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San Francisco has been described as "the finest East Coast city ever built." A lot of San Francisco developed in the decades from 1848 on, which were pretty foundational for East Coast cities too. San Francisco isn't Manhattan, but there are aspects of the way the city is laid out that echo Manhattan. The wooden rowhouse neighborhoods of San Francisco have similarities to the brick rowhouse neighborhoods of Boston or Brooklyn or Philadelphia.
I just have to snark on Saint Louis for a moment--to my knowledge it is the only major American city that demolished one major historic landmark to provide an adjacent parking garage for another.
San Francisco has been described as "the finest East Coast city ever built." A lot of San Francisco developed in the decades from 1848 on, which were pretty foundational for East Coast cities too. San Francisco isn't Manhattan, but there are aspects of the way the city is laid out that echo Manhattan. The wooden rowhouse neighborhoods of San Francisco have similarities to the brick rowhouse neighborhoods of Boston or Brooklyn or Philadelphia.
I just have to snark on Saint Louis for a moment--to my knowledge it is the only major American city that demolished one major historic landmark to provide an adjacent parking garage for another.
The Northeast Corridor. Bowash. The Megalopolis. Whatever you call it, the very apex of urban America by any standard is this string of cities, metro areas, and interconnecting towns that run northeastward, in a row: Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
The region has no peers.
But there is a whole lot of country beyond that narrow stretch of the Atlantic Coast. The model for urban America was basically set by these northeastern cities and transported from greater to lesser degrees to the major cities throughout the US.
If we use the Northeast Corridor as a model, which American cities do you think would fit best in this region based on the urban model they present. This is not a better than/worse than or ranking thread by any means; I have no intention of pitting one city against another here. I'm merely trying to find the cities that offer the type of urbanity of the east coast by whatever measures you use (mine would include density, downtown-centric, mass transit, important cultural centers, walkability, ethnic neighborhoods, sense of place, older buildings,etc.)
Based off this, I'd go with Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. Pittsburgh is a pretty obvious one considering it is part of the Northeast and aligns much more with the Megalopolis cities than cities to the west and south of it (besides Cleveland and maybe Columbus). I didn't add Detroit in there because it doesn't have the density, ethnic neighborhoods (still intact), walkability, mass transit, and downtown-centric of other Northeast cities.
Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Houston, and Denver are a far from a Northeastern culture as you can get IMO.
Probably Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Not only because of their geographical locations, but the history and demographic makeup is most similar to the cities on the East Coast.
Phoenix
Tucson
Salt Lake City
Oklahoma City
Jacksonville
Fort Worth
Boise
Anchorage
Reno
They all have historic downtown areas with archeticture quite similar to the northeast. I would say out of this list Reno fits the most though because its somewhat compact and its probably the most liberal out of these cities
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