121-445: Downtown Knoxville is the downtown area of Knoxville , Tennessee , United States. It contains the city's central business district and primary city and county municipal offices. It is also home to several retail establishments, residential buildings, the city's convention center, and World's Fair Park . The downtown area contains the oldest parts of Knoxville, and is home to the city's oldest buildings. Knoxville's downtown area
242-525: A belief summed up in a housing poster of the period "you cannot expect to get an A1 population out of C3 homes" – referring to military fitness classifications of the period. The committee's report of 1917 was taken up by the government, which passed the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 , also known as the Addison Act after Christopher Addison , the then Minister for Housing. The Act allowed for
363-585: A city or town or to a separate municipality or unincorporated area outside a town or city. Although a majority of Americans regard themselves as residents of suburban communities, the federal government of the United States has no formal definition for what constitutes a suburb in the United States, leaving its precise meaning disputed. In Canada, the term may also be used in the British sense, especially as cities annex formerly outlying areas. In
484-550: A city's expansion, such as Ealing , Bromley , and Guiseley . In Ireland, this can be seen in the Dublin suburban areas of Swords, Blanchardstown , and Tallaght . The history of suburbia is part of the study of urban history , which focuses on the origins, growth, diverse typologies, culture, and politics of suburbs, as well as on the gendered and family-oriented nature of suburban space. Many people have assumed that early-20th-century suburbs were enclaves for middle-class whites,
605-404: A component of these newly designed suburbs which were booming in population. The television helped contribute to the rise of shopping centers by allowing for additional advertisement through the medium in addition to creating a desire among consumers to buy products that are shown being used in suburban life on various television programs. Another factor that led to the rise of these shopping centers
726-479: A concept that carries tremendous cultural influence yet is actually stereotypical. Some suburbs are based on a society of working-class and minority residents, many of whom want to own their own house. Meanwhile, other suburbs instituted "explicitly racist" policies to deter people deemed as "other", a practice most common in the United States in contrast to other countries around the world. Mary Corbin Sies argues that it
847-565: A further distance from them. In Japan, the construction of suburbs has boomed since the end of World War II and many cities are experiencing the urban sprawl effect. In Mexico, suburbs are generally similar to their United States counterparts. Houses are made in many different architectural styles which may be of European, American and International architecture and which vary in size. Suburbs can be found in Guadalajara , Mexico City, Monterrey , and most major cities. Lomas de Chapultepec
968-424: A great deal of money, while others would stand to gain. One way in which downtown changed from the late 19th century to the early part of the 20th century was that industrial concerns began to leave downtown and move to the periphery of the city, which meant that downtown's businesses were chiefly part of the burgeoning service sector . Brand new firms followed the older ones, and never came to downtown, settling at
1089-1015: A high of nearly two-thirds of Calgary CMA residents (67%), to a low of about one-third of Montréal CMA residents (34%). Large cities in Canada acquired streetcar suburbs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modern Canadian suburbs tend to be less automobile-centric than those in the United States, and public transit use is encouraged but can be notably unused. Throughout Canada, there are comprehensive plans in place to curb sprawl. Population and income growth in Canadian suburbs had tended to outpace growth in core urban or rural areas, but in many areas, this trend has now reversed. The suburban population increased by 87% between 1981 and 2001, well ahead of urban growth. The majority of recent population growth in Canada's three largest metropolitan areas ( Greater Toronto , Greater Montréal, and Greater Vancouver ) has occurred in non-core municipalities. This trend
1210-642: A highly-factionalized city government. In recent years, the city has had some success with mixed residential-commercial areas, namely in the Old City and along Gay Street. This effort has been aided in large part by developers such as Kristopher Kendrick and David Dewhirst, who have renovated aging office and warehouse buildings such as the Holston , Sterchi Lofts, and the JFG Building for use as condominiums and residential flats. Downtown Downtown
1331-588: A large scale in the 19th and 20th centuries, as a result of improved rail and road transport, which led to an increase in commuting. In general, they are less densely populated than inner city neighborhoods within the same metropolitan area, and most residents routinely commute to city centers or business districts via private vehicles or public transits ; however, there are many exceptions, including industrial suburbs , planned communities , and satellite cities . Suburbs tend to proliferate around cities that have an abundance of adjacent flat land. The English word
SECTION 10
#17327721333111452-476: A large stand–alone house. In the suburbs, where stand–alone houses are the rule, lots may be 85 feet (26 m) wide by 115 feet (35 m) deep, as in the Chicago suburb of Naperville . Manufacturing and commercial buildings were segregated in other areas of the city. Alongside suburbanization, many companies began locating their offices and other facilities in the outer areas of the cities, which resulted in
1573-558: A meeting point for those who lived within suburban America at this time. These centers thrived offering goods and services to the growing populations in suburban America. In 1957, 940 shopping centers were built and this number more than doubled by 1960 to keep up with the demand of these densely populated areas. Very little housing had been built during the Great Depression and World War II , except for emergency quarters near war industries. Overcrowded and inadequate apartments
1694-637: A model law, the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act of 1922 was drawn up for the guidance of cities wishing to enact zoning regulations, which are now part of virtually every American city. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the downtown area was the business district of the American city, but beginning around the 1920s and 1930s, as cities continued to grow in size and population, rival business districts began to appear outside of downtown in outlying districts. This
