Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St Louis, Hartford, Baltimore, Milwaukee-Which city Grows first? (compared, places)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Ironically the latest year over year city estimates (2021-2022) showed a small gain for Hartford. I'm sure it's just general fluctuation within the estimates process and it doesn't represent a trend. I still found it interesting. Hartford's MSA also showed gains, again same as my previous sentence I'm sure.
It is quite interesting. My parents live just outside Hartford. The region itself I think will have a great future. It is 1/3 the price of Greater Boston and Greater NYC, while offering very similar amenities. The area has been seeing a lot of migration from NY/NJ and recently MA with the millionaire tax, properties sell in less than a week and the home value % growth has been one of the highest in the country in these past 12 months.
The city itself, unlike every city on here, has literally no 'hip' or 'cool' city amenity. I mean there is West Hartford, but thats not IN Hartford.
Not as much of a mess as i think its portrayed. I think itd be 3rd here after PITT and BAL and Baltimore is wayyyy more of a mess.
Agree in a way, but atleast Pittsburgh and Baltimore have some sort of a cool urban neighborhood that is a destination. Hartford's is West Hartford, just outside the city. If they can find a way to remove 91 or do something to the highways/crime problem, the City of Hartford has a lot of protentional. But I think for now, the suburbs are seeing most of the growth potential. Like West Hartford.
I think there's a bit of optimism available for Hartford as UConn Hartford started moving things from West Hartford to downtown Hartford in 2017 and so now the law school, business school, and public policy school among others are in Hartford proper. Plus, the Hartford Line got up and running as did the Valley Flyer extension.
I do think they should remove I-91 in Hartford though (at *most* allow it to get to I-84 from the north, but that's it and preferably further up north at Jennings Road and so no freeway from there to Charter Oak Bridge) and bury and cap almost all of I-84 within the city.
Also, true high speed rail route should be an extension along Waterbury branch of MNR through to Hartford and then to Providence avoiding the winding CT coast. The rail right of way is already there for the most part to get through Hartford and then follow the Middle Turnpike and then CT Route 101 to Providence, just need to stop being a whiny baby ***** about doing it.
I did not know this. I remember when I lived in Greensboro NC, the law schools and university's that moved their campuses into Downtown helped revilatize the area post-covid. Lots of bars/food/restaurants and coffee shops opened to serve the college kids, and then the apartments came, and now the neighborhoods are thriving (relative, of course...). I hope Hartford takes advantage of this.
However, my biggest issue with Hartford are its Taxes. An assessed $100,000 condo would pay nearly $7,500 in property taxes per year. Some of the nicer homes on the very Western edge that are valued at $750,000-$1.5m, pay like $100,000+ in property taxes per year as well. If you own a 2016 Honda CRV, a $25,000 car, you pay over $1,000+ a year in Car Taxes. How is this sustainable for any city?
If you hope over the border, the rates go down considerably.
All it takes is a James Beard awarded chef, a Wegmans, and a few Vietnamese coffee shops for New Yorkers to suddenly start moving to Hartford.
That’s a luxury none of these other cities have.
Not sure I understand the optimism for Pittsburgh. It’s been this way for two decades.
I think the bolded has happened in towns just outside Hartford like West Hartford, Simsbury, Wethersfield and Newington. I think more needs to be done in the City of Hartford to attract more people to move/hang out there. It could easily be as attractive as Providence. I see the potential there. Its a very well designed/complete Metropolitan area with great train service to NYC and good proximity to Boston/NYC. I am sitting in CT now and when I want to do something, I will go to West Hartford. Hartford really just does not have anything. Removing the parking lots, parking garages and maybe a highway or two and replacing it with what you said would make Hartford instantly more attractive. Put up some condos/apts, and you have a real thing going.
I do notice (Since my family is just outside Hartford) that a lot of people are looking to move here. Houses in this area are typically gone within a week. Lots of former NY/NJ'yans moved here, and we are starting to see an influx of MA residents making a move to the area. Hopefully this continues.
I’ll definitely give you the lakefront advantage, but most of what you said above would easily apply to St. Louis as well, which has MANY parallels with Cleveland and then some, in my opinion. I really think it’s ridiculous to say that no other city in this discussion can compete with Cleveland’s attractive suburbs, that’s a real stretch. I would put Cleveland and St. Louis on equal footing when it comes to suburbs overall. Tons of parallels between the two.
St. Louis has outstanding suburbs in terms of high-quality living, walkability (some, ie: U. City, Clayton among others), and woodsy attractiveness (esp. Ladue). Suburban St. Louis stands 2nd to no city, really. Metro Rail serving several of these suburban areas is a major plus, too.
Despite being a native Pittsburgher, this is why I voted for Milwaukee.
Growing up there at the height of its population freefall and on the eve of its loss of corporate HQ clout, no one had anything nice to say about Pittsburgh (or its brother Cleveland). Then, later in the 1980's, its making "best city in the U.S." type lists, but still no population gain.
Fast forward a few decades, PGH is still getting hype for "the only city among so and so that added jobs" around the time of the G20. Guess what? Still no population gain. Other smaller things like becoming arguably the global headquarters for driverless car tech.....hey no population gain.
So I'll believe it when I see it. Pittsburgh remains the strongest example of how population means absolutely nothing in determining the caliber of a city.
