Cleveland: Midwest or Northeastern/East Coast?

[TheProf]

Originally Posted by ferraris

FAnd again, obviously University Circle has attractions, but it's just not a very residential neighborhood. You don't visit the Art Museum and daydream about a life living a block or two away, like you might when visiting Ohio City or Gordon Square.

Actually, this isn't true. Univ. Circle is very residential... Apartments are going up all around University Circle (Uptown, E. 118th apartments, Uptown, 116, Centric, and huge new, beautiful One University Circle, among them). There are also a number of rehab-ed old large homes and apartments... and then there's dense Little Italy just across the Rapid tracks which has tons of housing, along with several new or recent apts and townhouses going in...

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by andrew61

Don't get me started on the condition of some of those rental highrises along Lake Shore Boulevard... I've been seeing horror stories on the local newscasts during the past couple years...

Some are good. Some are bad. The single family homes are an entirely different matter.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by TheProf

Actually, this isn't true. Univ. Circle is very residential... Apartments are going up all around University Circle (Uptown, E. 118th apartments, Uptown, 116, Centric, and huge new, beautiful One University Circle, among them). There are also a number of rehab-ed old large homes and apartments... and then there's dense Little Italy just across the Rapid tracks which has tons of housing, along with several new or recent apts and townhouses going in...

Fair points on both counts. I didn't think of Little Italy technically being part of UC, and I didn't really consider the large apartments/condos. I'd be interested in knowing how many people live in UC outside of Little Italy, which seems to be the only self-contained non-apartment neighborhood in UC -- the rest are very small and/or contiguous with street grids into adjacent neighborhoods.

Little Italy in general is a good point and it definitely bucks the trend of most of the other East Side city neighborhoods. It's actually the only Cleveland Neighborhood of note that I haven't visited, which is why it slipped my mind. I need to rectify that!

[TheProf]

Originally Posted by ferraris

Fair points on both counts. I didn't think of Little Italy technically being part of UC, and I didn't really consider the large apartments/condos. I'd be interested in knowing how many people live in UC outside of Little Italy, which seems to be the only self-contained non-apartment neighborhood in UC -- the rest are very small and/or contiguous with street grids into adjacent neighborhoods.

Little Italy in general is a good point and it definitely bucks the trend of most of the other East Side city neighborhoods. It's actually the only Cleveland Neighborhood of note that I haven't visited, which is why it slipped my mind. I need to rectify that!

A lot of people, present company included, long did not consider Little Italy a part of UC, and technically, it's not. Having grown up on the East Side and in the Heights, we always viewed LI as a very closed, insular neighborhood with the resident Italians walling themselves off... Not so much these days. The younger generation Italians don't think this way (if they live in LI at all). And while the neighborhood is strongly Italian in its retail district, it is more diverse than it has ever been -- the running joke is that it could be dubbed "Little Asia" based on the significant Asian population there -- also there a number of CWRU students and profs living there, among others -- so much so, that LI's inter-connectivity with UC these days is so strong, it's almost like it's a shared neighborhood.

If you visit LI... take the Rapid to the new LI-UC station on Mayfield Road right at LI's doorstep (notably the very dense Mayfield Road commercial district, with lots of mixed-use buildings, including a new substantial new apt/retail complex: La Collina http://www.hwrep.com/project/la-collina/), and a short walk from UC's Uptown, CWRU and museums (the latter being a little bit farther away, but still walkable). When you get off the Rapid and come down to street level, you'll notice a healthy amount of foot traffic back 'n forth between the 2 neighborhoods flowing under the rail tracks...

... Aside from the large scale apartments, there is also the sea of new smaller scale apartment buildings and townhouses along E. 118th street stretching 2-blocks, just NW of Euclid. There is also the decade-old Coltman 27 townhouses right on the border of LI and UC near the Rapid Station (although LI claims these attractive buildings).

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by TheProf

A lot of people, present company included, long did not consider Little Italy a part of UC, and technically, it's not. Having grown up on the East Side and in the Heights, we always viewed LI as a very closed, insular neighborhood with the resident Italians walling themselves off... Not so much these days. The younger generation Italians don't think this way (if they live in LI at all). And while the neighborhood is strongly Italian in its retail district, it is more diverse than it has ever been -- the running joke is that it could be dubbed "Little Asia" based on the significant Asian population there -- also there a number of CWRU students and profs living there, among others -- so much so, that LI's inter-connectivity with UC these days is so strong, it's almost like it's a shared neighborhood.

Until its demise, the Cleveland Mafia vigorously enforced a color barrier in LI. I had a friend who bought a rental property in LI and was immediately visited and warned about the rules; it was a shocker.

University Circle officialdom definitely has absorbed Little Italy. I don't know if the University Circle police patrol there.

University Circle | Cleveland Ohio | Arts & Culture

[TheProf]

Originally Posted by WRnative

Until its demise, the Cleveland Mafia vigorously enforced a color barrier in LI. I had a friend who bought a rental property in LI and was immediately visited and warned about the rules; it was a shocker.

University Circle officialdom definitely has absorbed Little Italy. I don't know if the University Circle police patrol there.

University Circle | Cleveland Ohio | Arts & Culture

I was aware LI had a racial/racist history. Your comments about the Mafia racial enforcement, while disturbing, is not surprising. LI fought relocating the Rapid stop to Mayfield Road for decades based on fear of a black & brown invasion -- mainly black -- even though everyone acknowledged that's where the Rapid needed to be. Old-line hard liners quietly grumbled when UCI pushed RTA to relocate the station, but fortunately their voices were drowned out. LI has an ugly legacy of race which thankfully seems to be dying out.

[aca1]

Why does the issue of having African-American population keep popping up in regards to whether a place is Northeastern or Midwestern? It might be a indicator of whether something is in the West vs East of the US, but not whether it is Midwestern or not. If the northeast has places like Baltimore and Philadelphia with large AA populations, the Midwest has Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and above all Detroit.

And if we are talking about tolerance, while I cannot speak from a personal level, reading the internet and watching the news, it does not seem to me that black people feel particularly accepted anywhere in the US.

[warren zee]

How many times are people going to ask this question?