Recent Comments
- John Polk said “I knew Charles when he was EVP of The Atlanta Chamber and I worked for ...” on Memories of Oklahoma City circa 1993
- John Polk said “Back in the mid-80's and early 90's, Cleveland was actually recognized as one of the ...” on Economic development in NEO: A view from the street-level
- John Polk said “Is there any way to substantiate Dimora's claim re: GCP and the PD, other than ...” on Cleveland’s new development dynamic?
- George Nemeth said “Like all glimmers of newness in CLE+ I expect this one to be crushed too” on Cleveland’s new development dynamic?
- Cleveland’s new development dynamic? | Brewed Fresh Daily said “[...] by Ohio voters, as gambling interests convert the Ohio constitution into a zoning ordinance. ...” on Ohio’s casino deal gets a bit more messy
- About BDP Comments
Meta
Rob Pitingolo · Death Warrant for the Urban Core?
January 16th, 2009
Brent Larkin predicts a mass exodus to the suburbs if Cleveland city employees aren’t required to live inside the municipality’s borders:
The wrong ruling will essentially complete the exodus of the middle class from what was once the nation’s fifth-largest city. It will do that by guaranteeing widespread flight from three of the city’s most prosperous neighborhoods – West Park and parts of Collinwood and Old Brooklyn… None of the seven justices who will decide this issue lives in Cleveland. But if they decide it the wrong way, they might just be signing the city’s death warrant.
It is hard not to note the irony of what Larkin is suggesting. There are metro areas across America where city employees with modest incomes would love the ability to live in the equivalent of a West Park or an Old Brooklyn, but struggle to afford the rents because demand for housing in those types of neighborhoods is so high.
Last 5 posts by Rob Pitingolo
- The Cleveland International Film Festival: Thinking Ahead - March 29th, 2010
- Omitted Variable Bias - February 18th, 2010
- Deciphering Another Nonsense Forbes List - February 10th, 2010
- A Downtown Cleveland Fantasy - December 23rd, 2009
- Put a Nail in RTA's Coffin - November 17th, 2009
January 16th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I’m afraid the mass exodus already took place about 30 years ago, in response to the infamous busing case. And whether the death warrant has been signed or not, it’s awfully hard to envision how the city of Cleveland proper will ever really come back to any real vibrancy. Its days as a destination location, at least to live if not visit, are mostly behind it.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
If city employees don’t want to live in the city, I would be happy to step into one of their jobs.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I’m sure you could do three jobs simultaneously at least as well as they did, Christine.
January 16th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Can’t let you get away with dissing public servants out of hand, John! There are undoubtedly lots of bad apples (as there are in any profession), but there are still plenty of folks out there who regard public service as noble calling, as a very serious and important responsibility and not an entitlement or a free ride. I’ve learned from the best of them. Heck, I was raised by one of the best of them. I sincerely hope you run into at least one, before the day long-hence that you depart for that great writer’s retreat in the sky.
January 16th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
How about offering incentives? With so many homes owned by banks, and the City of Cleveland in the midst of lawsuit against those said banks– I would hope that the Jackson administration is trying to settle by getting the banks to unload the properties for immediate transfer to social workers, bus drivers, nurses, teachers, safety force personnel and city workers, willing to put sweat equity into a home. I am extremely suspicious of the land bank “solution.” It leaves the landed gentry…holding the keys to everything. Meanwhile, how about all that money wasted on CDC staff, not required to live in the City of Cleveland…and the teachers aren’t saints…they don’t live here either, though it would help the shady district pass a levy, if they did.
January 16th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Oh no, I wasn’t remotely meaning to diss public servants, C. I’d be among the last to do that, and besides, I think it’s meaningless to make generalizations about groups of people. Sorry that it was interpreted that way. I was merely saying that it seems to be a little bit of an overstatement to say that losing these public servants as Cleveland residents would somehow wreck the city beyond its current state of advanced decline. It would certainly eventually affect the property values and attractiveness of some of those relative garden spots on the borders, most notably West Park and the nicer parts of the Shaker Square neighborhood, but that seems like a relative pinprick compared to the larger problems of the entire city is all I was saying.