1815-435: A modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway-service to central London. By 1915 people from across London had flocked to live the new suburban dream in large newly built areas across north-west London. Suburbanization in the interwar period was heavily influenced by the garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard and the creation of the first garden suburbs at the turn of the 20th century. The first garden suburb
1936-456: A phenomenon known as white flight . After World War II, the availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar suburbs originally developed along train or trolley lines that could shuttle workers into and out of city centers where the jobs were located. This practice gave rise to the term " bedroom community ", meaning that most daytime business activity took place in
2057-435: A problem of public order (keeping the unwelcome poorest classes together with the criminals, in this way better controlled, comfortably remote from the elegant "official" town). On the other hand, the expected huge expansion of the town soon effectively covered the distance from the central town, and now those suburbs are completely engulfed by the main territory of the town. Other newer suburbs (called exurbs ) were created at
2178-584: A relief map, the Loop would be equivalent to the peaks of the Himalayas compared to the rest of the city. In 1926, Chicago's central business district, which took up less than 1% of the city, had 20% of the city's land value. The same relationship was true in St. Louis in the mid-20s (20%) and Los Angeles in the early 1930s (17%). So when a downtown area started to shift its location, some property owners were bound to lose
2299-473: A settled life moved in masses to the suburbs. Levittown developed as a major prototype of mass-produced housing. Due to the influx of people in these suburban areas, the amount of shopping centers began to increase as suburban America took shape. These malls helped supply goods and services to the growing urban population. Shopping for different goods and services in one central location without having to travel to multiple locations, helped to keep shopping centers
2420-578: A total price of $ 10,000. Veterans could get one with a much lower down payment. At the same time, African Americans were rapidly moving north and west for better jobs and educational opportunities than were available to them in the segregated South. Their arrival in Northern and Western cities en masse, in addition to being followed by race riots in several large cities such as Philadelphia , Los Angeles , Detroit , Chicago , and Washington, D.C. , further stimulated white suburban migration. The growth of
2541-639: A unique name, unlike the former boroughs surrounding it; the center of the city is also where Philadelphia City Hall is located within the city's original plat . New Orleans uses the term Central Business District (or CBD) for its downtown due to the French Quarter and other historic neighborhoods downriver from the CBD being referred to as "downtown" . United States (50 most populous American cities) Canada Suburbs A suburb (more broadly suburban area )
SECTION 20
#17327721333112662-509: Is uptown . In the common New York City phrase "We're going to take the subway downtown", downtown refers to traveling in the geographic direction of south. A person standing on 121st Street and walking ten blocks south could also be said to have walked ten blocks downtown. The term uptown is used to refer to the cardinal direction north. Such concepts derive from Manhattan's elongated shape, running roughly north–south and nowhere more than 2 mi (3.2 km) wide. As such, transportation on
2783-615: Is a distinct European style originating from European influence during the mid-1600s when the Dutch settled the Cape. Houses like these are called Cape Dutch Houses and can be found in the affluent suburbs of Constantia and Bishopscourt . Large cities like Sydney and Melbourne had streetcar suburbs in the tram era. With the automobile, the Australian usage came about as outer areas were quickly surrounded in fast-growing cities, but retained
2904-623: Is a term primarily used in North America to refer to a city's sometimes commercial , cultural and often the historical, political , and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district (CBD). It may also be a center for shopping and entertainment. Downtowns typically contain a small percentage of a city's employment but are concentrated in services, including high-end services (office or white-collar jobs). Sometimes, smaller downtowns include lower population densities and nearby lower incomes than suburbs . It
3025-550: Is also beginning to take effect in Vancouver , and to a lesser extent, Montréal . In certain cities, particularly Edmonton and Calgary , suburban growth takes place within the city boundaries as opposed to in bedroom communities. This is due to annexation and a large geographic footprint within the city borders. Calgary is unusual among Canadian cities because it has developed as a unicity – it has annexed most of its surrounding towns and large amounts of undeveloped land around
3146-721: Is an area within a metropolitan area which is predominantly residential and within commuting distance of a large city. Suburbs can have their own political or legal jurisdictions, especially in the United States, but this is not always the case, especially in the United Kingdom, where most suburbs are located within the administrative boundaries of cities. In most English-speaking countries , suburban areas are defined in contrast to central city or inner city areas, but in Australian English and South African English , suburb has become largely synonymous with what
3267-441: Is an urbanized nation where over 80% of the population lives in urban areas (loosely defined), and roughly two-thirds live in one of Canada's 33 census metropolitan areas (CMAs) with a population of over 100,000. However, of this metropolitan population, in 2001 nearly half lived in low-density neighborhoods, with only one in five living in a typical "urban" neighborhood. The percentage living in low-density neighborhoods varied from
3388-455: Is called a " neighborhood " in the U.S. Due in part to historical trends such as white flight , some suburbs in the United States have a higher population and higher incomes than their nearby inner cities. In some countries, including India, China, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and parts of the United States, new suburbs are routinely annexed by adjacent cities due to urban sprawl . In others, such as Morocco , France, and much of
3509-844: Is derived from the Old French subburbe , which is in turn derived from the Latin suburbium , formed from sub (meaning "under" or "below") and urbs ("city"). The first recorded use of the term in English according to the Oxford English Dictionary appears in Middle English c. 1350 in the manuscript of the Midlands Prose Psalter, in which the form suburbes is used. In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, suburban areas (in
