Downtown....how do you define it? (metro, suburban, Atlanta, subway)

[edsg25]

The term "downtown" derives from where New Amsterdam/New York first developed in lower Manhattan. Since area served as the entire city once and went on to be its true core all the way through the end of the 19th century and was the business hub for the city during these times, other cities called their CBD's "downtown"....even in cities like SF and Boston where downtowns are pretty much uptown in location. Notably Philadelphia doesn't have a downtown, its core famously being "Center City", but, of course, that is semantics since Center City is a traditional downtown area (even when nothing was allowed to stand taller than the top of Wm Penn's hat).

We tend (or tended) to see downtown as the CBD of a city and quite often that area was strictly about business...with nothing in the way of residential. Chicago's Loop teamed with life during the day, but at night it shut down (short of the theatre district on Randolph).

But, it seems to me, downtown has changed considerably in the last 50 or so years: even while our cities were contracting in the years after WWII, their core areas grew up....and more importantly for this discussion...out. And the central city expanded in the process.

We started to get basically "super downtowns" (the Chgo Tribune once referred to ours as the "Super Loop"). At one point, some ten or so years back, the CTA proposed a rapid transit line that would surround the extended core of the city, just like the Loop el did well more than a century before (for note: Chicago's Loop wasn't named for the el that surrounded it but by an earlier streetcar loop that proceeded it). The line would have used mostly various segments of both el and subway with two infills on the southwest and the northwest. The Circle Line never got past the planning stage. And during this time of increased growth of the cores, interesting things were happening.....the areas surrounding the original downtowns were gaining office, commercial, etc., space...and later in development (for the Chicago Loop, probably the 1990s as the earliest), the traditional downtown was gaining residents, particularly with the conversation of old office buildings into apts. and condos.

With all this, I think our concept of downtown is pretty murky in how we define it.

I guess to me, when I say downtown, I mean "core" or (on a twist on Philly's approach) "central city". And I tend to see the downtown area in rather extended terms, a true core where centrality occurs.

In Chicago, we have long given up the equation that Loop=downtown. The Loop may be the heart of downtown today, but in so being, it is merely another neighborhood like Streeterville, River North, South Loop, etc. that is part of the core.

So in my eyes, downtown is "core city", almost a city of its own (like London's?). My perception is probably extreme, but I really tend to see downtown/core/whatever you call it to be a truly encompassing zone. So when I look at US cities, I see...

• Chicago: where I tend to include everything along the lake from the southern tip of Lincoln Park (in other words: North Avenue) down to McCormick Place (Cermak Ave) and going east to west from the lakefront to the United Center/Medical center area) to be Chicago's core

• San Francisco: I pretty much give the northeast corner of the city to its core....in simple terms, everything east of Van Ness (the furthest west any cable car goes), and on a north/south basis, from the north waterfront (Wharf, Pier 39, Aquatic Pk) south to Mission Bay and UCSF's downtown campus.

• New York: this one is tougher as Manhattan has two cores, Midtown, and the one it replaced as primary, Downtown. But NY and Manhattan are just plain different. Manhatttan's linear nature created a different dynamic through a few north/south subway lines created access to transportation clear up its length. I realize in New York, the downtown truly is "downtown" but to me, if I wanted to delineate something akin to the areas I described for Chgo and SF, to me core NYC is the lower 2/3 of Manhattan.

But that's how I parse things and in so doing, I'm merely sharing my paradigm of downtown....which is neither right or wrong but simply my opinion. But my question here is....what is your opinion of what we call "downtown" today and, if you choose, what would you define as the relative boundaries of your city's core....or any city's core you wish.

[gladhands]

I agree with the concept of greater downtowns, but push back on the notion that the UWS and UES are “downtown”. I say this as someone who grew up a block from Central Park. P

[mjtinmemphis]

When I lived in Chicago, I would very seldom use the term Downtown to describe the area I was going to. It was always the Loop , Gold Coast or whatever. Downtown was a classification I would hear suburbanites use to describe what they thought DT was and would vary depending upon what they where familiar with.

Boundaries for Chicago's Downtown would be anything south of North Ave, north of Roosevelt, east of Halsted and west of Lake Michigan.

I currently live in St. Louis. I would consider anything east of Jefferson, south of Delmar, west of the river and north of 64.

When I lived in Charlotte, I would consider Uptown aka downtown to be anything inner freeway loop.

[gladhands]

Originally Posted by mjtinmemphis

When I lived in Chicago, I would very seldom use the term Downtown to describe the area I was going to. It was always the Loop , Gold Coast or whatever. Downtown was a classification I would hear suburbanites use to describe what they thought DT was and would vary depending upon what they where familiar with.

