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Milwaukee's Third Ward...it's next to downtown, but an area separate from downtown. It has a lot of construction going on, as for years now, old warehouses have been turned into shopping and condos. This area (separate from downtown), includes the very popular Milwaukee Public Market, Anthropologie, West Elm, lots of coffee shops, restaurants, etc. There are condos on the river, that have boat slips, in addition to parking. Many from Chicago are buying up these condos, and spending week-ends in Milwaukee. I'll include a pic of the condos with boat slips...a couple of them, as there are more. Look on both sides of the bridge.
I love Milwaukee. It's absolutely beautiful and well laid out city. It was also blessed at being located on beautiful lake Michigan. I would like to think that if St. Louis was also located on a beautiful lakefront instead of a working, industrial river it would have also developed in a similar manner. That dense hi rise development that St. Louis has in it's central corridor and around Forest Park probably would have been laid out in a north-south manner along the water. Generally cities with beautiful waterfronts have more denser development and therefore census tracts along that water. It's common sense. With that said, Milwaukee really doesn't have dense residential streets to me. Most of the housing is wood frame and has generous set backs and gangways that are pretty typical of a place like Minneapolis.
I think Detroit and Philly were in the same overall class of cities, but I don’t think they are of the same category of urban form. Detroit is the prototypical autocentric city; what built it also led to its demise. During its most formative years, Detroit thought of cars first and people second. That is a recipe for all kinds of problems.
Pre-automobile Detroit (basically everything within the Grand Blvd. loop) was close.
It lacked row homes, but if you look at pictures of its commercial corridors and residential streets before the 1967 riots, Black Bottom / Paradise Valley, Cass Corridor,, etc., they were unmistakenly urban and walkable.
Hamtramck in fact would give you an idea of what much of inner city Detroit looked like.
Pre-automobile Detroit (basically everything within the Grand Blvd. loop) was close.
It lacked row homes, but if you look at pictures of its commercial corridors before the 1967 riots, Black Bottom / Paradise Valley, Cass Corridor,, etc., they were unmistakenly urban and walkable.
No doubt, I agree and I LOVE DETROIT! It has a relatively later rise to prominence though, and much of the city’s most iconic legacy was built post-automobile, for better or worse. It’s just a unique urban archetype.
I know this is a subjective topic, but the fact that St. Louis ranked among the top 10 most populous US cities from 1850-1960 makes this an easy one, at least in terms of urban fabric and cultural history. Detroit is right up there too, and it could be argued that the Motor City’s rise (and fall) is the most dramatic of them all. But I’m sorry, when it comes to urban character, Milwaukee and especially Minneapolis just are not even in the same class as St. Louis. STL is so much more established and grand, and reflects an influence of prosperity, prominence and stature that none of the other cities really have to the same degree (save for Chicago and Detroit). Cleveland gets an honorable mention, but its vernacular frame housing style is no match for solid red brick St. Louis. This is an easy one.
I agree. South St. Louis and the neighborhoods around Forest Park are easily the most solid, contiguous block of urban built form outside of Chicago. The residential streets in particularly really have no answer outside of Chicago. St. Louis also easily has the most pre-war apartment block neighborhoods in the Midwest outside of Chicago. I think an area that St. Louis really lacks on, that other cities have done much better is the commercial streets. St. Louis has really decimated some of it's commercial streets with drive thru restaurants and car lots, but a lot of new development is changing that for the better. Also, St. Louis has a crapload of variety. Apartment neighborhoods, rowhouse neighborhoods, old mansion neighborhoods, bungalow belts, 4 and 2 family flat neighborhoods, loft districts etc. People really don't get it. They just focus on the worst areas and conclude that's St. Louis.
Which major Midwestern city (that's not Chicago) would you say has the most 'urban character?'
Not sure how you are defining "urban character." That could mean a lot of things: density, nice downtown/tall buildings, grit/graffiti, heavy traffic, good public transit, row houses and apartments vs. individual houses, etc.
