You’ve gotten the rules confused. Rule 2 is the “Cicero Rule”, in which cities that were never any good are ineligible. The population requirement is in the Governor’s Addentium.
(BTW, I’d put Baltimore on top for “worst decline in the last 20 years”, but I believe that some cities have done worst between 1950 and now.)
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Hey there, dan! I was asking about you a couple of months ago. How goes it?
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It goes very well, Juanita, thank you for asking. Yes, I noticed you ask but was unable to respond here.
Being from Flint MI, I’d say that Flint is worse than Detroit as well. I work for the phone company and I’ve been to both cities enough to know. The superbowl is coming to Detroit, two new stadiums just went up soon to be followed by a Hard Rock Cafe(not that that means anything). I just think there is more money and incentive trying to make Detroit a nicer place. Hopefully they will start working on the suburbs downtown. Flint is just awful. We had to recall the mayor, the city council is ineffective, downtown is virtually dead. The only thing that keeps downtown going are the college kids. Almost everything thats ever been tried to bring life into the city(Autoworld, Water Street Pavillion) has been a failure. I have heard talks of a casino and I’m it happens. There are some nice suburbs surrounding Flint, but the city itself needs improvement. Not as many burnt down buildings as Detroit, but some of the neighborhoods on the north end are just as, if not more dangerous. I live in one of the “nicer” neighborhoods. Just around the corner there is a perpetual graffiti war going on between rival wannabes.
I agree with Detroit. At the turn of the century until the 1920’s, it was one of the most desireable and lucrative places to live. Even up thru the 1940’s, it was a great place. It is probably the worst city in the country now.
Mostly I’ve just been up & down the Eastern seaboard, but of all the places I’ve seen Camden is by far the worst. I’ve never seen anything more depressing and devastated than that place.
As to why so many towns wind up like this, it amounts to one thing, IMO: if you get overly dependent on an industry or a single company, then you live & die by that industry/company. This may be what is happening to NYC today, which during the Nineties became so dependent on Wall Street that it’s having a real tough time of it now that Wall Street is down on its luck. Seattle, from my perch over here on the other side of the country, looks like a city that has managed to have successful companies in a very wide range of industries, from Boeing to Amazon to Starbuck’s. Fifty years from now, it’ll probably still be a prosperous place.
pantom, minor quibble: I think you’ll find that Boeing has kissed off Seattle, at least in terms of its headquarters (which maybe oughta be in China 
). That said, Seattle is far too beautiful a city to go into serious decline and so, IMO, is NYC.
Yeah, I know about the headquarters thing, but I’m sure they’re still one of the largest, if not the largest, employer in Seattle.
I was just over in Midtown Manhattan today, right around Rockefeller Center. Within a couple of blocks you’ve got St Patrick’s Cathedral, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the Rock itself. The concentration of stuff in there is just spectacular. But the economy does need to get more diversified.
Niagra Falls Canada is a nice city, and just a few feet away. As I recall, Niagra Falls Canada and Niagra Falls New York, were at one time(1920’s?) very comparable and similar to each other.
I just don’t understand what you Baltimore bashers are using for criteria. Crime is down in B-more, drug use is down, teen pregnancies are down. The center city is the model for other cities redevelopment projects-Harborplace clones abound, and every baseball stadium built since 1993 looks like Camden Yards and all the new football stadiums are copies of Ravens stadium. B-more was the first ( and as far as I know, only ) city to completely demolish all of their high rise housing projects and replace them with much safer and more attractive low-rise developments, in a lot of areas of town now the “projects” look like any nice suburban townhouse development. The city still has an industrial base, Beth Steel is down but has been bought out and the new owners are planning to revitalize the entire plane, we’re still one of the busiest 2 ports on the east coast. I can’t think of a single neighborhood in town where I wouldn’t ( and I frequently do-my job takes me all over the entire metro area ) walk down the street any hour of the day and most hours of the night without feeling completely safe. Neighborhood abound with community projects and a multitude of ethnic festivals makes the city one where you can always find something different to do, plus our mayor plays lead guitar in a rock and roll band. What else could you want? I get the feeling those of you bashing B-more have driven through, seen trash lying around ( which I admit bugs the shit out of me as well ) and said “Sheesh, what a dump!”