You aren't kidding, Pitt currently has less people than it did in 1900, I suppose at some point the population fall off has to stop otherwise there will be nobody left. I can very clearly see why you will believe it when you see it given the lack of growth in the last 70 years.
I did not know this. I remember when I lived in Greensboro NC, the law schools and university's that moved their campuses into Downtown helped revilatize the area post-covid. Lots of bars/food/restaurants and coffee shops opened to serve the college kids, and then the apartments came, and now the neighborhoods are thriving (relative, of course...). I hope Hartford takes advantage of this.
However, my biggest issue with Hartford are its Taxes. An assessed $100,000 condo would pay nearly $7,500 in property taxes per year. Some of the nicer homes on the very Western edge that are valued at $750,000-$1.5m, pay like $100,000+ in property taxes per year as well. If you own a 2016 Honda CRV, a $25,000 car, you pay over $1,000+ a year in Car Taxes. How is this sustainable for any city?
If you hope over the border, the rates go down considerably.
Yea, I think having the college in downtown Hartford will probably be pretty helpful in building some critical mass with people who have a bit of leisure time and maybe a bit of money without worrying too much about the property taxes. The capital city plus college presence has been a pretty good combination for quite a few places in the US, and even though this is not the flagship campus, it probably helps at least some.
The property taxes being high probably does some work in helping depress prices, but ultimately what's probably best for the city is to not be too reliant on residential property taxes for its coffers. Having more retail / commercial activity would probably do wonders. There may be a sort of double-edged sword in having the capital and college in a city with such small boundaries though which is that it's possible that the state properties and college properties aren't taxed normally which is a problem in other places though I'm not sure what the laws are like in Hartford and CT.
Quote:
Originally Posted by masssachoicetts
I think the bolded has happened in towns just outside Hartford like West Hartford, Simsbury, Wethersfield and Newington. I think more needs to be done in the City of Hartford to attract more people to move/hang out there. It could easily be as attractive as Providence. I see the potential there. Its a very well designed/complete Metropolitan area with great train service to NYC and good proximity to Boston/NYC. I am sitting in CT now and when I want to do something, I will go to West Hartford. Hartford really just does not have anything. Removing the parking lots, parking garages and maybe a highway or two and replacing it with what you said would make Hartford instantly more attractive. Put up some condos/apts, and you have a real thing going.
I do notice (Since my family is just outside Hartford) that a lot of people are looking to move here. Houses in this area are typically gone within a week. Lots of former NY/NJ'yans moved here, and we are starting to see an influx of MA residents making a move to the area. Hopefully this continues.
Doesn't Hartford have some pretty good Vietnamese restaurants IIRC?
I definitely agree that Hartford could be in a pretty good place, and I think the highways and surface parking lots are pretty bad there and are a relatively easy thing to target. I know there's some talk of doing highway removal. I definitely think getting rid of I-91 going through downtown and with its large interchange with I-84 sucks. I'd demolish it and reassign I-91 to be co-assigned to the stretch of I-291 going across the Captain John Bissell Memorial Bridge then to I-84 and then to the Wilbur Cross Highway going across the Charter Oak Bridge to where the I-91 is again and open up much of the riverfront. At most, I-91 south of the John Bissell bridge should be a spur as far south as Jennings Road in the North Meadows section where it's very industrial and a good mile and a half from downtown. If they really want to build, then I think I-91 going over a bridge paralleling the Connecticut Southern Railroad Bridge to the cluster**** interchange in East Harftord should be as far as it goes. I-84 in Hartford should have most of it buried and capped expanding the bit of capping it has now.
Does Hartford having parking minimum rules?
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheProf
St. Louis has outstanding suburbs in terms of high-quality living, walkability (some, ie: U. City, Clayton among others), and woodsy attractiveness (esp. Ladue). Suburban St. Louis stands 2nd to no city, really. Metro Rail serving several of these suburban areas is a major plus, too.
I think there's a possible argument that some of these suburbs might be somewhat detrimental to the city proper especially if the metropolitan area as a whole isn't showing large growth. That being said, I think there's a chance that this decade sees all of the city proper go to growth, but the question was which one would get there first.
St. Louis has outstanding suburbs in terms of high-quality living, walkability (some, ie: U. City, Clayton among others), and woodsy attractiveness (esp. Ladue). Suburban St. Louis stands 2nd to no city, really. Metro Rail serving several of these suburban areas is a major plus, too.
Totally agree about St. Louis’ suburbs. They are really fantastic.
In fact, Midwestern suburbs in general are seriously underrated.
Pittsburgh by far has the most of its proverbial **** together. That's just plain obvious compared to every other city in this thread.
This is despite being demographically heavy on a white population, which of course is not a long-term growth strategy. However, industry mix, solid urban neighborhoods, top COL/ income ratio, income growth, educational attainment--basically all the ingredients for a thriving 21st Century economy--are highly in Pittsburgh's favor.
There also appears to be a lot of ignorance of Pittsburgh's suburbs; quite a simplification and broad brush to paint them all as "dying mill towns."
Places like Mt. Lebanon, Fox Chapel, Sewickley, Oakmont, Dormant, Upper Saint Clair--the list of very livable middle/upper-middle class locales goes on. Allegheny County is a world apart from Fayette County.
Last edited by Duderino; 06-23-2023 at 09:53 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