As I suspected the poll is falling along the usual C-D lines: sheer size: Detroit. Sheer C-D popularity MSP, nearness to Chicago: Milwaukee.
... at least I'm glad to see perpetual C-D whipping-boy city St. Louis some love, it is a real nice city that shares some of the problems of other post-industrial Midwestern cities like Cleveland and Detroit. Cleveland, of course, get's no C-D respect in such polls (the 1 vote, so far, is from me). Sometimes I attribute this to the fact that it's location is a tad ambiguous and that, in polls like this, some may not even see it as a Midwestern city... not sure.
St. Louis has more than a couple of suburbs that are denser than Milwaukee. So like the other poster said. Density doesn't always tell the whole story. St. Louis is denser than Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas, but those cities feel more developed in many aspects. Miami is nearly twice as dense as Minneapolis or Milwaukee and actually denser than Chicago by a good margin. I wouldn't say Miami is conclude from this that Miami has a more urban form than any of the older Midwestern cities. Milwaukee and Minneapolis also have way more immigrant homes than St. Louis, which also adds to the census driven population density, but I would say your average, fully occupied residential block in St. Louis feels noticeably more urban.
I once read someone describing St Louis like an old cat lady: she's crazy, she smells funny, she's raggedy, she's prone to violent outbursts- but at one time she was fabulously wealthy, and you can still see the remnants of that wealth. The mansion in disrepair, the moth eaten gowns, the faded beauty, the tarnished jewellery and silverware she gets out on occasion...
I love Milwaukee. It's absolutely beautiful and well laid out city. It was also blessed at being located on beautiful lake Michigan. I would like to think that if St. Louis was also located on a beautiful lakefront instead of a working, industrial river it would have also developed in a similar manner. That dense hi rise development that St. Louis has in it's central corridor and around Forest Park probably would have been laid out in a north-south manner along the water. Generally cities with beautiful waterfronts have more denser development and therefore census tracts along that water. It's common sense. With that said, Milwaukee really doesn't have dense residential streets to me. Most of the housing is wood frame and has generous set backs and gangways that are pretty typical of a place like Minneapolis.
Share some examples, and I'll see if Milwaukee can match.
I once read someone describing St Louis like an old cat lady: she's crazy, she smells funny, she's raggedy, she's prone to violent outbursts- but at one time she was fabulously wealthy, and you can still see the remnants of that wealth. The mansion in disrepair, the moth eaten gowns, the faded beauty, the tarnished jewellery and silverware she gets out on occasion...
Yes, that's a good analogy and I agree. People like to say that the Sunbelt cities are the most hated on this forum. I've noticed that there is a St. Louis hater cult on this forum too. I think St. Louis may be the most "versed" city on this forum for any topic. For a city that is so bad and underwhelming, it sure is a topic of a lot of debate.
Obviously depressed, but in more intact than what people would realize.
I left St. Louis in the mid 70s and it seemed like it was down for the count but it got back up again and has turned into one of the best medium sized urban style cities in America. It is very comfortable and relatively easy to negotiate. It shot itself in the foot almost 150 years ago and paid dearly for that but survives as the center of a vibrant metro area.
I have lived in other "river cities" and the interstates and lessor highways tore through the central core of the town on the way to the bridges and to hook up with infrastructure on the other side. A little more planning and a little more money would have preserved more of the core. St. Louis suffered more than some others.
The north side will come back over time. Urban renewal in that area was an improvement because housing conditions were well beyond repair. Pruitt Igoe and other high rise public housing blocks were a horrendous mistake but were arguably better than some of what was there before. I had relatives that lived in apartments with communal out houses in the early 1950s. The new ($1.7 billion) 90+ acre National Geospatial Agency north city project sits on top of where my Irish immigrants operated a ramshackle grocery and liquor store in the 1880s in the Kerry Patch Irish slum neighborhood.
MSP is the most functionally urban Midwestern city outside of Chicago.
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