3630-407: Is located. Most major North American cities are located on major bodies of water, like oceans, lakes, and rivers. As cities expanded, people built further away from the water and their historical cores, often uphill. Thus the central business district of a North American city, or the historical core of the city, is often located "down", in altitude, relative to the remainder of the city. Many cities use
3751-407: Is necessary to examine how "suburb" is defined as well as the distinction made between cities and suburbs, geography, economic circumstances, and the interaction of numerous factors that move research beyond acceptance of stereotyping and its influence on scholarly assumptions. The earliest appearance of suburbs coincided with the spread of the first urban settlements. Large walled towns tended to be
Downtown Knoxville - Misplaced Pages Continue
3872-475: Is often distinguished as a hub of public transit and culture. The Oxford English Dictionary ' s first citation for "down town" or "downtown" dates to 1770, in reference to the center of Boston . Some have posited that the term "downtown" was coined in New York City , where it was in use by the 1830s to refer to the original settlement, or town , at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan . As
3993-654: Is traditionally bounded by First Creek on the east, Second Creek on the west, the Tennessee River on the south, and the Southern Railroad tracks on the north. In recent decades, however, the definition of "downtown" has expanded to include the University of Tennessee campus and Fort Sanders neighborhood west of Second Creek, the Emory Place district and parts of Broadway and Central north of
4114-617: The Detroit Public Library and the Detroit Institute of Art , and most of the cultural institutions in Pittsburgh . Public reaction to these moves was mixed, with some bemoaning the loss of a counterbalance to the overall materialism of downtown, while others, particularly those involved in real estate, looked positively on the availability of the land which the cultural institutions left behind. The loss of
4235-580: The FNB ("Soccer City") Stadium and south of the city in areas like Eikenhof, where the "Eye of Africa" planned community exists. This master-planned community is nearly indistinguishable from the most amenity-rich resort-style American suburbs in Florida, Arizona, and California, complete with a golf course, resort pool, equestrian facility , 24-hour staffed gates, gym, and BMX track, as well as several tennis, basketball, and volleyball courts. In Cape Town, there
4356-667: The Great Depression had a major effect on the country's downtown area. Downtown was just coming off a major building boom, in which significant amounts of new commercial and office space, hotels, and department stores had been built. By 1931 there were 89 buildings of 30 stories or more in Manhattan, and between 1925 and 1931, office space nearly doubled; in Chicago, it increased by almost 75%, in Philadelphia by almost two-thirds, and by more than 50% in New Orleans and Denver. In
4477-673: The Hampstead Garden Suburb . The suburb attracted the talents of architects including Raymond Unwin and Sir Edwin Lutyens , and it ultimately grew to encompass over 800 acres. During World War I, the Tudor Walters Committee was commissioned to make recommendations for the post war reconstruction and housebuilding. In part, this was a response to the shocking lack of fitness amongst many recruits during World War One, attributed to poor living conditions;
4598-495: The Interstate Highway System , and white flight from urban cores to rapidly expanding suburbs . Due to well-intended but ineptly executed urban revitalization projects, downtowns eventually came to be dominated by high-rise office buildings in which commuters from the suburbs filled white-collar jobs, while the remaining residential populations sank further into unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. By
4719-1143: The Metropolitan Museum of Art , the New-York Historical Society , the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the City of New York , all in Manhattan, moved out of downtown, as did the Museum of Fine Arts , the Boston Public Library , the Boston Symphony Orchestra , and the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art , the Baltimore Museum of Art ,
4840-845: The TVA Towers , the General Building , the Medical Arts Building , the Bank of America Building, and the City-County Building and the Andrew Johnson Building , the latter two of which house municipal offices for Knoxville and Knox County. The Knox County Courthouse and Howard Baker Jr. Federal Courthouse are located on Main Street. Notable historical buildings include Blount Mansion ,
4961-403: The inner cities of the U.S. Examples include the banlieues of France, or the concrete suburbs of Sweden, even if the suburbs of these countries also include middle-class and upper-class neighborhoods that often consist of single-family houses . Following the growth of the middle class due to African industrialization, the development of middle class suburbs has boomed since the beginning of
Downtown Knoxville - Misplaced Pages Continue
5082-402: The "Sun" that the outlying business districts revolved around. Others doubted whether decentralization had as strong an impact as it was credited with. Positions were taken that downtown was a natural part of the evolution of a city, or the unnatural result of a de facto conspiracy by merchants and property owners, so the question of what decentralization would do to downtown became bound up with
5203-493: The 1850s and eventually became a component of the Australian Dream . Toward the end of the century, with the development of public transit systems such as the underground railways , trams and buses, it became possible for the majority of a city's population to reside outside the city and to commute into the center for work. By the mid-19th century, the first major suburban areas were springing up around London as
5324-405: The 1880s, and from there spread to most other American cities in the 1890s and 1900s. The apparent lack of a height limitation of this type of building set off a fervent debate over whether their height should be restricted by law, with proponents and opponents of height limits bringing out numerous arguments in favor of their position. The question of height limits also had a profound implication for
5445-550: The 1920s, 500,000 additional hotel rooms were built in New York, and from 1927 to 1931 there were 84 large hotels built there, an increase of hotel space by two-thirds. When the boom was over, and the Depression had begun to have its effect, much of this new space became unneeded excess. Owners of smaller buildings who could not keep a sufficient number of tenants to pay their overhead, tore down their buildings, but whereas in
