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.
They're not unique neighborhoods if you live in a growing city. What you're excited about what would be called slums, ghettos, projects, abandonment in any other city. A chain restaurant is generally more pleasant to visit when you're surrounded by other inhabited establishments...not plywood covering windows
Okay, then you stay in your bland, pleasant environment, I'll stay in the city where the heart and soul is. Those boards on the windows, the abandoned buildings, those are scars on the face of a city with as much character and warmth as the Eastern European migrants who settled here. That character has never died, even if the face of the city has changed. It's sad that you lived here so long, and you never saw it.
I'll never understand you people and your insatiable consumerism. How much stuff do you really need?
Crocker Park sucks? The place apparently doesn't suck enough to stop people from living in the townhouses that were built into the mall itself. It's one thing to have a nice mall, but this place is so happening that it attracts people to actually live there.
Maybe the term "losing national relevance" is a bit loaded, but I think the OP raises a good question. Something I frequently see on City Data is boosterism/unabashed optimism. "City X is great because it has a lot of developments planned. It's an over-looked, up-and-coming city. It's slowly revitalizing." The problem, though, is that the numbers often don't support the facts. If you look at Cleveland's population, it's been decreasing since the 1960s. The decrease showed signs of slowing down from the 1980s to the 2000s, but it's only picked up since then. The most recent Census estimate (which I'll readily admit is not always accurate) shows that it lost 1.5% of its population over the last two years.* Cleveland might be slowly revitalizing, but it's still losing people. You could say that many cities went through a similar process, but they've since rebounded. Baltimore, for example, posted population gains for the first time in decades. I'm not sure Cleveland has reached that point yet.
(*I'll go ahead and add my standard caveat that I understand past performance is not an indicator of future performance.)
It is comical to read the same old tired posters talk up the fading city of Cleveland. They make it seem that all these neighborhoods are teeming with activity while mocking places like Crocker Park or Legacy. Well here is something funny: that new hot spot of University Circle is basically a Crocker Park light. Yep...all chains: Panera, Chipotle, Jimmy Johns, Verizon, etc. Gee..really hip and cool! Sure, a couple of independents too but hardly a neighborhood that has any real "buzz" for anyone who has lived in a "real" city.
One poster commented about Little Italy being like any other SUBURBAN downtown...exactly. You can walk up one side of Mayfield and down the other in about 5 minutes...big deal. Same can be said about East 4th...even smaller though maybe more people there...or Coventry. If you actually LIVE in any of these neighborhoods you will quickly become BORED as the choices are so limited.
I think the OP mentioned Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Anyone who has visited this area knows that there are more people there on any given weekend than ALL of the little neighborhoods of Cleveland combined. That is the problem with Cleveland...too many little neighborhoods and not enough people. If only all the effort could be focused in one or two areas then maybe you might get a more vibrant "city" experience but sadly that is not the case.
Cleveland is in decline...no doubt about that. Until the population of the city stops decreasing one can not argue this fact. Sure, perhaps more people might be living downtown but those are people who are NOT living in Ohio City or University Circle etc as the population of the city/county continues to decline.
Beware of Cleveland. Bad leadership, bad weather, high taxes and high poverty is not a mix that leads to a comeback.
It is comical to read the same old tired posters talk up the fading city of Cleveland. They make it seem that all these neighborhoods are teeming with activity while mocking places like Crocker Park or Legacy. Well here is something funny: that new hot spot of University Circle is basically a Crocker Park light. Yep...all chains: Panera, Chipotle, Jimmy Johns, Verizon, etc. Gee..really hip and cool! Sure, a couple of independents too but hardly a neighborhood that has any real "buzz" for anyone who has lived in a "real" city.
One poster commented about Little Italy being like any other SUBURBAN downtown...exactly. You can walk up one side of Mayfield and down the other in about 5 minutes...big deal. Same can be said about East 4th...even smaller though maybe more people there...or Coventry. If you actually LIVE in any of these neighborhoods you will quickly become BORED as the choices are so limited.
I think the OP mentioned Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Anyone who has visited this area knows that there are more people there on any given weekend than ALL of the little neighborhoods of Cleveland combined. That is the problem with Cleveland...too many little neighborhoods and not enough people. If only all the effort could be focused in one or two areas then maybe you might get a more vibrant "city" experience but sadly that is not the case.
Cleveland is in decline...no doubt about that. Until the population of the city stops decreasing one can not argue this fact. Sure, perhaps more people might be living downtown but those are people who are NOT living in Ohio City or University Circle etc as the population of the city/county continues to decline.
Beware of Cleveland. Bad leadership, bad weather, high taxes and high poverty is not a mix that leads to a comeback.
Yup, University Circle has those food chains that come with being by a college, then all those art museums chains, orchestra chains, music school chains, art school chains, one of the best science school chains, historical society chains, public transit chains, elite hospital chains, etc. It's a really lame place.
