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.
That part I was joking about sounds like you hang out in different circles. Only a small few make Cleveland jokes. In your opinion, why do people try hard to compete with other cities?
I can't speak for Clevelanders--I'm sure they could give you a better opinion than I could. But my guess would be because they don't feel that their city is acknowledged or respected. It's not so much that people put Cleveland down, they just ignore it altogether. It never seems to make "Best of" lists, for example.
There's a perception that Cleveland has never changed beyond its rust belt image. Compare it to Pittsburg, which has been much more successful at changing that image. I'm not sure why this is. My husband and I visited Pittsburg and really weren't that impressed. It doesn't have the cultural amenities that Cleveland has, its downtown wasn't much, and the traffic was far worse than Cleveland! Yet, for some reason, everybody talks about how much Pittsburg has changed and what a desirable place it is.
I really don't know why that is. Perhaps others on the thread might have some ideas.
One thing that would help Cleveland is if they had an explosion of jobs in new industries. It's a shame that Ohio State wasn't placed in Cleveland. Can you just imagine if Cleveland had a major university that generated lots of new jobs? That would certainly put the city on the map! Even people on the coasts would start paying attention.
I consider Cleveland a desirable place to retire, but if I were young, I would not want to move there. I'd be very concerned about the economy. The coasts have traffic, a high cost of living, and a stressful lifestyle, but the economy is a lot more diversified and there are a lot more opportunities.
On the positive side, last time my husband and I visited his hometown of Canton, we went out to a fine dining restaurant. Our waiter was a young man who had relocated from California. He said he was moving to Ohio because the cost of living in California was just too high, and even as a waiter, he felt he had a better life than what he had in California. Go figure!
I can't speak for Clevelanders--I'm sure they could give you a better opinion than I could. But my guess would be because they don't feel that their city is acknowledged or respected. It's not so much that people put Cleveland down, they just ignore it altogether. It never seems to make "Best of" lists, for example.
There's a perception that Cleveland has never changed beyond its rust belt image. Compare it to Pittsburg, which has been much more successful at changing that image. I'm not sure why this is. My husband and I visited Pittsburg and really weren't that impressed. It doesn't have the cultural amenities that Cleveland has, its downtown wasn't much, and the traffic was far worse than Cleveland! Yet, for some reason, everybody talks about how much Pittsburg has changed and what a desirable place it is.
I really don't know why that is. Perhaps others on the thread might have some ideas.
One thing that would help Cleveland is if they had an explosion of jobs in new industries. It's a shame that Ohio State wasn't placed in Cleveland. Can you just imagine if Cleveland had a major university that generated lots of new jobs? That would certainly put the city on the map! Even people on the coasts would start paying attention.
I consider Cleveland a desirable place to retire, but if I were young, I would not want to move there. I'd be very concerned about the economy. The coasts have traffic, a high cost of living, and a stressful lifestyle, but the economy is a lot more diversified and there are a lot more opportunities.
On the positive side, last time my husband and I visited his hometown of Canton, we went out to a fine dining restaurant. Our waiter was a young man who had relocated from California. He said he was moving to Ohio because the cost of living in California was just too high, and even as a waiter, he felt he had a better life than what he had in California. Go figure!
First of all, Pittsburgh is spelled with an "H".
Also... the claim that Pittsburgh lacks cultural amenities is ridiculous. The Carnegie museum system is first rate, the Heinz History Museum is part of the Smithsonian, and there are three major league sports teams. There are also many art galleries and smaller museums sprinkled throughout the city. You just have to be willing to explore outside the Downtown area.
While the Downtown is relatively small compared to Cleveland, it has been on the rise, with a number of restaurants, bars and hotels opening within the last decade.
And the neighborhoods... did you visit the Southside, Lawrenceville, the North Side, Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, the North Side, East Liberty... and on and on? There are several commercial districts with block upon block of uninterrupted activity... the density of these neighborhoods and their walk-ability are important factors in their charm.
There is also an extensive city park system that is highly integrated into the city. Pittsburgh is topographically beautiful with lots of green space and hills and rivers.
Perhaps you can go back for a significant visit and then reevaluate.