5566-603: The 1930s through 1945, there were 1,450,000 constructed annually from 1946 through 1955. The G.I. Bill guaranteed low-cost loans for veterans, with very low down payments, and low interest rates. With 16 million eligible veterans, the opportunity to buy a house was suddenly at hand. In 1947 alone, 540,000 veterans bought one; their average price was $ 7300. The construction industry kept prices low by standardization—for example, standardizing sizes for kitchen cabinets, refrigerators and stoves allowed for mass production of kitchen furnishings. Developers purchased empty land just outside
5687-589: The 1990s, many office-oriented businesses began to abandon the tired old downtowns for the suburbs, resulting in what are now known as " edge cities ". One textbook, in explaining why edge cities are so popular, stated: The big central city comes with dirt, crime, subways, stress, congestion, high taxes, and poor public schools. Edge cities are not immune to all of these problems (especially congestion) but for now they largely avoid most of them. Since then, between 2000 and 2010, downtown areas grew rapidly in population. In U.S. metro areas with at least five million people,
5808-434: The 1990s, particularly in cities such as Cairo , Nairobi , Johannesburg , and Lagos . In an illustrative case of South Africa, RDP housing has been built. In much of Soweto , many houses are American in appearance, but are smaller, and often consist of a kitchen and living room, two or three bedrooms, and a bathroom. However, there are more affluent neighborhoods, more comparable to American suburbs, particularly east of
5929-653: The Chicago Loop – although values in other parts of the city, including the outlying business districts, fared even worse. Department stores were hit hard; most managed to keep their doors open, but few made money. Hotels which needed to have large staffs, and required high occupancy rates to make a profit were also deeply affected; in Manhattan the hotel occupancy rate fell from 1929's 70% to around 50% in 1933. Room rates were slashed, revenue dropped, and many hotels closed or defaulted. By 1934, 80% of hotels in Manhattan were owned by their creditors. The slow recovery from
6050-592: The Grand Central Terminal commuter hub that enabled its development. Westchester's true importance in the history of American suburbanization derives from the upper-middle class development of villages including Scarsdale , New Rochelle and Rye serving thousands of businessmen and executives from Manhattan. The suburban population in North America exploded during the post-World War II economic expansion . Returning veterans wishing to start
6171-485: The Manhattan model and continue to use downtown , midtown , and uptown both as informal relative geographical terms and as formal names for distinct districts. However, the city of Philadelphia uses the designation Center City , not downtown, due to the business district's central location, as well as Philadelphia's age and circumstances; "Center City" corresponds to the City of Philadelphia prior to its amalgamation with Philadelphia County in 1854 , leaving it without
SECTION 50
#17327721333116292-688: The Southern tracks ("Downtown North"), and parts of the Morningside area east of First Creek. Important sections of Downtown Knoxville include Gay Street , Market Square , the Old City , the World's Fair Park, and Volunteer Landing on the riverfront. The downtown area is home to several large office buildings, including the Plaza Tower and Riverview Tower (the city's two tallest buildings),
6413-476: The U.S., the development of the skyscraper and the sharp inflation of downtown real estate prices also led to downtowns being more fully dedicated to businesses, thus pushing residents outside the city center. While suburbs are often associated with the middle classes, in many parts of the developed world, suburbs can be economically distressed areas, inhabited by higher proportions of recent immigrants, with higher delinquency rates and social problems, reminiscent of
6534-440: The United Kingdom and Ireland, the term suburb simply refers to a residential area outside the city center, regardless of administrative boundaries. Suburbs, in this sense, can range from areas that seem more like residential areas of a city proper to areas separated by open countryside from the city center. In large cities such as London and Leeds, many suburbs are formerly separate towns and villages that have been absorbed during
6655-468: The United States, many suburbs remain separate municipalities or are governed locally as part of a larger metropolitan area such as a county, district or borough . In the United States, regions beyond the suburbs are known as "exurban areas" or exurbs ; exurbs have less population density than suburbs, but still more than rural areas. Suburbs and exurbs are sometimes linked to the nearby city economically, particularly by commuters. Suburbs first emerged on
6776-802: The appellation suburb ; the term was eventually applied to neighborhoods in the original core as well. In Australia, Sydney's urban sprawl has occurred predominantly in the Western Suburbs . The locality of Olympic Park was designated an official suburb in 2009. Bangladesh has multiple suburbs, Uttara & Ashulia to name a few. However, most suburbs in Dhaka are different from the ones in Europe & Americas . Most suburbs in Bangladesh are filled with high-rise buildings, paddy fields, and farms, and are designed more like rural villages. Canada
6897-501: The building of large new housing estates in the suburbs after the First World War , and marked the start of a long 20th century tradition of state-owned housing, which would later evolve into council estates . The Report also legislated on the required, minimum standards necessary for further suburban construction; this included regulation on the maximum housing density and their arrangement, and it even made recommendations on
7018-462: The building profitable. What shattered that restriction was the invention of first the iron- and then the steel frame building, in which the building's load was carried by an internal metal frame skeleton, from which the masonry – and later glass – simply hung, without carrying any weight. Although first used in Chicago, the steel-framed skyscraper caught on most quickly in New York City in
7139-535: The business district lower Manhattan and the newer one in midtown began to grow towards each other, or in Chicago, where downtown expanded from the Loop across the Chicago River to Michigan Avenue . In fact, the instability of downtown was a cause for concern for business and real estate interests, as the business district refused to stay where it had been, and shifted its location in response to numerous factors, although it generally stayed fairly compact – in
7260-655: The cities themselves. Cities in the US grew much more slowly than during any other period in the history of the country, and some even lost population. Metropolitan regions grew faster than the cities inside them, indicating the start of the decades of urban sprawl , but they too grew at a slower pace than usual. Downtowns also had less daytime population because people now went to the outlying business districts, which were closer to their homes by car, for their shopping and entertainment, to do business, and to work. The increased use of automobiles over mass transit also damaged downtown, since
