It is so sad to see them slowly die, even after their recent rallies ........

[Stinky The Clown]

I'm talking about America's cities.

Tonight I'm in a hotel in downtown Cleveland. In another life I lived close to here for a year or two. That was after the Cuyahoga River caught fire, but before The Flats became trendy and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was even conceived.

On the train ride on the RTV in from Hopkins, the empty, decaying factories tell the tale of the flight of manufacturing, first to the South and then direct to China. Walking the streets of downtown, the signs of decay underlie it all. Spalled concrete. More bird shit than on the head of a now meaningless statue. A walk through a shiney new downtown crystal palace, still looking hopeful inside, but with its four restaurants having posted "new hours" and closing at 3.30 pm. These were clearly conceived as dinner houses, now trying (and failing, I'll bet) to make it on lunch alone. A peek out my hotel room at 7.00 pm reveals near-deserted sidewalks.

Deferred maintenance is everywhere. The convention center is literally decaying. The doors on its south facade are locked, but incredibly bowing out, as if from a bomb blast inside. The Mall is weedy and seedy. Its concrete crumbling, adding to the sense of decay.

This is Cleveland after its attempt at a rally. A rebirth. It died once and is dying again. It seems worse than when I lived here, before its attempt at rebirth. The hotels, all high end flags, would seem to me an embarrassment to their respective home offices.

Cleveland is my topic since I'm here and since I actually **liked** living here, those many years ago. But Cleveland is by no means alone. I saw the same sorts of issues in Atlanta. Walk through and around Centennial Park, and especially, walk into CNN Center. Deferred maintenance. Nashville. Boston. Baltimore. Dallas. It is everywhere.

We simply seem unable to keep up what we have. No money for paint and repairs. No money to remove the grit and grime and pigeons.

Perhaps some enterprising soul will find a way to harvest the guano and pay royalties to our cities for the right to scrape it off our monuments and landmarks.




I'm not picking on Cleveland. Honest I'm not. She's not as bad as some cities. Not by a long shot. And she is better than many.

One little story ......... I was out and about and a thunderstorm hit. I was without an umbrella. Not many people around. A woman was hurrying along. She saw me.

"Where are you going?"

I answered.

"Its on my way. Get under here."

That's Cleveland. Its people.

[Mythsaje]

1. I was born there...

But have since only been there only for a few hours otherwise.

[JeffR]

2. That's a city I loved the many times I was there as a kid.

Damned shame.

[MADem]

3. Boston's not looking bad. It's looking pretty damned good, actually.

When they finish the Rose Kennedy greenway, it'll be a showplace.

[scheming daemons]

5. Pittsburgh too... I'm glad they chose us for the G20 summit.

Going through a pretty good period now, after a few tough years.

[mopinko]

6. i enjoyed my visit to pittsburgh.

i was there last spring for a conference. i liked it. it had that muscle-y energy that a good city does. i liked the trains still going through the middle of town. and all the different bridges.

[rockymountaindem]

12. Yeah, Boston is great

I understand this wasn't the case 10-15 years ago, but since I moved here in 2007 I don't have any complaints. If every major city in the US were as nice, we'd be doing great.

[mediaman007]

4. I just drove through downtown St. Paul this evening. While there is

a little life developing on the fringe at 7th and Kellogg, the core of the city is empty. After 6:00 PM, most of St. Paul is pretty quiet.

[mopinko]

7. i love chicago. it is blooming.

when i moved here in the early 80's it was as you say- sad. dusty. empty. but i, personally, love my mayor. he has taken on every tough problem that came along. and he has done some end runs around the old fossils in the city council to do great things. this here is my favorite.

http://www.millenniumpark.org/

if you read the papers about it, you will read that there were terrible cost overruns, and many engineering problems. but what really happened is that he got a plan for a parking garage approved, then picked all the deep pockets around here to turn the park into a showcase. none of the art or fountains or the geary bandshell or even the theater were in the original plan. he just raised private money, and got them through the back door.



we are also an example for all cities for our many green innovations. ie-all the buses and trains now have bike racks so that people can connect up to transit on their bikes. there are bike lanes, bike racks, even bike valets at the big concerts. city hall has a green roof. the city has a big research center for green technology.


above all, imho, we have grown the city with beauty and caring and things to feed the soul. you should come for a visit. you will love it.

