City of Cheapskates

One of my contention is the reason Dayton sucks has a lot to do with the people who live here.

Shithead populace = shit town.

Case in point is the recent string of comments responding to a DDN article on how economic hard times is hurting tipping. The article quotes a bar manager at a resaurant in Springboro as saying if people can't afford to eat out and leave a tip they shouldn't be going out, they should "go to McDonalds".

Now affluent Springboro is one place where you'd expect people could afford to tip, which I guess shows that even the well-off are cheap here.

But the hoot is the firestorm of commentary on the thread. Apparently the remark really hit a nerve with some local cheapskates, as they have gone beyond the usual bitter/sacrcastic flaming to trying to get the person fired & get people to not patronize the place, leading to intereviewee apologizing and the general manager of the firm posting his email address.

You can just feel the love here. Or lots of people rationalizing their low tips.

As for tipping, I came here from California, where, unlike Dayton, it's traditional to leave large tips, probably a legacy of the Golden State's halycon /magninimous style, dating back to Gold Rush era.

I guess I really picked up on this el-cheapo Dayton mentality when going out with a co-worker and her aksing me if she should tip, did the service warrant a tip. I looked at her like she was nuts, as where I come from you always tip, unless the service was truley abysmal.

And then there was the times I order pizza in. When I round up to the tip they always look suprised and make with the effusive thank-yous like they never recived a tip before.

...and I think to myself, forget it Jake, its Dayton.

Not to be too hard on the locals, here is a fun site, showing that low tippers are everywhere:

Celebrity Tippers: The Saints and the Scum

Visualizing Postwar Sprawl

A mapping exercise to investigate how Dayton grew after WWII, drawn atop a base map.

To 1941-1950

First, subdivided areas as of 1950. This is mostly prewar Dayton + a few wartime developments and very early postwar plats. One can see how the city was starting to extend out along interurban lines, plus some early auto-oriented plats. Most of this was pre-Depression development, and there apparently was a lot of infill and re-platting of dead subdivisions going on during the immediate postwar era.



To 1970-1973

Orange color maps out suburbanization due to the postwar boom of the 1950s and 1960s mostly. The early 70s is the cutoff point as Montgomery County population stops growing more or less after 1970, and the manufacturing economy here starts to stall starting with the NCR shutdown in the early 1970s. This is also pre-I-675 growth. Whats not shown is the ribbon development that is found the country roads.



To 2000-2008

Yellow shows suburbanization since the early 1970s. Most of this is really 1980s on. Here one sees the real boom across the county lines in Greene and especially northern Warren County. Unfortunately the growth east is truncated due to the map not showing more of Greene County.


Commentary

Removing the base map and drawing in the expressway system one gets a better picture on how Dayton grew beyond the old city, or prewar city (which includes Oakwood and the older parts of Kettering). One can see the massive growth south, where a “new Dayton” has been created, and the river valleys and airport sort of separateing growth north into three fingers. Greene County would also show as a newer "new Dayton" to the east, similar to the growth south.


Deleting the older contingous areas one sees how growth was “north” and “south”, which have two suburban areas somewhat separate and disconnected from each other. It's noticeable that most of the built environment in the area post-dates WWII.

I-70 could be operating as the connecting feature between the “north” suburbs while I-675/75 is the connecting feature for the “South” (+ east) area. One can visualize how the Dayton Mall/Austin Road area is becoming the downtown for “South” .


What’s also noticeable is a large empty quarter. It’s really an almost empty quarter since Drexel, Trotwood and rural ribbon plats are there, but it did miss out on most of the postwar growth.


Applying two geographical models of urban form or growth; the concentric circle model (from the 1920s) and Homer Hoyt's sector model. These are two common models of urban geography.
One comes up with a diagram for Dayton, showing how there was a favored dector to the south (concept is sort of from Hoyt, bat also from Christopher Leinberg’s new book (The Option of Urbanism)" on land development and spraw) as well the empty quarter to the west. A new “favored quarter” has developed to the east due to Wright-Patterson driving development, especially after the early-mid 1980s.