As to the DC apologists, except for the Federal Government ( which is centered around the mall ) and the sections of the city that cater to the middle class drones who work for the Government ( but they don’t live in the city, no they live in NOVA and Rockville ) such as Georgetown, the entire city is comprised of lower and lower middle class slums filled with the service industry people who wash the dishes, cut the grass, empty the trashcans and clean the offices of those government drones. There’s no industrial base and very little chance for perople in this neighborhoods to ever be anything other than what they currently are- minimum wage slaves invisible to the “power elite” yet crutial to the function of the city, completely taken advantage of by the system. Drive through DC on the BW parkway one time and tell me about run down, trashy neighborhoods. The palatable sense of indifference and hopelessness that covers these areas of town like a shroud is an unmitigated disgrace for a city that is our nation’s capitol.
The BW parkway doesn’t go through Washington. It ends just before the border, where it merges with Kenilworth Avenue. Just a nitpick.
As for the lack of industrial base, has it ever had one? Because if it hasn’t, then it can’t be counted as a “decline,” can it?
The BW parkway extends to Rt 50, isn’t that inside the DC line? But yes, you’re technically accurate, it’s Kenilworth Ave that I’m talking about, which then hooks up with 295 for the final streach to 95 south of DC. Basically the same road, just 3 different names.
Also, DC did have an industrial base, most of it left in the 50s.
Yeah, that’s why it’s really a nitpick.
There are plenty of of places in DC that are pretty bad, but one could argue that all cities have plenty of places that are pretty bad. Trying going to NE Philly or W Philly after dark, for example.
In the short time I’ve been here I’ve been lost all over the area. I was lost on foot for more than three hours one late night in NE and survived. It’s more like the SW and SE areas, I think.
A lot of DC has a condition that I call “Good block/bad block”- there will be a block with all restored beautiful turn-of-the-century rowhouses, followed by a block of run-down, astro-turf-front-lawn, sketchy drug market houses. With as much bad press as Anacostia gets it actually has some nice neighborhoods and houses. It’s not like taking 95 through Baltimore gives you a nice view of anything other than billboards, old factories belching fumes, and a stadium named for a now-defunct telcom company.
Like I said earlier, I like Baltimore- the cost of living is cheap, good museums (including the aquarium and the insane visionary museum), good restaurants (Little Italy, crabcakes, pit beef…) and the inner harbor and Fells Point are cool. But to say that there hasn’t been a decline in the past 20 years is ignoring things- I’ve posted the crime stats and the story about it being the heroin capital 2 years ago which points out that at that time, 1 in 10 Baltimoreans was an addict. There’s PLENTY of bad, unsafe neighborhoods in Baltimore- take a walk in a three block radius around the Johns Hopkins hospital at night. The cost of living is so cheap now because of the decline. Is it a burnt out unliveable hellhole like a Gary, Indiana? No. But it ain’t what it used to be.
[sub]and the outside of Camden Yards may be beautiful, but the baseball being played inside is UGLY.[/sub]
Detroit’s cool, it’s just not pretty. I’d hardly say it’s the worse city in the country, not by a long shot. What are you basing this statement on, aside from a viewing of 8 Mile?
Pittsburgh is doing OK. It’s the formerly important cities surrounding it that are hurting…bad.
Duquesne, McKeesport, Homestead and Clairton immediately come to mind. Loss of population, crime problems, loss of industry…everything yoou’d want for your classic decline.
I believe there’s nobody left in Duquesne except senior citizens and welfare cases. The mill that employed tens of thousands is long gone. The mayor and state delegation personally lobbied the KMart company to keep the store open. Losing it was a huge hit to the job base.