Perhaps you can go back for a significant visit and then reevaluate.
I didn't say that Pittsburgh has nothing, I just think that Cleveland has a lot more--on par with much bigger cities. The art museum and orchestra are truly world class, and Playhouse Square has the highest concentration of theaters outside of Broadway. That's pretty impressive--and I'm speaking as a person who has lived close to both NYC and D.C.
Haven't gotten to the history museum, but if I'll check it out next time.
I wasn't counting the sports teams. Forgive me for sounding like an elitist, but I don't really think of sports as "culture".
There's a perception that Cleveland has never changed beyond its rust belt image. Compare it to Pittsburg, which has been much more successful at changing that image. I'm not sure why this is. My husband and I visited Pittsburg and really weren't that impressed. It doesn't have the cultural amenities that Cleveland has, its downtown wasn't much, and the traffic was far worse than Cleveland! Yet, for some reason, everybody talks about how much Pittsburg has changed and what a desirable place it is.
I really don't know why that is. Perhaps others on the thread might have some ideas.
Pittsburgh has managed to establish itself as a leading technological center, based largely IMO on the leadership of Carnegie Mellon.
This is reflected in the per capita incomes of the two metropolitan areas -- 51,200 in Pittsburgh in 2016, more than any Ohio city, of which Cleveland is the leader at 49,000.
The above graphs are interactive. Note that in 1990, Cleveland topped Pittsburgh 21,500 to 19,500. That's a significant change in relative fortunes.
Other important factors in Cleveland's relative decline are pitiful federal tax and industrial policies that disadvantaged Greater Cleveland's manufacturing base (anyone that can remember Greater Cleveland in 1980 versus today should be very, very angry); IMO pitiful corporate managements that sold off leading Cleveland corporations for IMO personal gain (think TRW, National City Corp., Sohio, Reliance Electric, Warner & Swasey, Lubrizol, and several others if I put my mind to the task); the Republican Toll Road (Republican leasing of the Indiana Toll Road; Republican leveraging of the Ohio Turnpike; in both cases, increasing tolls annually for decades) places an anchor around the northern Ohio manufacturing economy; the continued pollution of Lake Erie, greatly permitted by anti-environment Republicans (at some point, when I get time, I will once again elaborate on this assertion, but just consider the current anti-environment policies of the Trump administration which precludes any possibility of the federal EPA controlling agricultural pollution of the Maumee River watershed).
Cleveland's former corporate giants can be researched here:
The exceptional cultural amenity in Pittsburgh is the Carnegie Museum on Natural History, but its physical plant is very dated. The National Aviary also is a unique amenity that is well worth a visit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gouldnm
One thing that would help Cleveland is if they had an explosion of jobs in new industries. It's a shame that Ohio State wasn't placed in Cleveland. Can you just imagine if Cleveland had a major university that generated lots of new jobs? That would certainly put the city on the map! Even people on the coasts would start paying attention.
Case Western is a top 50 national university and a major research university, ranking just behind Ohio State in at least one listing, and ahead of the Univ. of Pittsburgh. Strangely, I didn't find Carnegie Mellon on the list.
Here's the rub. Case Western has massively relatively improved since 1990 even as Cleveland has relatively declined; I suspect the catalyst for this improvement was massive contributions by the Smith family that founded Lubrizol and were Case Institute of Technology graduates.
Case Western's impact, leveraged by a significant Cleveland Clinic research budget and the establishment of the Clinic's Lerner College of Medicine, now part of Case Western's medical school, perhaps will be felt much more in future decades. Consider IBM's Explorys division, a Clinic spin-off now headquartered in Cleveland and with massive growth potential.
I consider Cleveland a desirable place to retire, but if I were young, I would not want to move there. I'd be very concerned about the economy. The coasts have traffic, a high cost of living, and a stressful lifestyle, but the economy is a lot more diversified and there are a lot more opportunities.
As someone whose career spanned a much worse period of the Cleveland economy, this ignores the reality that Cleveland's professional salaries are comparable if not greater than in many east and west coast economies adjusted for the after-tax cost of living (working for a national firm, I regularly did this calculation). Greater Cleveland is a great place for professionals to accumulate capital and raise families.
