Yes, Cleveland.
“The Passion of Young Cleveland”
There is an article up on The Atlantic Cities blog, part of a larger series, and I was looking for paragraph to use as a pull quote as lead-in for a quick link post.
It was hard. Most of the article was just quotes (looks like about six folks were quoted, out of who-knows-how-many who might have been interviewed) — and that doesn’t make it a bad article, per se, just that the picture is very much incomplete.
Here’s the link:
The Passion of Young Cleveland : http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2013/11/passion-young-cleveland/7486/
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I have some more background on Cleveland, which is in the longer urban campus essay, and since I have a suspicion none of you read that far down I might as well include the relevant links here:
[blockquote]
- An Enclave of Entertainment in Cleveland: East Fourth Street was developed slowly by the Maron family, who studded it with eating and entertainment options. : Keith Schneider, 7 July 2009, The New York Times
- How Cleveland Could Rise Again : 29 May 2010, NPR Weekend Edition Saturday
- Rust Belt Reboot Has Downtown Cleveland Rocking : 11 June 2012, NPR Morning Edition
- Cleveland’s Empty Spaces Brim With Potential : 12 June 2012, NPR Weekend Edition Saturday
- A Metro ‘Revolution’: Cities, Suburbs Do What Washington Can’t : 25 July 2013, Fresh Air from WHYY (also via NPR)
- If You Build It, They Will Come: How Cleveland Lured Young Professionals Downtown : Sophie Quinton, 2 August 2013, The Atlantic Cities Blog
Want To Make A Creative City? Build Out, Not Up : 31 July 2012, NPR Talk of the Nation
[yes, that’s Cleveland: East Fourth Street Downtown. image source: Wikimedia Commons]
The place comes first, before you can make it “The Place” for… whatever. In the case of Cleveland, a project to redevelop old commercial and warehouse space into viable apartments had to be accompanied by a parallel development of restaurant and entertainment space: Not just a place to live downtown, but places to eat and meet, things to do, and stuff that’s open evenings and weekends.
That was well underway by 2009, and then in 2012 (at least according to the NPR Story) the tech firms were following.
Cleveland has a new downtown that is drawing new residents (and given the usual demographics, these residents are young and educated). Cleveland also has Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic. Add on University Circle, plus a number of distressed urban properties ripe for renovation and Cleveland looks like a great place to build a tech incubator campus.
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