Another question is what makes some cities become not real cities? Why is there a massive migration out of some cities but not out of others?
Toronto, for instance, even undertook a reverse migration where people got fed up with living in the city’s butt ugly and hugely overpriced suburbs and massively moved back to the city.
Why did St. Louis become a not real city while Chicago didn’t? What is the big difference between the two? Chicago has a higher crime rate, the climate is intolerable to many people, yet it is alive. St. Louis has a much better climate (from the conventional point of view) but it stands empty.
Clarissa's Blog 
Quick guess:
The presence of middle class people with options who choose to live there 24/7 rather than commute from a burb makes a city ‘real’.
An urban area that’s full during working hours but becomes an empty shell at night is not real.
What keeps middle class people in a place are things to do (whether or not people actually do them, they like having them around) and good schools.
Chicago crime statistics might be misleading. Most of the murders are gang things (with some innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire). Many people realize that at some level and don’t feel overly threatened by it as long as it’s kept on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.
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Racism affects all cities and kills many.
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So this phenomenon is not about racism? What is it about then?
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Racism killed Detroit and made a mess out of Chicago. White people could not abandon blacks fast enough in those cities. The excuses were falling real estate prices, crime and failing schools. Rather than stick it out, whites retreated into suburban enclaves. Now they are coming back to tarted up downtown areas. None of this inspires me very much. I saw all the crass racism in the 60’s. White people wanted the cities to die but then realized they could not get along without urban centers and only then started reviving them.
Short explanation, I know, but essentially correct.
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So this is nothing than a form of segregation, then.
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I wouldn’t take what Hattie wrote for gospel. There is a abundant blame for all sides (black, white, business, corrupt politicians) for making Detroit what it is now and has little to do with your original question.
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Something you might not have picked up on yet and will probably seem bizarre to someone from the FSU.
Traditionally middle class white Americans (esp outside NYC and Chicago) don’t want to have kids until they move into a house (that preferably they own). This makes home ownership important and drives people who want families in areas where housing is expensive into the suburbs.
Also, there’s the school issue as in most of the US your address determines which public school your kids are supposed to go to. This drives the family oriented away from urban areas (especially ones with poor and/or minority populations who might get assigned to the same school as their kids).
I’m thinking too that water plays a part as many creative people are drawn to cities near large bodies of water (atlantic, pacific, gulf of mexico and great lakes).
I’m thinking there’s a lot of interacting features rather than a formula.
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“Traditionally middle class white Americans (esp outside NYC and Chicago) don’t want to have kids until they move into a house (that preferably they own). ”
– You mean that the bank owns. 🙂
“I’m thinking too that water plays a part as many creative people are drawn to cities near large bodies of water (atlantic, pacific, gulf of mexico and great lakes).”
– This is a very interesting idea that I never heard before.
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Well this is sort of responding to both the city posts at once. I have heard the “real city thing several times. I personally find it a it annoying. It’s usually accompanied by a sort of snobbery. For instance, I have never personally been to Cleveland but I had a good friend who lived there and said it was a really wonderful place to live: an “arty” vibe, good restaurants, nice architecture etc. Yet it’s one of the cities that people frequently decry as “unreal.” I personally love a lot of smaller cities: Kansas City (MO–not KS), Milwaukee, Albuquerque, Durham, etc; and so I personally try to resist this “real” vs “non real” distinction. It seems to be a way of knocking the midwest or other parts of the country that people from the coasts turn their noses up at. And I’m from the west coast originally so I’m very familiar with “west coast snobbery.” I love the coast but it’s not the only worthwhile area of the country.” (Chicago is obviously an exception here. It’s certainly a “real city”.–midwest location notwithstanding…)
Also: I was shocked that a commenter said Philadelphia is not a real city! I’m not sure what metric would measure Philadelphia as “not real.”
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I tried to get to like St. Louis very hard, but it does stand completely empty all of the time. It’s like a corpse of a city, rather than a city. The difference between it and Montreal or Philadelphia is enormous. And there are good restaurants and St. Louis and there are efforts being made to attract people to it. But it still stands empty.
I hate the West Coast and have nothing good to say about the East Coast where I lived for years. So when I say that St. Louis stands empty, I’m not saying that because I’m prejudiced against it. It’s because that is true.
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Well, real cities have a history, so since people live ahistorically at present they can’t judge the worth of a city or its institutions. I’m from San Francisco, so I see a city which has been wiped clean of most of its history and filled with tarted up attractions for the rich. And all kinds of “facts on the ground” that have eliminated the past.
But for young people, who weren’t around when this was a city dominated by the working class, with tremendous opportunities for upward mobility, this is all unknown. Now we are stuck with crowding everywhere, which I find intolerable, and a meager selection of social roles to fill. It’s the new poverty.
Lots to say, but, hey, it’s a busy day.
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“I’m from San Francisco, so I see a city which has been wiped clean of most of its history and filled with tarted up attractions for the rich.”
– I think this is the reason why I didn’t like SF when I visited it. It’s now a place for extremely rich people and I just couldn’t relate to anything I saw there.All of the history I had read about seemed to have been commodified and turned into a quaint relic.