If someone ever actually takes a hatchet to the federal government, which appears inevitable, the Washington, DC, metropolitan economy likely will be very exposed. I wouldn't call it diversified. Rising sea levels also will impose difficult burdens on coastal cities in coming decades.
If someone ever actually takes a hatchet to the federal government, which appears inevitable, the Washington, DC, metropolitan economy likely will be very exposed. I wouldn't call it diversified. Rising sea levels also will impose difficult burdens on coastal cities in coming decades.
D.C. has a lot more than just government jobs. There's also a lot of research and technology in everything from pharmaceuticals to aerospace, not to mention all the policy centers and think tanks. But I wasn't just talking about D.C. When I initially moved to the East. I moved to New Jersey, which at the time was considered to be the most diversified economy of any state in the country. It probably still is.
Also, when Congress decides to downsize government, that doesn't mean the jobs go away. It just means that everything is contracted out. The "government" decreases, the contractors increase. Then the administration changes, and the government starts hiring again.
It's just a game that Congressman play so they can tell their constituents that they're cutting the bureaucracy, and the people out in the Heartland have no clue about how the system actually works, so they keep falling for it.
My husband and I visited Pittsburg and really weren't that impressed. It doesn't have the cultural amenities that Cleveland has, its downtown wasn't much, and the traffic was far worse than Cleveland!
She NEVER said that Pittsburgh lacks cultural amenities, as you claimed in your straw man response:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Merge
Also... the claim that Pittsburgh lacks cultural amenities is ridiculous.
I would suggest that anybody who believes that the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Pittsburgh Symphony are on the same level as the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Orchestra, merely needs to avail themselves of the respective institutions. Cleveland's Playhouse Square also offers a superior theater experience to that found in Pittsburgh.
Or simply do some research, or just re-read my post 227.
As I've repeatedly noted, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is one of the best in the U.S., but the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has been ranked in the top 10 nationally, and is undergoing a major renovation and expansion.
The Heinz History Museum is excellent, but Cleveland also has a very good history center. It's very different than the Heinz center, lacking a chronological time line of the city's history and a major sports museum. It does have other attributes, such as a significant auto museum and historic mansions.
the Heinz History Museum is part of the Smithsonian
The Heinz History Center is NOT part of the Smithsonian. It's merely affiliated with it, as are over 200 other U.S. museums. Don't get me wrong. I've seen a couple of the jointly collaborated Heinz/Smithsonian exhibits and they are wonderful. The Civil War exhibit, for example, emphasized Pittsburgh's important role as Union manufacturing center, and how, as such, it was both a strategic target of the Confederacy and therefore provided with significant Union defenses. Of course, it used Smithsonian artifacts to tell the general history of the Civil War.
I suspect that the Cleveland History Center lacks the large exhibition space necessary to pull off a Smithsonian affiliation.
The affiliate program is a wonderful Smithsonian initiative, and I doubt if too many museums have capitalized on their affiliation more than the Heinz History Center.
I would encourage Pittsburghers and Clevelanders to visit each other's city. They are short distances away and offer excellent weekend excursions.
Between the two cities, check out Ohio Amish Country or the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, or Canton attractions.
The exceptional cultural amenity in Pittsburgh is the Carnegie Museum on Natural History, but its physical plant is very dated. The National Aviary also is a unique amenity that is well worth a visit.
Along with others not yet mentioned:
The Mattress Factory
The Warhol
The Maxo Vanka Murals
Bayernhof Music Museum
The Cathedral of Learning at the U of PGH
CMU campus
Bicycle Heaven
Trundle Manor
Phipp's Conservatory
Kennywood
The Duquesne Incline
Randyland
Manchester Craftsmen's Guild
Pittsburgh Glass Center
St Mary's Reliquaries in Troy Hill
etc.
All completely unique.
But of course this isn't a competition.
Cleveland is awesome.
I am a huge booster.
Just wanted to correct the poster's inaccurate claims regarding the city.
D.C. has a lot more than just government jobs. There's also a lot of research and technology in everything from pharmaceuticals to aerospace, not to mention all the policy centers and think tanks. But I wasn't just talking about D.C. When I initially moved to the East. I moved to New Jersey, which at the time was considered to be the most diversified economy of any state in the country. It probably still is.
