one of the selling points is that you aren't far from a global city with a large South Asian diaspora. In most of the US, South Asian Muslims are a distinct minority, so being near Toronto is a huge plus factor.
I for sure see how that could be a draw, especially now that the community has been established and may/probably is attracting some higher educated/higher income South Asians immigrants, along with the refugees that originally settled in Buffalo.
But if you look at the numbers, Akron comes close to the same type of growth Buffalo has had.
From 2010-2020, Buffalo's Asian population grew by roughly 13K (150% increase; and population went from about 3% to 7.5%)
Akron's grew by roughly 6K (140% increase; and population went from about 2 percent to 5.5%)
So, Akron-Buffalo was somewhat similar. Cleveland's growth was paltry (3K total and from 2 to 3 percent), which isn't surprising because Indians are the fastest growing Asian group in Cuyahoga and the vast majority are settling in the suburbs and other South Asians have been going mostly to Akron. Cleveland easily could have been a settlement city but missed out. Akron jumped on it and has most definitely benefitted from that group stabilizing Akron's north side.
That leads to what is probably is another advantage Buffalo (and probably Pittsburgh and St. Louis from the above list) have over Cleveland as well. Buffalo (though Rochester is fairly close in proximity but not as intertwined with each other as Cleveland is to the rest of Northeast Ohio), Pittsburgh and St. Louis more stand alone in their regions, where Cleveland seemingly splits some immigration with Akron and Canton (and a couple of older cities in neighboring MSA counties).
The city of Akron has been getting the South Asians and down south a bit further, there is a growing central American population in Canton and New Philadelphia/Dover. Canton City Schools have gone from like 2 percent Hispanic to over 10 percent in the last decade; Dover and New Philadelphia have gone from like 2 percent to about 25 percent each in the same period; almost all being from Central America.
That has left Cleveland with Puerto Ricans being the No. 1 "immigrant" group. Even then, Cleveland splits that with Lorain city/Lorain County, which is just a big a destination (Lorain County schools collectively are now about 18 percent Hispanic, with the bulk of that being Puerto Rican). Then, the what seems to be small Mexican immigration is mostly centered in Painesville/Lake County (Painesville schools have gone from about 2 percent to over 50 percent Hispanic in the last 20 years...almost all Mexican). There are growing Indian/MENA populations in the suburbs; and Cleveland has gotten quite a few Ukrainian rufugees in the past year, but again are almost all in the suburbs.
It's good for the greater region that there are different groups establishing communities in Northeast Ohio, but since it's dispersed, it doesn't help the city of Cleveland's population numbers. ... Though, Cleveland does seem to have small but growing Dominican and African (Ghana/DRC) populations on the westside of the city.
Pittsburgh seems the “obvious” choice to many, but there’s something about Pittsburgh I guess I don’t quite understand yet. It doesn’t jump out as an obvious choice.
The standouts in that list to me are Milwaukee and Cleveland.
Milwaukee benefits from its proximity to Chicago and the generally “sweet” reputation Wisconsin has. It’s decently laid out with some nice established neighborhoods.
Cleveland has been quietly improving itself for a long time, and the entire NE Ohio area is a region I was pleasantly surprised with, as was Ohio in general. Ohio seems like a place which is sort of representative of America in a way, sort of an “average American” place if you will, which isn’t awesome for everybody but I do see it’s appeal. And I feel like others would too.
Winter will hold most all of these back. People switching states who can live anywhere, are by and large not choosing wintry places.
Pittsburgh has seemingly always been a C-D darling city.
The city of Pittsburgh itself has done a great job of keeping the neighborhoods stable, but most of the wealth in Pittsburgh stayed in the city. The surrounding area of Pittsburgh is rather depressing. Compare that to Cleveland, and Cleveland's suburbs are far better than anything in Pittsburgh save a handful here or there. The African American population in Cleveland just seems more successful and mobile than what I see in Pittsburgh. But that is what this thread is about, which CITY grows first. Others like Buffalo and Cincinnati have started growing again. Pittsburgh is most likely next in line as it has essentially stabilized.
I guess with having been to Buffalo lately and frequent visits to Cleveland, this poll just shows how little people know about Cleveland. The amount of construction and revitalization in Cleveland is at another level over Buffalo. If immigration is what is helping Buffalo grow, then Cleveland needs to market itself more.
Pittsburgh seems the “obvious” choice to many, but there’s something about Pittsburgh I guess I don’t quite understand yet. It doesn’t jump out as an obvious choice.
What is it you don't understand yet about Pittsburgh? Why it's on the cusp of desirability?
Pittsburgh stands out in the Rust Belt for a number of reasons which made it more predisposed to gentrification. These included.
1. Relatively low levels of white flight. Pittsburgh's regional economic growth peaked early (around 1920), which meant that after the U.S. imposed draconian immigration restrictions, there wasn't the same need for a "new labor force" as somewhere like Detroit. For a long period, natural population growth alone due to new locals entering the labor force was fine. As a result, there really wasn't the same level of migration of African Americans from the South (or the large influx of white Appalachians which influenced cities like Baltimore, Cincinnati, and to a lesser extent Detroit and even Chicago). Pittsburgh absolutely had white flight areas, but the city's black population peaked at just over 25%. Lots of working-class white neighborhoods like South Side, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, and Polish Hill didn't experience considerable demographic change and stayed 90% or so physically intact. Nationally speaking, such areas tend to be the first places that gentrify since white gentrifiers preferentially move into white neighborhoods when they're cheap.