January 17th, 2009 at 11:58 am
If they don’t want to live in the city that much, let ‘em go. Let ‘em find jobs in those cities.
We need more people here who love the area and the other people willing to stay and work here. Yes, it’s counter intuitive, but I say allow the brain drain to run it’s course by encouraging it.
January 17th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
What better position to judge an exodus than from the helm of an organization that took “Cleveland” out of their name and then took their production facilities out of Cleveland.
January 17th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Well said HC–of course, the Plain Dealer assumes no responsibility for their role in the decline of the city.
January 17th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
The Plain Dealer merely did what any other rational business would do in that same position: admit the obvious, that hundreds of thousands of its readers live in the Northeast Ohio region, not Cleveland proper, and change its name to reflect that fact. And that happened a very long time ago, by the way.
The decline of the city happened for a host of mostly macro reasons, from changes in dominant transportation systems to massive Interstate highway funding after WWII to the final nail in the coffin, court-ordered busing. What in god’s name does the PD or any other Cleveland-based business have to do with any of that?
The world has just changed, and will continue to change. And we live in a market economy, where people can live and work where they damn well please, no matter what fans of downtown areas (even those far more appealing than Cleveland’s) think about it.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Yes, Mr Etorre, people can live where ever they damn well please to get away from their “fears” or to live out their fantasies…but don’t ever forget that “someone” else is paying for that freedom in terms of paying for the roads, the sewers, the electric, the WATER supplying those communities outside the city..and unless you are a farmer/producer, the societal cost to serve these “people” is too high.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:50 am
And if you want a story…perhaps look into the changing role of the NEORSD in NEO. I would like it if someone bothered to cover the story.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:55 am
A whole lot of people live in the suburbs and now the exurbs simply because they like having space, land and more immersion with nature than is possible in a city. That is an ancient, even primordial desire, and has nothing to do with fear. The way you’re formulating it assumes that living in a crowded city is the societal norm, and everything else a deviation from that. But that’s not how tens of millions of Americans think about it (maybe even 100 million or more of them). The rest of your formulation is just tiresome “sprawl” industry boilerplate.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:03 am
This is from Tim Russo’s blog and I am lifting it here:
There are two realities in Cleveland. There is the Cleveland that is the well-heeled, landed gentry “NEO” crowd of grant whores, consultants, lawyers, and PR hacks who feed off the public teet like maggots on rotting meat. And then there is the Cleveland that is the rotting meat, the rest of us, who live in this fetid toilet that was once a great city.
Well, I live in the city and it’s not quite a fetid toilet, but Russo’s point is well taken. There are NOT two kinds of people Mr. Etorre. Only one kind of people and we had better learn to live closer together to be able to share resources. I am not being snide or hostile, just realistic.
January 19th, 2009 at 11:24 am
This only goes back to Cleveland’s failed leadership–
http://realneo.us/content/plain-dealer-leads-fradulent-med-mart-push#comment-8648
January 19th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Nice…
Just like the MedMart, there is no business plan on how to spend all this grant and foundation money on these maggots.
I’m still waiting for all the laid off factory workers to be transformed into biotechnology employees – all funded by Gateway revenues!
On the flip side, it’s Cleveland who feeds off the teat of non-city workers who are taxed for the “privilege” of working downtown (after navigating through traffic cameras to get there).
Companies are beginning to realize that setting up shop downtown holds no cache. The suburbs are much better. Even venerable Jones Day plays down the fact that it’s headquarters are in Cleveland.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
No, I don’t think there are two kinds of people, but perhaps hundreds, or even thousands of kinds of people, with every imaginable kind of different taste, orientation, preferences, you name it. Not sure what that means in the context of your argument, however. And I haven’t taken your argument to be snide or hostile at all. We simply disagree, which is a completely normal thing for people to do. Just as it’s completely normal for some people not to want to live too closely to others.
