Social And Economic Development Of St. Louis And Cleveland

Despite disparate origins, both St Louis and Cleveland are historically industrial cities. St Louis which was once just an outpost and trading hub to the west eventually turned into an industrial force boasting a skyline dotted with power plants, warehouses, and breweries. On the other hand, Cleveland, being a member of the manufacturing belt, was situated right in the middle of american industrialization. Clevelands proximity to the waterways of the great lakes, canals, and railroads allowed them access to the raw materials needed to manufacture steel products. St Louis similarly benefitted from being located on the western bank of the Mississippi River. The history of both cities has had profound impacts on the social and economic development

Cleveland grows southward and St Louis grows westward. The explanation is that high rent residences tend to pull the entire city in the same physical direction. This is a characteristic of the sector model, which I believe both cities to fall under. Then new residential areas extend farther and farther outward along select transportation axes. For St Louis, they extend along 4 interstate highways that lead into the CBD I-55, I-46, I-64, and I-70 and for Cleveland they extend along 2 interstate highways, I-71 and I-70. Then a filtering process occurs when groups like the middle class abandon their areas, lower-income groups filter into them. This leads to patterns of sectors instead of concentric rings. Both cities have similar sectors when it comes to economics, they each have a service and light/heavy manufacturing sector. However, they differ in that St Louis has a research sector and Cleveland has a Health Care center.

The reason this type of model occurs in both of these cities is that high-rent residents historically have wanted to move away from the industrial sectors for quality of life reasons. Thus low-income residents tend to live close to these areas with adverse health effects leading to missing work and spending money on health products. This results in a lack of ability to move up the social ladder and possibly move out of these areas.

In the 20th century they were a desireable location during the great migration, which was the movement of 6 million african americans from the South to the North and Midwest. They moved to avoid segregation and in search of job opportunities in the booming manufacturing industry. Prior to the great migration, approximately 1.4% of the population of Cleveland was African-American. 10 years following the start in 1920, approximately 4.3% of the population was African-American and would continue to increase over the next 50 years. Today Cleveland is very much segregated by poverty and race despite 53.3% of the population being African-American. The largest section of poverty in the city is the Northeast which is exactly where the African-Americans are segregated to. As a whole, Cleveland isn’t doing a good job with their property. The median property value is 66,200 with a 0.46% growth rate while St Louis has a median property value of 130,800 with a 14.9% growth rate. In retrospect, it’s quite sad to think that many of the ancestors of African Americans living in Cleveland originally moved to there to escape segregation and find a stable job in manufacturing and eventually grow socially only to have their families live in the same unhealthy areas they did 50 years later and not progress up the social