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Houston surpassed Seattle and Louisville before the US entered the Second World War while Atlanta and Dallas were close behind.
In 1930, Atlanta and Dallas were behind Newark, Jersey City, Rochester, Toledo, Columbus, St Paul and Oakland. They were not big cities by the standard of the era.
Houston was a little bit ahead of Atlanta and Dallas but it lost most of its old fabric.
In 1930, Atlanta and Dallas were behind Newark, Jersey City, Rochester, Toledo, Columbus, St Paul and Oakland. They were not big cities by the standard of the era.
Houston was a little bit ahead of Atlanta and Dallas but it lost most of its old fabric.
I'm just saying, I think you are being a bit generous on what you define as a "legacy city."
In 1930, Atlanta and Dallas were behind Newark, Jersey City, Rochester, Toledo, Columbus, St Paul and Oakland. They were not big cities by the standard of the era.
Houston was a little bit ahead of Atlanta and Dallas but it lost most of its old fabric.
They were considered big cities in their regions, regardless of how they 'stacked up' nationally.
I think 1940 is a bit late as a cut-off. By 1930 America was already heavily motorized... almost every family had a car by then and suburban development was already well under way (even if it didn't take full flight until after the war). I think it's better to look at the census of 1910 or 1920 if you want to know the extent of pre-auto urban fabric. In 1920 Seattle had a population of 315k; Portland 258k. Houston and Dallas -- 138k and 159k, respectively. That's a big difference. The only one of the large sunbelt metro areas that have exploded post-WWII that could be considered "legacy" IMO is Atlanta, but it too was well below Seattle/Portland/Denver's population in 1920.
I think 1940 is a bit late as a cut-off. By 1930 America was already heavily motorized... almost every family had a car by then and suburban development was already well under way (even if it didn't take full flight until after the war). I think it's better to look at the census of 1910 or 1920 if you want to know the extent of pre-auto urban fabric. In 1920 Seattle had a population of 315k; Portland 258k. Houston and Dallas -- 138k and 159k, respectively. That's a big difference. The only one of the large sunbelt metro areas that have exploded post-WWII that could be considered "legacy" IMO is Atlanta, but it too was well below Seattle/Portland/Denver's population in 1920.
Again, there are certain cities that were "legacy", but all still developing big-time today. I will offer this list:
1. San Francisco
2. Seattle
3. Los Angeles
4. New York City
5. Chicago
6. Atlanta
7. Dallas
8. Houston
9. ???
10. ???
Feel free to fill out the top 10.
For LA, Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston, they once had booming and very vibrant Downtowns pre-70s. But then the era of suburban sprawl, highway expansion, and white flight caused their downtowns to decline incredibly. In some ways, you can say they have or had a "sunbelt exterior, with a rust belt interior." That's no longer as true today as it was say in 1990. All of them have been revitalizing their urban cores over the past 10-20 years. This should help answer the question of why for such booming regions, their downtowns are/were lackluster with too many surface parking lots and lack of street-life.
To be honest I am not ready to put Atlanta, Dallas or Houston in the "legacy cities that continued to grow" category. They were all pretty small before WWII and didn't become big cities until the post war suburbia era. The legacy cities in the south are New Orleans and Louisville, and on a smaller scale, Savannah and Charleston. The south was the last part of the country to experience heavy urbanization, and it's lack of legacy cities is a product of that.
Are they still new? I mean they've been rapidly growing for 4-5 decades now. They went from relative no names to regularly showing up on top 50 international lists within a very short time, but at some point, even new cities aren't new.
New rising cities to me are Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh. I wouldn't call Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta legacy cities, but I feel like they're mature at least in terms of economy and metro population.
So I guess a new category would be "Mature Rising cities" which would include the 3 I mentioned and Miami.
IMHO there's a big difference between the cities which boomed in the 19th century and those which boomed in the early 20th century.
Older cities and neighborhoods are pretty much universally pedestrian focused. There were some wealthy people who engaged in work commutes via the railroad or horsecar, but for the most part every neighborhood was a patchwork of residential and commercial uses which was primarily interacted with on foot.
Then came the development of the electric streetcar, and what is termed the "streetcar suburb." Streetcar suburbs were very different in layout from earlier neighborhoods. Housing tended to spread out a bit, and move away from the sidewalk. Blocks became much longer, because it was expected you would jump onto the streetcar to take you where you needed to go, rather than walk for blocks. Detached single-family homes became the norm across wide swathes of newer neighborhoods. The new neighborhoods had no employment centers - you were supposed to take transit to get to them. Sometimes they would have a small strip of one-story commercial buildings (which was different from earlier commercial, that had apartments above) in the center of the neighborhood, but often you were expected to head Downtown or to another commercial nexus for your big shopping needs. Streetcar suburbs were proto-suburbia, just without the car. These sort of neighborhoods were pretty easily retrofitted to automobile usage once cars became commonplace.
By the 1920s, even streetcar suburbs were going out of style, replaced by automobile suburbs. Functionally speaking, these neighborhoods were not any different from later suburbia, aside from the fashionable housing styles being different, and attached garages being rare. Of course car ownership in general was still pretty low in the 20s, but people who couldn't afford a car weren't buying homes in the new neighborhoods anyway.
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