By Jason SegedyJuly 25, 2016Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972Glendale Cemetery, AkronThis morning, I read a piece in The Atlantic, entitled Do Parts of the Rust Belt Need to Die Off?  In it, Texas A&M’s Galen Newman argues that some of America’s struggling cities should embrace their decline, and plan around it.  He goes farther and says, essentially, that in some cases, these cities will never be coming back, and that we need to be realistic in contemplating their future - even if that means permanently shutting down entire neighborhoods and relocating the residents.On one level, this makes some degree of sense.  It goes without saying that nearly every major cultural, economic, and social trend in the United States over the past 70 years has been unkind to the cities of the so-called Rust Belt – everything from air conditioning, to deindustrialization, to freeways, to suburbanization.  Large swaths of these cities, to be sure, are shadows of their former selves.Yet, on another level, I had a visceral negative reaction to the entire concept.  Yes, some of it was an emotional response “No, I don’t want my city to die!” But much of my discomfort with this piece was based on reason, as well.I don’t think that Galen Newman, or others who share his ideas, are trying to intentionally do harm to our cities.  I believe that they are trying to help. Nonetheless, I think that many of these ideas are wrongheaded, and that if implemented, will do far more harm than good.Should your city die?  For, if we are to discuss the issue honestly, let us dispense with the abstraction of an indefinite article, and get concrete with a personal pronoun:  not a city, but your city.Should your city die?  It’s not an academic question.  It’s a big existential question.  It’s a question that involves entrenched social and economic trends; involves a personal and collective choice between fatalism and hope; and, most importantly, involves the lives of millions of people in the cities of America’s Rust Belt – places that many people think they know a lot more about than they really do.Are they places that are full of promise and opportunity, which often pleasantly surprise unsuspecting outsiders when they visit?Or are they places that are often their own worst enemy, full of intractable problems, shambling toward the abyss of despair?Are they like Boxer, the fabled work horse who had a good run, but is no longer needed on the animal farm, so it’s off to the glue factory?Or are they like the Velveteen Rabbit, the stuffed child’s plaything who, although old, shabby, and discarded, transcended its circumstances, and became a real rabbit through the sheer power of love?Should we give up on Rust Belt cities, and adopt untested, draconian social-engineering schemes like the forced relocation of residents?Or is there a way forward; one that builds on the legacy of the past, but envisions something new and transformative for our foundering urban places?These are important questions.  I will attempt to wrestle with them by posing three more:1)      Are Rust Belt cities dying?2)      If Rust Belt cities are dying, why should we care?3)      If we do care, what can be done to save them?Are Rust Belt Cities Dying?The first question is fundamental.  Are Rust Belt cities really dying?  How we phrase and answer this question is important.  If we’re talking about regions, the reality, even here in the Rust Belt, is that hardly any of them are shrinking, let alone “dying”.The following table shows population change between 1960 and 2010 in a selected number of medium-to-large-sized cities in the Eastern Great Lakes region, often associated with being the poster children for Rust Belt decline.Of the 12 cities shown in the table, all lost a significant percentage of their population between 1960 and 2010, but only two (Buffalo and Pittsburgh) actually lost population at the regional level.  When the evolving vagaries of metropolitan area geography at the Census Bureau are taken into account, several more of these regions could be considered to have lost population:  Greater Youngstown, for example, contained two counties in 1960, but three in 2010. By nearly any accounting, it is probably functionally smaller today, than it was in 1960.Similarly, some other regions are not growing nearly as fast as this table indicates. Greater Cincinnati, for example, contained only three counties in 1960, but by 2010, had expanded to a region of 15 counties.  Again, some of this is actual urban growth, but some of it is more a result of adding exurban counties in Kentucky that have little connection to urban Cincinnati, other than commuting patterns.The arcane nature of Census Bureau geography notwithstanding, even the regions that have lost population have done so at a fairly gradual pace.  At the regional level, the sky isn’t falling, although it is fair to say that it may be a bit overcast.  Let’s move on to the core cities themselves.  Here the weather is far stormier, and the picture becomes far more complicated.  It is undeniable that there are profound and seemingly intractable socioeconomic disparities between all of these regions and their core cities.  Most of them are struggling mightily on nearly every measure of social and economic health, and none of them have posted positive net population growth since 1960.Even more distressingly, the same intractable socioeconomic disparities that exist between these core cities and their metropolitan regions, also exist within each core city, at the neighborhood level.  Many individual neighborhoods in these cities are at, or are quickly approaching, levels of social and economic distress at which it might be accurate to say that they are “dying”.We’ll come back to that point, in greater detail, later in this post.  But for now, let’s make this point clear:  major Rust Belt population clusters aren’t disappearing anytime soon.Detroit, probably the world’s foremost example of a city that, to read media accounts, is dying and has no future - still has 700,000 people, and anchors a metropolitan area of over 4 million.  It is the busiest U.S. international border crossing, in terms of trade, and it is located on the world’s largest inland waterway.The Detroit region is not going anywhere anytime soon.  Despite its many woes, it occupies one of the most advantageous pieces of real estate on the North American continent.Akron, where I live, which is a far smaller city than Detroit, still has 4 million people living within an hour’s drive of downtown.  It is located at the geographic center of the 16th largest metropolitan region (Cleveland-Akron-Canton) in the nation.  The economic opportunity implicit in being located in such close proximity to so many consumers, workers, and jobs isn’t going to disappear either.The core city, to be sure, is not the same thing as the region – as those of us who live in the core city know better than anyone.  But, despite media pronouncements to the contrary, even the most distressed core Rust Belt cities are not analogous to a ghost town in the old west that had 2,000 people at its peak, without another soul living within 50 miles of it.  That obscure, old silver mining town in the Colorado mountains that you can’t name might have been a one-industry town, just like Youngstown was, but there still exists an incredibly important difference of degree between the two, if not also one of kind.Whether a smaller city like Flint or a large one like Detroit, we’re still talking about established places with tens or hundreds of thousands of residents, surrounded by hundreds of thousands or millions more.  The critical mass of people, and economic activity, even in a massively shrinking city like Youngstown, is staggering.Most of these cities aren’t where they are simply because someone decided to build a factory there. Nearly all of them have profound geographic assets (water, transportation routes, proximity to markets) that aren’t disappearing any time soon, regardless of what any given industry decides to do.Despite the trends of the previous half-century, if one were to contemplate the long-term future of a region of the country, one might do well to worry about large swaths of the Sunbelt, rather than the Rust Belt.  What about the long-term future of the cities of the desert Southwest, or much of coastal Florida, where the locational advantages are far less profound, especially given climate change, and where it is inevitable that largely superficial and transitory economic activity (tourism, gambling, retirement) will one day come to an end?  It is not entirely unreasonable to think that 50 years from now, pundits might be writing about a resurgent Detroit, and a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas.Many people think that they know why Rust Belt cities are losing population, but it is a very complicated topic.  Many of the theories regarding why these cities are declining tend to just as often reflect the proponent’s ideological perspective, as they reflect objective reality.Shrinking household size, for example, accounted for 46% of the observed population decline in St. Louis between 1950 and 2010 – a far from inconsequential number.  Regardless of deindustrialization, or white flight, a city that was built-out in 1950, in an era where every social trend was pointing toward smaller households, really had nowhere to go but down.  Yet almost no one has written about this fact, because it isn’t as interesting as stories about racial tensions and abandoned factory buildings.As Charles Marohn, of Strong Towns, has astutely pointed out, people from one ideological perspective can find plausible urban decline narratives that run completely counter to plausible narratives put forth by people of the opposite ideological perspective. In the Rust Belt, the decline of manufacturing is an oft-cited culprit for core city population decline, and it is certainly an important factor.  But the very really challenges that these cities and regions are facing are not just due to the loss of manufacturing.  It is probably more accurate to say that Rust Belt urban problems are American urban problems, with the loss of industrial jobs providing an unwelcome overlay of additional complexity and distress.The American urban problem, in short, is the erosion, since World War II, of the basic concept of what a city even is:  a densely developed, diverse, mixed-use, walkable place.  Given that reality, suburbanization, in general, and the Growth Ponzi Scheme, in particular, are extremely important reasons for the decline and fall of many Rust Belt cities – older places which were already facing headwinds due to the decline of their manufacturing-based economies, which also happened to lose their industrial bases at the exact same time that Americans were rejecting traditional urban life wholesale.But that was then, and this is now.  Signs that the suburban model of development is, too, a failed approach, are now appearing.  The endless cycle of transfer payments between governments, underwritten by federal transportation spending, and public and private-sector debt, which largely fueled the building of the suburbs, is quickly coming to an end. When it fails completely, there will be a desire to return to the city.  In the piece in The Atlantic, Newman states:What I think is going to happen is that a lot of these old, large cities are going to die out. I don’t think they’re going to officially die, but I think we’re going to have to let some of them go, while these other newer cities are going to sprout up and take off with modern-age industries. It will probably be a pendulum swing. I don’t know if it will happen before I die, but at some point these older cities aren’t going to be able to sustain economies because of the way industry grows now and technology changes so fast. And so the pendulum’s going to swing back and forth, but all of these smaller cities are going to grow larger and all of their suburban belts are going to overlap. So we’re going to be really looking at regional-based growth rather than city-based growth to some degree. He’s about forty years too late.  This isn’t a description of what will happen.  It’s a description of what has already happened.  I’m 44 years old, and we’ve been pinning our hopes on regional-based growth models for my entire lifetime.  What’s actually happening now is that the whole paradigm for regional-based economic growth is falling apart.  We’re witnessing the beginning stages of the end of big - the big corporation, the big government, and the big region. Place-based growth is currently on the upswing, and Americans of all generations are beginning to long for the lost sense of place and local community that has been methodically destroyed since the late 1960s.In 1974, the Richfield Coliseum was built on the edge of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, right in between Cleveland and Akron, because it was thought important that a major civic structure be seen as serving the entire region.  It lasted a mere 20 years, replaced by a new arena in downtown Cleveland, which was built in 1994, because it was thought important that a team bearing the name “Cleveland”, actually play in Cleveland. The Coliseum was reduced to rubble in 1999.  