East Liberty and Lawrenceville coolest neighborhood's in USA

[szug-bot]

[quote=zalewskimm;49808633]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

That highway led to economic growth in the North Hills and beyond. I bet a lot of customers and patrons in North Shore establishments use the highway to drop money in the city. BUT A HIGHWAY FOR DEVELOPMENT ISN'T ALWAYS GOOD. IT JUST SUCKS MONEY AWAY FROM URBAN AREAS.

I recall Perrysville Avenue in the late 1970s - prior to the construction of I-279 - like it was yesterday. It was an area in obvious decline. There were growing pockets of poverty. NOT having the highway did not prevent this. HAVING the highway did sucks away population and wealth, but overall probably created more wealth for the region.

And now, it brings money back into the city through entertainment, and encouraging jobs to relocate here, and remain here.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

That might not be entirely true. Camden, NJ? Hartford, CT? I hadn't been to either place in ages, but my dated experience would not put those neighborhoods in either city, in close proximity to a CBD, as desirable. IT is surely an advantage to be close to a downtown, but there are so many more factors at play.

Hartford demolished all of its neighborhoods adjacent to downtown for a ring of highways, parking lots, and industrial zones. The closest residential blocks are like a 20-minute walk away, which is too far for what I'm talking about. Not a pleasant walk either.

As for Camden, the little residential area right around the Rutgers campus is actually gentrifying.

Lots of small, largely poor cities have a "bougie" enclave right by the CBD. Trenton has Mill Hill, Harrisburg has Midtown, Albany has Center Square, New Haven has East Rock/Wooster Square, Providence has College Hill. I know they exist in Wilmington, DE and Lancaster, but I don't know their names off the top of my head.

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

That might not be entirely true. Camden, NJ? Hartford, CT? I hadn't been to either place in ages, but my dated experience would not put those neighborhoods in either city, in close proximity to a CBD, as desirable. IT is surely an advantage to be close to a downtown, but there are so many more factors at play.

The mindset of the late 1950s can't be the same as hindsight in 2017.

Camden and Hartford are not very comparable to Pittsburgh.

Here are some comparable examples in rust-belt cities (19th c. neighborhoods adjacent to downtown). It's also possible that the demolition of the lower Hill was at least partly responsible for the decline of the rest of the Hill. I have friends who remember a bustling Hill District nightlife in the '70s. It's certainly not the vibrant neighborhood I've read about it being in living memory, unless you like cookie cutter townhouses and urban prairie.

Anyway, some examples of 19th c. neighborhoods in rust-belt cities adjacent to the CBD that have gentrified or at least stabilized:

-Corktown and Brush Park in Detroit
-Over the Rhine in Cincy
-St. Louis has a few I forget (Soulard?)
-Old West End in Toledo
-Heritage Hill in Grand Rapids
-Allentown in Buffalo
-Midtown / 3rd St. (?) in Harrisburg
-Mt Vernon in Baltimore (also a bunch more, right?)
-Every 19th c. neighborhood around Center City Philly
-Ohio City, Cleveland
-German Village, Columbus
-Our own South Side and Strip District. Most of Uptown adjacent to downtown was lost to hospital, university expansion..
-Does Milwaukee have one?

Basically every big city seems to have a hip 19th c. neighborhood next to downtown.

[xdv8]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

i disagree.

I-279 - should Pittsburgh remain a 1950s metropolis? You need high-speed arteries. last i've seen Deutschtown is doing quite well, with the best music festival in the area, still greatly situated, and a popular night life destination. That highway led to economic growth in the North Hills and beyond. I bet a lot of customers and patrons in North Shore establishments use the highway to drop money in the city.

Hill District - the Civic Arena has provided memories for thousands. Ask people in their 50s about seeing concerts there in the 70s. And, it gave birth to the hockey culture we have today, which is very successful. The neighborhood was not decimated - instead, a dilapidated, worn sub-area was, with people willingly selling out.

Allegheny Center - possibly a fledgling success story. Its street pattern now has provided us with the space to develop a great bike route. Could AC become a Market Square north? Chances are good more businesses will take route in that building.

Beaver Avenue - again, the need for arteries for a modern metropolis. And the issues in that area are because of sporadic violence and crime.

Penn Circle - East Liberty began its decline in the 1960s. I have that straight from former residents. That, and continued suburbanization, and increasing crime, were real issues then. Penn Circle did not help, but how could it hurt a lost cause anyway? The city overall was in decline at that time. People exaggerate the affect of Penn Circle when Monroeville Mall was all the rage then.

Waterfront - what??? That is an uber-successful and wonderful shopping area. It has EVERYTHING you could need.

The Rocks and Turtle Creek - dont know. dont care. McKees Rocks had a bad reputation in the 1970s.

