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.
^True, the days of being able to rely on one industry are long gone.
However, one concept that people don't understand is that you can't sell yourself widgets to have a healthy economy. Too much reliance on the service sector is etremely unhealthy, as no actual production is occuring to further the economy. Also, relying on the healthcare industry will only be a temporary boom that lasts until the baby boomers are gone, surely not a way to secure an economy for the next century.
Tool and Die is extremely important. Many high-tech, engineering and research jobs are spawned from this industry, and this sector allows Dayton to hold its title of having the most inventions per capita of any city in the USA. Still, Nick, we definitely need more diversified industry, but at the same time we cannot completely disown our current base.
You know, I was thinking about this very thing the other day and wondering if our country can survive and thrive into the next century if we're no longer "making things." Definitely something that makes me think about where we're going when so much industry is being outsourced.
Location: A voice of truth, shouted down by fools.
1,086 posts, read 2,701,466 times
Reputation: 937
The basic problem in the economy today (and Dayton is an extreme example of this) is that there are few crappy, low end, and/or menial jobs that undereducated people can perform. I'm quite serious. In a bell curve distribution, most people in the population are NOT computer scientists and researchers.
The specific problem that Dayton and a lot of the rust belt has is that the population became "specialized" for industrial labor jobs, so there is a real problem in moving these people into the jobs that do exist, which aren't all that many even at the upper levels. There isn't a culture in urban Ohio of going to college. Many families put multiple generations into GM or Delco as line workers.
And the problem of the US as a whole is that about 30-35 years ago when futurism was in full vogue the US made a collective decision sort of like a fussy, pale honor roll student who doesn't want to work with his hands, that the only "worthy" jobs were brainwork jobs - engineering, accounting, computer science, business.
What's happened today in 2009 is that a lot of IT people would have been much better off if they had gone into business as plumbers or electricians.
What's happened today in 2009 is that a lot of IT people would have been much better off if they had gone into business as plumbers or electricians.
Maybe, maybe not. If millions of additional workers became plumbers or electricians, but nobody created any new plumbing or electrical work, then you'd just be spreading the same work (and income) across more people, making plumbing or electrical work lower-paid. It's not like construction is booming right now.
The U.S. never made a collective decision that blue collar jobs were not "worthy". Free global trade, easier international travel and communications, inexpensive global shipping, and the desire of China, Korea, and Japan to grow via exports made it profitable to import labor-intensive products rather than manufacture those products with U.S. workers. Those menial jobs still exist, but just in China and India instead of Ohio and Michigan. Manufacturing was the source of most high-paying manual labor jobs.
Your basic point, though, is right on, that the loss of high-paying menial jobs has had a major impact on the U.S.
I went to college near Dayton and that place sucked. The only thing I liked about it was the Submarine House on Salem Ave. I wish I could get some food Fed X to me!!!
Well there's your problem, you were on/near Salem Avenue. Sheesh.
Salem Avenue has some rough patches but it also has some of the finest housing stock, and neighborhoods in the city of Dayton. It is hard times for Salem Ave in Trotwood. But to say that Salem Ave is "bad" is just not true and based on assumption. Parts of it are and parts aren't.
Five Oaks, Grafton Hill, Dayton View, Dayton View Triangle, University Row/Princeton Heights, Cornell Heights, et al., are all adjacent to Salem Avenue. These are really nice areas. Of course so too is Santa Clara and Fountain Avenue. arguably one of the worst areas in the city. Emphasizing that it's a long avenue with a lot of changes along the way.
I really like the work you did with the pics though. The closed shopping strips is something that can happen in any suburb. Most, if not all of those pics are in the north west Dayton suburbs. Sad really.
Five Oaks, Grafton Hill, Dayton View, Dayton View Triangle, University Row/Princeton Heights, Cornell Heights, et al., are all adjacent to Salem Avenue. These are really nice areas.
These areas were the concentration for midde and upper-middle class socioeconomic groups in the city of Dayton. They were equivilant to the east side of Cincinnati (Hyde Park, Observatory, Mount Lookout) and the Clifton area, or the Cherokee Park area in Louisville (the Highlands), or Palmer Park in Detroit, with an equivilant housing stock, includings apartments and townhouse groups.
This area remained desirable into the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s, which is why they built those apartments and elevator buildings there...there was enough demand (back when Oregon was a big slum) to justify that kind of real estate investment. The Salem corridor was the place to live, apparently, if you were going to live in the city.
Then the blacks came.
After Westwood, Residence Park and Edgemont were flipped during the 1940s and 50s the local real estate industry apparently decided to "open" Dayton View to blacks in the mid 1960s, leading to a big white flight. This first occured in the neighborhoods south of Cornell Avenue and west of Salem. The 1960s racial distrurbances, starting in with the 1966 riot, killed the housing market for white urban multi-family housing; living in this area became un-desirable. This marked the start of the slide of Grafton Hill.
Then this demographic transition crossed east of Salem as an advancing wave through Five Oaks toward Main Street.
The city, to its credit, fought back since losing these neighborhoods (seeing them follow the usual progression into poverty-stricken black ghettos) would mean losing what was left of the middle and upper middle classes in the city.
During the 1960s and early 1970s the city had something called the Dayton View Stabilization Project, to try to manage the racial transition and ensure the neighborhoods along Salem remained in good condition. I'd say the city effort failed in some areas but maybe suceeded in others.
