Cleveland

My whirlwind trip has brought me to Cleveland and the start of the Rust Belt. This also marks a change in my transportation plans, as I shift my mode of intercity transport from that of trains and planes to that of the car. Also within the city I will be trying to engage the waterfront via car and bike, allowing me to understand topography and distance on a more human scale.

Cleveland faces a condition where they are both lake-front and riverfront. The lake-front is for all intensive purposes a seasonal functioned area, which has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Brown's football stadium, as well as a small lake-front airport. The rest of the land is in a transition from port to other uses. The problem with this program is it doesn't allow for a diverse 24-7 approach to land use. It also creates a situation where residents don't have any reason to go there apart from the 8 Sundays the team plays a home game. It appears from this trip that the best way to kill the life of a city is the placement of Stadiums. These deadzones are such a large scale that they seem to isolate parts of cities easily. I think there are examples where this isn't the case, but in most cases it is when the stadium is old enough that the fabric is rebuilt around it, as is the case with Wrigley Field in Chicago. Stadium placement is critical in cities, because it dictates these areas of concentrated activity at specific times and dead zones for much of the year.

Cleveland has bunched their remaining stadiums together on a single plot. The baseball and basketball stadiums are on the southern fringe of the CBD, surrounded by parking. The one arm that the city has extended is the establishment of a walking street that extends from Euclid Ave, a commercial core that seems to be newly revived with a BRT line and a number of restaurant and entertainment venues. The walking street unfortunately ends in a parking lot, reinforcing my generalization about Cleveland, and that is that at least in downtown it is a city that is ravaged by the parking lot.

It was an interesting comparison being in the vacant city on Sunday and then again on the busy Monday. The city actually felt better when cars occupied its parking lots than when it was entirely vacant. Nonetheless multiple blocks of parking separate the two viable sectors of the city, Euclid Ave and the Warehouse district, creating a condition where the city fabric breaks down.

The Warehouse district and the riverfront is a completely different condition than the lake-front. The Topographic condition is much more exaggerated on the river side, which is home to a number of warehouse and industrial buildings. A few of which have been converted to large scale lofts. Many others are still abandoned. One more has been converted into a large scale entertainment venue, compete with waterside covered amphitheater. It is quite impressive.

Actually, come to think of it the entire industrial river valley is pretty cool. theres a variety of cool bridges and warehouses that begs for an integrated adaptive reuse/redevelopment area. The only downside being the valley in which it lies. Plans are on the boards for some development in this area, but with the current economic state thats anyones guess if it'll continue.

The thing about Cleveland that I found remarkable was the amount of old buildings that there were. It may be  that i've gotten to the part of the US in my trip that industry was prominent before the era of the Semi Truck. The pre-eminent mode of transport when Cleveland was booming was rail. The time period was most likely the 20s/30s-50s/60s. The interface towards rail meant that buildings were located in the heart of the city and at a smaller scale. With the change in interface towards roads industry moved abruptly towards the interstate highway. So Cleveland is either remarkable or so devastated that it has maintained a large portion of its industrial fabric.

Suburban development seems to be spread out, with the only density existing near Case Western University.  Even then the majority of density in East Cleveland seems to be hospital related. The other interesting part is the location of many cultural institutions is not in downtown, but rather to the east.

Cleveland's industrial fabric was interesting because its by far the oldest I've seen, but as a city Cleveland didn't really spark my interest. The downtown was bland and primarily offices and parking lots, and the suburban sprawl was so expansive it was almost beyond repair. As a city that is still fighting back, I didn't see the vibrancy and invigoration that has taken place so many other places. Rather I read a lot about the plans and the thoughts about what could be.

Regardless now I continue on the rust belt towards Pittsburgh