[girl gone mad]

11. Chicago is a gem.

I live there part time and I personally have a lot of respect for the mayor, too. Having lived in a council-run city for so long, I can appreciate the many advantages that the strong mayor model brings. I still believe Chicago is an underrated city. Yes, it gets very cold, but people didn't suddenly discover that after putting up a bunch of tall buildings. The city was very well planned.

Having said that, Chicago is probably in for some tough times. The last I looked, the vacancy rate downtown was 13% and it's unlikely that real estate and gentrification-related jobs will be enough to replace the industrial jobs that have left. It's the people that make Chicago a truly special place, and I don't think that will change, even in these economically uncertain times.

[Withywindle]

13. I'm glad to live in Chicago too.

It's still a city that people WANT to move to, and they do. I know several people in the arts and media fields who moved to NYC because they believed that was "the place to be" for their work. Nope, they were back a few years later. Chicago is a place where you can have a life AND get work done, still.

Chicago is a living, thriving city. I have a co-worker who moved here from Detroit a few months ago - she loved Detroit, or what it used to be, but she's in awe of the fact that there are people out on the streets at night here, you can get your groceries after dark, public transit still takes you where you need to go, there are parks and museums and lakefront beaches that people who live here actually USE, that we have world-class politics and live music and theater, that our economy is diversified enough that we'll take some bad hits but we'll still survive.

[Withywindle]

14. Oh, and another great indicator.

I'm of that age where a large number of my friends have paired off and had children in the past few years. If I wanted to, I could round up all the toddlers of my acquaintance and have a kindergarten class that would be way too large to manage.

Only ONE couple has moved to the suburbs, and they didn't go very far (still within the CTA range), and that was mostly to be near grandparents, and still make sure to come in every weekend with the sprouts to socialize with their city friends and their kids. Most of the young families I know are concentrating on trying to buy a small place in their present city neighborhoods.

[mopinko]

15. chicago schools are mostly pretty good.

some are really, really excellent. not just the smarty pants schools either. our neighborhood school has been just awesome. and my kids are citizens of the real world. they are about as racially unconscious as is humanly possible.
now if only they would reach out to the amazing diversity of languages spoken in this city and start teaching foreign languages in grade school, like they should.
an arts high school would be pretty good, too. i hear they are looking to give out a couple charters for that.

ritchie took charge of the schools, after decades of buck passing and papering over. they have built so many new schools. they have brought so much innovation. they bucked the status quo, pissed people off. they have worked their asses off. and it shows.

[Withywindle]

16. That's what the parents I know want for their kids.

A lot of diversity, languages, growing up with friends from all over the world and seeing that as normal. Being citizens of the real world- exactly. And learning about the whole world, with less of the American-exceptionalist bullshit that was shoved down our throats when we were kids.

They should TOTALLY start teaching languages early, as soon as possible, when kids' brains are in the best stage to learn them. I think it's a crime that we don't! I'm happy that I know several little ones (pre-school) whose parents are both Anglo, but they pick up Spanish words from their playground friends, and their parents bought them Spanish picture books to keep it going. Just in my neighborhood alone, this could easily happen with Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian too. In other areas it could be Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Swahili, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi....the list is endless. Such great resources, all available.

[mopinko]

18. my kid's school population has

32 home languages.

[Feron]

8. Reminds me of two Cleveland tourism spoof videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=ysmLA5TqbIY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM&feature=related

[Odin2005]

9. Fargo is still booming.

The recession hasn't effected North Dakota all that much.

[demodonkey]

10. Pittsburgh (my home) is just gorgeous these days & I was in Minneapolis over the weekend which...

...seemed really nice too.

On edit: Pittsburgh has a ton of night life, and it seemed at least on the weekend so did downtown Minneapolis. (could have done without the construction there though!)

[JDPriestly]

17. The only hope is to revive American industry. The Obama administration

does not seem at all interested in a strategy for reviving our industrial base. Yet that is our only hope.