Opinions for Medina County- Brunswick (Cleveland, Akron: city hall, hotels, lawyers)

[jam40jeff]

LOL, that's hilarious. I was thinking the exact same thing. Both places are exurban in nature with traces of the country folk leftover whose farms were bowled over by developers. The only real difference is that Medina has a small but well kept historic downtown, whereas Brunswick has a strip plaza made to somewhat resemble an old downtown (very poorly I might add). However, exurbs are hardly what one would ever call "sophisticated".

[CityGrrl77]

Originally Posted by jam40jeff

LOL, that's hilarious. I was thinking the exact same thing. Both places are exurban in nature with traces of the country folk leftover whose farms were bowled over by developers. The only real difference is that Medina has a small but well kept historic downtown, whereas Brunswick has a strip plaza made to somewhat resemble an old downtown (very poorly I might add). However, exurbs are hardly what one would ever call "sophisticated".

A strip plaza made to resemble an old downtown? Um, where?
Never has Brunswick tried to create a historic downtown. Brunswick has never had one - you are right - however there was never any attempt to build one. I was just there over the weekend again. Did they build one after I left at 6:30p last night? lol

I learned something new from your post, however....'exurb'....was not aware of the term. You are correct in saying that Medina and Brunswick has few or has had farms that were pushed out by developers. There have always been way, way more farms in Medina than Brunswick though.

[jam40jeff]

http://www.city-data.com/picfilesv/picv27652.php

They were trying to make it the "new downtown" with a proposed ampitheater and everything.

[CityGrrl77]

Originally Posted by jam40jeff

http://www.city-data.com/picfilesv/picv27652.php

They were trying to make it the "new downtown" with a proposed ampitheater and everything.

Oh is that what they are calling it?
Brunswick doesnt have a downtown - new buildings or old. lol
Anyone who lives there will tell you that. That is their attempt to bring more/new people to the area and give Brunswick more of a personality than just it being a place littered with gas stations and pizza places.

See, the tradition for people in Brunswick was to go to Medina or Strongsville or elsewhere to go shopping and be able to eat at sit-down restaurants because Brunswick, prior to this new 'town center', didnt really have any of that. And honestly, in my opinion, B-wick still is not anywhere up to par with those things.
Given all this new development right off I-71, that area tends to be a giant clusterF (for lack of a better term) all the time anymore.
Don't get me wrong - I love my hometown and I wouldnt choose to have grown up anywhere else, but they could have done things a little differently. They could start with giving some money to Brunswick High School to put towards making the building more presentable. But, that's just me.

[jam40jeff]

I'm sorry to put down your hometown (but I do it to my own as well as far as urban planning goes, although I also have good memories of my hometown) but Brunswick is an example of NO urban planning. A bunch of ugly strip plazas and developments haphazardly scattered across once country roads, which has led to an mess of parking lots and ugly, mismatching one-story structures sprawling across once-farmland. There was no town to speak of, so it is 100% suburban slop, clinging to I-71 as its lifeline.

[CityGrrl77]

Originally Posted by jam40jeff

I'm sorry to put down your hometown (but I do it to my own as well as far as urban planning goes, although I also have good memories of my hometown) but Brunswick is an example of NO urban planning. A bunch of ugly strip plazas and developments haphazardly scattered across once country roads, which has led to an mess of parking lots and ugly, mismatching one-story structures sprawling across once-farmland. There was no town to speak of, so it is 100% suburban slop, clinging to I-71 as its lifeline.

That's fine.
But, in it's defenese, atleast its not Medina...or East Cleveland....or Kenmore. lol

Brunswick was never meant to be a sprawling metropolis or a pretend 'high-end' town like Hudson.
We have a great football team, a good Police Department and its safe - good urban planning or not.

[jam40jeff]

I am not knocking Brunswick in the way people who call it Brunstucky would. I am knocking it in the same way I would knock North Olmsted, Mentor, or Macedonia. It is only "safe" because people have built insular developments centered around an unsustainable "cars only" and "cars for everything" culture to keep "those people" out. And in turn, they've vacated urban areas en masse, fueling their rapid decline. In the long run, I see more potential in most inner city neighborhoods than in places like Brunswick as long as a sufficient amount of their beautiful building stock and urban fabric can be preserved. They may be safe now, but there is nothing of lasting value. The strip plazas will decay and become ugly(-ier), and the cheap cookie-cutter homes will deterioate before any structure really should. There is no aesthetic beauty and nothing but the "suburban mentality" that drew anyone here in the first place, which will disappear when it starts to look more and more like a craphole. The type of people who move to a place like Brunswick will just move on and leave Brunswick to be the next Garfield Heights. The problem is that most people today are so "now-oriented" and "me-oriented" that they neither see what is best for society as a whole nor what is best for society in the long run. I firmly believe that building bland cardboard boxes miles from anywhere, with the aim of forcing people to have to own a car to live there in order to self-segregate themselves, in turn wasting time and non-renewable energy sources to achieve this, as well as isolating themselves from the bulk of society, will do much more long-term harm to this country than the short term "happiness" they derived from these places.

[800]

If your going to move to Medina Co. it might as well be in the Highland school district...

[CityGrrl77]

Well, jam40jeff....I don't know about all of what you said but Brunswick has grown in population since I was born in 1980 and still is. I'd like to think that it would be around a lot longer but don't really know.

Do you have some kind of schooling/background in urban planning?

[jam40jeff]

Originally Posted by CityGrrl77

Well, jam40jeff....I don't know about all of what you said but Brunswick has grown in population since I was born in 1980 and still is. I'd like to think that it would be around a lot longer but don't really know.

Do you have some kind of schooling/background in urban planning?

Just strong interest...I've actually thought about taking some ubran planning classes at CSU. I've pretty much been interested in it since I was about 14.

My point isn't that Brunswick is on the slide or that it will be in 10 years or anything, but look at the trend of EVERY city in the area since WW2. They all seem to grow for about 30 or 40 years, peak, and then shrink rapidly, in outward concentric cricles from Cleveland. Hopefully, this trend will go back inwards so we don't have a HUGE donut (instead of the small donut we have now). But when you look at areas losing population, you also see some revitalization efforts in some and some that come back (like Ohio City and Tremont). The revitalization efforts are nearly always concentrated around renovating historic and architecturally intresting housing stock (or factories/warehouses as is the case with the Warehouse District and Tyler Village). You don't see ANY of this redevlopment in the dying inner-ring suburbs like Maple Heights, Garfield Heights, Brookpark, Parma, etc. And I predict the same fate will make it's way to the newer suburbs in due time. Not too long ago, I'm sure people thought Middleburg Heights was the latest greatest, and now it's already considered a less desirable suburb.

This is not a condemnation of Brunswick or people from Brunswick, but rather the unusual and unproductive migration patterns around American cities.