7381-496: The city (then the largest in the world) became more overcrowded and unsanitary. A major catalyst for suburban growth was the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in the 1860s. The line later joined the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the suburbs of Middlesex . The line reached Harrow in 1880. Unlike other railway companies, which were required to dispose of surplus land, London's Met
SECTION 60
#17327721333117502-472: The city, installed tract houses based on a handful of designs, and provided streets and utilities, while local public officials raced to build schools. The most famous development was Levittown, in Long Island just east of New York City. It offered a new house for $ 1000 down and $ 70 a month; it featured three bedrooms, a fireplace, a gas range and gas furnace, and a landscaped lot of 75 by 100 feet, all for
7623-717: The city, with the working population leaving the city at night for the purpose of going home to sleep. Economic growth in the United States encouraged the suburbanization of American cities that required massive investments for the new infrastructure and homes. Consumer patterns were also shifting at this time, as purchasing power was becoming stronger and more accessible to a wider range of families. Suburban houses also brought about needs for products that were not needed in urban neighborhoods, such as lawnmowers and automobiles. During this time commercial shopping malls were being developed near suburbs to satisfy consumers' needs and their car–dependent lifestyle. Zoning laws also contributed to
7744-588: The city. As a result, most of the communities that Calgarians refer to as "suburbs" are actually inside the city limits. In the 2016 census, the City of Calgary had a population of 1,239,220, whereas the Calgary Metropolitan Area had a population of 1,392,609, indicating the vast majority of people in the Calgary CMA lived within the city limits. The perceived low population density of Calgary largely results from its many internal suburbs and
7865-579: The companies they did business with elsewhere. As a result of this migration, manufacturing was no longer a significant part of the downtown mix of businesses. Another sector which began to move away from downtown even before the turn of the 20th century were the great cultural institutions: museums, symphony halls, main libraries and so on. Not only was the high cost of land downtown a factor, but these institutions wanted larger plots of land than were available there, so that their buildings could themselves be easily perceived as works of art. Organizations such as
7986-418: The daytime population of the country's downtowns did not rebound. For instance, in Chicago between 1929 and 1949, the population of the city grew 7%, and that of the entire metropolitan area by about 14%, but the daytime population of The Loop only rose 1/3 of 1%. With a few exceptions, such as New York City, this pattern was typical across American cities, and was tied to the slowing down of the rate of growth of
8107-543: The decentralization of commerce which affected the importance and influence of downtown and the central business district. Theaters , vaudeville houses, dance halls and night clubs had been primarily located in downtown, with nickelodeons spread throughout the city. When film became the dominant medium, and exhibitors started to build movie theaters to show them in, they at first built those venues downtown as well, but, as in retail shopping, chain exhibitors such as Loews began to construct them in locations convenient to
8228-704: The directionality of both words was lost, so that a Bostonian might refer to going "downtown", even though it was north of where they were. Downtown lay to the south in Detroit, but to the north in Cleveland, to the east in St. Louis, and to the west in Pittsburgh. In Boston, a resident pointed out in 1880, downtown was in the center of the city. Uptown was north of downtown in Cincinnati, but south of downtown in New Orleans and San Francisco. Notably, "downtown"
8349-410: The early 1930s even the largest took up less than 2% of the city's space, and most were significantly smaller – and remained the primary business district of the city. Real estate interests were particularly concerned about the tendency of downtown to move because the downtown area had by far the highest land values in each city. One commentator said that if Chicago's land values were shown as height on
8470-465: The early part of the 20th century, English travel writers felt it necessary to explain to their readers what "downtown" meant. Although American downtowns lacked legally-defined boundaries, and were often parts of several of the wards that most cities used as their basic functional district, locating the downtown area was not difficult, as it was the place where all the street railways and elevated railways converged, and – at least in most places – where
8591-450: The edges of the city or the urban area. Industrial districts developed in these areas, which were sometimes specifically zoned for manufacturing. There, land was considerably cheaper than downtown, property taxes were lower, transportation of supplies and finished products was much easier without the constant congestion emblematic of downtown, and with the improvement of the telephone system, the industrial firms could still keep in touch with
8712-476: The effects of the Great Depression began in the mid-1930s, decelerated at the end of the 1930s, and picked up speed with the start of World War II , so that by the early 1940s the country was for the most part out of the Depression. Excess commercial space began to be used, vacancy rates dropped, department store sales rose, hotel occupancy rates went up, and revenues increased. Despite this recovery,
8833-460: The era, was heavily influenced by the Art Deco movement, taking influence from Tudor Revival , chalet style , and even ship design. Within just a decade suburbs dramatically increased in size. Harrow Weald went from just 1,500 to over 10,000 while Pinner jumped from 3,000 to over 20,000. During the 1930s, over 4 million new suburban houses were built, the 'suburban revolution' had made England
8954-561: The first suburban districts sprung up around downtowns to accommodate those who wanted to escape the squalid conditions of the industrial towns. Initially, such growth came along rail lines in the form of ribbon developments , as suburban residents could commute via train to downtown for work. In Australia, where Melbourne would soon become the second-largest city in the British Empire, the distinctively Australasian suburb, with its loosely aggregated quarter-acre sections, developed in