Today it is a grassy meadow, and herds of deer have replaced the sports fans and concert goers.The Coliseum was regional growth – in both a metaphorical and literal sense. For years, pundits, prognosticators, and policy wonks have been telling us that the age of the central city is over; that it is the region that is important. Economies are based on regional job markets, they say, and improvements in transportation and communications are making local places (even large ones) increasingly irrelevant.The fact that economies are regional is true - as far as it goes.  But like anything viewed through one lens only, it does not tell the whole story.Are regions important? Of course. But so are places.  Like so many other things in the realm of urban public policy, this is not a binary, either/or, choice.Why Should We Care? In the piece in The Atlantic, Newman states:We need to accept that some of these big cities need to die, pieces of the city need to die off, not the whole city, to make way for future growth. That’s what I think, but people don’t want to hear that because we’re talking about their homes, that’s where they live. They shouldn’t have to hear that.It is true that people don’t want to hear it.  And it is true that reality trumps our wishes, whether we like it or not.But the story that is being told here is not the whole story.  The scenario that Newman is describing (dead cities with no possibility of revival) is not reality, either.  It is true that all of these Rust Belt cities are struggling to one degree or the other. Some, like Detroit, Flint, or Youngstown, are fighting for their very survival – but they are not inevitably fated to die.  Again, the implied analogies between the Rust Belt city and the ghost towns of the old west, where everyone just packed up and left, are misplaced.  This iconography may be embedded deep in the American psyche, but it does not recognize the incredibly complicated web of connectivity (social, economic, environmental, physical, and even spiritual) that exists between modern cities and their suburbs. I would argue that abandoning our core cities to their supposedly inevitable fate is not like removing a wisdom tooth or an appendix.  The core city is not a vestigial appendage that is no longer needed.  Instead, it is like removing a beating heart from a temporarily ailing, but otherwise healthy person.  When the heart is removed, the patient dies.  We don’t need euthanasia. We need a good heart surgeon.  We’re not talking about numbers on a balance sheet.  We’re talking about people.People are the lifeblood of the city.  A city isn’t a collection of infrastructure that happens to contain people.  It is a place for people to live that happens to contain infrastructure.  People must always come first.  The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.Regardless of what some advocates of regionalism might say, city boundaries are not arbitrary and meaningless.  Core cities will continue to profoundly matter, especially to the people (often disproportionately poor) that remain.Municipal boundaries are not irrelevant, whatever the regionalists may tell you. Economies may be regional, but in most of the nation’s fastest declining cities, government is not.  Municipal boundaries affect taxation, land use policy, public safety, education, public infrastructure, and the delivery of social services. When a city’s population declines precipitously, the proportional demand for the public services that it provides shrinks less than its population, with the end result that its residents end up paying more in taxes, for less in services.  Even if this were not the case, it is expensive and (politically speaking) exceedingly difficult to scale-back and shrink long-term capital investments in public infrastructure – as “shrinking cities” like Detroit and Youngstown have discovered.  What goes on within a given city’s actual municipal boundaries has incredibly important ramifications for its tax base; its employment base; the performance of its schools; the distribution of everyday amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public services; and less tangible, but equally important things like its sense of place and its sense of itself.  As cities are abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic opportunities diminishes along with the population:  the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and increasingly inaccessible locale.  To pretend as though the economic and social well-being of city residents is not directly impacted by population decline is to turn a blind eye to reality.This is not just about bricks and mortar infrastructure, or civic pride.  It is about people.Are the things that are associated with place (like tradition, identity, stability, and community) objective values that are intrinsically important?  Or are they just subjective and arbitrary?  Are they really just subordinate means to allegedly more important ends such as economic development and personal profit?Are places really nothing more than engines for economic growth that, like machines, can be discarded as obsolete when they are no longer “useful” in the most reductive, narrowly-defined sense of that word?  Or do places have an emotional and spiritual significance that we ignore at our peril?And what about the people themselves?  Where do they fit into the equation? Where do they stack up on the balance sheet, and in the benefit/cost calculations?  Who is measuring the true human cost of abandoning entire neighborhoods, entire communities, and entire ways of life?  Is it possible to truly understand the social, economic, and spiritual impact of our collective decisions on where and how to build our communities?These questions are never considered in conversations about economic growth and development.  But they should be.What Can Be Done?I don’t believe that a “Shrinking Cities” model of mothballing infrastructure and relocating residents will ever work.  Instead of putting precious time, energy, and money into shrinking, we, in Rust Belt cities, should be building on our neighborhood assets, learn how to stabilize in the present-day new normal, and yes, one day (perhaps sooner than anyone thinks) grow again.I am convinced that “smart decline” is harder work than “smart growth”, and it is not at all clear that “smart decline” even works.  Detroit has talked about it for years, but it hasn’t really done it.  To imagine that a place like like Detroit, which does not even currently have the resources to adequately maintain core public services, will somehow be able to implement a highly-complex, top-down program of relocation and infrastructure removal, both effectively and efficiently, defies credulity.  It hasn’t happened.  It’s not going to happen.Youngstown, another alleged “smart decline” champion, has been unable to implement any of the most formidable tenets of its famous 2010 “shrinking cities” plan, such as forced relocation or infrastructure removal. The plan received a huge amount of press upon its completion, and it recommended a lot of other modest strategies that have truly helped the community, but I have yet to see one detailed analysis of how the big, ambitious, top-down “smart decline” strategies it recommended were successfully put into practice.Instead, what Youngstown has been doing, probably better than anyone, is harnessing the DIY ethos and creativity of amazing and talented young people like Ian Beniston (YNDC) and Phil Kidd (Defend Youngstown).  These efforts deserve a blog post of their own.  Ian, Phil, and their colleagues, involved in the critical but unsexy work of ground-level urban revitalization, have been rock stars, but their work hasn’t involved theoretical “command-and-control” strategies of relocating people, shutting off utilities, tearing out infrastructure, and formally mothballing neighborhoods.  Their work is of a different sort entirely.The solution isn’t to shut these cities down.  The solution is to repair them. That’s not the same thing as being Pollyannaish about growth. Repair may never lead to growth (at least as we formerly understood that term) but growth will never come without repair.American cities have often gone astray, looking for that mega-project or that silver bullet.  They placed their faith, first in 1960s-era urban renewal, and then, later, in the prosperity theology of stadiums, arenas, convention centers, and casinos.It would be an equal and opposite error for cities to place their faith in the predestination theology of Smart Decline.  Both errors place far too much faith in the idea that big, top-down projects and plans are going to save us.  It is the little things that truly make the difference. These are the things that often involve fundamentals, are easier to pull-off, and more readily establish trust, inspire hope, and build relationships.  Trust, hope, and relationships are the indispensable ingredients necessary for overcoming fatalism, and for doing bigger things further down the road. Without them, we labor in vain.A sledgehammer is a valuable tool - but not if you are trying to repair a watch.Our cities are far more akin to a living organism than they are to a machine. Given that reality, we must then tailor our approach to fixing (healing) them, accordingly.The idea that we are fated to decline, and that the past is prologue, sells our cities short.  When we write-off whole neighborhoods, or even entire cities, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy that breeds even more apathy, cynicism, and despair.The solution is not to destroy our communities, but to provide functional places for people to live.  I refuse to believe that it cannot be done. And if it ultimately cannot, I believe that we should die trying.In the piece in The Atlantic, Newman states:Yeah, one of the main things you’re going to run into is that if you’re trying to concentrate development, that means you’re going to have to restructure. There are people who remain in the city, people who actually stay and live there. But you’re going to have to relocate those people that stay if you’re going to try to grow like that. So there’s a lot of people fussing that they don’t want to be relocated, but cities are going to have to say, “we are only going to provide services to these certain areas, so if you want these services, you’re going to have to relocate into these areas.This sounds like the urban renewal of the 1960s, all over again.  It’s disturbing, the degree to which the notion of relocating entire populations (sure to be disproportionately poor and non-white) is passed off as being not much of a big deal. There is a grain of truth here.  Could we be in a triage situation, and might we need to prioritize and concentrate on certain neighborhoods rather than others? Absolutely.  That’s called setting priorities in an environment with scarce resources, and it’s what Rust Belt cities have to do every day.  But that’s a far different proposition than advocating for a modern version of urban renewal - forcibly relocating people and shutting whole portions of the city down.  Not only is this conception of “Smart Decline” inequitable (and, I would argue, unethical) - it is completely impractical.  Can you imagine the time, energy, and money that it would take to actually implement such a strategy?  Wouldn’t those precious human and financial resources be better spent saying “You know what, our city is in rough shape, but we have hundreds of thousands of potential residents living just a few miles away from us, many of whom have a lot of social and economic capital.  Why don’t we focus our efforts on attracting them to live here?”And again, attracting them doesn’t mean relying on the silver bullets of a new stadium or casino, or the snake oil of the latest urban planning fad.  It means embarking upon the incredibly hard and unsexy work of doing the dozens of fundamental things well (housing, public safety, education, transportation, health, arts, culture, entrepreneurship, small business, jobs) that make a city a truly great place to live. What we have in our neighborhoods, cities, and regions, today, is primarily an economic distribution problem, not an economic growth problem.  We don’t need to worry about more growth in the Rust Belt.  We need to better align the growth that we already have present in our region with the needs of all of our people.We don’t need to build more ships.  We need to get the ships that we already have in our fleet into the harbor, and we need to repair the ones that are damaged.  The rising tide can only lift the ships that are out at sea.  It can’t help the ones that are taking on water, or the ones that are anchored in drydock.The people who will ultimately fix the cities of the Rust Belt are not those who work in them, play in them, or write about them. These cities will be be fixed by those of us who actually live in them, and love them - not because of their imperfections, but in spite of them.  When you actually live in and love a place, its future is not theoretical or academic. Its future is your future, and that of your brothers, and sisters, and neighbors.We are our brother’s keeper.  Let’s not worry about whether we are individually capable of meeting all of our neighbor’s needs. Let’s just start by loving our neighbors as ourselves.  When enough of us do that…I think we’ll be surprised at what we can do, serving together.