I think the empty quarter phenomenon is fascinating. Most American citys just don't "stop growing" in one direction. It's something that's never remarked on here, but it is so obvious studying the maps and especially via this chronological look at how suburbia grew.

Wympee Turns 70

1938. FDR was President, the Depression was still going on, and Wympee opened at Wayne and 3rd just east of downtown.

And its still there, with what looks like the original exterior. One of the early versions of a fast food place, made up of white enamel panels, contemporary of early fast food chains like White Caste and White Tower (don't know if Wympee was a chain).

So they had a deal on hamburgers starting at 10 AM today. 70 cents. And they were pretty busy.

They used to have a counter that ran the length of the place, but replaced it with those little booths. Window counter is original.

I remember coming here (and to the nearby White Tower) a lot when I first moved here. I recall the breakfast regulars going behind the counter to help themselves to coffee refills. It was that kind of place. Probably still is.

It's remarkable this place is still in business given that so much has closed (or has been displaced or torn down), and that the exterior is so unchanged. A relic from an earlier era here, when Webster Station saw thousands of factory workers, day and night shifts.

Dayton View as Lost Cause.

You really realize what a tragedy Dayton is after checking out Dayton View.

Most cities have a surviving Victorian or early 20th century mansion district. Examples in the region are Old Louisville and Broad (or is it High) Street in Columbus, between downtown and Bexley. Or certain parts of Cincinnati.

Dayton lost its premier mansion districts to urban renewal, downtown expansion, and so forth, so very little survives.

What does survive is Dayton View, and it is the historic district that makes one consider how what a lost cause this city is.

Here is an example of a Dayton View mansion of the old grand manner. It looks like its being restored. And you'd have to wonder why anyone would bother.



Will anyone make any money on this place, or even break even, if one should decide to sell? Who would even consider buying a house like this in the middle of a drug-infested ghetto (with dealing going on in broad daylight on a corner half a block away)?

And, whats’ more, why isn’t anything being done to clean up the neighborhood and why are there are not more restorations going on in the neighborhood?

Then there is this restored apartment building across the street, probably from the 1920s, as an example of what could be...

Yet around the corner is this ruin. Maybe a more realistic fate for the multifamily things left in the neighborhood...
And finally, the ubiquitous bulldozed block, leaving a nice open space where a ruined house once stood (who knows or even remembers what was here?)


Will this be the fate of more old mansions in Dayton View?

On one hand I really have a lot of respect for the people working on restoration/rehab in this neighborhood as they are working on the best, most distinctive houses in the city, but in the least-likely-to-suceed historic district, so they are doing this not becuase its hip or trendy but becuase they probably have a genuine appreciation of the architecture and the neighborhood.

On the other hand buying and restoring here seems quixotic given the declining condition of the city and the trend to Downtown, South Park and Fairgrounds as the hot new in-town areas.

Dayton View just seems like such a lost cause.

White Folks on Welfare

The racialization of relief was one of the great propaganda successes of the Conservative movement, as a way to play on racist assumptions about blacks in order to destroy political support for the minimal US welfare state.

This was the logic behind Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” comments, as a way of playing the race card to discredit the concept of poor relief.

Yet, there were, and are, a lot of white folks on assistance. A geography of white folks on welfare in Montgomery County will demonstrate this.

First, using the census definitions, we can divide up “welfare” as two kinds…SSI, or Supplemental Security Income, which requires some form of disability to qualify, and public assistance, i.e. “welfare”, which today means mostly TANF. The census doesn’t provide stats for food stamps, which is a fairly important public assistance program.

Combining SSI and “welfare”, around $50M in public assistance flows to white folks annually in this county. Lots of money being pumped into the local economy via poor and disabled relief.




Public Assistance

This is what people think of when they think of welfare or "relief". Nowadays this is mostly TANF, and these numbers do not include the Food Stamp program, which would be quite interesting to map out. Nor does it include things like Section 8 vouchers.