Gateway Center isn't great by today's standards, but it's OK in relation to the city at large. There should be a direct ped path to the state park, though. At the time of its inception, it was probably prime office space.

Pittsburgh in the 1940s can't hold a candle to Pittsburgh NOW. The city is dirty, but it probably was littered then. Now it has so much to offer and the modern touches are just filling a void. We will never lose iconic things like the Union Trust building and so forth.

Is this a joke? There is absolutely no reason to run massive interstates directly through dense urban areas. Europe didn't do anything this stupid and they have great cities as a result, oh and they also have suburbs. Meanwhile every US city was ripped up for these roads. All the planners needed to do was have these highways near the city and make appropriately sized connecting roads.

So much of this post is just wrong or incredibly uninformed, it's almost hard to read without thinking "this must be a parody". You know very little about what makes a city great. Pittsburgh would be 20 years ahead of where it is today had it not been for these projects that destroyed natural urban fabric for grand city planning that has been almost completely regarded as backwards.

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by xdv8

Is this a joke? There is absolutely no reason to run massive interstates directly through dense urban areas. Europe didn't do anything this stupid and they have great cities as a result, oh and they also have suburbs. Meanwhile every US city was ripped up for these roads. All the planners needed to do was have these highways near the city and make appropriately sized connecting roads.

So much of this post is just wrong or incredibly uninformed, it's almost hard to read without thinking "this must be a parody". You know very little about what makes a city great. Pittsburgh would be 20 years ahead of where it is today had it not been for these projects that destroyed natural urban fabric for grand city planning that has been almost completely regarded as backwards.

Your explanation of road patterns is incredibly simplistic. The comparison begs for a larger discussion - western europe has had a different planning strategy for different reasons. Here, we do not have extensive train travel, for starters.

I can't imagine having to drive to downtown Pittsburgh with thousands of other commuters by way of South 18th to Carson, or Brighton Road to the lower north side.

[RogersParkTransplant]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

I can't imagine having to drive to downtown Pittsburgh with thousands of other commuters by way of South 18th to Carson, or Brighton Road to the lower north side.

We often talk about what the alternatives may have been. For example some sort of beltway or ring could have made more sense for Pittsburgh, with highways coming in from the ring that ran along the rivers, like 28 and 65. Of course those required some areas to be razed too, but the particular loss of the East Street Valley for 279 is especially sad. I think there would have been ways to integrate highways in a less destructive fashion if the city planning of the previous generation hadn't assumed that the city was never going to make a comeback.

In response to earlier comments -- it's not that urban planning can always stop decline, honestly. It's just as much an issue of understanding that neighborhoods can go through natural cycles of being new, then run down, and then eventually rediscovered, so an area doesn't have to be razed just because it's struggling.

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by RogersParkTransplant

I think there would have been ways to integrate highways in a less destructive fashion if the city planning of the previous generation hadn't assumed that the city was never going to make a comeback.

In response to earlier comments -- it's not that urban planning can always stop decline, honestly. It's just as much an issue of understanding that neighborhoods can go through natural cycles of being new, then run down, and then eventually rediscovered, so an area doesn't have to be razed just because it's struggling.

Exactly. I will add also that buildings do not need to be razed simply because they are in disrepair, but try telling a city building inspector that.

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by RogersParkTransplant

... example some sort of beltway or ring could have made more sense for Pittsburgh, with highways coming in from the ring that ran along the rivers, like 28 and 65.

What we have now, more or less, is a beltway. If instead we develop something more "circular", an actual beltway, then what are we talking about - a ring highway that will have to remove neighborhoods.

So where do we start? Level Ross Township? Have a beltway overpass above Sewickley?

Then what about the sprawl that would result? At least with what we have now, sprawl can be controlled somewhat because of the arterial nature of the highways in this area. With a beltway, and all that extra infrastructure that needs to be maintained, you will be bursting at the seams without allowing sprawl on that cheap land.

I still trust that for this area, planners through the last century and this one are better qualified than those on city-data who believe this area is "20 years behind" because of the Allegheny Center Mall.

[eschaton]

Ring highways are terrible, and it was a boon to Pittsburgh we never built one.

Why are they terrible? The entire purpose is to allow for quick suburb-to-suburb commutes. If Pittsburgh had one this would make it relatively easy to commute from say Mt. Lebanon to Cranberry without passing through Downtown first. This gets rid of one of the big advantages for businesses of locating in Downtown Pittsburgh - that it's centrally located and they can pull from the talent pool of all of Allegheny County, as opposed to just one "side" of the county if they are located in the suburbs.

Of course, we'll never know for sure either way, since we can't rewind the clock and change history. But Pittsburgh is fairly unusual for a mid-sized city in that our CBD job count has been largely unchanged since the 1950s at around 100,000 (relative importance has declined, but not absolute importance). We're also fairly unusual in that we never built a ring highway. These two factors may indeed be related.