By Jason SegedyApril 29, 2016Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972Our dynamic and visionary new Mayor, Dan Horrigan, is committed to growing Akron again.   We do this by making a great place even better - by building new housing, by rehabilitating existing buildings, by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercial redevelopment, and by using artistry in urban design to create irresistible places for people to live, work, and play.  For roughly 80 years, Akron was the center of the global rubber and tire industry. It was home to the headquarters of four of the world’s five largest tire manufacturers – Goodyear, Firestone, B.F. Goodrich, and General Tire. In 1920, it was building half of the world’s tires.  By 1982, not a single a passenger tire was built in the city.  The impact on the city’s economy, culture, and psyche was profound.Between 1910 and 1920, Akron was the fastest growing city in the entire nation, expanding from a population of 69,000 in 1910 to 208,000 in 1920.   As a result, much of the city’s housing was built in the 1910s, and is now 100 year old.  Like most cities, it is a place of diverse neighborhoods:  hastily-built, poorly planned ones in the city’s urban core; solidly middle-class, well-planned, historically significant ones, like Goodyear Heights and Firestone Park; and opulent ones containing palatial homes on tree-lined streets, like Merriman Hills and Fairlawn Heights, built for its most affluent residents.The city hit its peak population in 1960, expanding to 290,000 residents.  Since 1960, the city has lost 31% of its population.  Today it is home to 198,000 residents.  Despite losing 73,000 residents between 1960 and 2000, the number of households (90,000) remained consistent for 40 years, due to shrinking average household size.But since 2000, Akron has lost an additional 19,000 people and over 6,000 households.  This has led to a growing problem with vacant and abandoned properties.Despite its significant loss of population and manufacturing jobs, it is inaccurate to pigeonhole Akron as a “shrinking Rust Belt city”.  The fact that the city once contained the corporate headquarters of at least half-a-dozen Fortune 500 companies, and all of the wealth that they generated; and the fact that it has since diversified its economy, retaining and attracting new high-paying jobs, means that it is still home to some of the most stable and affluent urban neighborhoods in the entire Great Lakes region.  Like most places, it should not be painted with an overly broad brush.Today, when it comes to housing, Akron is a city of contrasts.  It is not one real estate market, but half-a-dozen. Approximately one-quarter of the city’s housing is in great shape, while another one-quarter is extremely distressed. The remaining 50% could be characterized as being at a tipping-point of sorts - largely solid, older homes, in middle class neighborhoods - for now.The city contains approximately 96,000 housing units. The median housing unit (houses and apartments) was built in 1952.  64% of them were built prior to 1960.  More housing was built during the Great Depression than has been built since 2000.When you look at the housing on Akron’s near-west side, for example, you can see the radial pattern of the pre-1920 homes that were built along the former streetcar lines. You can also see the way that adjacent neighborhoods evolved and filled-in, between 1920 and 1960, along with scattered pockets of more recent infill development.  You can also see, on the bottom right, a downtown where very few people currently live.This map of housing in Akron and its inner ring suburbs illustrates the radial streetcar pattern even better – neighborhoods with the highest percentage (88%+) of housing built before 1960 are the darkest red, while those with the lowest (less than 12%) are the darkest blueAkron (from akros - Greek, for “high place”) is a city of hills that was home to an incredibly dirty industry.  The wealthy moved northwest - uphill and upwind of the pollution.  That pattern holds to this day – the neighborhoods with the highest median house prices (over $120,000) are in dark red, the lowest (under $57,000) are in dark blue. A similar pattern holds for annual median household income - the neighborhoods in dark red have a median household income of $54,000 or more; those in dark blue have a median household income of less than $18,000.Approximately 6% of the city’s housing is vacant (and not for sale or rent).  Vacancy is not evenly distributed.  In the darkest red neighborhoods, over 13% of the homes are vacant; in the darkest blue, less than 1.4% are.We are presently hard at work crafting a housing strategy that reflects today’s reality – that of a city that contains thousands of solid, beautiful, well-maintained historic homes, and that of a city that has torn down 2,100 abandoned houses in the past five years.We are committed to pursuing a growth strategy in Akron.  One that looks at reality with both eyes wide open, and that employs time-honored urban design principles and innovative placemaking strategies to build on our considerable strengths, and to turn our liabilities into assets.We are reinventing Akron as a place to not simply work, or play, but to live. Our long-term goal is to grow back to 250,000 residents by 2050, and our short-term goal is to get our current population of 198,000 back over 200,000 by 2020.I don’t believe that a “Shrinking Cities” model of mothballing infrastructure and relocating residents will work for us.  Instead of putting precious time, energy, and money into shrinking, let’s build on our neighborhood assets, and figure out how to grow again.Why does it matter if we keep losing population?   Because the size of our population has incredibly important ramifications for our tax base; our employment base; the performance of our schools; the distribution of everyday amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public services; and less tangible, but equally important things like our sense of place and our sense of ourselves.Fiscal:  We will have the same amount of infrastructure to maintain and the same level of public services to provide, whether we grow or shrink. Permanent contraction of our population means the same amount of services to pay for, with less people to help share the cost of paying for them.Equity:  As our neighborhoods are abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic opportunities diminishes along with the population:  the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and increasingly inaccessible locale.   The job, hardware store, or barbershop that used to be a short walk around the corner is now a 45-minute bus ride away. Social:  The intangible, but critically important issue of sense of place:  As our once-vibrant neighborhoods and commercial districts become mouths full of missing teeth, our residents’ sense of place and sense of self is correspondingly diminished.Akron was recently ranked as the most affordable housing market of the 100 largest metropolitan areas.  The good news is that it is an inexpensive place to live.  The bad news is that the low cost of housing makes it extremely difficult to cost-effectively rehabilitate many houses in most neighborhoods.In many of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods, a house can easily be had for $20,000 or less.  However, even after an investment of $60,000 or more to rehabilitate it, the owner may still only be able to sell it for $40,000. It is a difficult market proposition.The Strategic Housing Plan that we are working on recognizes our current reality – that of a stagnant housing market where new construction has been minimal, where it is difficult to cost-effectively rehabilitate homes, and where much of our urban fabric is being eroded by demolition. The Plan will examine three questions:  What do we have?  What do we need? How do we get there?  The last question is the most important and most complicated one to answer. We will need half-a-dozen (or more) different redevelopment strategies for our neighborhoods, depending on which neighborhood we are talking about.We are reaching out to developers, home builders, and realtors to figure out how to strategically, intentionally, and creatively rebuild each one of our neighborhoods. Doing this well will require public, philanthropic, non-profit, and private sector leadership; in partnership with everyday people working together, one block at a time, one neighborhood at a time, to rebuild and transform their community.   No matter how great of a place this city is to live (and it is) we can’t grow again if we don’t figure out how to build and rehabilitate more housing than we tear down.  It’s simple arithmetic.  Right now, we have an oversupply of houses that people don’t want, and an undersupply of houses and apartments that people do want. The time is right to take a fresh look at both supply and demand.  The market has begun to change, especially Downtown, as Millennials, empty-nesters, and others interested in urban living, are demanding new multi-family housing. There is also an untapped market for rehabilitating historic homes in many of our neighborhoods.  The challenge is to learn how to make that happen in a cost-effective manner.  The opportunity is the revitalization of the numerous high-quality, historic, irreplaceable neighborhoods throughout our community that can serve new generations of Akronites for the next 100 years. As we rebuild Akron, it is important that we avoid false choices – neighborhoods versus downtown; commercial development versus residential development; people versus jobs.  The answer to these questions is not a multiple-choice “either/or” - it is an “all of the above”.  We need to make our Downtown more like a neighborhood, with thousands more people living in it.Downtown currently has a 23% commercial vacancy rate, as many law offices, accountants, and other professional services have relocated to the suburbs. We can turn that current liability into an asset, through adaptive residential reuse of commercial buildings, as places to live.Like most cities in the Great Lakes region, Downtown Akron is full of irreplaceable and high-quality historic architecture.And, like most cities in our region, we did terrible things to our Downtown through urban renewal.We will be reforming our zoning code to adopt form-based overlays to encourage the type of mixed-use, walkable development that originally made our Downtown so successful as a place to live, work, and play. We need to make our neighborhoods more like a downtown, with revitalized, walkable, mixed-use business districts. Neighborhood development is economic development. The old Akron that remembers being the Rubber Capital of the World is fading away.  A new Akron, with different memories and different needs is being built - looking forward, but standing on the shoulders of giants.The past is what we are building on with our Innerbelt Freeway repurposing project.  Planned in 1963, and built between 1970 and 1986, at a cost of over $300 million in 2015 dollars, the Innerbelt was designed to carry over 100,000 vehicles per day.  Today, it carries roughly 18,000.  Built as a so-called “urban renewal” project, it displaced thousands of people in the city’s urban core, all in the name of economic development, which largely never materialized.  Due to an ill-conceived premise, poor planning, and cost-overruns, it was never completed.   For over a decade, it sat as an actual “road to nowhere”, failing to connect to another freeway. After 16 years, it was finally connected to I-76/77 on the south, but a proposed linkage to State Route 8, on the north, was never completed.In 1999, a mere decade after the last section of the freeway opened to traffic, Akron’s leaders decided that it might finally be time to view the roadway as a sunk cost, save millions of dollars in future operations and maintenance costs, stop throwing good money after bad, and repurpose the northernmost mile of the freeway. Akron’s Innerbelt Freeway at 12:30 p.m. on May 14, 2015.  Construction begins this year to reconfigure the entire length of freeway shown in this photo. The project will occur in two phases.  The first, beginning this Spring, will rebuild the parallel service roads (Dart Avenue and Rand Avenue) as urban streets.  