Also, when Congress decides to downsize government, that doesn't mean the jobs go away. It just means that everything is contracted out. The "government" decreases, the contractors increase. Then the administration changes, and the government starts hiring again.
It's just a game that Congressman play so they can tell their constituents that they're cutting the bureaucracy, and the people out in the Heartland have no clue about how the system actually works, so they keep falling for it.
The federal government is such a massive part of the Washington, DC, economy, that even a 10 percent cutback would cause an economic earthquake. Some day research how frugal the federal government was in the past.
I remember reading a biography of George F. Kennan that said that the U.S. embassy in Germany wasn't even allowed to have an automobile in the 1930s. Within a decade, the U.S. will be so desperate to maintain basic programs and service its debt, that lobbying in Washington, DC, will provide little economic benefit, likely greatly reducing the massive Washington shadow economy.
The Mattress Factory
The Warhol
The Maxo Vanka Murals
Bayernhof Music Museum
The Cathedral of Learning at the U of PGH
CMU campus
Bicycle Heaven
Trundle Manor
Phipp's Conservatory
Kennywood
The Duquesne Incline
Manchester Craftsmen's Guild
Pittsburgh Glass Center
St Mary's Reliquaries in Troy Hill
etc.
All completely unique.
You've got to be kidding me. I've seen several of these attractions, and wouldn't exactly say that they are unique. However, I think the Duquesne Incline is very special, especially at night. Pittsburgh has one of the nation's best cityscapes, especially as viewed from the top of the Duquesne Incline. E.g., there are many museums for individual artists in the U.S.
Again, the one Pittsburgh attraction that I found personally unique, perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps not, is the National Aviary.
E.g., the Phipps is often listed as a top-ranked attraction in Pittsburgh, but I wouldn't describe it as unique. It's wonderful, but I don't think its outdoor gardens are as good as the Cleveland Botanical Garden, let alone the nation's truly great botanical gardens, such as Longwood Gardens. The Phipps has a great botanical collection, such as orchids, but its green houses aren't as unique as the Glasshouse exhibits at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. Due to its much larger greenhouses and botanical collection, however, the Phipps certainly is a better botanical garden than anything that I've seen in Ohio. It's definitely at the top of the list of attractions to visit in Pittsburgh.
It's always interesting to compare the rated attractions for both Cleveland and Pittsburgh. In Cleveland, there are some very, very good attractions buried in the ratings, such as the Steamship Mather, the Dittrick Medical History Center, and the International Women's Air & Space Museum.
You've got to be kidding me. I've seen several of these attractions, and wouldn't exactly say that they are unique. However, I think the Duquesne Incline is very special, especially at night. Pittsburgh has one of the nation's best cityscapes, especially as viewed from the top of the Duquesne Incline. E.g., there are many museums for individual artists in the U.S.
Again, the one Pittsburgh attraction that I found personally unique, perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps not, is the National Aviary.
E.g., the Phipps is often listed as a top-ranked attraction in Pittsburgh, but I wouldn't describe it as unique. It's wonderful, but I don't think its outdoor gardens are as good as the Cleveland Botanical Garden, let alone the nation's truly great botanical gardens, such as Longwood Gardens. The Phipp's has a great botanical collection, such as orchids, but its green houses aren't as unique as the Glasshouse exhibits at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. Due to its much larger greenhouses and botanical collection, however, the Phipps certainly is a better botanical garden than anything that I've seen in Ohio. It's definitely at the top of the list of attractions to visit in Pittsburgh.
You could make a case that there are other glass house botanical gardens like Phipps, although I would say not as gilded, or as historically well-preserved.
You could make a case that there are other universities like CMU... but the architecture there, along with the public art on campus is unlike what I have seen...
And you could make a case that there are other family-oriented, old school amusement parks like Kennywood... but probably not as many preserved attractions like the wooden coasters and Noah's Ark.
But aside from those... I don't really understand your objection to me calling those places "unique".
Last edited by Merge; 05-16-2018 at 12:43 PM..
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.