One thing the anti-sprawl industrial complex tries to do is paint this–people wanting to move to less dense places–as a recent phenomenon, but it’s not. I happened to come across an interesting reminder of that only this past weekend, while paging through one of my favorite magazines, The New Republic. A book review about the Internet noted that the first radio ad ever, in 1920, was for a suburban development that talked about escaping the crowded city, where “a slant of sunlight” was all you could hope for.
I’m sympathetic about the point about better sharing resources, and the waste that’s inherent in forever building new infrastructure to accomodate the ever-expanding metro zones in America. But the reality is that the compact dense city structure is an animal of the pre-automobile era, when people were tied to rail, water and other earlier, more fixed, forms of moving about. Cities have been sprawling ever since the middle class had their own wheels, which is now nearly a century ago.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I would have posted a link to that book review if I could find it, by the way. But it appears not to be online.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I presently work downtown, but not for much longer. My clients don’t like coming downtown, and it is increasingly apparent to me that downtown is inhospitable — or appears to be so to my clients, which for my purposes is functionally the same thing.
The burbs offer free parking and no traffic cameras.
January 19th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
This discussion is actually quite interesting because it demonstrates just how much of an anomaly Cleveland (and its suburbs) is. For all of the talk about how bad a place downtown is to live and work, and all the arguments about how human nature favors big, open, suburban space, it can be easy to forget the many, many cities where demand for urban residential and office space is incredibly high (as evidenced by their relative rents); and many of those cities have schools that are just as bad, crime that is about on par, and residential units with even less livable space. Yes, sprawl has happened everywhere, but not every city is about to nail shut its coffin.
January 19th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Yes, I was thinking about those traffic cameras earlier, and how that’s helped REALLY turn me off to heading downtown. Besides the serious exception I take to the Big Brother aspects on privacy grounds, it leaves suburbanites feeling as if the City of Cleveland is simply a legalized form of the ancient art of pickpocketing.
Rob, you make a good point about Cleveland being an anamoly. You’re partly right. But the truth is that a whole bunch of structural forces are making this a winner-take-all dynamic. A handful of really attractive urban centers with strong economies relative to the rest of the country–places such as Chicago, Boston, Denver, etc.–are becoming increasingly attractive places to live, and in the process of gentrification, pushing out the middle class, to say nothing of those who are poorer. But a lot more secondary and tertiary urban centers are increasingly struggling, just like Cleveland.
January 19th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Back to Rob’s original post, I’m personally pretty apprehensive about the outcome of this situation because I’m thinking about buying a house in one of these neighborhoods that might soon be vacated en masse. But then again, that presupposes that all of these city employees are chomping at the bit to get out, which isn’t necessarily true.
In all the places I’ve traveled to and lived in, I’ve never experienced anything like the way people feel about Cleveland proper. There are so many people here who act like even just driving a block into Cleveland from the suburbs is like jabbing yourself in the thigh with an HIV-infected needle.
January 19th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
CB, the disease you describe is called “urban decay.”
January 19th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
There already are good incentives, many offered by block grant monies, the City of Cleveland, the Cleveland Clinic, teacher organizations, to purchase a Cleveland house. And they are pretty good too.
I believe in people’s freedom to live wherever they want. I also believe in the philosophy behind asking your employees to work where they live. I also talk to a lot of the City Worker/Homeowners in question. What I hear is divided almost 50/50, with ’staying in Cleveland coming out just a bit ahead. A lot of firefighters and polic officers live in areas where other family members live…so moving is not a top priority for them.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:14 am
I believe in people’s freedom to live wherever they want? Carole–you think that an employer should not have ANY say in where an employee lives, especially if the taxes paid by said employee, support the employer/and other employees?
January 20th, 2009 at 8:15 am
To hell with community?