When that project is completed in 2018, the centerline of the freeway will be permanently closed to traffic.  The project will free up approximately 30 acres of land for reuse.The second phase of the project could reconnect portions of the urban street grid, placing a special focus on pedestrian connections between Downtown and the West Hill neighborhood.  Clearly, there is demand to walk between the two places.The West Hill neighborhood contains a treasure-trove of Victorian-era architecture – cemeteries, homes, and winding brick streets.The second phase of the project will entail a strategic planning process, which will culminate in a comprehensive land reutilization strategy.  It will be important to restore the site using time-honored urban design principles so that it evolves into an authentic urban place, containing a mix of uses, including housing and green space, so that Akronites can enjoy this reclaimed space in the heart of our city for generations to come.  My hope is that someone will be able to visit this site in twenty years, and find that the project has been designed so well, and Downtown and West Hill have been knitted together so seamlessly, that they will never know that the Freeway even existed.Dreaming or Doing?  It’s another false choice.  The key to rebuilding our community is to think big, but to work equally hard on doing the small things extremely well.  American cities have often gone astray, looking for that mega-project or that silver bullet.  The urban renewal of the 1960s brought us expensive freeway projects like the Innerbelt, and cold, foreboding civic spaces like the original incarnation of Cascade Plaza.  More recently, cities have placed their faith in stadiums, convention centers, and casinos.  Few of these projects have delivered the civic benefits that they originally promised.  It is not that these things are unimportant - they can be great things, and they may well be necessary, but they are insufficient.  A sledgehammer is a valuable tool - but not if you are trying to repair a watch. Does this mean that we should never do or dream anything big?  Of course not.  But we must be prudent, patient, and wise.  Our cities are far more akin to a living organism than they are to a machine.  Given that reality, we must then tailor our approach to fixing (healing) them, accordingly.I believe that the way forward is to put people and places first.  Big plans are important, but so are little plans - because they often involve fundamentals, are easier to pull-off, and more readily establish trust, inspire hope, and build relationships.  Trust, hope, and relationships are the indispensable ingredients necessary for doing bigger things further down the road.  Without them, we labor in vain.Inside/Out is a great example of a little thing done well.  An initiative of the Akron Art Museum, the project installs life-sized reproductions of the museum’s collection at various sites around the city.  Here’s an installation located at the spot of the artist’s actual vantage point, when he painted it in the 1930s.The Main Street Viaduct, built in 1923, was replaced by the Y-Bridge in 1981. This installation was located at Waters Park in North Hill, overlooking the Y-Bridge. This installation, not officially part of Inside/Out, follows the same premise. Here’s new-wave band, Devo, exhibited life-sized in the original S. Main St. storefront where this photo was shot in 1978.Akron2Akron is a neighborhood walking initiative where everyday people take the lead on organizing walks in their neighborhood to discuss whatever they would like to discuss with participants.  Photo credit:  Tim Fitzwater (buy his stuff)The walks have been extremely popular, especially with younger people.  Over 70 people turned out for this one, in Akron’s Wallhaven neighborhood, on a dreary March day.  Photo credit:  Tim Fitzwater (buy his stuff)Better Block is another great example:  Last year, we accomplished what is believed to be one of the largest Better Block installations in the United States to date.  Working with Jason Roberts, here’s what we planned……And here’s what we did:  transforming North Hill’s 1920s-era Temple Square business district, by shrinking an oversized North Main Street, installing new street trees, public gathering spaces, a bocce court, and six pop-up businesses.The Better Block radically altered the perception of the North Hill neighborhood for residents and visitors alike – we got over 2,000 people to come out the weekend that it was installed.The street looked and felt safer and so much more vibrant.In the 1920s, North Hill was home to thousands of Italian and Polish immigrants.  Today, it is home to over 5,000 Nepali and Bhutanese immigrants, our newest Akronites, who are helping to revitalize the neighborhood.During Better Block weekend we held a 3.5 mile long Open Streets event. Main Street in Akron was completely closed to traffic on a Sunday afternoon.  Like Better Block, the event helped people imagine places and spaces in a new way.Thanks to the Knight Foundation, last October, we held 500 Plates:  a dinner for 500 people on the Innerbelt Freeway.  The Freeway was closed to traffic, and 500 Akronites from over 20 neighborhoods were invited to come out and discuss the future of the soon-to-be-repurposed freeway.All of these events serve to remind people of the most important truth in city building – that all of the planning and urban development tools that we use – plans, maps, zoning ordinances, building codes, tax increment financing, complex public processes – they are all simply a means to an end.  They are not ends in themselves.  We forget that at our peril.The end that we are seeking to achieve is the creation of wonderful places for the wonderful people that live in our city.  May we all arrive at that end – working together.

By Jason SegedyDecember 22, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972This post, which looks at the City of Akron as a whole, is a companion-piece to my 20-part series, detailing the social and economic characteristics of Akron’s neighborhoods.It is currently a time full of opportunities and challenges in Akron.  The mayor-elect, Daniel Horrigan, will take the helm in January as the city faces its most severe set of economic challenges since the collapse of the rubber and tire industry.On the other hand, this is a time of great energy, enthusiasm, and civic engagement in Akron - especially as a new generation of leaders across the public, private, and non-profit spectrum continues to work together in substantive ways both great and small.2015 represents a true demographic turning point for our city.  Our loss of not just population, but now households, too, is a direct result of our using up all of the viable, marketable housing that we had, and our tearing down more housing than we have been able to rebuild.Simply put – we are now at the place where we are physically unable to grow, because we are experiencing a net loss of housing – year after year, as it gets older and older.On average, we tear down 500 single-family homes every year in this city. On average, we build 10.New residents can move to Akron, of course, but they will simply be replacing someone who already lives here.We are playing “musical chairs” with our housing stock – one person replaces another, and every once in a while, another chair is taken away.We used to have 290,000 people.  We’re at 199,000 today.  I am convinced that we can grow again.  Those of us that already live here know that Akron is a great place to live.  Our challenge is to attract new residents to our city.We do this by making a great place even better - by building new housing, by rehabilitating existing buildings, by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercial redevelopment, and by using artistry in urban design to create irresistible places for people to live, work, and play.No matter how great of a place this city is to live (and it is) we can’t grow again if we don’t figure out how to build more housing than we tear down.  It’s simple arithmetic.  Right now, we have lots of houses that people don’t want, and not enough houses that people do want.Why does it matter if we keep losing population?Because the size of our population has incredibly important ramifications for our tax base; our employment base; the performance of our schools; the distribution of everyday amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public services; and less tangible, but equally important things like our sense of place and our sense of ourselves.  As our neighborhoods are abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic opportunities diminishes along with the population:  the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and increasingly inaccessible locale.  To pretend as though the economic and social well being of city residents is not directly impacted by population decline is to turn a blind eye to reality itself.So, with all of this in mind, stick with me over the next three weeks, as we explore the city’s neighborhoods, one-by-one - and think about the challenges and opportunities that we have, working together, to revitalize them.CITY OF AKRON: AT A GLANCEPeople:Population:  199,110White:  62.2%Black:  31.5%Other Race:  6.3%Median Age:  35.7Under 20:  26.7%20-44:  34.8%45-64:  25.9%Over 65:  12.6%Akron’s percentage of minority residents is higher than the national average. The median age is lower than the national average, with percentages of children and older adults that closely mirror the national average.Households:Households:  83,712Average Size:  2.311-Person:  34.8%Family:  56.3%Non-Family, Multi-Person:  8.9%Median Income:  $33,598Income under $50k:  66.9%Income $50-100k:  24.6%Income over $100k:  8.5%Akron’s average household size is much lower than the national average. Household incomes are far lower than the national average.Housing:Median Value Owner-Occupied:  $87,200Value <$100k:  62.3%Value $100-200k:  29.8%Value >$200k:  7.9%Units:  96,288Owner-Occupied:  54.5%Renter-Occupied:  45.5%Vacant (not for sale or rent):  5.7%Median Year Built:  1952Built pre-1960:  64.0%Built 1960-1979:  21.6%Built 1980-present:  14.4%1-unit Detached:  67.2%Akron is one of the most affordable large housing markets in the entire United States, with home prices that are far lower than the national average. The percentage of renters is higher than the national average.  The vacancy rate is quite a bit higher than the national average, while the housing stock is much older than the national average.  The percentage of single-family, detached homes is higher than the national average.Demographic MapsNOTE:  At present, the maps below are fairly small and not able to be enlarged.  I’m looking into modifying the HTML code for my blog in order to enlarge them (with some trepidation), but, in the meantime, the most important thing to know when interpreting them is that there are eight colors - 4 shades of blue and 4 shades of yellow/red.  Each color represents 1/8 of the block groups in the city. The darkest blues are the bottom 1/8 of block groups (on whichever demographic characteristic you are looking at) and the darkest reds are the top 1/8 of block groups.Dark red areas are significantly higher than the city-wide average, while dark blue areas are significantly lower.  Light blues and yellows are close to the city-wide average.Percent White PopulationPercent Black PopulationPercent Other Race PopulationMedian AgePercent under 20 years oldPercent 20-44 years oldPercent 45-64 years oldPercent over 65 years oldAverage Household SizePercent 1-person HouseholdsPercent Family HouseholdsPercent Non-Family, Multi-Person HouseholdsMedian Household IncomePercent Households earning under $50,000Percent Households earning $50,000-$100,000Percent Households earning over $100,000Median Value of an Owner-Occupied HomePercent Homes worth less than $100,000Percent Homes worth $100,000 to $200,000Percent Homes worth over $200,000Percent Owner-Occupied HomesPercent Renter-Occupied HomesPercent Vacant (not for sale or rent) HomesMedian Year Homes Were BuiltPercent Homes built before 1960Percent Homes built 1960-1979Percent Homes built 1980-presentPercent 1-unit detached Homes

