Why do American cities look so alike? (versus, Baltimore, suburb)
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I don't know what proportion of Colorado's old stock is still around. In Denver, quite a bit. There just wasn't that much "old stock" to begin with, was my point.
click on the map for a large version. Appears to be a big north vs south difference in age of rural housing.
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I have no idea what happened in MO, but yes, people have been leaving "the farm" for a long time.
As people changed from renters to owners, they may have abandoned apartment buildings.
Most of "leaving the farm" for New England was in the mid maybe late 1800s, so rural decline doesn't show up in my numbers. Many rural upstate NY counties saw little to no growth from 1850 to 1960 or so. Both parts of rural New England and upstate NY have had a period of growth afterwards (60s to 80s), either as exurbs or just modern technology and infrastructure removed some of the drawbacks and isolation of rural living. But the new residents weren't farming.
Yes, you've pointed that out before. I wish you'd done Colorado, I can't seem to come up with anything.
% 1940 housing still existing
Colorado: 52%
Denver: 59%
so, similar to southern California, lower than the Bay Area (or New England)
Alleghany and Beaver County are both 49%. Though obviously the % of housing that's built before 1940 is much lower in Denver than western PA. 4% of homes in Alleghany County didn't have plumbing. Massachusetts reported a negative number of homes with plumbing, so there's something off with the data.
% of homes in Manhattan without plumbing in 1940: -10% !
^^Well, that's interesting. Thank you very much. In re: houses in Allegheny County w/o plumbing-my mom was a visiting nurse there. She had a patient who had no connection to city water. They lived near the Ohio River, and had a pipe running from the house to the river to draw water. Yecch!
Just a bunch of concrete sky scrapers in the city centre does not make a city for me. Great cities have their individual characteristics that develop over time. It's almost like all the cities use the same template.
New York does not look like any city of which I am aware.
Hmm, I don't think I agree with the premise on the whole. I think American downtown cores in mid-sized or large can vary pretty greatly. But the suburbs? Well that all feels the same, particularly in the commercial sections. As for residential? There are some regional variations, but town to town in the same region is also all the same.
Have you seen the remaining old shacks in the south? Most of the ones which are gone probably had dirt floors and lacked both indoor plumbing and electricity.
That's my mom's neighborhood. There are still a few falling apart shacks still in use, but most of the people have upgraded to double wide trailer homes that are permanently docked. There are a handful of modest brick homes, but just about everyone lives in a trailer in her part of town.
We never spent a lot of time in the "city" part of her town. It is a small city in North Carolina. It is a mystery to me, but from what I have seen in pictures, it is quite cute! But that was a completely separate world from what my mom experienced growing up. That was where her mom worked to clean houses, not where any people like my mom's family lived or even knew. I haven't actually met a person from my mom's city. I am curious what it is like on the "other side."
That's my mom's neighborhood. There are still a few falling apart shacks still in use, but most of the people have upgraded to double wide trailer homes that are permanently docked. There are a handful of modest brick homes, but just about everyone lives in a trailer in her part of town.
Interesting. I kinda suspected the shacks got replaced with trailers.
Hmm, I don't think I agree with the premise on the whole. I think American downtown cores in mid-sized or large can vary pretty greatly. But the suburbs? Well that all feels the same, particularly in the commercial sections. As for residential? There are some regional variations, but town to town in the same region is also all the same.
Mid-sized cities are often not particularly distinctive. There's some variation in the older coastal cities (rowhomes as inner city housing stock in eastern PA, triple-deckers in New England)
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