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I live in Indianapolis now and there is a ton of blight and dilapiladated buildings in the core city. Crime is high. Many homes are being sold for under $20k and no one will buy them. Large swathes of the city look completely abandoned.
I went through Cincinatti today and driving on 71 through downtown from the eastern burbs is a lesson in blight and being beaten with an ugly stick. Toledo, Dayton, and Cleveland are all the same way. Detroit is a wreck. I've never been to Chicago or St. Louis, but I'd expect large parts of their cities to also be bad. Kansas City also had a lot of bad parts when I visited. Minneapolis seems to be one of the lone exceptions for big cities.
Why are the Midwestern metros a blighted out mess?
Certain parts of certain large cities in the midwest are very tough, most of the areas are former strong industrial areas that have fallen from their peaks. Crime wise the midwest is typical of the country, same with income levels. Unemployment in the Midwest is lower than the national average and the region has been gaining population since it was first settled.
There are bad parts to virtually any city in the country. I really don't notice the Midwest having a larger population living in "run down" areas than other places in the east, west, south.
Areas of the country are portrayed to represent differnet images in our minds. Manhattan in New York, bustling cities and quaint towns for the northeast, new age suburbia and growing cities in Texas, palm trees and movie stars in Hollywood, beaches and sun in Florida and failing industrial areas and farms in the Midwest are common images. Those images exist in real life for sure, but I think many times we tend to think that's all those areas contain. Yes there are palm trees and movie stars in southern LA, but there are also a lot of fairly tired looking lower income neighorhoods stretching for miles away from the coasts. The Midwest has bad neighborhoods and post-industrial hard hit areas, but a vast majority of the region has nothing to do with that. South Florida has beaches and sun, but otherwise the suburban areas of one region really don't function or work any different than they do in most any other region.
"Why are Midwest metros a blighted out mess". What? Even the worst areas like Detroit have 85% of the people in the region living in perfectly fine suburban areas. Silly thread.
Last edited by Chicago60614; 12-07-2014 at 07:14 PM..
One reason could be because they are older than most western cities. They have had more time to decay. They are also larger than many western cities. I think though, if you really look at some of the western and PNW cities that allegedly do not have bad appearing sections you will find them. They may not look as run down as those in the midwest and may be smaller but give them time and they will look just as bad as any midwestern slum.
One reason could be because they are older than most western cities. They have had more time to decay. They are also larger than many western cities. I think though, if you really look at some of the western and PNW cities that allegedly do not have bad appearing sections you will find them. They may not look as run down as those in the midwest and may be smaller but give them time and they will look just as bad as any midwestern slum.
I doubt it. There was large scale abandonment in many rust belt cities. It may not be repeated elsewhere. Boston is older than rust belt cities, it has bad areas but not much decay.
One reason could be because they are older than most western cities. They have had more time to decay. They are also larger than many western cities. I think though, if you really look at some of the western and PNW cities that allegedly do not have bad appearing sections you will find them. They may not look as run down as those in the midwest and may be smaller but give them time and they will look just as bad as any midwestern slum.
I think the point of the thread is not that Midwestern cities have more bad areas, but that so much of it is abandoned/blighted. And the answer is population loss spurred by deindustrialization.
Here in California, there are probably just as many bad neighborhoods in the East Bay and Los Angeles as there are in Chicago and Cleveland, but in the California cities these bad neighborhoods have actually grown in population while those in the Midwest have had severe population losses. A lot of this is owed to Western cities being strategically located to absorb much of the immigration from Latin America and Asia.
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