This is Cleveland | Images and ideas from an urban bus tour

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There’s a lot to see in Cleveland, and we did just that on a recent urban bus tour.

Countless towering revival buildings reaching higher than most commercial buildings at all in Hamilton; long arcade malls lit by the sky through pristine glass ceilings; sculptures, statues, and monuments watching over the streets.

It should be mentioned though, that Cleveland’s population peaked at 914,000 before dropping to its current 395,000—smaller than Hamilton, which still has a growing population. It was that once much larger population that led to these commercial spaces being built. But that’s all they have downtown, commercial spaces, because no one used to live downtown. And to a certain extent, no one does right now.

They were excited to tell us how proud they were to announce a downtown population of more than 15,000 people.

Wait, 15,000? Hamilton’s Ward 2 (downtown from Queen Street to Wentworth, the mountain to the water) has a population of well over 37,000.

Still, with Cleveland’s downtown revitalization in infancy, we both are struggling with many of the same setbacks. Property owners leaving they buildings to rot, old feats of architecture being torn down, environmental and transit battles, and the extreme invasion of hipsters.

This is Cleveland.

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• christoph benfey
• cleveland
• Photos
• scott summerhayes
• urban tour