By Jason SegedyDecember 1, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972This is the tenth post of a 20-part series, detailing the social and economic characteristics of Akron’s neighborhoods.It is currently a time full of opportunities and challenges in Akron.  The mayor-elect, Daniel Horrigan, will take the helm in January as the city faces its most severe set of economic challenges since the collapse of the rubber and tire industry.On the other hand, this is a time of great energy, enthusiasm, and civic engagement in Akron - especially as a new generation of leaders across the public, private, and non-profit spectrum continues to work together in substantive ways both great and small.2015 represents a true demographic turning point for our city.  Our loss of not just population, but now households, too, is a direct result of our using up all of the viable, marketable housing that we had, and our tearing down more housing than we have been able to rebuild.Simply put – we are now at the place where we are physically unable to grow, because we are experiencing a net loss of housing – year after year, as it gets older and older.On average, we tear down 500 single-family homes every year in this city. On average, we build 10.New residents can move to Akron, of course, but they will simply be replacing someone who already lives here.We are playing “musical chairs” with our housing stock – one person replaces another, and every once in a while, another chair is taken away.We used to have 290,000 people.  We’re at 199,000 today.  I am convinced that we can grow again.  Those of us that already live here know that Akron is a great place to live.  Our challenge is to attract new residents to our city.We do this by making a great place even better - by building new housing, by rehabilitating existing buildings, by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercial redevelopment, and by using artistry in urban design to create irresistible places for people to live, work, and play.No matter how great of a place this city is to live (and it is) we can’t grow again if we don’t figure out how to build more housing than we tear down.  It’s simple arithmetic.  Right now, we have lots of houses that people don’t want, and not enough houses that people do want.Why does it matter if we keep losing population?Because the size of our population has incredibly important ramifications for our tax base; our employment base; the performance of our schools; the distribution of everyday amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public services; and less tangible, but equally important things like our sense of place and our sense of ourselves.  As our neighborhoods are abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic opportunities diminishes along with the population:  the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and increasingly inaccessible locale.  To pretend as though the economic and social well being of city residents is not directly impacted by population decline is to turn a blind eye to reality itself.So, with all of this in mind, stick with me over the next three weeks, as we explore the city’s neighborhoods, one-by-one - and think about the challenges and opportunities that we have, working together, to revitalize them.KENMOREKenmore is an outer ring neighborhood on Akron’s southwest side. It was originally incorporated as a separate community, which grew rapidly in the early 1900s along the streetcar line which connected Akron and Barberton.  It was annexed to the City of Akron in 1929. People:Population:  16,655White:  84.6%Black:  9.9%Other Race:  5.5%Median Age:  37.0Under 20:  26.2%20-44:  34.6%45-64:  27.5%Over 65:  11.8%Kenmore’s percentage of minority residents is much lower than the citywide average.  The overall age of the population is slightly older than the citywide average.Households:Households:  6,916Average Size:  2.411-Person:  30.7%Family:  61.1%Non-Family, Multi-Person:  8.2%Median Income:  $34,190Income under $50k:  68.1%Income $50-100k:  28.6%Income over $100k:  3.4%Kenmore’s household size is larger than the citywide average. Household incomes are nearly identical to the citywide average.Housing:Median Value Owner-Occupied:  $71,000Value <$100k:  89.8%Value $100-200k:  9.8%Value >$200k:  0.3%Units:  7,927Owner-Occupied:  60.8%Renter-Occupied:  39.2%Vacant (not for sale or rent):  4.9%Median Year Built:  1947Built pre-1960:  76.4%Built 1960-1979:  16.3%Built 1980-present:  7.3%1-unit Detached:  79.1%Kenmore’s housing stock is less valuable than the citywide average. The percentage of renters and the vacancy rate are lower than the citywide average.  The housing stock is older than that of the city as a whole.  The percentage of single-family, detached homes is higher than the citywide average.Demographic MapsNOTE:  At present, the maps below are fairly small and not able to be enlarged.  I’m looking into modifying the HTML code for my blog in order to enlarge them (with some trepidation), but, in the meantime, the most important thing to know when interpreting them is that there are eight colors - 4 shades of blue and 4 shades of yellow/red.  Each color represents 1/8 of the block groups in the city. The darkest blues are the bottom 1/8 of block groups (on whichever demographic characteristic you are looking at) and the darkest reds are the top 1/8 of block groups.Dark red areas are significantly higher than the city-wide average, while dark blue areas are significantly lower.  Light blues and yellows are close to the city-wide average.Percent White PopulationPercent Black PopulationPercent Other Race PopulationMedian AgePercent under 20 years oldPercent 20-44 years oldPercent 45-64 years oldPercent over 65 years oldAverage Household SizePercent 1-person HouseholdsPercent Family HouseholdsPercent Non-Family, Multi-Person HouseholdsMedian Household IncomePercent Households earning under $50,000Percent Households earning $50,000-$100,000Percent Households earning over $100,000Median Value of an Owner-Occupied HomePercent Homes worth less than $100,000Percent Homes worth $100,000 to $200,000Percent Homes worth over $200,000Percent Owner-Occupied HomesPercent Renter-Occupied HomesPercent Vacant (not for sale or rent) HomesMedian Year Homes Were BuiltPercent Homes built before 1960Percent Homes built 1960-1979Percent Homes built 1980-presentPercent 1-unit detached Homes

By Jason SegedyNovember 10, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972This is the fourth post of a 20-part series, detailing the social and economic characteristics of Akron’s neighborhoods.It is currently a time full of opportunities and challenges in Akron.  The mayor-elect, Daniel Horrigan, will take the helm in January as the city faces its most severe set of economic challenges since the collapse of the rubber and tire industry.On the other hand, this is a time of great energy, enthusiasm, and civic engagement in Akron - especially as a new generation of leaders across the public, private, and non-profit spectrum continues to work together in substantive ways both great and small.2015 represents a true demographic turning point for our city.  Our loss of not just population, but now households, too, is a direct result of our using up all of the viable, marketable housing that we had, and our tearing down more housing than we have been able to rebuild.Simply put – we are now at the place where we are physically unable to grow, because we are experiencing a net loss of housing – year after year, as it gets older and older.On average, we tear down 500 single-family homes every year in this city. On average, we build 10.New residents can move to Akron, of course, but they will simply be replacing someone who already lives here.We are playing “musical chairs” with our housing stock – one person replaces another, and every once in a while, another chair is taken away.We used to have 290,000 people.  We’re at 199,000 today.  I am convinced that we can grow again.  Those of us that already live here know that Akron is a great place to live.  Our challenge is to attract new residents to our city.We do this by making a great place even better - by building new housing, by rehabilitating existing buildings, by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercial redevelopment, and by using artistry in urban design to create irresistible places for people to live, work, and play.No matter how great of a place this city is to live (and it is) we can’t grow again if we don’t figure out how to build more housing than we tear down.  It’s simple arithmetic.  Right now, we have lots of houses that people don’t want, and not enough houses that people do want.Why does it matter if we keep losing population?Because the size of our population has incredibly important ramifications for our tax base; our employment base; the performance of our schools; the distribution of everyday amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public services; and less tangible, but equally important things like our sense of place and our sense of ourselves.  As our neighborhoods are abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic opportunities diminishes along with the population:  the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and increasingly inaccessible locale.  To pretend as though the economic and social well being of city residents is not directly impacted by population decline is to turn a blind eye to reality itself.So, with all of this in mind, stick with me over the next three weeks, as we explore the city’s neighborhoods, one-by-one - and think about the challenges and opportunities that we have, working together, to revitalize them.EAST AKRONEast Akron is an inner-core neighborhood approximately two miles southeast of Downtown Akron.  Its precise boundaries with neighboring Middlebury (to the north) and Firestone Park (to the west) vary, depending on who you are talking to.People:Population:  12,445White:  41.8%Black:  49.7%Other Race:  8.5%Median Age:  32.0Under 20:  34.3%20-44:  31.7%45-64:  23.8%Over 65:  10.2%East Akron has a larger minority population than the City of Akron as a whole. The age of the population is younger than the citywide average.Households:Households:  4,958Average Size:  2.501-Person:  30.1%Family:  63.4%Non-Family, Multi-Person:  6.5%Median Income:  $23,613Income under $50k:  80.0%Income $50-100k:  16.8%Income over $100k:  3.2%East Akron’s household size is larger than that of the city as a whole. Household incomes are lower than the citywide average.Housing:Median Value Owner-Occupied:  $68,485Value <$100k:  89.7%Value $100-200k:  8.6%Value >$200k:  1.7%Units:  5,762Owner-Occupied:  47.9%Renter-Occupied:  52.1%Vacant (not for sale or rent):  5.6%Median Year Built:  1953Built pre-1960:  62.8%Built 1960-1979:  21.6%Built 1980-present:  15.6%1-unit Detached:  65.9%East Akron’s housing stock is less valuable than the citywide average.  The percentage of renters is slightly higher than in the rest of the city.  The vacancy rate is right at the citywide average.  The overall age of the housing exactly mirrors that of the city as a whole.  The number of single-family, detached homes is right at the citywide average.Demographic MapsNOTE:  At present, the maps below are fairly small and not able to be enlarged.  I’m looking into modifying the HTML code for my blog in order to enlarge them (with some trepidation), but, in the meantime, the most important thing to know when interpreting them is that there are eight colors - 4 shades of blue and 4 shades of yellow/red.  Each color represents 1/8 of the block groups in the city. The darkest blues are the bottom 1/8 of block groups (on whichever demographic characteristic you are looking at) and the darkest reds are the top 1/8 of block groups.Dark red areas are significantly higher than the city-wide average, while dark blue areas are significantly lower.  Light blues and yellows are close to the city-wide average.Percent White PopulationPercent Black PopulationPercent Other Race PopulationMedian AgePercent under 20 years oldPercent 20-44 years oldPercent 45-64 years oldPercent over 65 years oldAverage Household SizePercent 1-person HouseholdsPercent Family HouseholdsPercent Non-Family, Multi-Person HouseholdsMedian Household IncomePercent Households earning under $50,000Percent Households earning $50,000-$100,000Percent Households earning over $100,000Median Value of an Owner-Occupied HomePercent Homes worth less than $100,000Percent Homes worth $100,000 to $200,000Percent Homes worth over $200,000Percent Owner-Occupied HomesPercent Renter-Occupied HomesPercent Vacant (not for sale or rent) HomesMedian Year Homes Were BuiltPercent Homes built before 1960Percent Homes built 1960-1979Percent Homes built 1980-presentPercent 1-unit detached Homes