Dayton View deteriorated into a slum. The place has lost half its housing stock to abandoment and demolition, and this is still happening. It is a little Detroit. Restoration work on a few blocks, two or three streets, but the rest is gone. The only bright spot is the HOPE IV project replacing the housing project that was there.
The Salem Avenue business district there is all but dead, declining to a handful of businesses. Mostly vacant lots and empty storefronts.
Grafton Hill has issues with crime and drugs, partly due to the concentration of apartments. The parts of the neighborhood around the Art Institute have been saved, however. Nice houses and streets surrounded by a developing ghetto (though the hospital has torn down a lot).
Five Oaks, in general, is on its way down. The place has drug and crime problems, which were severe enough for the neighborhood to comission Oscar Newman to do a defensible space plan for it in the 1990s. It's unclear if this strategy worked as I think issues continue in the neighborhood based on anecdotal evidence. I know the Unitarians abandoned the neighborhood, but that was after the local Gay & Lesbian center left (the used the Unitarian churches room), due to crime concerns (cars being broken into, etc). I know people who lived in that neighborhood who told me about issues with crime and bad neighbors. The place is probably contested space, but I think its going to flip and decline into a slum.
Decline (poor condition of property, vacancy, etc) is also hitting other neighborhoods east of Salem, but there are individually nice streets like Red Haw and Ridgedale that are OK. The Mount Vernon area (near the old Colonel White high school) could still be saved. But its good block/bad block.
Things seem to be better west of Salem. The housing stock there is nicer, for one, which might contribute to the area being somewhat better condition.
The neighborhoods along Cornell Avenue, either side and around the old seminary,heading toward Phildalphia are still in pretty good shape (things seem to get worse the further north in the Triangle..the Theatre Guild was in this area but had to have a security gaurd in their parking area when they put on shows. Maybe a reason why they relocated into town.
The college streets west of Salem and south of Cornell might be OK still. I know there are crime issues and that has driven out one or two people I knew who lived there, but it seemed to be in good condition (landscaping and exeriors are being maintained) last time I drove by there.
The long and short of it is that this has become a black area, not an integrated one, so it's not really playing anymore in the (unofficial) white housing market...in other words the demand will be limited to the black community since whites usually don't want to live in black neighborhoods. From what I can tell (from the census) parts of this area remain a desirable place to live for upper middle class and middle class blacks.
Thanks for the post. I appreciated the history, as always, you do a very thorough job and is why I appreciate your responses. Dayton View def. has it's share of vacancies and decline, but personally I like the nicer blocks in the area. I'm not sure it stacks up to Detroit's blight. I would have to say that Santa Clara is well on it's way unless something turns the area. There are entire blocks in that neighborhood that are vacant. But not Dayton View. Though I will concede that some of the blocks in Dayton View are gritty. It really depends on one's perspective. The crime in the areas mentioned by my standards are on the petty side.
University Row is a very nice area. It is very well maintained and it seems the residents do a good job of keeping on top of things. If you haven't driven through there lately you may want to. Also, DMM has a lot of pics showing off the homes over there as well as Dayton View Triangle.
I own a home on the east side of Dayton and if I had to do it over again, I would likely set my sights on the areas immediately west of Salem. An acquaintance of mine lives on Oxford Ave off of Salem and loves the area. He is from Chicago and has the same opinion I do. Crime in Dayton is overstated compared to cities like L.A. Chicago and New York. It's really block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood.
It's just really hard to say that Salem Avenue is "bad". I guess that's whats gets me talking about it and endeavoring to hammer out the details in an intelligent manner. As opposed to the threads parent who wanted to know "Does it still suck there?" My answer is no. I live in Dayton, own property here, and love it. Hard to find a metro region that offers as much for the price.
Thanks for the intelligent, informative, and well thought response JefferyT!
I would have to say that Santa Clara is well on it's way unless something turns the area. There are entire blocks in that neighborhood that are vacant. But not Dayton View. Though I will concede that some of the blocks in Dayton View are gritty.
Dayton View, the district between Wolf Creek, Grand, Broadway and Salem, has more board-ups and vacancies on the south and west edges, closer to Wolf Creek and Broadway and nearby streets (like Riverview and Audubon Park or Court). The blocks closer to Salem have lost a lot of houses so more a vacant lot situation vs an empty house situation.
The bright spot here is that HOPE project has went beyond replacing the public housing and is building new houses on nearby vacant lots, so the neighborhoods is actually being re-constructed in parts. But there is going to be ongoing abandoment and demolition there as the remaining housing stock goes vacant.
Yet there are some islands, like restoration work on Superior and Grand and the little pocket of Jane Reece Terrace...heres' a link:
...a bit of gay & bohemian history here that you wouldn't know about unless you were clued-in to that scene.
Quote:
University Row is a very nice area. It is very well maintained and it seems the residents do a good job of keeping on top of things. If you haven't driven through there lately you may want to.
The Salem cooridor has some good examples of "mid century modern" (MCM for short) , which was a popular retro thing during the last decade, more on the west coast than here. Here is a thread starting out with these MCM houses (and some offices) off Salem, including some art deco/art moderne things from maybe the 1930s or 20s, then moving to a collection in Harrison Township just across the city limits (one or two might actually be in the city):
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.
