Dayton inter city (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Springfield: transplants, 2013, insurance)

[Ohioan58]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

I first became associated with Dayton around 1993... so about 20 years ago. During those 20 years I've seen one major business after another close its doors, relocate or go bankrupt. Several of the storied "invented in Dayton" manufacturers have departed just in the past 10 years. Dayton didn't benefit appreciably from the IT boom in the late 1990s, and suffered grievously in the Great Recession. Instead of up-down oscillations, its modern history feels like monotonic decline.

Part of my job involves working with engineering-students at a local university. These aren't English majors; they're engineers. And the prevailing sentiment is that local jobs can't be found, even if the students have excellent grades. The best remedy seems to be to move away.

In the 20 years that I did IT contracting in and about Dayton I have likewise seen one *small* technology business after another close its doors. The reasons usually centered on head-up-the-p00 hole managements who actively demoralized their engineers, programmers and tech leads.

Loser tech businesses in Dayton do not have "the economy", the Japanese, the Indians, or the Chinese to blame. They are their own problem.

I keep saying that Dayton has some unique local cultural dysfunctions. I grew up in Dayton and I moved back here in the 90s. Dayton (and to a lesser extent Cincinnati) is a wasteland for high tech.

Dayton has deservedly (in my opinion) missed out on a possible transition from the smokestack/factory economy to a better economy based on technology, and even that window of opportunity has pretty much closed.

Dayton has absolutely sucked as a place to be an engineer or programmer, *unless* you're one of the kept smurfs working in a local DoD house inside a contract bubble.

There is simply no technology culture here and in Dayton in particular there is an extremely strong anti-progressive taint to the thinking of the managements and owners in the region. You'll never, ever see a vibrant startup scene in Dayton. Never.

A key part of the local tech culture problem in Dayton is that it's tough to find good projects and work here. So the mentoring and learning experience of a recent graduate in Dayton is stunted. And managements in Dayton are rife with "Theory X" thinking, blaming the worker.

Good careers come to Dayton only to be destroyed. Good minds starting their careers in Dayton are not taught good practices. Managers with exceptionally poor insight and combative relationships with inventor types are validated as being in the right.

Dayton is sort of the opposite of a tech incubator - Dayton is more like a tech composter.

[Dayton Sux]

When I first moved to Dayton, it struck me as a blend between a smaller version of Detroit and the South. That is, it had the feeling of post-industrial decline as in Detroit, and segregation like in the old south. Beavercreek and Centerville are to Dayton, what Ann Arbor is to Detroit... the "nice" neighborhood where the wealthier and more cultured people live.

I think Anne Arbor might be more Yellow Springs? YS does seem like a refugee camp of relocatees some times. But I want to expand on your comment.

Dayton is a weak market metropolitian area. That means, for people wanting to relocate here (who presumably have a job offer or are being transferred here) the choice of where to buy is key, in order to ensure that their new house holds resale value. Also, assuming the relocatee has a family, schools become key, too.

So there will be certain areas that will remain islands of more-or-less affluence and growth an in a generally slow-growth region. Or, in the case of Oakwood, affluence but no growth since the place is built-out.

@@@@

But I digress, this thread is "Dayton Inter- (or Inner?) City". The way Dayton is not like inner-city Detroit is that its not just a concentration of poor black people. It is also the concentration of poor white people...where you see the development of a white ghetto to go along with the black one.

Another way Dayton differs from Detroit is that a lot of the city is still standing.
I think we have a ways to go before we start seeing the scale of Detroit neighborhood demolition to urban prairie types of stuff....though you can get that atmoshphere that at old industrial sites in some parts of town (in fact the old Dayton Tire site really was turned into a prairie as an environmental remediation).

[ohio_peasant]

Ohioan58 and Dayton Sux – Because I’m a transplant to this area, I’ve tried to hold back my criticisms, lest locals get offended that here comes another interloper (me) spewing negativity. But I agree with both of you. Before moving here, I’ve lived in large cities on both coasts, including the DC region, which is heavily defense-driven and in some regards resembles the Wright-Patt culture (some, not all!). In DC the defense-sector is well integrated with civilian and private-sector tech. There is considerable cross-pollination, for example between IT people transferring from DoD contracts to Silicon-Valley field-office contracts and back. (Fairfax County VA and Montgomery County MD are quite similar to the SF Bay region in many regards). For some reason this doesn’t appear to be happening in Dayton.

