Midwest Metro Musings, #2: More Initial Musings

It's time again to counter the prevailing Rust Belt narrative. Let's dig deeper into what the Midwest's major metros are doing.

The 105 W. Adams Street building in Chicago’s LaSalle Street Corridor. It’s one of several buildings being advanced for conversion to residential use under Chicago’s LaSalle Street Reimagine program. Source: chicagoyimby.com

Today I’m picking up on a sample of stories documenting activities in the 17 largest metro areas in the Midwest, each with at least one million residents. The first entry included blurbs on the nine smallest of the one-million-plus metros: Omaha, Dayton, Rochester, Buffalo, Louisville, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Kansas City. This entry covers the eight largest: Columbus, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cleveland, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit, and Chicago.

Just as a note – future Midwest Metro Musings will not include so many metros mentioned at once. In fact, future entries will likely focus on one metro, with maybe 2-3 more mentioned for comparison or contrast purposes. However, I do think a run-through of these metros is good on an annual, end-of-the-year basis, just like this. In my case the first two entries in the series serve two purposes – 1) they introduce all the metros that will get this coverage in the coming year, and beyond; and 2) they provide a glimpse into what locals, whether professional planners, housing or transit experts, lay urbanists, or media, are thinking at a given time about their home.

Let’s dig in again.

Columbus: The website Columbus Underground seems to take a pretty broad look at Columbus happenings, covering arts and entertainment, the restaurant scene, and real estate development. There’s an interesting reader-generated Top Ten Columbus Neighborhoods of 2024 list, with the Clintonville neighborhood winning for the sixth time in the 12-year history of the survey:

“Clintonville has a lot of long-term neighborhood charm with amenities like the ravines, The Park of Roses and Studio 35, there’s always a lot of new reasons to love living or visiting. Some of the latest updates from 2024 include new restaurants like Jenny’s Diner and Wario’s as well as new businesses like Modo Yoga, Bite This by Annie and the newly relocated Tigertree / Cub Shrub.”

Indianapolis: Here’s a different take on local infrastructure improvements. Earlier this month Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett announced a new application round for the city’s Community Powered Infrastructure Program. The program offers a 50/50 funding match for infrastructure projects identified by nonprofits, community organizations and neighborhood associations:

“One of the groups to benefit is The Oaks Academy Middle School, near 16th Street and College Avenue.

They received new sidewalks and curbs after submitting applications to the program a few years ago.

"For us alone to pay for this, it probably would've been impossible,” said Andrew Hart, the CEO of The Oaks Academy.

A project that would have cost a total of $56,000 ended up being only $28,000 out of the school’s budget.

That's because the city agreed to split the bill through the CPI program. Essentially, neighbors or nonprofits pay for half and the city picks up the rest.”

OK, I’m of two minds on this. One part of me says this is a good way to get residents interested in good neighborhood infrastructure. Another part of me says Indianapolis may have a serious issue with meeting its infrastructure maintenance needs, and is deferring local government activities back to residents.

Pittsburgh: Downtown Pittsburgh’s Market Square is getting a makeover. The city’s Historic Review Commission heard a presentation on a proposed redesign of the square. Earlier designs recommended the removal of vehicular traffic at the square, but property owners and businesses pushed back. Still, a modified version that limits traffic is proposed:

“The new plan is all about balance, according to Jeremy Waldrup, president and CEO of Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. Fewer cars and trucks mean more space for outdoor dining and events for the tens of thousands of people who cross through the square each month. On the south and west ends of the square, the plan would double the amount of space for outdoor dining. “That pulls the life and vibrancy that's right now, separated. This is going to make it so that outdoor dining really blends right into the square.””

St. Louis: Writing for Next STL, G.F. Fuller decries the state of St. Louis' suburban built environment:

“The growth of the suburbs has coincided with a retreat from the public realm into the safety of private products. In the bored background of suburbia lies a “political economy” Heyda says, “that just wants efficiency out of everything and that privatizes and individualizes.” While the car may be convenient and excursions can often be joyrides, there is something simply devoid of life and meaning in our need to drive everywhere. We end up with a sort of “minimum environment,” says Heyda—“this formulaic kind of thing.””