By Jason SegedyNovember 6, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972This is the second post of a 20-part series, detailing the social and economic characteristics of Akron’s neighborhoods.It is currently a time full of opportunities and challenges in Akron.  The mayor-elect, Daniel Horrigan, will take the helm in January as the city faces its most severe set of economic challenges since the collapse of the rubber and tire industry.On the other hand, this is a time of great energy, enthusiasm, and civic engagement in Akron - especially as a new generation of leaders across the public, private, and non-profit spectrum continues to work together in substantive ways both great and small.2015 represents a true demographic turning point for our city.  Our loss of not just population, but now households, too, is a direct result of our using up all of the viable, marketable housing that we had, and our tearing down more housing than we have been able to rebuild.Simply put – we are now at the place where we are physically unable to grow, because we are experiencing a net loss of housing – year after year, as it gets older and older.On average, we tear down 500 single-family homes every year in this city. On average, we build 10.New residents can move to Akron, of course, but they will simply be replacing someone who already lives here.We are playing “musical chairs” with our housing stock – one person replaces another, and every once in a while, another chair is taken away.We used to have 290,000 people.  We’re at 199,000 today.  I am convinced that we can grow again.  Those of us that already live here know that Akron is a great place to live.  Our challenge is to attract new residents to our city.We do this by making a great place even better - by building new housing, by rehabilitating existing buildings, by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercial redevelopment, and by using artistry in urban design to create irresistible places for people to live, work, and play.No matter how great of a place this city is to live (and it is) we can’t grow again if we don’t figure out how to build more housing than we tear down.  It’s simple arithmetic.  Right now, we have lots of houses that people don’t want, and not enough houses that people do want.Why does it matter if we keep losing population?Because the size of our population has incredibly important ramifications for our tax base; our employment base; the performance of our schools; the distribution of everyday amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public services; and less tangible, but equally important things like our sense of place and our sense of ourselves.  As our neighborhoods are abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic opportunities diminishes along with the population:  the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and increasingly inaccessible locale.  To pretend as though the economic and social well being of city residents is not directly impacted by population decline is to turn a blind eye to reality itself.So, with all of this in mind, stick with me over the next three weeks, as we explore the city’s neighborhoods, one-by-one - and think about the challenges and opportunities that we have, working together, to revitalize them.CHAPEL HILLChapel Hill is an outer-ring neighborhood in Akron’s northeastern corner, which developed in a suburban style around the same time that the mall that bears its name was constructed (in 1967).People:Population:  4,202White:  69.2%Black:  22.5%Other Race:  8.4%Median Age:  42.5Under 20:  20.0%20-44:  32.6%45-64:  29.6%Over 65:  17.7%Chapel Hill has a slightly smaller minority population than the City of Akron as a whole. The age of the population is older than the citywide average.Households:Households:  2,175Average Size:  1.931-Person:  49.1%Family:  45.4%Non-Family, Multi-Person:  5.5%Median Income:  $26,161Income under $50k:  72.6%Income $50-100k:  22.9%Income over $100k:  4.5%Chapel Hill’s household size is much smaller than that of the city as a whole. Household incomes are lower than the citywide average.Housing:Median Value Owner-Occupied:  $101,277 (estimated weighted average)Value <$100k:  59.5%Value $100-200k:  38.8%Value >$200k:  1.7%Units:  2,395Owner-Occupied:  38.6%Renter-Occupied:  61.4%Vacant (not for sale or rent):  2.5%Median Year Built:  1967Built pre-1960:  27.0%Built 1960-1979:  57.5%Built 1980-present:  15.5%1-unit Detached:  46.9%Chapel Hill’s housing stock is more valuable than the citywide average.  The percentage of renters is higher than in the rest of the city.  The vacancy rate is low.  The overall age of the housing is newer than that of the city as a whole, with comparably little housing built before 1960 and after 1990.  The number of single-family, detached homes is lower than the citywide average.Demographic MapsNOTE:  At present, the maps below are fairly small and not able to be enlarged.  I’m looking into modifying the HTML code for my blog in order to enlarge them (with some trepidation), but, in the meantime, the most important thing to know when interpreting them is that there are eight colors - 4 shades of blue and 4 shades of yellow/red.  Each color represents 1/8 of the block groups in the city. The darkest blues are the bottom 1/8 of block groups (on whichever demographic characteristic you are looking at) and the darkest reds are the top 1/8 of block groups.Dark red areas are significantly higher than the city-wide average, while dark blue areas are significantly lower.  Light blues and yellows are close to the city-wide average.Percent White PopulationPercent Black PopulationPercent Other Race PopulationMedian AgePercent under 20 years oldPercent 20-44 years oldPercent 45-64 years oldPercent over 65 years oldAverage Household SizePercent 1-person HouseholdsPercent Family HouseholdsPercent Non-Family, Multi-Person HouseholdsMedian Household IncomePercent Households earning under $50,000Percent Households earning $50,000-$100,000Percent Households earning over $100,000Median Value of an Owner-Occupied HomePercent Homes worth less than $100,000Percent Homes worth $100,000 to $200,000Percent Homes worth over $200,000Percent Owner-Occupied HomesPercent Renter-Occupied HomesPercent Vacant (not for sale or rent) HomesMedian Year Homes Were BuiltPercent Homes built before 1960Percent Homes built 1960-1979Percent Homes built 1980-presentPercent 1-unit detached Homes

biBy Jason SegedyOctober 14, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972In Copenhagen, all major streets are designed with separate rights-of-way for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists - in descending order of priority.NOTE:  This is the first of a multi-part series on what I learned on a recent Knight Foundation-sponsored trip to Copenhagen and how we can apply what I learned to transportation and urban design in Akron.I was recently interviewed by The Akronist about bicycling in Akron.  My trip to Copenhagen last month (which I will blog about in much greater detail in the future) informed many of my answers.  I’ve included the interview at the bottom of this post.  The trip was wonderful and inspiring (thank you Knight Foundation!)  The Danes were friendly, hospitable, and incredibly informative.  We spent a lot of time talking to them about how transportation and land use are planned in Copenhagen, but we spent even more time experiencing what it was like to walk and bike in that amazing city.  As a result, we experienced the city as end-users, and not simply as theoreticians or academics.  Unfortunately, the theoretical approach is all too common of a modus operandi in public policy, in general, and urban planning in particular.  We need more planners walking and biking their streets, and less planners staring at maps in an office.  We need more elected officials doing the same, before they propose or approve the legislation which governs our transportation and development decisions.My two biggest takeaways, based on what the Copenhageners told us, were:1) Protected, separated bike lanes are the only way to get people to bicycle in large numbers (unprotected lanes are largely a waste of time/money)2) Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure – if you build high-quality, safe (both statistically safe and perceived to be safe) bike infrastructure, more people will ride bikes.  If you don’t, they won’t.  Riding a bike in Copenhagen was a life-changing experience – to see what a city that is truly bike-friendly can actually be like.  As pictured above, every major street has a high-quality sidewalk, a separated bikeway, and lanes dedicated for cars.  If there is a bikeway, it is illegal to ride a bike in the car lanes.  If there is no bikeway, then it is fine.  Copenhagen has done an awe-inspiring job of separating bike, pedestrian, and car traffic – and it is consequently safer and more pleasant for everyone.A caveat to the second takeaway, is that in Akron we will also have to work hard to improve our built-environment in other ways (e.g. increase population density, zone for mixed use, employ traditional urban design principles that make cities appealing places to be at three miles-per-hour).  Copenhagen has a huge leg-up in terms of the quality of its built-environment (dense, mixed use, pleasant streets) that serve to “populate” the bikeways with thousands of people.  We can do the same in Akron, but it will take a commitment of time, energy, and money.  It will be well worth our while. Q: Why are Akron roads in need of “road diets?" Akron has lost 91,000 residents since its 1960 peak population of 290,000.  We’ve also lost nearly all of our heavy manufacturing, and the considerable truck traffic that came with it.  The consequence of losing 1/3 of our population and much of our industry is that many of the city’s streets are “supersized” for the amount of motor vehicle traffic that they carry today.  In short, we have too much pavement, and not enough cars and trucks to justify it.  This is the opposite of the situation in many other cities.  But, in many ways, it is a good problem to have.  It enables us to think about ways to reutilize this space – providing more opportunities to improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians, with bike lanes and wider sidewalks.  Road diets, by eliminating through lanes, also tend to slow car traffic, which is safer not just for cyclists and pedestrians, but for people in cars.  And all of this can be accomplished in the existing street right-of-way, inexpensively, by the use of paint to restripe the road to a different lane configuration.  Drivers travel slower, not because we are paying police overtime to give them tickets, but because the road design encourages them to do so.  Road diets, where practical, are win-win-win situations.Q: What are some current road diets being put into effect at this moment? What are some roads you’d love to see get a road diet? The first official “road diet” in Akron was on Copley Road between I-77 and Storer Avenue.  This project followed the prototypical road diet configuration – transforming a 4-lane street into a 3-lane street (two through lanes and a center turn lane) with two bike lanes.  It was a matter of using the same 48’ of pavement to accomplish a different set of goals – slower, safer motor vehicle traffic, and safer conditions for cyclists and pedestrians. The City of Akron has plans to expand this road diet to include the remainder of Copley Road from Storer Ave to Edgewood Ave, as well as the adjacent stretch of Maple St. from Edgewood Ave to W. Market St.  