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See, I would partially disagree on that, too, despite some good points. While suburbs began to emerge as early as the 20s, the trend really didn't accelerate until the 60s and the uptick in crime. All you have to do is look at the trend lines in urban crime, and 1965 was when it began to soar. And while busing didn't begin until the 70s, it threw gasoline on the fire.
I remember my good-sized city growing up. There were shops and movie theaters and restaurants downtown until about 1972-1975. Then the vacancy signs started to emerge. By the mid 80s, it was almost deserted. Not coincidentally, we started seeing an increase in downtown occupancy in the mid 90s, about the same time crime prevention strategies changed.
The American culture is very different from most of the world. Even in small cities or even towns around the world you can find people are walking around late at night, drinking, singing and socializing. I remember in Italy in small towns such as Vigevano there were people walking around the main piazza at midnight, restaurants that are still full.
Around 4 in the morning a pizzeria I used to frequent was still full. Another town nearby Cassinetto the same story. I remember in Abbiategrasso one can walk to the center of the town and find plenty of hole in the wall bars. You stop at one and get a shot of whatever and take you walk until a half-hour later you repeat. There are always people to talk to. In Spain at a larger town Sevilla, I remember bars; nightclubs didn't start until about midnight and went on until next day. Again the people were accessible.
Cuzco Peru was even wilder; things went on all night and morning.
One thing that all of these places have in common is that the culture allows people to really let go, in some instances by having some religious festivity at some specific dates. After the mass and the procession is over, then firecrackers go off and everyone has a good time, that includes the young the old, the poor the rich everyone. This doesn't have anything to do with being a consumer, or the marketplace.
The Philippines, Thailand, Korea and many others places, one will also find people being socially laid back, clubs and bars are open all night, where the nightlife is just as important as the day life.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,043,908 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cjester
The American culture is very different from most of the world. Even in small cities or even towns around the world you can find people are walking around late at night, drinking, singing and socializing. I remember in Italy in small towns such as Vigevano there were people walking around the main piazza at midnight, restaurants that are still full.
Around 4 in the morning a pizzeria I used to frequent was still full. Another town nearby Cassinetto the same story. I remember in Abbiategrasso one can walk to the center of the town and find plenty of hole in the wall bars. You stop at one and get a shot of whatever and take you walk until a half-hour later you repeat. There are always people to talk to. In Spain at a larger town Sevilla, I remember bars; nightclubs didn't start until about midnight and went on until next day. Again the people were accessible.
Cuzco Peru was even wilder; things went on all night and morning.
One thing that all of these places have in common is that the culture allows people to really let go, in some instances by having some religious festivity at some specific dates. After the mass and the procession is over, then firecrackers go off and everyone has a good time, that includes the young the old, the poor the rich everyone. This doesn't have anything to do with being a consumer, or the marketplace.
The Philippines, Thailand, Korea and many others places, one will also find people being socially laid back, clubs and bars are open all night, where the nightlife is just as important as the day life.
I think this is especially true with the Romance-based cultures. There's much more a culture of going on, whereas in English-speaking places once people 'get over the hill' they are content to stay in their little suburban coocoon, in bed by 9 or whatever or else just watch TV all the time, although that is slowly changing I think. In places like Spain or South America people throng their cities and towns and the nightspots always seem vibrant all night. Like you say it's also old and young, not just the young like like it tends to be in the Anglo nations.
I think this is especially true with the Romance-based cultures. There's much more a culture of going on, whereas in English-speaking places once people 'get over the hill' they are content to stay in their little suburban coocoon, in bed by 9 or whatever or else just watch TV all the time, although that is slowly changing I think. In places like Spain or South America people throng their cities and towns and the nightspots always seem vibrant all night. Like you say it's also old and young, not just the young like like it tends to be in the Anglo nations.
I've observed that, too.
I don't think people in "English-speaking places" watch TV all the time in comparison with other nationalities - Italians watch loads of TV, too. Rather, in comparison with people from Romance cultures (perhaps excluding France), they have "hobbies". It seems like there is a lot more diversity among individuals as to what they do for leisure in the U.S. or U.K. or other English-speaking cultures than in Romance cultures, which seem to place more emphasis on enjoying the basic activities of daily life - going out with friends, entertaining guests, eating, etc.
Perhaps wealth is a contributing factor: the U.S. and the U.K. have traditionally been among the wealthiest nations, while until recently, the Romance countries (again, excluding France) were very poor (and many Latin American countries still are). For most hobbies, you need to make medium-sized to large cash outlays (a gun for hunting, a yacht for sailing, a GPS for geocaching, etc.), at least initially. Entertaining friends, or even going to bars or clubs do not involve large one-time purchases, and the price of drinks, food, and club admission can be adjusted to the local price level.
we have a lot of dead downtowns after work hours but i'm fine with it the way it is.
southern cities aren't going to see the urban renewal as much so as cities like nyc or chicago or philly because southern cities are for the most part already fairly suburban as it is but also satellite city development is a new and growing trend down south so central downtowns are losing relevance.
Last edited by CelticGermanicPride; 08-27-2011 at 11:10 AM..
Seattle is doing well ,they have two new department stores under construction downtown.jc penneys and target. Added two the other three . Downtown is also home to 13,000 hotel room. And thousands of newapartments downtown
Lots of kneejerk answers bemoaning the cultural emptiness of American cities. What should be considered here is that American downtowns used to have a very vibrant culture. Heck, go back in the newspaper archives and read about it yourself. The real deterioration began a few decades ago. Today, the relatively quiet downtowns are very much the unintended consequences of governmental social engineering in the 1950s and 1960s. Three factors:
1) The astonishing rise in inner-city crime. The rate of violent crime per 1,000 QUADRUPLED from 1960 to 1993. Even today, with tougher enforcement and better security measures, that rate has only declined to 3 times 1960 figures. And most of that crime is inner city. There are many factors to this, from the misguided public housing policies of the 60s that only served to create dense poverty pockets in the downtown areas to more lenient sentencing. Only as inner city crime has begun to decrease are people actually considering looking back downtown for their entertainment.