9075-520: The focus around which smaller villages grew up in a symbiotic relationship with the market town . The word suburbani was first employed by the Roman statesman Cicero in reference to the large villas and estates built by the wealthy patricians of Rome on the city's outskirts. Towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty , until 190 AD, when Dong Zhuo razed the city, the capital Luoyang
9196-474: The growth of the chain stores, to the detriment of the big downtown department stores. Furthermore, the "taxpayers", which many people had expected to disappear once the economy improved, remained in place, and even increased in number. In the Loop in Chicago, by the early 1940s, 18% of the land was vacant or was used for parking; in Los Angeles at the same time, the figure was 25%. Demand for commercial space
9317-499: The ideal number of bedrooms and other rooms per house. Although the semi-detached house was first designed by the Shaws (a father and son architectural partnership) in the 19th century, it was during the suburban housing boom of the interwar period that the design first proliferated as a suburban icon, being preferred by middle-class home owners to the smaller terraced houses . The design of many of these houses, highly characteristic of
9438-417: The increased density of older suburbs and the growth of lower density suburbs even further from city centers. An alternative strategy is the deliberate design of "new towns" and the protection of green belts around cities. Some social reformers attempted to combine the best of both concepts in the garden city movement. In the U.S., 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere. In
9559-479: The island travels in the uptown/downtown directions. The other boroughs are wider, and "downtown" there refers to Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn , or some more local business district. Mercantile efforts to promote the South Bronx as "Downtown Bronx" have met with little success. In some North American cities, downtown is the formal name of the neighborhood in which the city's central business district
9680-771: The large amount of undeveloped land within the city. The city actually has a policy of densifying its new developments. In China, the term suburb is new, although suburbs are already being constructed rapidly. Chinese suburbs mostly consist of rows upon rows of apartment blocks and condos that end abruptly into the countryside. Also new town developments are extremely common. Single family suburban homes tend to be similar to their Western equivalents; although primarily outside Beijing and Shanghai, also mimic Spanish and Italian architecture. In Hong Kong, however, suburbs are mostly government-planned new towns containing numerous public housing estates. However, other new towns also contain private housing estates and low density developments for
9801-424: The location of residential areas outside of the city center by creating wide areas or "zones" where only residential buildings were permitted. These suburban residences are built on larger lots of land than in the central city. For example, the lot size for a residence in Chicago is usually 125 feet (38 m) deep, while the width can vary from 14 feet (4.3 m) wide for a row house to 45 feet (14 m) wide for
9922-740: The lower-density suburbs on the outskirts of the urban area. The term 'middle suburbs' is also used. Inner suburbs , such as Te Aro in Wellington, Eden Terrace in Auckland, Prahran in Melbourne and Ultimo in Sydney, are usually characterized by higher density apartment housing and greater integration between commercial and residential areas. In the United States and Canada , suburb can refer either to an outlying residential area of
10043-446: The major cultural institutions left downtown as a place primarily dedicated to business, but the loss of another sector, retail shopping, defined the type of business that was done there. The great retail outlets like the department stores had always had the tendency to move closer to the residential districts, to make it easier for their customers to get to them, but after 1920 they started to congregate in secondary business districts on
10164-515: The major cultural institutions, much of the retail shopping in the city, and its loss of status as the entertainment center, the nature of downtown had changed considerably. It was still the location of banks, stocks and commodity exchanges, law and accounting firms, the headquarters of the major industrial concerns and public utilities, insurance companies, and advertising agencies, and in its confines continued to be built new and taller skyscrapers housing offices, hotels and even department stores, but it
10285-409: The mass audience they were seeking; again, it was a matter of bringing their product to where the people were. By the late 1920s, movie houses outside of downtown far outnumbered those in the central district. Not all the movie theaters in the periphery were palaces , but some were, and the net effect was that downtown was no longer the entertainment center of the city. With the loss of manufacturing,
10406-411: The most heavily suburbanized country in the world, by a considerable margin. Boston and New York City spawned the first major suburbs. The streetcar lines in Boston and the rail lines in Manhattan made daily commutes possible. No metropolitan area in the world was as well served by railroad commuter lines at the turn of the twentieth century as New York, and it was the rail lines to Westchester from
10527-437: The nature of downtown itself: would it continue to be a concentrated core, or as it grew, would height limits force it to spread out into a larger area. In the short run, the proponents of height limits were successful in their efforts. By the 1910s, most of the large and medium-sized cities had height limits in effect, although New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis were notable exceptions. Ultimately, it
10648-427: The original town – which was also New York's only major center of business at the time – became known as "downtown" ( Lower Manhattan ). During the late 19th century, the term was gradually adopted by cities across the United States to refer to the historical core of the city, which was most often the same as the commercial heart of the city. "Uptown" also spread, but to a much lesser extent. In both cases, though,
10769-410: The outer wall, making higher-up segments of the building progressively narrower than the base) to reduce a building's bulk by allowing additional height per foot of setback – the exact amount depending on what zone the building was in. The ultimate effect of setbacks is to increase the sunlight and visible sky at street level. New York City was the first to do this, with the 1916 Zoning Resolution , which
10890-482: The outskirts of the city were generally inhabited by the very poorest. Due to the rapid migration of the rural poor to the industrializing cities of England in the late 18th century, a trend in the opposite direction began to develop, whereby newly rich members of the middle classes began to purchase estates and villas on the outskirts of London. This trend accelerated through the 19th century, especially in cities like London and Birmingham that were growing rapidly, and
