Next Batch of Cities for Comparison Articles

[thelakelander]

With a brief family stop in Detroit and a college classmate's wedding a week later in Huntsville, I'll be on the road to explore following cities from June 5 - 14.

Lexington, KY
Cincinnati, OH
Dayton, OH
Detroit, MI
Ann Arbor, MI
Kalamazoo, MI
Chicago, IL
Indianapolis, IN
Louisville, KY
Nashville, TN
Huntsville, AL
Birmingham, AL
Atlanta, GA

Another wedding and Detroit July trip will have me in the following cities:

Baltimore, MD
York, PA
Harrisburg, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Youngstown, OH
Akron, OH
Cleveland, OH
Toledo, OH
(return trip still to be determined)

So far, here are things I'll be on the look out for in these cities:

- Successful urban public spaces (courthouses, parks, riverfronts)
- Pedestrian friendly urban infill
- Mass transit
- Urban failures (good for examples of what not to do)
- Vibrant urban neighborhood commercial districts
- Urban Nightlife districts
- Convention centers
- Intermodal transportation centers

Since our forum members are from all over, I would like to use this thread gain information on the topics above about areas I should check out.  I'll also do a few live updates from these cities while I'm there, in this thread.  Also feel free to suggest additional topics worth exploring that are not mentioned above.

[CrysG]

How about what the city has done downtown in terms of culture?

I remember that on my first trip to Cincy that I was in awe of the number of museums and conservatories. 

[thelakelander]

^Most definitely!  It will be interesting to see if cultural uses are clustered or isolated and what the impact is on their surroudings with each option.

[Traveller]

I've visited Pittsburgh a few times recently and would recommend you check out the following:
- The renewal along the northshore around the stadiums.
- East Carson Street on the southside, both the old Southside Flats and the new Southside Works.
- Station Square shopping center.
- The Strip District, including the Heinz History Center and Primanti Brothers restaurant.
- The T light rail system.
- Pittsburgh's BRT.
- Ft. Pitt and Point State Park.
- The downtown theater district.
- The David Lawrence Convention Center.
- The whole Oakland neighborhood, including the Carnegie museums, CMU, and Pitt.

[thelakelander]

^Thanks.  My hotel happens to be along the Northshore about a block or two from the stadiums.  Early on, I thought about booking a hotel near the airport and using BRT to get into town, but once I added up the cost/ride time, it was better stay near the heart of the city.

[hanjin1]

dang, all those cities will be better than ours.

[thelakelander]

I think we'll fare pretty well against spots like Toledo, Dayton and Youngstown.  I'm trying to hit a good mix of cities so that we can see the good, bad and ugly.

[vicupstate]

I have heard something many years back that Harrisburg PA had changed its property tax structure to tax land heavily and improvements (ie buildings) lightly.  The result was a denser city with fewer surface parking lots and less sprawl.  It has been in the back of my mind to investigate this for myself, to see if it could be propagated to other cities.     


Here is a reference to this from the Harrisburg PA wikipedia entry:

Harrisburg is also known world wide for its use of land value taxation. Harrisburg has taxed land at a rate six times that on improvements since 1975, and this policy has been credited by its long time mayor, Stephen R. Reed, as well as by the city's former city manager during the 1980s with reducing the number of vacant structures in downtown Harrisburg from about 4,200 in 1982 to less than 500.

I would be interested to see if Harrisburg DOES appear to have fewer vacant lots, surface parking lots, vacant buildings and higher density generally, than would normally be expected from a city of that size.   I'll see what I can dig up on that in the interim too.

Doing something like that in JAx would likely require significant changes to state laws, but fortunately, since Jax is the only consolidated government, it is already treated differently in respect to certain laws.  For instance, with Crist's Property tax reform, Jax was given  an escape clause by the legislature (although it was not enacted by the city, it was nonetheless available).   

Jacksonville has an abundance of vacant lots, vacant buildings, surface parking lots in the urban core and that issue needs to be addressed somehow.   