Little Italy is a pleasant neighborhood. It is not suburban. You can't go to restaurants like that in most suburbs. Suburban downtowns also don't really have access to rapid transit. It has some really great bakeries and cafes too. Extremely walkable area. Very safe area. Also close to Coventry and the scene up the hill there.
But hey guess what- no matter where you live in the country, your options of food, cafes, bars, shops are pretty much always the same. Shops don't constantly move in and out because you personally want more variety. I'm just saying that if you get bored with Little Italy (for example), you are allowed to go to a different neighborhood.
Whether or not Cleveland as a whole is "in decline" is quite debatable. Certainly any objective observer could not honestly say that some individual neighborhoods are in decline. If you ask me, other neighborhoods losing population isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's not really about having overall more people, it's about getting the right (educated, economically stable) people to move in. In the last few years, that has been happening in several core neighborhoods, though I agree that it needs to happen in more other places. A big thing holding this back is lack of jobs for such people (though we definitely have a few strong institutions already in town to attract some). This is why I moved out. But I am actively trying to return. Other places aren't really all they're cracked up to be necessarily.
One poster commented about Little Italy being like any other SUBURBAN downtown...exactly. You can walk up one side of Mayfield and down the other in about 5 minutes...big deal. Same can be said about East 4th...even smaller though maybe more people there...or Coventry. If you actually LIVE in any of these neighborhoods you will quickly become BORED as the choices are so limited.
Well, you're pretty much setting yourself up for failure because that's pretty much the same deal as any other neighborhood with a functioning business district in any mid-sized city. There are maybe a handful of cities in the entire country where the options are so innumerable from neighborhood to neighborhood that one would not get "bored" if they were to never leave any given one. But the beauty of living in a city with multiple viable neighborhoods, even if they individually don't come close to approaching a New York level of commercial options, is that you can hop around from one to another relatively easily. Whereas living in a small town or suburb, a serious excursion might be required to escape from your limited options.
Quote:
I think the OP mentioned Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Anyone who has visited this area knows that there are more people there on any given weekend than ALL of the little neighborhoods of Cleveland combined. That is the problem with Cleveland...too many little neighborhoods and not enough people. If only all the effort could be focused in one or two areas then maybe you might get a more vibrant "city" experience but sadly that is not the case.
I happen to be quite fond of Baltimore, but you're way off base here.
The Inner Harbor is a tourist trap that was set up around a spectacular natural setting and benefits enormously from the fortune of being located within a couple of hours drive from and being easily accessible by transit from three of the nation's seven largest metro areas. It's architecturally ugly for the most part, and hampered by awful auto-centric design (namely the six-lane moat that separates it from the rest of Downtown Baltimore). It's still less safe than any of Cleveland's most popular areas.
The true measurement of a city's vibrancy would certainly be more accurately demonstrated by the number of viable neighborhoods it has, not by the presence of one tourist draw. If anything, Baltimore could learn a lot more from, say, Tremont or Gordon Square, than Cleveland could from the Inner Harbor.
during my 51 yrs in Cleveland ive seen bad/crime areas like downtown w25th , Tremont , prospect ave , e.4th st , etc become cool growing hot spots.. and areas like slavic village , old Brooklyn , lee-miles , inner-ring burbs , etc , go into decline... Cleveland is growing/getting better from its core downtown and many inner city neighborhoods, but sadlly the farther out city neighborhoods and some inner-ring burbs are going downhill at the same time.. Cleveland still has huge strides to make in regards to crime/per capita , poverty , abandoned/housing/brownfields etc. ... with that said, make no mistake Cleveland has never looked as good in my life. and it continues to get better.. about the population. "Cleveland" is really "greater Cleveland" and greater Cleveland is " NE Ohio". the population of NE Ohio is stable and its still a huge metro compared to most cities/metros. Cleveland, NE Ohio on a great lake , has as much or more to offer than cities with much larger "city proper" populations... look for our metro population to grow in the near future , that will be the sign that Cleveland is rebounding.
I think the OP mentioned Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Anyone who has visited this area knows that there are more people there on any given weekend than ALL of the little neighborhoods of Cleveland combined. .
I have a feeling this isn't true. Obviously the Inner Harbor has more visitors than Cleveland's North Coast Harbor, but there are many reasons for that (the top one being location -- Baltimore is on the Eastern Seaboard, and Cleveland isn't). As far as the "going-out" neighborhoods -- which is my bias, being single and in my late twenties -- I stayed at a buddy's place in Baltimore's Canton area, and my impression from "going out" in a few different areas was that volume of people also "going out" was the exact same as Cleveland (i.e., much smaller than Chicago), with the possible exception of that late-night carryout by the water that looks like a boat.
The boosters on here -- we all know who they are -- like to peddle glaring inaccuracies at times, but I'm inclined to take their side on this thread. The only thing I would like to see stop is the city-suburban infighting. That works in a big city like New York or DC, but in Cleveland it sounds like people in a medium-sized city trying to make their sound city sound bigger than it is. I noticed this in Omaha as a visitor to that city, and it was off-putting -- Omaha is too small for residents to avoid entire sections of town or pretend that because they live in a five-square-block "hip area" that they're the only people in the metro with access to any culture. Cleveland is, too.