My organization, AMATS, has also funded upcoming road diets on Tallmadge Ave in North Hill between N. Main St and State Route 8, as well as along the one-way portions of W. Exchange St and W. Cedar St downtown and in West Hill.I’d like to see the “Bridge-to-Bridge” bikeway on N. Main St through North Hill completed, as well, which would permanently implement the bike lanes that we tested on the Better Block project, connecting the Y-Bridge in downtown Akron with the High-Level Bridge to Cuyahoga Falls.My organization, AMATS, has completed a comprehensive road diet analysis, which identifies over 60 potential locations where we have the opportunity to reduce the number of lanes and reutilize that space to make our streets safer and more attractive to people.Q: In your opinion, how safe is Akron for bicyclists?I don’t think that Akron is particularly unsafe for bicyclists.  I ride my bike on city streets quite often, so, for me, this is not just a theoretical urban planning consideration.  What I do think that Akron is, though, is not particularly friendly or appealing to cyclists.  Other than the Towpath Trail, we have almost no “protected” bike facilities.  What I mean by that term is that there are almost no places where bikes have their own right-of-way separate from cars and pedestrians.  Cyclists must either ride in the street, and compete with cars, or ride on the sidewalk (which is statistically more dangerous than the street) and compete with pedestrians – and with cars at intersections and driveways. I was recently in Copenhagen, a city where 50% of commuters get to work daily by bike.  One of the biggest ingredients in their success was providing high-quality, protected and separated bikeways where cyclists have their own right-of-way.  This is ultimately the direction that we should be going.  These types of bikeways are safer, and, just as importantly, “feel” safer.  The average person will not ride a bike on West Market Street, not necessarily because it is objectively more dangerous than driving – it simply feels uncomfortable (and thus unsafe) to most people.  In Copenhagen, 70 year-olds routinely ride bikes, as do 8-year old children.  Women ride just as often as men (and perhaps even more).  The typical cyclist looks like a typical person – not like Lance Armstrong.  This is because cycling feels safe and pleasant, and is convenient and practical.We have some painted bike lanes in Akron, but I often call these “crimes of opportunity”.  They are done with good intentions when the opportunity presents itself, but they often lack continuity, and therefore, appear and then vanish regularly, connecting to few, if any, other bike lanes or trails.  Examples of vanishing bike lanes include those on Portage Path, Merriman Rd, and N. Hawkins Ave.  Akron also experimented with “sharrows” - painted bike stencils that tell motorists to “share the road”, which were well-intentioned, but ineffective.Q: In the city of Akron specifically, why do you think it is important to advocate bicycling as a means of transportation?First and foremost, I think it is important to advocate for bicycling (and walking) because these are low cost means of transportation that are available to everyone, and they are the primary mode of transportation for our large population of lower income residents.  Many of these residents also ride the bus – which always entails a walk, bike, or wheelchair ride at the beginning and end of the trip.  Therefore, I think it is an incredibly important issue from a standpoint of simple equitability, fairness, and justice.  When you think about it, it is incredibly unfair that we, one of the richest countries on earth, make spending an average of $10,000 per year to own and operate a car, a prerequisite for good access to social and economic opportunities.But I also think it is important because when a city is bike-friendly, it also tends to be doing other complementary types of “good” urban planning and urban design.  Buildings tend to be built up to the sidewalk (there are sidewalks for that matter!)   Parking lots are smaller, and built in the back.  Residential and commercial uses are mixed more frequently.  Land is developed more densely, meaning more people are a shorter walk or bike ride from more things.  More attention is paid to aesthetics, artistry, design, and beauty.  This is because these are many important details that one notices at 12 m.p.h. on a bike, or 3 m.p.h. on foot, but one does not notice at 40 m.p.h. in a car. As such, I think that creating a bike-friendly city goes hand-in-hand with creating a beautiful city, a welcoming city to people of all ages and incomes, and a city that is competitive in an increasingly competitive world.  Akron needs new residents and businesses.  In order to attract them, we need to look and feel better than we do.  We need to do things differently than we have done them for the past 60 years.  It’s not just an Akron problem.  It’s an American problem.Q: What does Akron receiving a bronze Bike Friendly Community Award mean for the city? What will it take to be a platinum awarded city?It means a great deal.  It was a small, but important victory for a changing perspective in our community.  It was well-deserved recognition for the fact that more and more people are working hard to make our city an easier place to get around for those without cars.  Our Towpath Trail, the Safe Routes to School Program, our Road Diet Analysis, and our upcoming comprehensive Bicycle Plan are all steps in the right direction. To become a Platinum city, we will probably need to get to the point where 5% of all trips are on bicycle.  Right now, we are at a small fraction of 1%.  Five-percent is a doable goal in Akron, but to do that we will need to build the high-quality network of protected bikeways that I mentioned.  We’ll also need to increase our population density and more frequently mix commercial and residential development, so that more opportunities to cycle to things are created – riding a bike is a quite viable option for trips of less than 4 miles, and extremely easy for trips of less than 2 miles.  If more activities (stores, schools, workplaces) are closer to more residents, and if we provide safe, appealing bikeways, more people will bike.  They will bike because it is safe, easy, and convenient, not because a public service announcement told them that they should.Q: Do you think the number of active bicyclists in Akron is growing? Why?Yes.  The number is growing slowly, but surely.  Bike rack usage on METRO RTA buses, for example, has increased by over 50% since 2010.  Younger Gen-Xers and Millennials are more interested in riding bikes as a means of transportation.  Lower income residents, regardless of age, often use bikes as a regular mode of transportation as well – especially now that METRO RTA has bike racks on all of its fixed-route buses.  These trends are likely to continue, but we will reach a natural limit to growth in bicycling, unless we take our bike infrastructure and our urban design to the next level, in the ways that I mentioned earlier.

By Jason SegedyMay 11, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972Chis Horne of The Devil Strip (a guy with plenty of great ideas of his own, and the creator of my favorite local publication) recently asked me if I had a “Big Idea” for Akron that I wanted to share.I do.  The topic is especially timely, given the pending departure of Mayor Plusquellic - as true of a lover of Akron as there ever was, an authentic leader, and an idea person extraordinaire.  Akron is going to need lots of new Big Ideas and lots of committed people to make them a reality.  Mayor Plusquellic will be sorely missed.  His legacy is that he took the bull by the horns and remade Akron as a wonderful place to work and play. The next mayor has some big shoes to fill.  We need someone that will stand on the shoulder of a giant, build on that legacy, and reinvent Akron as a place to live.So, as Akron transitions to new leadership, figuring out how to grow the city’s population needs to be a high priority.  My Big Idea is “250 by 2050″ (i.e. getting Akron’s population back to 250,000 by 2050).All of us that care about this community should be working hard to ensure that we encourage and support the next mayor to help our city grow once again.Here’s what I shared with The Devil Strip:  Name:  Jason SegedyAge: 42Occupation: Director, Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (Greater Akron’s Metropolitan Planning Organization)Hometown and where you live now:  Lifelong Akron resident.  Born at St. Thomas Hospital.  They’ll bury me at Holy Cross Cemetery.  I grew up in West Akron, near Buchtel High School.  I live in Wallhaven today.How can Jane Q. Public contact you if she or her friends want to help?   E-mail: jsegedy@akronohio.govTwitter: @thestile1972What is your BIG IDEA?  250 by 2050 - that is, to get Akron’s population back to 250,000 by the year 2050.We used to have 290,000 people.  We’re at 199,000 today.  I am convinced that we can grow again.  Those of us that already live here know that Akron is a great place to live.  Our challenge is to attract new residents to our city.We do this by making a great place even better - by building new housing, by rehabilitating existing buildings, by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercial redevelopment, and by using artistry in urban design to create irresistible places for people to live, work, and play.Why do you pursue your BIG IDEA?We’ve lost 91,000 people since our peak population.  On average, we tear down 500 single family houses every year, and we build 10.  No matter how great of a place this city is to live (and it is) we can’t grow again if we don’t figure out how to build more housing than we tear down.  It’s simple arithmetic.  Right now, we have lots of houses that people don’t want, and not enough houses that people do want.So what, you say?  Why does it matter if we keep losing population?Because the size of our population has incredibly important ramifications for our tax base; our employment base; the performance of our schools; the distribution of everyday amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public services; and less tangible, but equally important things like our sense of place and our sense of ourselves.  As our neighborhoods are abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic opportunities diminishes along with the population:  the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and increasingly inaccessible locale.  To pretend as though the economic and social well being of city residents is not directly impacted by population decline is to turn a blind eye to reality itself.When did you know your BIG IDEA was a good idea?In the 1990s, Akron’s economy improved significantly.  That decade, we only lost 6,000 people, and it looked as if we were about to turn the corner.  But in the 2000s, we lost 17,000 more people.  That was a big wake-up call for me.  I realized that one of the main reasons that we lost people is that there are simply not enough viable places for people to live in the city.  We’re essentially playing musical chairs with the housing in our better neighborhoods, while many other neighborhoods continue to fall prey to blight, vacancy, and abandonment.My pleasant surprise is that this is an idea that really resonates with people - especially with young people.  I meet more and more people every day that care passionately about this place and who are inspired to make it better.  That gives me a lot of hope!How do you hope your BIG IDEA makes Akron a little better?The legacy of my idea is this - that in Rust Belt cities like Akron, too many people have lost the ability to believe that things can ever be any different than they are today.  Our regional culture in Northeast Ohio is such that we do a lot of living in the past - “Akron used to be great, but now it sucks” is not an uncommon sentiment.To me, that sentiment is fatalistic bullshit.  The only people that can stop our community from becoming a place that more people want to live is us.  Fatalism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can do better than that.  We ARE doing better than that.  I see a lot of hope today, and that is inspiring.Please understand - I’m not just blowing sunshine here.  We need more than just “hope” to make our city better.  But hope is a necessary prerequisite for the hard work that must follow.  In the end, it’s about people and community, and being the change that we want to see.  First “They” has to turn into “Me”.  Then “Me” has to turn into “We”.  Once that happens, the sky is the limit.