[JeffreyS]

^An interesting idea.  I wonder if any other cities have tried to copy this plan.  In a State full of sprawl I would love to see something that encouraged infill.  I want great urban, Suburban and rural areas in my community not just the suburb of Florida.

[reednavy]

As I've said Lake, I'll gladly type some stuff up and email to you about Nashville. Besides downtown, check out these areas:

The Gulch on the SW edge of downtown
Midtown along West End Ave, especially Centennial Park
Hillsboro Village around 21st Ave South
Germantown and the Bicentennial Mall area in north downtown
SoBro, where The Pinnacle will be opened by December at 436ft tall and where the new convention center will go, behind the Sommet Center.
Make sure, you have to check out the absolute core, Church Street. This is what Laura Street can learn from.

Also, I recommended checking out Murfreesboro, an exurb of over 100,000 and becoming a very self sufficient city and my hometown. While it may seem like a lot of sprawl, you have to check out downtown and East Main Street.

[Clem1029]

Some Cleveland suggestions:
* I cannot emphasize this enough -  find time to spend around East 4th Street downtown. 5-7 years ago it was nothing but an ugly run down alley looking street, now it's one of the best entertainment and residential areas in the city. There may not be many huge success stories in Cleveland right now, but E. 4th is one of them.
* The most recent transit development there is the Euclid Corridor (BRT). Enough said.
* If you want a good comparison of how not to use your waterfront, drive down the shoreway (RT 2) downtown - there's lots of talk of redevelopment, but that is going to take money the city doesn't have.
* There's a lot of talk of building a new or redeveloping the existing convention center and having a Medical Mart permanently in the convention center. Lots of screaming over location, but it's poised to be a big deal for the city.
* If you're looking for good urban cultural pockets, take a drive through Tremont (near west side - kind of the "artsy" population area), Little Italy and Coventry on the east side are nice areas. There's also the Museum District and University Circle on the east side.

[Ocklawaha]

Lake if we're going to stay in this Transit Race, a shot of each Amtrak station, road and track side if possible may help our own designs. Interior shots are good to. We need to see every multi-modal station as well as all of the older stations, as THEY were designed for huge crowds.

Y'all just remember, "our train is coming..."

OCKLAWAHA

[reednavy]

Lake if we're going to stay in this Transit Race, a shot of each Amtrak station, road and track side if possible may help our own designs. Interior shots are good to. We need to see every multi-modal station as well as all of the older stations, as THEY were designed for huge crowds.

Y'all just remember, "our train is coming..."

OCKLAWAHA

Well, count Nashville out on that then. However, Union Station downtown is incredible.

[thelakelander]

I have heard something many years back that Harrisburg PA had changed its property tax structure to tax land heavily and improvements (ie buildings) lightly.  The result was a denser city with fewer surface parking lots and less sprawl.  It has been in the back of my mind to investigate this for myself, to see if it could be propagated to other cities.

From the photographs and aerials I've viewed, Harrisburg has a pretty compact and vibrant downtown with very few large parking lots (most are on the edge near the railyards).  I'll keep this in mind.  It should contrast greatly with Youngstown.  There, they have a plan to abandon significant portions of the city to concentrate on repopulating others.

[thelakelander]

As I've said Lake, I'll gladly type some stuff up and email to you about Nashville. Besides downtown, check out these areas:

The Gulch on the SW edge of downtown
Midtown along West End Ave, especially Centennial Park
Hillsboro Village around 21st Ave South
Germantown and the Bicentennial Mall area in north downtown
SoBro, where The Pinnacle will be opened by December at 436ft tall and where the new convention center will go, behind the Sommet Center.
Make sure, you have to check out the absolute core, Church Street. This is what Laura Street can learn from.

Also, I recommended checking out Murfreesboro, an exurb of over 100,000 and becoming a very self sufficient city and my hometown. While it may seem like a lot of sprawl, you have to check out downtown and East Main Street.

I'm going to take you up on that email offer.  I'll be hatching out the details for this trip this weekend.  Are there any neighborhoods in Nashville that are similar to Springfield, yet further ahead commercially?