Dayton resembles Detroit in the sense that the inner-city and its inner-suburbs are blighted (with the notable exception of Oakwood), but the more distant suburbs such as Centerville or Springboro appear to be doing OK. It also resembles Detroit because both cities were heavily dependent on the auto industry. As this industry contracted, the big-3 and their first-tier suppliers evidently pulled back to retain their historical epicenter and sacrificed their satellite plants, such as those in Ohio. In that regard, Dayton would have suffered more than Detroit.

My question in all of this is whether Dayton has a particular disadvantage as compared to say Peoria, Terre Haute, Toledo, Des Moines and so forth… other midsized Midwestern cities. What strikes me as blatantly obvious and demoralizing about Dayton is a sanctimonious culture of “once we were great”, a misplaced pride that’s firmly stuck in a past now gone for 40+ years. Attitude adjustments are difficult to make, but one remains optimistic. Either the whole Midwest is doomed, or cities such as Dayton can better themselves at a local level.

Second, I wonder if Dayton is a “weaker” market than its Midwestern midsized-city peers, or if stands out as particularly disadvantaged?

[SWOH]

^To answer your question of whether Dayton is particularly disadvantaged, yes and no.

To put it simply (in terms used by another forumer, Dayton Sux possibly?), Dayton is Colorado Springs glued to Youngstown.

We aren't disadvantaged enough to get full benefits like Youngstown, yet we aren't prosperous enough to be like Colorado Springs...

[Ohioan58]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

In DC the defense-sector is well integrated with civilian and private-sector tech. There is considerable cross-pollination, for example between IT people transferring from DoD contracts to Silicon-Valley field-office contracts and back. (Fairfax County VA and Montgomery County MD are quite similar to the SF Bay region in many regards). For some reason this doesn’t appear to be happening in Dayton.

This is a stupendously on-point and accurate observation. In Dayton, if you don't have a clearance but you apply for a job demanding a clearance, you will often (usually) feel like an idiot for wasting your time. Employers will pick around and reject you because they don't want to fund clearance work (Dayton is an exceptionally "cheap" city, where even business owners have a coupon clipping bargain mentality.)

And when I made that move in the reverse direction, from DoD to commercial work, the people I worked with (in Cincinnati, but the culture is similar) gave me untold s*** about $400 hammers and whatnot, like I was an imbecile and time waster and jerk for having worked in DoD (In return, I thought these guys were unskilled rube idiots and their software development skills were pure poo.)

Screw the defense industry in Dayton, because it doesn't mix with the private sector in any way.

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

My question in all of this is whether Dayton has a particular disadvantage as compared to say Peoria, Terre Haute, Toledo, Des Moines and so forth… other midsized Midwestern cities. What strikes me as blatantly obvious and demoralizing about Dayton is a sanctimonious culture of “once we were great”, a misplaced pride that’s firmly stuck in a past now gone for 40+ years.

Second prop I have to give you - exceptionally insightful remarks.

In my view, what has killed Dayton, dating from at least the 1960s was an attitude of extreme entitlement that permeated the atmosphere. Businesses around Dayton usually acted entitled to business. I remember a real estate broker that went out of his way to call and insult my parents because he found out that they sold their house through another broker. I'm positive that all of the old flagship businesses around Dayton like NCR and Rike's never expected trends, technology and markets to move against them. Union workers at auto plants in Dayton felt extremely entitled - you'd see them braying from strike lines in the 11 PM news about wanting to crush GM just so their pay or benefits would be increased.

On multiple levels, old school Dayton suffered from an abundance of civic pride that metastasized into an attitude of entitlement and invulnerability. Then, Dayton fell, very hard - as it fell by increments nobody around there could believe that jobs and opportunity were gone for good.

And now 40 years later, you have some locals who expect people to spontaneously start to see once again how awesome Dayton is.

That's my analysis on why Dayton got to the position that it is in now.

[Dayton Sux]

My question in all of this is whether Dayton has a particular disadvantage as compared to say Peoria, Terre Haute, Toledo, Des Moines and so forth… other midsized Midwestern cities. What strikes me as blatantly obvious and demoralizing about Dayton is a sanctimonious culture of “once we were great”, a misplaced pride that’s firmly stuck in a past now gone for 40+ years. Attitude adjustments are difficult to make, but one remains optimistic. Either the whole Midwest is doomed, or cities such as Dayton can better themselves at a local level.

Second, I wonder if Dayton is a “weaker” market than its Midwestern midsized-city peers, or if stands out as particularly disadvantaged?

A lot of the discussion on this thread is subjective, but if you want to put hard numbers for comparable places and Dayton, for various measures like education attainment, decline in housing value, unemployment, etc, the Brookings and Urban Institute think tanks put out studies and rankings.