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Agree completely about SF. Its a pretty city but one that has been stripped of any diversity or vitality because of an absolutely unaffordable cost of living. And yet, most people consider it a real city; many people go completely ga ga for SF.
I have never been to St. Louis and understand that you don’t have any coastal prejudices but generally most people who distinguish between “real” and “nonreal” cities generally show a profound (and in my mind misguided) distaste for the Midwest and South.
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I lived for several years in Tempe, AZ, which is part of the Phoenix metro area. I don’t know much about the history of Phoenix, but it’s not a city because it really isn’t. It comprises a number of great smaller cities, Tempe, Scottsdale, Chandler, Glendale etc, each cute and with its own center. Phoenix downtown is just a business center, empty after dark, but the downtown areas of the small cities are beautiful and quite alive. Another reason it’s not a real city is its sheer size. Coastal cities occupy a much smaller area and are conducive to public transport. A place like Phoenix absolutely is not. When I lived there, the closest grocery store was more than 6 miles away. A 45 min commute without traffic is not a big deal, things are just spread out really far. It’s been a while since I lived there, there were plans for a metro or light rail, hopefully that worked out, but comparing it to something like SF or Chicago is just ridiculous, it’s really apples and oranges. But each one of the small cities is lovely and I love the desert and the heat, so I have really fond memories of my time there.
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When housing is expensive in central cities, those central cities are emptying. Montreal begins to empty right now because of it.
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When housing is expensive in central cities, those central cities are emptying. Montreal begins an emigration cycle now because of it.
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And this phenomenon is worse when universities are located in cow farm land. God forbid that we don’t have this problem in Québec.
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In St Louis the best university in the area is located downtown on a beautiful campus. And still the city stands empty.
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WUSTL has a wall around it and does very little to integrate its students into the community. WUSTL students are taught to use STL like their own personal bar while they bide their time to go spend their trust funds in a real city. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not defending STL either. I’ve lived here off and on for six years, since my husband was hired at UMSL (where I also now work), in the City’s most walkable neighborhood (CWE), and I have my favorite haunts, but it does feel like a ghost town. Plus it’s v. hard to make friends bc I find locals to be very suspicious of non-natives.
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I totally know what you mean! People around here are very nice but I have a feeling I’m a little too exotic for them. 🙂
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Maybe you and I can hang out sometime if you are staying in the area. 🙂
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I’ll be here for at least the next year, probably two! I’d love to met you, and the baby once s/he comes.
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“I’ll be here for at least the next year, probably two! I’d love to met you, and the baby once s/he comes.”
– Let’s totally do that!
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😀 Provided I don’t get run over by a motorist doing the “St. Louis Stop Sign Stop” first. My favorite is when they begrudgingly accept that you’re going to actually dare to cross the street, and wait until your heel is about 1cm clear of their path and then peel out behind you.
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I would also say your previous commenters are correct when they discuss racism. In the case of STL, racism has played a huge part. I talk about this with my German students a lot, about the difference between a ” große Stadt” and a “Großstadt,” a big city and a metropolis. The US has many cities, but only a handful could fit the description of metropolis. And I think population density and public transport/walk ability are HUGE factors in this.
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Your comment in another thread and this lit a spark in my brain.
For me, a ‘real’ city has a number of walkable and/or bikable areas and probably reliable public transport. That’s when you see people. St Louis sounds like a large area filled with buildings and cars and people who spend as much time as they can in one or the other.
In that way, the 100,000 city where I finished my BA seemed much more like a real city than did Houston, another conglomeration of buildings and cars.
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Yes, Montreal, for instance, is made for walking and biking.
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In STL I get yelled at on my bike and almost killed on my feet *every day.* There is a definite attitude that anyone not in a car is somehow Less Than and may or may not deserve to die. I think there are very complicated and multiple social/class/psychological reasons for this, and I think the reasons for the wealthier people hating peds/bikers and the poorer are different (although it is something that unites STL across class!). Meanwhile, I take MetroLink lightrail to work, and my students (the more sheltered ones) gasp at me and go “BUT THAT’S DANGEROUS” (hint: it is less dangerous than driving a private automobile, even with all the “crime” I have never seen on it in 6 years of riding it). But at least STL has a lightrail. Columbus, where I lived for 2 years, had the stimulus $ to build a lightrail (and it has a million residents!), but the governor turned it away, ostensibly because of TEA PARTY FREEDOM, but actually because the #1 industry in Columbus is auto insurance.
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“There is a definite attitude that anyone not in a car is somehow Less Than and may or may not deserve to die. I think there are very complicated and multiple social/class/psychological reasons for this, and I think the reasons for the wealthier people hating peds/bikers and the poorer are different (although it is something that unites STL across class!). Meanwhile, I take MetroLink lightrail to work, and my students (the more sheltered ones) gasp at me and go “BUT THAT’S DANGEROUS” ”
– I don’t drive, so I know exactly what you mean! My students look shocked and confused when I tell them I don;t have a car and come to school by bus. 🙂 It’s a completely ridiculous typically American prejudice that posits public transportation as somehow unprestigious.
“(hint: it is less dangerous than driving a private automobile, even with all the “crime” I have never seen on it in 6 years of riding it).”
– I know! This is a great public transportation system that is operated and used by really great people. And crime? That’s just silly.
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