2) Forced Busing. A Federal judge's disastrous ruling created the emptying out of the inner city. In his ruling, he attempted to even out educational disparities by having black kids bused to mostly white schools and vice versa. This incited a full-scale disaspora to the suburbs. Oddly enough, most middle- and working-class families weren't wild about walking their eight-year-olds to the curb and watching them get bused to an inner-city school ten miles away. The people who sneeringly use the term, "White Flight" never used their children as guinea pigs in some ill-fated social experiment, and seem to choose private schools for their kids. Meanwhile, middle- and working-class parents had no choice but to vote with their moving vans. Interestingly enough, black parents also have joined the exodus to the suburbs over the past twenty years, enrolled their kids in suburban schools, and typically have had little trouble assimilating.
So there you go. Ill-considered government programs having predictable effects. The automobile culture didn't cause American downtowns to empty out. Instead, American downtowns emptied out, creating the automobile culture. Think about that the next time you consent to
another harebrained government effort.
Busing was done to help the massive inequalities that existed between black and white schools. The United States government for close to 300 years up until the 1960s actively keep black people from whites through separate housing, schools, theatres, hotels, military ranking, sports, workplaces. If you honestly think that most white Americans circa 1960s did not harbor any racist animosity towards African Americans moving into their neighborhood largely (or even simply) because of their race, you really need to pick up a history book.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Originally Posted by Trimac20
......Take San Diego, for instance, with a metro area of 3 million. It's downtown felt deader than Perth, with half the population. Memphis, with about the same metro population as Adelaide, had the activity of an Australian city of about 200,000-300,000. Cities like Austin and Nashville were better, of course NYC, Boston etc are the exceptions, but I'm wondering if as a rule, downtowns are more like Memphis or Boston?
I don't know anything about Memphis, but the nightlife in San Diego is out around the beaches, not downtown, except that there are some good restaurants in the Gaslamp District next to downtown. But even so, San Diego has always been considered to be the sleepy brother of LA, which has a lot of action spread out over a large area.
San Francisco is a bit more concentrated, but even there it's not all about the downtown - lots of stuff going on in North Beach.
NYC, Miami, Chicago, Boston are the downtown party cities. Probably some places in the South like Atlanta or Dallas, but I haven't been much of anywhere in the South. There are also numerous smaller touristy towns like Key West, Cape Cod, Santa Cruz, and many large universities in small towns across the US that have lots of action concentrated in a small area.
I know things are changing, and investment, development and people are moving back to many downtowns throughout the country, but aside from a few notable exceptions, American downtowns seem like ghost-towns, surprisingly for me, even during business hours. I thought Aussie cities were suburban-centric and while they are, our downtowns generally seem a lot more lively than comparably sized downtowns in the US. Of course European and Asian downtowns beat either, so I'm wondering if the US has the 'deadest' downtowns of any country on earth?
Take San Diego, for instance, with a metro area of 3 million. It's downtown felt deader than Perth, with half the population. Memphis, with about the same metro population as Adelaide, had the activity of an Australian city of about 200,000-300,000. Cities like Austin and Nashville were better, of course NYC, Boston etc are the exceptions, but I'm wondering if as a rule, downtowns are more like Memphis or Boston?
San Diego's downtown is better than it used to be. It doesn't have the benefit of a major college campus next to it like the others mentioned, so it might feel "deader." Many other cities have similar issues.
I know things are changing, and investment, development and people are moving back to many downtowns throughout the country, but aside from a few notable exceptions, American downtowns seem like ghost-towns, surprisingly for me, even during business hours. I thought Aussie cities were suburban-centric and while they are, our downtowns generally seem a lot more lively than comparably sized downtowns in the US. Of course European and Asian downtowns beat either, so I'm wondering if the US has the 'deadest' downtowns of any country on earth?
Take San Diego, for instance, with a metro area of 3 million. It's downtown felt deader than Perth, with half the population. Memphis, with about the same metro population as Adelaide, had the activity of an Australian city of about 200,000-300,000. Cities like Austin and Nashville were better, of course NYC, Boston etc are the exceptions, but I'm wondering if as a rule, downtowns are more like Memphis or Boston?
I could be wrong, but do other countries have as many downtown areas as the US does? Many states have multiple cities with large downtown areas.
I don't know what other downtowns are like besides the major cities I've been too. KC is only over 2 million population, but it has a busy downtown with streets still having people walking around the streets late at night....
Of the largest cities in Australia, you have 3 before it they drop to populations of less then 2 million metro. The US has 29 cities with population of over 2 million metro.
You can't compare, you see some people in this thread saying "US cities are dead except NYC" or something of that nature. Consider the state New York has twice the population of Portugal, and around 3 million less than Australia as a whole.
37 million people in California, and I can't speak for San Diego, but San Francisco and LA are both lively.
Chicago, Boston, Philly, Miami... I can't say how lively all the cities downtown areas are in the US, but I live in a pretty midsize city, and it's VERY active downtown, but yeah after 3 AM or so it dies down, but since KC is not a cultural mecca compared to the major cities of some other countries, and since it has a HUGE problem with sprawl, I think it is holding up pretty well.
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