Dayton tends to cluster with certain other cities near the bottom or in the midrange of these ratings, or groups together with other cities with common characteristics.

Also, one has to take care about apples to apples comparison....the comparisons btw center city to center city, or metro area to metro area. The numbers might change. Also to compare like-cities in terms of population and economic size (as measured by the GMP, or Gross Metro Product)

And if one had the time or interest just digging in the Census/ACS records might let one
build one's own comparison.

I think, also, one would have to define 'disadvantage' to do the comparison.

Ohioan58 and Dayton Sux – Because I’m a transplant to this area, I’ve tried to hold back my criticisms, lest locals get offended that here comes another interloper (me) spewing negativity.

...been here 25 years myself and not a native, no connections to the place.

[Ohioan58]

I'm a local and I spew continual negativity about Dayton. The comments that get my cocked Dr. McCoy style eyebrow are effusive pro-Dayton propaganda and mindless obedience to the "Dayton that was". Dayton has some good things but you need a decent economy to create safety, jobs and social stability.

I believe that had Dayton not had a collective civic pride-entitlement stick up its heinie throughout the 60s and 70s, the drop would not have been as severe and Dayton may have held the line more. Dayton had a ton of unique corporate assets in the 60s and 70s. My thesis is that the unrealism and standing on laurels mentality around Dayton contributed to a steep slide. We *were* a center of innovation decades ago, a sort of midwestern Silicon Valley.

The collective attitude around Dayton in the 60s was "nothing is good enough for Dayton" so sure enough, Dayton has nothing now.

Now Dayton is at the level where a Pilot/Flying J truck center is seriously being considered for the Nicholas Rd. exit of I-75. Highly visible truck stops are for redneck hick towns in the middle of nowhere. It makes Dayton look like crap to have a truck stop as the first thing in Dayton that a traveler along I-75 would see.

[streetcreed]

Originally Posted by goofy328

Thing about it is these days people have short memories so you don't even need character. Columbus is what most people want, as evidenced by the population there. Not to many of us old heads that like grit are around.

If Columbus can successfully infill the more suburban parts of the city it will be interesting again. If not, it will continue to appeal to those that don't mind a 45 minute drive. Eventually Columbus will run out of land and they won't have any choice but to build up. That is usually how things go.

While it is true that Columbus has much suburban development populating the post 1950 areas of the city, it also has one of the most gentrified urban cores in the midwest and Ohio.

In the last 15 years the central city has become denser, developed, and trendy. Neighborhoods like the Short North, Clintonville, the grandview area, German Village, even downtown itself are young and vibrant with lively retail strips and a safe, colorful urban life.

This has occured as a result of the cities strong economy and a creative, white collar, transplant population that is willing to take over areas and develop and gentrify them.

In the 90s this was just starting to really take hold. Columbus isn't the same Columbus of the 80s or early 90s or before. Also, though you still have "sprawl" it is actually much more compact than Cincinnati's metro or daytons. A great majority of the cities metro still inside franklin county alone and within or right around the outerbelt.

[ohio_peasant]

That's an excellent observation, Streetcreed. It immediately begs the question: "What is it about a city that attracts "creative, white collar, transplant population"? With say Boston or San Francisco, the answer is obvious. But what about one midsized Midwestern city vs. another? No city in Ohio will ever match the cultural cachet of New England, but still, the relative success of one such city vs. another suggests that local attitudes are not irrelevant.

[SWOH]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

That's an excellent observation, Streetcreed. It immediately begs the question: "What is it about a city that attracts "creative, white collar, transplant population"? With say Boston or San Francisco, the answer is obvious. But what about one midsized Midwestern city vs. another? No city in Ohio will ever match the cultural cachet of New England, but still, the relative success of one such city vs. another suggests that local attitudes are not irrelevant.

That is the issue. The obvious answer is jobs (after all, white collar people only go where there are white collar jobs).

However, this begs the question of how does a metropolitan area attract white collar employment?

Some of it is based on tax incentives (this is primarily how the south gets their white collar employment)
Some of it is based on where companies are started - making a vibrant startup community essential
Some of it is where the jobs already are (this is where the midwest and new england cities are the heavy hitters)
Some of it is where is cool (Austin, Seattle, the Silicon Valley, and anyplace else that is "new" and "trendy" has an advantage here).

... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some major reasons why companies choose to locate where they do, like natural resources, regulations, site and situation issues, current available workforce, etc. But the issue is how do we, in the midwest, win in each of the four above categories?