Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the lamest show on Earth! That's right, it's Cleveland, the one and only AMAZING DISAPPEARING CITY!
Cleveland.com has the story on declining population.
440,000 people. 40th largest city in the nation. A far cry from the 1920s when the population flirted with 1,000,000 and it was the nation's 5th largest city.
Oh woe is you, C-land. Woe is you.
But what to do to renew the urban landscape? Potential lies there - Cleveland is home to educational hotspots like CWRU and nearby are BW and JCU. Cleveland has a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect to it going on right now. No one wants to stay in Cleveland because it sucks and it sucks more because no one cares to stay and improve it. (Of course, that's just a gross over-simplification of the situation, but the general point is the same.)
So what can be done to keep people in town and, maybe more importantly, bring people to Cleveland? The article offers a stopgap: merge with Cuyahoga County. Laughable when you consider what the suburbs are. I assure you that most Strongsvillians, Lakewoodites, Bay Villagers, and Parmanians (well, some Parmanians) are none too keen about joining Cleveland.
The Forest City needs revitalized. Not amalgamized.
-rl
1 comment:
Part of why people leave Cleveland is something Cleveland can't do anything about, and that's the weather. I think I hear more complaints about that than anything else - and that's living in Bay Village (and on a related note, I wouldn't care if we merged with Cleveland, but I know a lot of rich people who would).
-kb
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