2. Pittsburgh's downtown stayed remarkably robust, with the number of jobs downtown steady (until COVID) at 80,000-90,000 since the 1950s, high transit utilization, and relatively little in the way of parking craters. Lots of this honestly happened by accident. Pittsburgh never built a ring highway, which meant suburb-to-suburb commutes are bad, making Downtown a good compromise location. In addition, the Parking Authority decided to create a parking monopoly (banning new surface lots Downtown) and taxing their garages at such a high rate Downtown parking cost as much as NYC. This meant the professional class never abandoned transit (which is largely surface route busses) as was the case in many rust belt peers.
3. Pittsburgh functions as a "college town" like Boston. The six major universities in the city (Pitt, CMU, Duquesne, Point Park, Chatham, and Carlow) have a combined student body of over 62,000 - more than 20% of the total population of the City of Pittsburgh! Honestly, the metro lacks any substantive "college towns" outside of the city at all. Indiana, PA (IUP) is a decent college town, but it's outside of the metro. As a result, pretty much anyone in the metro who wants to have a conventional college experience goes to school in Pittsburgh and lives here, with many of them staying in the East End upon graduation.
Pittsburgh's big drag has been negative natural population growth - more deaths than births. This happened because the economic crash of steel in the 1980s caused young people to flee the region while their parents stayed in place and aged. Thus it isn't enough for the City of Pittsburgh to actually have positive domestic migration; it also needed to overcome these demographic headwinds. This has started to happen, though with birth rates so much lower these days in general, the number of children in the City of Pittsburgh continues to drop rapidly (particularly because there really aren't any high birth-rate immigrant groups stepping in to move to the city).
I for sure see how that could be a draw, especially now that the community has been established and may/probably is attracting some higher educated/higher income South Asians immigrants, along with the refugees that originally settled in Buffalo.
But if you look at the numbers, Akron comes close to the same type of growth Buffalo has had.
From 2010-2020, Buffalo's Asian population grew by roughly 13K (150% increase; and population went from about 3% to 7.5%)
Akron's grew by roughly 6K (140% increase; and population went from about 2 percent to 5.5%)
My impression is that the background of the Asian population boom in Buffalo and Akron is very different though.
In Buffalo, it's being driven largely by Bangladeshis (and to a lesser extent, other Muslim South Asians) who are migrating from NYC, taking advantage of lower housing costs and a pretty robust mosque and Islamic day school network now being set up.
In contrast, in Akron, it's a secondary migration/concentration of Bhutanese refugees (almost all ethnic Nepali) from smaller cities in the U.S. to there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BRNorth
The city of Pittsburgh itself has done a great job of keeping the neighborhoods stable, but most of the wealth in Pittsburgh stayed in the city. The surrounding area of Pittsburgh is rather depressing. Compare that to Cleveland, and Cleveland's suburbs are far better than anything in Pittsburgh save a handful here or there. The African American population in Cleveland just seems more successful and mobile than what I see in Pittsburgh. But that is what this thread is about, which CITY grows first. Others like Buffalo and Cincinnati have started growing again. Pittsburgh is most likely next in line as it has essentially stabilized.
I guess with having been to Buffalo lately and frequent visits to Cleveland, this poll just shows how little people know about Cleveland. The amount of construction and revitalization in Cleveland is at another level over Buffalo. If immigration is what is helping Buffalo grow, then Cleveland needs to market itself more.
It's very notable when you spend time in Cleveland vs. Pittsburgh how segregated the latter is. In Cleveland, it's totally normal to see black professionals everywhere (brew pubs, Japanese restaurants, vegetarian cafes, etc), whereas these kinds of spaces will be almost entirely white with a few Asians here.
Part of this comes down to Cleveland being a blacker metro, but I don't think it explains all of the difference.
Back of envelope math shows there are over 110,000 more African-Americans living in the city of Cleveland (pop 370,000) than in the city of Pittsburgh (pop 300,000). In most cases, that could be all of the difference.
Back of envelope math shows there are over 110,000 more African-Americans living in the city of Cleveland (pop 370,000) than in the city of Pittsburgh (pop 300,000). In most cases, that could be all of the difference.
True. Cleveland has a much larger swathe of black suburbia as well. The non-Cleveland portions of Cuyahoga County that are majority black have 200,000 residents. The non-Pittsburgh portions of Allegheny County that have a majority of black residents have...58,000 residents.
The types of places are also very different. In Cleveland, these are all older first-ring suburbs on the East Side. In contrast, in Pittsburgh, most of them are small cities/old mill towns (Clairton, McKeesport, Duquesne, McKees Rocks, Rankin, Braddock, Homestead, etc. The only areas that buck this trend are Wilkinsburg (sort of midway between East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights) and Penn Hills (which has been developing into Pittsburgh's first true black suburb for around a generation).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
