RSS
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
Four out of ten of the nation’s emptiest cities are in our immediate region. I think that says a lot about the successes of the Columbus area. Or, is it a sign of bad things to come. Just wondering.
Dayton
Toledo
Detroit
Indianapolis
Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion
The Nation's Emptiest Cities
[13 posts] [11 contributors]
Topic Rating:
(Total Ratings: )
Rate this topic:
Rate this topic:
-
columbusmike
Login to Send PM
I'm not sure how Columbus didn't make that list. We are nationally recognized as one of the worst cities in terms of urban decay (minus the last 10 years or so).
Posted 7 months ago # -
Andrew Hall
Dennison Place (The Circles)
Login to Send PM
The headline is misleading as what is measured are SMAs. (Statistical Metropolitan Areas) It is more than the urban core. For example, it includes Delaware in the Columbus SMA.
A.
Posted 7 months ago # -
columbusmike
Login to Send PM
Walker said:
Citation?James Kunstler has mentioned Columbus in several of his books as being a "wilderness of free parking"....and "already about 75 percent of the former downtown core of Columbus, Ohio is surface parking. So they’ve already done a magnificent job of destroying most of the fabric of the town"
I think Columbus is doing a great job recovering from the destruction the core of the city faced from the 70s and 80s. Slowly, we're bouncing back.
Posted 7 months ago # -
GCrites80s
5xNW
Login to Send PM
^ But the article was about empty housing units, so a parking lot can't hurt in their analysis. Oh well, all these lists are just advertorials anyway.
Posted 7 months ago # -
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
Login to Send PM
columbusmike said:
James Kunstler has mentioned Columbus in several of his books as being a "wilderness of free parking"....and "already about 75 percent of the former downtown core of Columbus, Ohio is surface parking. So they’ve already done a magnificent job of destroying most of the fabric of the town"I think Columbus is doing a great job recovering from the destruction the core of the city faced from the 70s and 80s. Slowly, we're bouncing back.
You lost me at Kunstler. ;)
While we certainly have historically done a terrific job of demo'ing Downtown, the 2.2 sq mile land mass Downtown only makes up roughly 1% of the area of the entire 212 sq mile city.
Also, it sounds like this story is measuring our entire region, and not just the city proper, so Downtown's emptiness is only a very small portion of what is being measured here.
Posted 7 months ago # -
sirlancelot
Login to Send PM
Could someone define "emptiest" as it relates to cities? If one refers to downtown (there are varied definitions of what constitues downtown) residential population, this might be a fair description. Certainly, downtown Columbus today is empty when compared to, say, 1940. It is less empty now than in 1990. Columbus is less empty than Cleveland or Cincy (or appears to be). Heck, even downtown Chicago seems empty on a Sunday morning!
P.S. Anyone catch the ABC TV News segment (this week) on Steubenville as an upcoming boomtown? All because of oil. 200,000 potential new jobs in the region? Take that, Texas!
Posted 7 months ago # -
christylwilliams
Olde Towne East
Login to Send PM
I adore James Kunstler. Mostly because I too hate compromise and think I'm always right.
For some reason, the downtown area in both Cincinnati and Cleveland always seem more dense and vibrant to me. More bars, more retail. Hell, I was in Detroit a couple weeks ago, and even their downtown seems to have more action on a Saturday night than Columbus.
Posted 7 months ago # -
NEOBuckeye
Ohio At-Large
Login to Send PM
christylwilliams said:
For some reason, the downtown area in both Cincinnati and Cleveland always seem more dense and vibrant to me. More bars, more retail. Hell, I was in Detroit a couple weeks ago, and even their downtown seems to have more action on a Saturday night than Columbus.Downtown Cleveland actually has a number of parking lots of its own. What's disturbing is that this wasn't always the case. The city in general though is still more densely built than Columbus.
Of course, Cleveland's landlocked 82.4 square miles might tend to make that a necessity, given that the city cannot annex any additional land. If you can't grow outward, you tend to grow upward. Cincinnati is in a similar situation, albeit with fewer parking lots.
Cleveland has East 4th Street and the Warehouse District as its current "IT" social districts (and Coventry, too, if you count Cleveland Heights on the distant east side). The Short North, University District and the Arena District (particularly Park Street) along with Grandview--all technically beyond downtown--seem to carry the "IT" social district designation here. Looking at Pearl Alley, Gay and Long streets in "downtown proper" I would expect them to continue to evolve into the "IT" social district for Downtown Columbus.
Posted 7 months ago # -
Coy
Discovery District
Login to Send PM
Every time I go back home to Youngstown it seems more and more like a creepy ghost town.
It's really strange to drive down major streets that I remember as being bumper to bumper traffic, that are now empty. So many retailers have left that even the suburban mall area (Boardman) is scary with vacant space. The downtown area has been pretty bleak since the late 80's, even with YSU right on top of it, but there are some signs of life that the few remaining folks in Y-town are starting to make a few good things happen.One article I read sometime in the past year said that there are so many vacant homes on the East side of Y-town, that there was talk about offering to move people who were the last holdouts on some blocks to other homes, on blocks that were more occupied, for free. Then bulldozing down the whole block, and/or removing the need for snow removal for that street.
Now THAT's an empty city.
Posted 7 months ago #
You must log in to post.
Launched in August 2010, TheMetropreneur.com is a local online resource devoted to small business development and entrepreneurship. Its aim is to tell the stories of Central Ohio's business community, foster regional economic development and assist entrepreneurs with its resource-heavy focus.