I get that, but saying “River North” or “Streeterville” seems oddly specific, when describing an area that most would universally agree are part of downtown. I do, however, agree that suburbanites tend to paint unrealistically huge swaths of the city (if not the whole city) as “downtown”.

[cjseliga]

Well, in Charlotte their downtown or CBD is called Uptown!

Tom Hanchett, staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South:

“There is a two-part answer: The first part is rooted in geographic reality. In the mid-1700s, the nation’s trading path from the southeast to the Atlantic ran along a ridge top.

“One of those Indian trading paths in Charlotte came to be Tryon Street and it crossed another that became Trade Street. This was the highest elevation point and the city grew around it. When people came to this point, they were going ‘up.’

“The second part is more recent. On September 23, 1974, a city council proclamation declared that the shopping and business district in the center city be officially named ‘Uptown Charlotte.’ The push for this came from local merchant and booster, Jack Wood. Wood argued that Uptown name was in use in the 50s and needed to be restored.”

[mjtinmemphis]

Originally Posted by gladhands

I get that, but saying “River North” or “Streeterville” seems oddly specific, when describing an area that most would universally agree are part of downtown. I do, however, agree that suburbanites tend to paint unrealistically huge swaths of the city (if not the whole city) as “downtown”.

It may be.

[_OT]

In Birmingham, the term "Central City" is considered as a neighborhood Downtown.

As far as anywhere else, I just define the Center City's as "Downtown," it's a safe term I guess.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by gladhands

I get that, but saying “River North” or “Streeterville” seems oddly specific, when describing an area that most would universally agree are part of downtown. I do, however, agree that suburbanites tend to paint unrealistically huge swaths of the city (if not the whole city) as “downtown”.

Ever since JHC and WTP were built, the Mag Mile has been solidly downtown. Chicago is not New York, where obviously downtown and midtown could never merge (and if they did, I don't imagine it would be a very livable city). It's not even like Atlanta where downtown and midtown, though close, are far enough apart to make linking up unlikely.

Not so for Chicago. Michigan Avenue, north of the river, had been a highly urbanized grand boulevard well before WWII. Its total lack of separation from the Loop meant that it was destined to be part of a new, greater downtown.

I would contend that Chicago is unique in what I will describe. Note that "unique" does not imply "superior" or "inferior", just the type of development we have here:

Chicago is the ultimate core city in virtually every way. Everything converges downtown. Like Rome, all roads lead to Chicago. Chicago was the poster child for wheel-and-spoke cities. Both rapid transit (CTA el's) and commuter rail (Metra) share in common systems that do: filter traffic in and out of downtown. All Metra lines terminate downtown. All el/subway lines have Loop stations (with the meaningless exception of the yellow line....which is there to get people in Skokie to Howard Street to switch to red/purple lines going downtown.) Even our expressways are heavily oriented towards getting people downtown (absurd, since driving within the downtown area is a nightmare). To our detriment, we have little in the way of expressways/tollways that don't head downtown. Like Rome, all roads lead to Chicago. Along with spoke-and-wheel, Chicago's development was the best example of concentric rings of development.

More so than anywhere else, Chicago's core is the magnet, the emerald city. Manhattan has both downtown and midtown. Chicago, again I believe more than any city, is truly "one core" and metro Chicago unusually compared to other big cities, has little in the way of edge cities and has virtually no second downtown by any measure.

In Chicago, downtown (the greater downtown) is The Place: on Lk Michigan, lined with parks, with the vast majority of the city's innumerable attractions within its limits. The spectacular lakefront has been joined by a now spectacular riverfront. The trendiest, the best neighborhoods are what they are in great part due to their proximity to downtown.

Again, I don't see that as a positive or negative (more of a mixture of both: it's great to have an emerald city and its dysfunctional to have a transportation system based on access to and from downtown), but you can't get more core oriented than Chicago.

[btownboss4]

Rochester has one of the hardest delimitation between Downtown and not Downtown in the country, the Inner Loop, until last year encircled about 1 sq mile that was Downtown Rochester, NY.

Pittsburgh is a little fuzzy to the east but is pretty well established as between the rivers and West of 579.

Cleveland also has some hard borders in at least 3 directions and only is a little fuzzy in the Euclid Corridor.

Then there are cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, thathave few hard boundaries everyone agrees on (except for Nashville the Cumberland River)

[annie_himself]

In New Orleans downtown doesn't mean CBD, it means downriver from Canal St so downtown neighborhoods there are the French Quarter, Marigny, and Bywater. Not sure about Holy Cross and 7th ward hoods.

Downtown's should be classified by the local government in my opinion. That's how I classify what is downtown or not, neighborhoods should have clear and defined boundaries. The idea of people having opinions on it seems weird. Almost like what do you define as NYC city limits?