Tuesday, March 30, 2010

More Pittsburgh and Cleveland Artist And Gallery Links Up

I'm slowly building up my Cleveburgh artists and art organization links which are finally starting to seem worthwhile. As, you can see, there are more assets there than a lot of people might suspect.

One big thing that attracts me is that unlike Pittsburgh, Cleveland really seems to have really large amounts of the kinds of large scale warehouse and manufacturing spaces perfect for artists. Imagine if we started to look at the region as a greater whole--someday linked by efficient rail networks. This deep well of available space should enable us maintain a cost advantage long after Pittsburgh has become hopelessly hip. (which I'm afraid is really a threat) Whatever, one thinks of Pittsburgh, it really is hard to really do growth here because of the hills and weird geography. Cleveland doesn't have that issue in the same way.

My guess is that these warehouse and old manufacturing buildings and districts are more interesting than a lot of it's single family housing stock most of which never reaches the critical density levels needed to support real neighborhoods.

Comment with your opinions please. I don't know Cleveland in the way I should. Like it or not it ain't moving away.

2 comments:

alee said...

Do you feel we are lacking in warehouse space for artists in Pittsburgh? Its hard for me to imagine we're lacking in any type of housing as our population continues to dwindle. Is the issue that those warehouses that are being converted to livable space are jumping the middle ground and going straight for the high-end residents?

John Morris said...

You make some good points that I don't have time to respond to right now.

As, you say, the attempt to take so many of these buildings directly to high end residential is frustrating and probably very misguided.

I think we all know artist's designers, writers and all kinds of perhaps poor but interesting people and small businesses that would love to use those spaces. This is real demand that's here now from the kind of people who are in Pittsburgh working to make it better today.

Instead we have more plans to agent orange the city, to make it feel safe for bland suburban types who have never shown an interest in living here.

By the way, initial estimates guess that more people are moving into the region than leaving.

Population decline now, is fueled by the death rate as the older generation who stayed here passes on.