January 20th, 2009 at 8:25 am
I just completed a brief analysis of population trends in a number of Midwest cities, including Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Toledo, Dayton Akron and Pittsburgh.
Cleveland had the highest rate of population loss among these cities. Between 2000 and 2007, the city lost about 8% of its population.
Cleveland is facing some major economic headwinds. Residency requirements for city employees might sound politically appealing, and they may be symbolically important. But (like set-aside programs, a close cousin) they are economically meaningless.
The City cannot regulate its way to prosperity. It needs a coherent, concise and clear strategic action plan.
Despite $8 million to $9 million a year from the Fund for Our Economic Future and a compliant County Commission wiling to vote millions more, the business, foundation and political leadership have yet to deliver a concise strategic action plan for the Cleveland+ region.
As a starting point, the city, like Youngstown, should embrace the reality that it is shrinking.
Our current business and political leadership thinks the future of Cleveland lies elsewhere.
The City’s future, according to this theory, hinges on a convention center. There’s only one problem: There is no evidence that this strategy works (and plenty of evidence that it will not). Convention centers represent a formula for low-skill, low-wage employment and public operating deficits as far as the eye can see.
Cleveland’s leadership has drifted into a classic case of group think. By shutting themselves off, the city’s business and political leadership have drifted into a dream world increasingly detached from underlying market realities.
With new leadership, Cleveland can do better. Prosperity lies in another direction, a strategy that embraces brainpower, creativity, innovation, sustainability, collaboration.
These are the foundations on which Cleveland’s future prosperity can be built.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:27 am
And not to grandstand, but if there are incentives, they are not well known… and/or not working…and/ or the options are bogged down by layers of CDC bureaucratic incompetents…and/or the city will tear your house down while you live in it, or before you can move in…I read your recent blog post, which by the way deserves, more investigation. This happens all too much in a city starved for tax revenue.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Ed, when/how do we get new leadership? The powers that be are so entrenched that not even the FBI can get rid of them. And, with all due respect, I don’t know how you can say residency requirements are economically meaningless…it is more than tax dollars. Civil servants have to want to see their community succeed. They should care about the seniors, the kids at the high school, the day care kids, the immigrants, the veterans…I see a lot of safety personnel that have divorced themselves from caring. Not all. But, a lot of them feel cheated in life. Why?
January 20th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Economically meaningless: In an economy the size of Cleveland, an attempt to regulate residency will not have a big impact. That’s simply a numbers issue.
But these requirements are symbolically and politically important, so I do not oppose them. I would not, however, waste a lot of time or resources on them.
Instead, I favor strong incentive programs to encourage housing ownership and mixed use development in the city. The innovation zone program Laz Kozmon and I designed for the County reflects these policies.
http://snurl.com/afgy3
As for the leadership, Cleveland’s leadership clique will change slowly with a generational shift. We can accelerate the shift by getting more engaged politically (through social networks) and pushing for more transparency with government and foundations.
I’ve posted a paper here that explores some additional thoughts triggered by BFD. http://snurl.com/afgm3
Comments welcome.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Ed–your proposed Innovative Zone Program is administered by the County ?(!) I am sorry–this means it will go no where. I give you all the credit in the world for constantly attacking the problem, but this needs to get a whole lot nastier…we have to name names and get rid of over paid incompetents…we can’t wait a generation. Besides, what measurables do we have from the County in terms of even getting this program off the ground? This was introduced in 2007.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Ed, how many people who might have been willing to get rid of Cuyahoga County’s leadership would you estimate has given up that voting right (either because they moved to a neighboring county or another metro area altogether) as a direct result of that poor leadership?
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
I’m not sure, but my guess is that it’s a bunch.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:12 pm
What about the rest of us stuck with this “leadership.” Give me the chance to vote out the losers and I will do it. I have not been able to identify one viable leader in Cuyahoga County. Not one. Can anyone else identify any REAL local leaders?