11011-503: The periphery of the city. The growth of chain stores such as J. C. Penney , F. W. Woolworth , Kresge and W. T. Grant , contributed to the increased importance of the outlying shopping districts, which began outselling those retail stores which had remained in the central business district, and provoked those stores to open branches in the secondary districts in attempt to go to where there customers were instead of having them come downtown to them. Entertainment venues also contributed to
11132-399: The population within two miles of the city hall grew twice as fast as the overall population in the metro area. The terms downtown and uptown can refer to cardinal directions , for example, in Manhattan, where downtown is also a relative geographical term. Anything south of where the speaker is currently standing, in most places, is said to be downtown . Anything north of the speaker
11253-591: The question about the area's legitimacy. Decentralization also increased the incidences of rivalry between downtown and burgeoning business districts. In Los Angeles, for instance, downtown and Wilshire Boulevard battled for dominance, and in Cincinnati the rivalry was between the old downtown centered around Fountain Square and the one on Canal Street. The diminishment of downtown by decentralization caused these battles to be between areas that were now more relatively equal. Like almost every other aspect of American life,
11374-448: The railroad terminals were. It was the location of the great department stores and hotels, as well as that of theaters, clubs, cabarets, and dance halls, and where skyscrapers were built once that technology was perfected. It was also frequently, at first, the only part of a city that was electrified. It was also the place where street congestion was the worst, a problem for which a solution was never really found. But most of all, downtown
11495-530: The railway. However, World War I (1914–1918) delayed these plans until 1919, when, with the expectation of a postwar housing-boom, Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE) formed. MRCE went on to develop estates at Kingsbury Garden Village near Neasden , Wembley Park , Cecil Park and Grange Estate at Pinner and the Cedars Estate at Rickmansworth and to found places such as Harrow Garden Village . The Met's marketing department coined
11616-520: The recent past they would have been replaced with taller buildings, now they became one- and two-story parking garages or ground-level parking lots. These were widely known as "taxpayers", as they generated enough revenue for the owner of the lot to pay the taxes on it. Rents fell, sometimes as much as 30%, and non-payment of rent increased. Even with the "taxpayers" taking away commercial space, vacancy rates rose precipitously. Owners went into default, and downtown real estate lost considerable value: 25–30% in
11737-808: The reconstructed James White Fort , the Bijou Theatre , Tennessee Theatre , Old City Hall , and the L&;N Station . World's Fair Park is home to the Knoxville Convention Center , the Knoxville Museum of Art , and the city's most iconic structure, the Sunsphere . Throughout much of the 20th century, city leaders struggled to revive the downtown area, which was once the primary retail center of Knoxville. Most revitalization initiatives failed, however, due in large part to
11858-430: The rise of the private automobile, which allowed shoppers to go to peripheral business districts more easily; a strong increase in streetcar fares; and the continuing problem of congestion in the narrow streets of the downtown area. As much as people disagreed about what caused decentralization, they were even less in agreement about how decentralization would affect the central business district, with opinions varying all
11979-422: The streetcar lines converged on downtown, while the roads went everywhere. All of these factors contributed to the lesser recovery of downtown relative to the city as a whole and the metropolitan area. Another sign that downtowns were no longer as central to city life as they once were include the decreased portion of retail trade that took place there as compared to the peripheral business areas, which profited by
12100-579: The suburbs was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining and numerous innovations in transport. Redlining and other discriminatory measures built into federal housing policy furthered the racial segregation of postwar America–for example, by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods. The government's efforts were primarily designed to provide housing to White middle-class and lower-middle-class families. African Americans and other people of color largely remained concentrated within decaying cores of urban poverty creating
12221-1008: The term Metro-land in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide, priced at 1 d . This promoted the land served by the Met for the walker, visitor and later the house-hunter. Published annually until 1932 (the last full year of independence for the Met), the guide extolled the benefits of "The good air of the Chilterns", using language such as "Each lover of Metroland may well have his own favorite wood beech and coppice — all tremulous green loveliness in Spring and russet and gold in October". The dream as promoted involved
12342-408: The town of New York grew into a city, the only direction it could grow on the island was toward the north , proceeding upriver from the original settlement, the "up" and "down" terminology coming from the customary map design in which up was north and down was south . Thus, anything north of the original town became known as " uptown " ( Upper Manhattan ), and was generally a residential area, while
12463-405: The upper classes. In the illustrative case of Rome, Italy, in the 1920s and 1930s, suburbs were intentionally created ex novo to give lower classes a destination, in consideration of the actual and foreseen massive arrival of poor people from other areas of the country. Many critics have seen in this development pattern (which was circularly distributed in every direction) also a quick solution to
12584-436: The way from the belief that it would diminish downtown sufficiently that it would eventually consist of only offices and the headquarters of corporate giants, to the belief that decentralization would lead to the (perhaps deserved) death of downtown entirely as unnecessary, a victim of its untameable traffic congestion. In between were those who saw a diminishment of the area's influence, but not enough to prevent it from remaining
12705-467: The wider sense noted in the lead paragraph) have become formalized as geographic subdivisions of a city and are used by postal services in addressing. In rural areas in both countries, their equivalents are called localities (see suburbs and localities ). The terms inner suburb and outer suburb are used to differentiate between the higher-density areas in proximity to the city center (which would not be referred to as 'suburbs' in most other countries), and