McKeesport used to have a business district with more department stores than downtown Pittsburgh had. Now the dollar stores are closing down for lack of business. National Tube, which employed tens of thousands, is now an underperforming industrial park.
My parents live in Clairton, which is the town portrayed in the movie “the Deer Hunter.” Sadly, the town is much more depressing now.
Pittsburgh is Shangri-La by comparison.
Mojo,
I think that my point is that B-more is on a resurge now. It came on strong in the 80s and made a lot of progress, then during the 90s we had a “Governor” who thought that the largest city in Maryland was Washington DC. :rolleyes: Obviously, the situation in Mobtown plateaued and even slipped back some then, but it’s coming back now, which is why I question those who call it a “city in decline”.
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With all due respect Weirddave I enjoy your posts and all but you are nuts. First I am one of those drones who live in DC. For that matter so are all of our neighbors. We could all afford to live in the burbs, but we don’t.
Why not? Well maybe you haven’t been to DC in a while but let me clue you in. Since Wiliams has taken office the city has improved by unheard of leaps and bounds. I live in NE, in what was once a ‘bad’ neighborhood. No violent crime in my area in the last five months. Police response averages a little over five minutes. We have an active neighborhood watch. Everyone plants flowers and the city helps out by planting their own trees and flowers on public land. Trash pick up is regular and efficient. People have known each other most of their lives and we look out for each other. Home values have soared almost everywhere in the District. I could go on and on, but I hope you get the point.
I can’t believe you choose to judge DC based on a drive on Kenilworth Ave. Have you driven through Charm City on 95? I love B’more but really would you like your city judged by the view from one stretch of road?
You also mention we have no industrial base. Have you gotten the memo that this is a service economy? We have the largest pool of service jobs here in our city. The Federal Gov’t is one of the last places people can go and have job security for life assuming they work hard.
Now on to the lower class and lower-middle class slums. With median home prices over $200k they must really get paid well. The worst areas left are over the bridge in SE which is admittedly really a depressed area. Where are these other slums? H Street NE where cops used to be afraid to tread. Homes are now selling like hotcakes there for close to $200k. Businesses are moving in and flourishing. Columbia Heights? My wife and I couldn’t afford to move there. Cap Hill, I could barely afford to live there and feel blessed. 14th street used to have hookers from start to finish. I haven’t seen one this year.
Sorry for the long rant, but I am getting more than a whiff of ignorance about what life here is like. I have lived in some of the worst places in America. My rogues gallery includes: Worcester and Lowell MA, Manchester NH, and fer chrissakes Port-Au-Prince Haiti. I know bad and it ain’t DC.
As a last note much of this improvement comes from the arrest of one man, Rayful Edmonds. Edmonds ran Murder Inc. in the eighties and was personally responsible for hundreds of murders in the city. Amazing that one arrest can do so much.
So dopers come visit. Get off the highway. Visit real people in real neighborhoods. I have yet to be scared living in DC.
Oops, you’re right - I did look at the wrong post when referring to the rules. Though I didn’t apply my points to the right rules, I think they still stand. Let me try again:
Camden’s decline has been relatively recent - it was a pretty good place to live in the 50’s and maybe the 60’s, according to my sources (OP rule 1 satisfied);
Camden used to be a good place (see my previous post), and it is a very very bad place now. Looking over my last post, I see I forgot to mention the extreme poverty, crime, and general burned out/trashed look of the place. It has been a major decline (OP rule 2 satisfied).
You’re right, of course. I didn’t mean that the waterfront development wasn’t having a noticable impact. It’s brought jobs and revenue to the city, I’m sure. Also, my impression is that when you’re around those attractions, you’re safer than you would be in most of the rest of the city. I guess I was just trying to say that while the waterfront attractions have made the waterfront area a good place to visit, they haven’t made Camden a nice place to live.
About that waterfront - I went to the baseball stadium for my college reunion. It’s more magical than you’d expect Camden, NJ to be. Right behind it is the Ben Franklin. Awesome sight at night.