I have a feeling this isn't true. Obviously the Inner Harbor has more visitors than Cleveland's North Coast Harbor, but there are many reasons for that (the top one being location -- Baltimore is on the Eastern Seaboard, and Cleveland isn't). As far as the "going-out" neighborhoods -- which is my bias, being single and in my late twenties -- I stayed at a buddy's place in Baltimore's Canton area, and my impression from "going out" in a few different areas was that volume of people also "going out" was the exact same as Cleveland (i.e., much smaller than Chicago), with the possible exception of that late-night carryout by the water that looks like a boat.
The boosters on here -- we all know who they are -- like to peddle glaring inaccuracies at times, but I'm inclined to take their side on this thread. The only thing I would like to see stop is the city-suburban infighting. That works in a big city like New York or DC, but in Cleveland it sounds like people in a medium-sized city trying to make their sound city sound bigger than it is. I noticed this in Omaha as a visitor to that city, and it was off-putting -- Omaha is too small for residents to avoid entire sections of town or pretend that because they live in a five-square-block "hip area" that they're the only people in the metro with access to any culture. Cleveland is, too.
That's exactly it. It has nothing to do with faulting people for wanting to live in a suburb with a good school system and still be able to go to any of Cleveland's attractions whenever they damn well please in 20 minutes. Cleveland traffic is nothing. The real reason people go against the mindset of suburban living in NE Ohio is because, as you stated, it makes them feel like the city is bigger than it is. I find that the people who live in the suburbs don't take it personally when someone makes the decision to live in the city, but when someone from the city decides they want to move to a suburb, all of a sudden they are labeled as a fool because it's "boring" there.
It's sad because for every finger pointed by a Cleveland city dweller at a NE Ohio suburban dweller, there 5+ fingers pointed at the Cleveland city dweller saying that life in Cleveland is boring to begin with! How ironic is that?! If the city dwellers would stop raising their fingers telling people that they need to live in the city, they wouldn't have so many pointed back at them. Instead they should be thankful that those residing in the NE Ohio suburbs are willing to work in Cleveland in the first place and deal with that 8% Cuyahoga city tax rate. People who are comfortable living in the suburbs don't need any convincing that they should live in the city. They like where they are at, and don't need change, and for very good reason.
"Hey now, you need to leave your job located in (insert NE Ohio suburb with great school system and safe walkable neighborhood here) that you live 5 minutes away from and instead move to the city of Cleveland /find a job in the city of Cleveland to help support it." "Life where you live is boring!" (Even though you can drive 20-30 minutes to see any attraction in Cleveland.)
If only I had a nickle for every time I heard this. Good luck with those "convincing" statements which are nothing more than failed attemps at trolling.
Last edited by maxmodder; 01-04-2014 at 01:35 PM..
That's exactly it. It has nothing to do with faulting people for wanting to live in a suburb with a good school system and still be able to go to any of Cleveland's attractions whenever they damn well please in 20 minutes. Cleveland traffic is nothing. The real reason people go against the mindset of suburban living in NE Ohio is because, as you stated, it makes them feel like the city is bigger than it is. I find that the people who live in the suburbs don't take it personally when someone makes the decision to live in the city, but when someone from the city decides they want to move to a suburb, all of a sudden they are labeled as a fool because it's "boring" there.
It's sad because for every finger pointed by a Cleveland city dweller at a NE Ohio suburban dweller, there 5+ fingers pointed at the Cleveland city dweller saying that life in Cleveland is boring to begin with! How ironic is that?! If the city dwellers would stop raising their fingers telling people that they need to live in the city, they wouldn't have so many pointed back at them. Instead they should be thankful that those residing in the NE Ohio suburbs are willing to work in Cleveland in the first place and deal with that 8% Cuyahoga city tax rate. People who are comfortable living in the suburbs don't need any convincing that they should live in the city. They like where they are at, and don't need change, and for very good reason.
"Hey now, you need to leave your job located in (insert NE Ohio suburb with great school system and safe walkable neighborhood here) that you live 5 minutes away from and instead move to the city of Cleveland /find a job in the city of Cleveland to help support it." "Life where you live is boring!" (Even though you can drive 20-30 minutes to see any attraction in Cleveland.)
If only I had a nickle for every time I heard this. Good luck with those "convincing" statements which are nothing more than failed attemps at trolling.
The fact that you have to drive 20 minutes to get to interesting things is what makes it undesirable. Urban dwellers generally like to walk; it's good exercise, better for the environment, and more convenient. That is a big reason a lot of people prefer the city to the suburbs. Millennials see driving as a "boring" waste of time. When you drive you can't text, surf the web, take pictures, etc., while you can on public transportation, or while walking. Suburbs are auto-centric. Hence, suburbs are boring.
Last edited by Cleverfield; 01-04-2014 at 02:28 PM..
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.