12826-591: Was allowed to retain such land that it believed was necessary for future railway use. Initially, the surplus land was managed by the Land Committee, and, from the 1880s, the land was developed and sold to domestic buyers in places like Willesden Park Estate, Cecil Park, near Pinner and at Wembley Park. In 1912 it was suggested that a specially formed company should take over from the Surplus Lands Committee and develop suburban estates near
12947-451: Was already a sluggish market. To many in the real estate industry, the zoning law was an example of a "reasonable restriction." Once New York had passed its law, other cities followed, although proposed zoning measures did meet stiff resistance in some places, often because of the inclusion of overly restrictive height limits, and sometimes because the entire concept of zoning was seen as undemocratic and bordering on socialism . Eventually,
13068-417: Was assumed that people would climb, but with the elevator, that limit was shattered, and buildings began to be constructed up to about sixteen stories. What limited them then was the thickness of the masonry needed at the base to hold the weight of the building above it. As the buildings got taller, the thickness of the masonry and the space needed for elevators did not allow for sufficient rentable space to make
13189-428: Was developed through the efforts of social reformer Henrietta Barnett and her husband; inspired by Ebenezer Howard and the model housing development movement (then exemplified by Letchworth garden city), as well as the desire to protect part of Hampstead Heath from development, they established trusts in 1904 which bought 243 acres of land along the newly opened Northern line extension to Golders Green and created
13310-410: Was done downtown, those who had their homes there were gradually pushed out, selling their property and moving to quieter residential areas uptown. The skyscraper would become the hallmark of the downtown area. Prior to the invention of the elevator – and later the high-speed elevator – buildings were limited in height to about six stories, which was a de facto limit set by the amount of stairs it
13431-528: Was mainly occupied by the emperor and important officials; the city's people mostly lived in small cities right outside Luoyang, which were suburbs in all but name. As populations grew during the Early Modern Period in Europe, towns swelled with a steady influx of people from the countryside . In some places, nearby settlements were swallowed up as the main city expanded. The peripheral areas on
13552-424: Was no longer as dominant as it once was. The causes of decentralization, which decreased the importance of downtown in the life of American cities, have been ascribed to many factors, including each city's normal growth patterns; advances in technology like the telephone, which made it easier for business-to-business intercourse to take place over a distance, thus lessening the need for a centralized commercial core;
13673-527: Was not included in dictionaries as late as the 1880s. But by the early 1900s, "downtown" was clearly established as the proper term in American English for a city's central business district, although the word was virtually unknown in Britain and Western Europe, where expressions such as "city centre" (British English), "el centro" (Spanish), "das Zentrum" (German), etc are used. Even as late as
13794-405: Was not simple height limits that restricted skyscrapers, but they were limited by comprehensive zoning laws which set up separate requirements for different parts of a city. Zoning rules would regulate not only height, but also a building's volume, the percentage of the lot used, and the amount of light the building blocked. Zoning regulations sometimes encouraged setbacks (step-like recessions in
13915-482: Was prompted in large part by the construction of the Equitable Building in 1915. The Equitable Building was a 40-story building with straight sides and no setbacks, which raised fears of the downtown area becoming a maze of dark streets that never saw the sun. Worse yet, at least from a real estate perspective, this new building created 1.2 million square feet (111,000 m ) of office space, flooding into what
14036-461: Was so light that it did not make financial sense to construct expensive new buildings, and banks began to refuse to make loans for that purpose, redlining whole neighborhoods in the central business district. The typical American downtown has certain unique characteristics. During the postwar economic boom in the 1950s , the residential population of most downtowns crashed. This has been attributed to reasons such as slum clearance , construction of
14157-406: Was still steadily losing ground as decentralization took its toll. Its daytime population was not keeping pace with the population growth of the city around it, and property values, while continuing to rise, were not rising as fast as those in the secondary business districts. Downtown was still the central business district, and was still the most important area for doing business and commerce, but it
14278-410: Was the building of many highways. The Highway Act of 1956 helped to fund the building of 64,000 kilometers across the nation by having 26 billion dollars on hand, which helped to link many more to these shopping centers with ease. These newly built shopping centers, which were often large buildings full of multiple stores, and services, were being used for more than shopping, but as a place of leisure and
14399-496: Was the common condition. Some suburbs had developed around large cities where there was rail transportation to the jobs downtown. However, the real growth in suburbia depended on the availability of automobiles, highways, and inexpensive housing. The population had grown, and the stock of family savings had accumulated the money for down payments, automobiles and appliances. The product was a great housing boom. Whereas an average of 316,000 new non-farm housing units were constructed from
14520-420: Was the place where the city did its business. Inside its small precincts, sometimes as small as several hundred acres, the majority of the trading, selling, and purchasing – retail and wholesale – in the entire area would take place. There were hubs of business in other places around the city and its environs, but the downtown area was the chief one, truly the central business district. And as more and more business
14641-441: Was the time when the term " central business district " began to appear as more-or-less synonymous with the downtown area. The phrase acknowledged the existence of other business districts in the city, but allocated to downtown the primacy of being "central", not only geographically, in many cities, but also in importance. And in many cases, the downtown area or central business district, itself began to grow, such as in Manhattan where
#310689