By Jason SegedyApril 15, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972A 1.3 mile walk along Jefferson Avenue on Akron’s west side is a fascinating journey through the city’s historyYou may have heard about the growing #Akron2Akron movement, which organizes monthly walking tours of Akron neighborhoods, led by local residents. The walks have attracted people of all ages and all backgrounds, and they have been a great way to connect with other people, to get to know your own neighborhood better, and to get to know another neighborhood that you may not be as familiar with.#Akron2Akron is one of several nascent examples of tactical urbanism in Akron, such as Jane’s Walk and the Better Block, which are predicated on the notion that everyday people can do small but powerful things, working together to make their communities better.These efforts are a wonderful complement to public-sector-led initiatives to make Akron a more friendly place in which to walk and bike, by implementing permanent road diets, organizing bike and brainstorms, and by holding open streets events that temporarily close streets to traffic, allowing residents to freely bike and walk them.The linkage of grassroots, citizen-led, placemaking and non-profit/public-sector facilitated community development has been an especially powerful combination here in Akron.  Citizens and entrepreneurs are empowering themselves and discovering that, when it comes to effecting change at the neighborhood level, “they”, can become “I”, and eventually becomes “we”.Public officials and non-profits, meanwhile, are discovering that their role does not always have to be that of bureaucrat, piggy-bank, or “big daddy” - and that sometimes their most effective role is to be a catalyst, an enabler, and a co-creator; while other times, it might be simply getting out of the way.A generational sea-change is currently underway in terms of how we view people and places, and in terms of how we define words such as community, freedom, and liberty.  All of this has been an extremely healthy reaction to an urban planning and community development culture that is often moribund, unresponsive, out-of-touch, hidebound, and incapable of envisioning big changes that don’t necessarily require a lot of bureaucratic oversight or a lot of borrowed money.When it comes to transforming our cities, fetishizing Daniel Burnham’s famous “Make no little plans…” quote has done us much harm.  Sometimes “little plans” are exactly what we need, because they often involve fundamentals, are easier to pull-off, and more readily establish trust, inspire hope, and build relationships. I have been honored to have been a small part of the cultural transformation that is currently taking place in Akron, regarding how we view people and place - sometimes contributing as an everyday citizen, and sometimes contributing as an urban planner and public official.Everyone in this city has a stake in how our community functions; everyone has a responsibility for it; and everyone has a different, but important role to play.Grassroots efforts like #Akron2Akron are not a substitute for having a master plan, an overarching vision, or for dreaming and doing big things - but they are an important and heretofore overlooked part of the urban revitalization equation.  There is a growing recognition that when people work together to accomplish small things that they can actually see and touch; they learn to savor that first taste of success, which leads to building the kind of trust and inspiring the type of hope that it takes to transform an entire city. So, in the spirit of #Akron2Akron, and with Jane’s Walk Akron rapidly approaching, I’d like to recommend a neighborhood walk that you may be interested in taking - by yourself, with a friend, or with a group.Jefferson Avenue: A Walk Through TimeJefferson Avenue, on Akron’s west side, is without a doubt one of the city’s most beautiful and interesting streets.If you are not initially arriving on foot, you may wish to park in the Highland Square retail area, as on-street parking along this portion of Jefferson is hard to come by. Beginning your walk at Highland Square also provides a perfect opportunity for a meal or a drink upon your return.I recommend walking from east to west, so as to witness the city’s evolution chronologically, but, if you would prefer to begin in the west, it is very easy to park at Forest Lodge (a.k.a. Elm Hill Park) and begin there.As you walk down this primarily residential street, not only will you see a wide variety of beautiful homes, but you will also feel as though you are walking through time; the city’s history unfolds before your eyes, as you move from east to west.Jefferson Avenue runs for 1.33 miles, between Corson Avenue in Highland Square, and South Hawkins Avenue in Wallhaven.  The eastern end of the street was developed in the early 1900s, just prior to World War I, while the western end was developed in the immediate aftermath of World War II.The eastern third of the street was built during Akron’s boom years, when the growth of the rubber and tire industry helped to triple the city’s population in just one decade (the 1910s).Much of the western two-thirds of the street was built as part of the prestigious Sunset View and Elm Hill allotments, which became one of the most affluent residential areas in the city.Highland Square Portion (Annexed 1900; built primarily in 1910s)The Highland Square portion of Jefferson Avenue extends for three blocks, between Corson Avenue and West Exchange Street.  This part of the street was developed during a time when Akron was the fastest growing major city in the United States.  Between 1910 and 1920, the city’s population tripled, growing from 69,000 to 208,000 in just that one decade.Prior to 1900, this portion of the street was outside of the city limits in (the now defunct) Portage Township.  During the Victorian era, the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods were clustered in the Fir Hill area (near the present day site of the Hower House in University Park).  But, as heavy manufacturing and the burgeoning rubber and tire industry expanded throughout Akron in the late 1800s, the wealthy began migrating further and further west.  Why west?  The reason was simple: to escape the increasingly noxious pollution being generated by the numerous factories located throughout East Akron and South Akron.  West Akron was strategically located, and primed for residential development. It sat atop a large hill - meaning that it was both upwind (the wind blows toward the east here) and uphill from all of the pollution. Even better, once you got to the top of the hill, the neighborhood was situated upon a large wooded plateau which gently sloped toward the west and contained good soils, meaning that it would be easy to develop.And that’s exactly what happened.  In the era immediately prior to World War I, the neighborhood’s population exploded, as more and more of Akron’s wealthy residents chose to build spacious, high-quality homes on Akron’s west side.  Jefferson Avenue was perfectly situated to take advantage of this growth, being as though it was only located a few blocks away from the West Market streetcar line, which terminated along South Rose Boulevard between W. Market St and W. Exchange St.  Downtown Akron was less than two miles away, and increasingly, nearby retail areas were developing to serve the residents of the Highland Square neighborhood, further adding to the convenience. Because this portion of the street was being developed slightly before automobile usage was widespread, it remains a classic mixed use, walkable urban neighborhood.  As you will see in the photos below, this portion of the street contains a mixture of single family homes, multi-story apartments, and small-scale neighborhood retail.Also of note - this portion of Jefferson Avenue retains its original brick street, which serve to add to its historic character, as well as to discourage speeding - if you don’t believe me, I challenge you to attempt to drive more than 10 miles per hour down this portion of the street.960 Jefferson Avenue, between Corson Avenue and Everett Avenue, built 1913988 Jefferson Avenue, between Everett Avenue and Metlin Avenue, built 19181029 Jefferson Avenue, between Metlin Avenue and West Exchange Street, built 19131026 through 1036 Jefferson Ave, corner of Jefferson Avenue and West Exchange Street, built 1915-1920 Storer Heights Portion (Annexed 1915; built primarily in 1910s) The Storer Heights portion of Jefferson Avenue extends for one long block, between West Exchange Street and Storer Avenue.This portion of the street was annexed from Portage Township in 1915, and, like the Highland Square portion of the street, was developed almost exclusively during Akron’s boom decade of the 1910s.As you walk down this portion of the street you will notice several interesting things.  There is an even wider variety of housing types and architectural styles - a few apartment buildings, as well as many single family homes built in the Colonial and the Craftsman styles.  The houses along this portion of Jefferson are generally grander and more opulent than the houses in the Highland Square portion, reflecting the continued westward migration of the affluent.  This portion of the street is also built along a steep hill that slopes upward from west to east.  Although the hill makes biking or walking up the street a bit of a challenge, it adds to the street’s character, serving as the namesake for the “Heights” portion of Storer Heights. You will also notice that front porches are less common on this portion of the street than they are along the Highland Square portion, reflecting the change in architectural styles that followed World War I.1076 Jefferson Avenue, between West Exchange Street and Storer Avenue, built 19151131 Jefferson Avenue, between West Exchange Street and Storer Avenue, built 19171158 Jefferson Avenue, between West Exchange Street and Storer Avenue, built 1919 Sunset View Portion (Annexed 1920; built primarily in 1920s) The Sunset View portion of Jefferson Avenue extends for three blocks, between Storer Avenue and Mull Avenue.This portion of the street was annexed from Portage Township in 1920, and was developed almost exclusively during the 1920s.At the time that it was developed, the Sunset View allotment was the second wealthiest neighborhood in the City of Akron, surpassed only by the neighborhoods along Merriman Road.  The Sunset View portion of the street contains some of Akron’s finest examples of Colonial and Tudor revival architecture.  Take a look at Zillow as you walk along, and you will be amazed that these beautiful, spacious houses located along a tree-lined street with such curb appeal, typically sell in only the $200,000 to $400,000 range.You will also notice that this area, having been built during the 1920s, reflects a more automobile-oriented design.  The houses are farther apart, the lots are larger, front porches have disappeared, and, unlike some of the portions of Jefferson further east, driveways and garages were clearly built as part of the original home.If you have time for a short side-trip, I would encourage you to explore the nearby portions of South Rose Boulevard, Sunset View Drive, and Dorchester Road, for a look at some of Akron’s most beautiful and iconic residential neighborhoods.1190 Jefferson Avenue, between Storer Avenue and South Rose Boulevard, built 19201250 Jefferson Avenue, between South Rose Blvd and Dorchester Road, built 19281263 Jefferson Avenue, between Dorchester Road and Mull Avenue, built 1930 Elm Hill Portion (Annexed 1920; built primarily in 1930s and 1940s) The Elm Hill portion of Jefferson Avenue extends for six blocks, between Mull Avenue and South Hawkins Avenue.This portion of the street was annexed from Portage Township in 1920, and was developed over a longer period of time than the other portions of Jefferson.  The oldest houses in the Elm Hill allotment were built in the late 1920s, while the newest houses were built in the early 1950s.  But the vast majority of the homes were built in the 1930s and 1940s.The wider variety in the age of these homes is primarily due to the Great Depression and World War II.  The migration of the wealthy to Akron’s west side was continuing apace throughout the late 1920s, and the Elm Hill allotment was well-positioned to absorb much of this growth.The Wall Street Crash of 1929, however, which launched the Great Depression severely hampered the real estate industry.  As a result, far fewer homes were built in Akron in the 1930s than in the 1920s.  The Elm Hill allotment, being a wealthier area, still attracted some new home construction, but not nearly as much as demand would have otherwise warranted, had the economy been better.  Just as the economy began improving in the early 1940s, World War II began, further dampening demand for new housing, due to the ongoing war effort.  As such, much of the housing built along the Elm Hill portion of Jefferson Avenue, dates from the late 1940s, as the neighborhood experienced a building boom beginning in 1945, immediately after the end of World War II.As you walk along this portion of Jefferson Avenue, you will notice that the neighborhood begins to adopt a proto-suburban feel.  The lots are actually a bit smaller than those located on the Sunset View portion of Jefferson (because the houses are generally smaller and less opulent), but what makes this area feel more “suburban” than the other portions of Jefferson is the complete absence of any nearby retail development or multi-family housing.  While the lack of variety in land use detracts a bit from the neighborhood’s functionality, it is nevertheless a beautiful residential area.  It contains an impressive variety of housing styles, ranging from Tudor, to Colonial, to Cape Cod. The homes are attractive and well-built.  Winding, tree-lined streets predominate, and the proximity to nearby parks (Schneider Park and Forest Lodge) as well as St. Sebastian’s parish and elementary school continue to make houses in this neighborhood quite attractive.By the early 1950s, the last of the available residential lots in the neighborhood (now known as Wallhaven) had been built upon.  Jefferson Avenue itself was not built past South Hawkins Ave, and the streets to the west of Hawkins, such as Artman and Marlow avenues (an area that was annexed from Portage Township in 1928) only extend for a block or two to the west.  The main impediment to continued single-family home construction further toward the west was soil quality.  Immediately west of South Hawkins Avenue is a large area of wetlands and peat-based soils which extends into neighboring Copley Township.  As such, much of this land was not deemed suitable for single-family residential development.  This is the reason why large, institutional land uses predominate to the west of South Hawkins Avenue, such as J. Edward Good Park Golf Course, the former Beth El Synagogue, the former Perkins Middle School, and First Energy’s West Akron campus. 1345 Jefferson Avenue, between Mull Avenue and Clemmer Avenue, built 19471415 Jefferson Avenue, between Clemmer Avenue and Elmdale Avenue, built 19321509 Jefferson Avenue, between Elmdale Avenue and Greenwood Avenue, built 19391521 Jefferson Avenue, between Greenwood Avenue and Westover Drive, built 19551557 Jefferson Avenue, between Westover Drive and Avondale Drive, built 19461593 Jefferson Avenue, between Avondale Drive and South Hawkins Avenue, built 1946I hope that you have enjoyed this short piece on one of Akron’s most beautiful and interesting streets.  Now that you’ve read it, grab a friend, and get out there and walk!  I live nearby, and I’d be happy to join you.