Two points I want to make here. One, the “minimum environment” discussed here is not just a suburban concern; it’s a full-on city concern in cities that have seen most of their growth come after WWII. Two, the pre-WWII development patterns that define cities like St. Louis will continue to be a niche that positively distinguishes them from the suburbs.

Cleveland: This past May, Cleveland approved a new zoning code that advances the possibility of more mixed uses and the creation of a true “15-minute city”:

““So our current zoning code is what's known as Euclidean zoning, it's actually named after Euclid, Ohio, just east of Cleveland,” Moss said. “By and large, it's really just a fancy term, that means it's zoning that segregates uses...So the factories go over here, the housing goes over here, the businesses go over there…We've had a zoning code now for almost 100 years in Cleveland and by keeping uses strictly separated, it actually makes it harder to get to them…

“Form-based code is different in the sense that it emphasizes more the way buildings are shaped and how tall they are, how many windows they have on the front… and how they address the street … versus what the uses are inside of them,” Moss said.

Moss said the City of Cleveland hopes the new Form-based code will be a more equitable, efficient and understandable redesign of Cleveland for the better, “especially for Clevelanders who don't have a car."

Way to go, Cleveland.

Minneapolis/St. Paul: Back in 2018, Minneapolis took a major step forward with the approval of its 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which advanced pro-housing reforms. The Plan recommended the development of 2-unit and 3-unit residential structures as-of-right in single-family home districts in an effort to create more housing and reduce housing costs. Minneapolis has reaped the benefit of the reform, but not quite how it thought it would:

“(T)he duplex and triplex provisions of the plan haven’t led to much new housing. In fact, researchers and journalists have found that these rules have hardly affected Minneapolis housing development. Since 2013, developers have built only a few dozen two- to three-unit buildings under 2040 Plan rules.

But this does not mean that Minneapolis’ zoning reforms failed. While developers have built relatively few duplexes and triplexes since the 2040 Plan’s passage, they have built quite a lot of other multi-family housing in lower-density neighborhoods — it just happens to be the case that most of these projects are larger than three units. Rather than proving their inefficacy, Minneapolis’ success reaffirms the promise of well-executed “missing middle” zoning reforms.”

Detroit: Detroit’s revitalization continues to amaze me. This summary of major 2024 developments makes my head spin:

“In February, a new 25-story glass high-rise opened on the downtown riverfront, on the site of what was once Joe Louis Arena.

The Residences at Water Square is a 496-unit luxury apartment building with floor-to-ceiling windows and striking views of the Detroit River and city skyline. It was developed by Detroit-based Sterling Group using union labor and without any tax breaks or similar incentives, which these days is unusual.

The building also features some of the highest asking rents in Detroit, such as $4,000-plus per month for some one-bedroom apartments on the building's upper floors.”

Detroit’s comeback is worthy of an extra shout-out here. A lot of media attention has been given to Detroit’s bevy of billionaires (Dan Gilbert, the Ilitch family, Roger Penske, among others) infusing money to fund the city’s revitalization. However this video explores the path the city took to solvency and better public service provision since exiting bankruptcy in 2014, paving the way for revitalization:

This needs to be celebrated more.

Chicago: Witness the conversion of older skyscrapers on Chicago’s LaSalle Street, the home of the city’s financial district, into the city’s newest Loop mixed-use neighborhood. In October the website chicagoyimby.com highlighted the progress of Chicago’s LaSalle Street Revitalization Program. One building received $28 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funding in support of a $64 million residential conversion, with more on the way:

“These projects as well as the other three LaSalle Street Reimagined projects and the conversions of 65 E Wacker Place and 500 N Michigan Avenue will add around 2,000 units in total to downtown. Coupled with the redevelopment of the Thompson Center into Google’s new home, the city is hoping for a revitalization of its center.”

There’s definitely progress happening in Midwestern cities.