Breaking down the welfare numbers by census tract, looking not at numbers of people but aggregate annual welfare income per tract, showing which tracts are getting the most white folks welfare.


And then mapping it out. Expected concentrations on the east side and North Dayton, but note how this suburbanizes, with concentrations in certain suburban areas (like Miami Twp, Riverside, and Northridge) and then smaller aggregates in suburban tracts. Whats key is that there is at least some public assistance in a number of suburban areas, including Kettering and Washington Township.

A close up for Dayton and close-in areas:
SSI

Supplemental Security Income is administered by Social Security, and according to their website has the following qualifiers to determine eligibility:

Anyone who is:

aged (age 65 or older);
blind; or
disabled.

And, who:


has limited income; and
has limited resources;
and is a U.S. citizen or national, or in one of certain categories of aliens;

So one can see there are a bunch of conditions to be met. Yet a lot of white folk in Montgomery County meet them, as can be seen by the pie chart at the start of the post.

Again, rank ordering the tracts based on aggregate SSI annual income

And mapping it out, again the concentrations on the east side and Old North Dayton show up. But also quite a bit of distribution beyond these areas, including in southwest Washington Township, an affluent suburban areas where one wouldn’t expect people to be on government assistance of any kind.But what’s notable is the widespread distribution of assistance beyond the expected concentrations; SSI in substantial numbers is found throughout suburbia.



What this mapping exercise demonstrates is that, contrary to racist opinions, its not just blacks on public assistance. A considerable amount of money is flowing to the county for white folks’ welfare, both the traditional “welfare”, and conditional SSI assistance. What’s really noticeable, too, are the concentrations and expansion beyond the inner city, destroying the stereotype that welfare of any kind is found only in inner Dayton.

Dayton Beyond the Point of (Almost) No Return

Before Richard Florida there was David Rusk.

Rusk, former mayor of Albuquerque, was the urban affairs analyst who came to Dayton back in the 1990s, on the strength of his 1993 urban policy book, Cities Without Suburbs. Like Florida he spoke a Wright State, giving a presentation on how the Dayton region was doing.

And it wasn't doing too good.

Rusk identified a collection of cities that he identified as "beyond the point of no return". Dayton was on this list.

Cities beyond the point of no return met the following criteria

• Major population loss since peak (20% or more)
  
• Disporportionate minority population (3 to 5 times or more than the metro average)
• Average income levels 70% or less than the suburban levels

Rusk called this the point of no return because no city on the list had ever closed the income gap with the suburbs "by so much as a single percentage point" (through the 1990 census)

However, Rusk, in the revised edition of his book, notes that as of the 2000 census Dayton did close the income gap:

1990: City as a % of Suburban Income= 64.1%
2000: City as a % of Suburban Income= 66.3%

...yet Dayton continued to lose population and become more minority.

Rusk did note that the 2000 census measured things at the top of an economic boom, so may overstate gains. And given the economic decline since 2000 one can wonder if the suburban income levels are also dropping.

Perhaps the city as a % of suburban income number will drop again in 2010, but due to an overall economic decline actings as an equalizing effect, plus some gentrification action in the inner city.

One also wonders though if the incomes improvement that would accrue due to downtown and historic district gentrification would be cancelled out by overall decline in the outer neighborhoods of the city.

Or, alternatively, Daytons numbers might improve due to abandonmnet, as the city becomes less poor, but less populated, too.

Nuns & Subdivisions

Dayton’s interurban suburbia is a little-remarked aspect of the urban sprawl story, but it was the first extensive expansion of development beyond the city. Yer humble host will be doing more investigation of these forgotten places.

Dayton had seven interurban rail corridors leading into the city that experienced some degree of subdivision. The strongest examples of interurban lines driving growth extending well beyond the city were to north, along Salem, Main, and North Dixie Drive, and west, along US 35.

An interesting example of how an interurban line might have driven some institutional suburbanization is the Sisters of the Precious Blood convent complex on Salem Avenue.

This local landmark may have been sited here to take advantage of transit out Salem Avenue



The interurban came up Salem (via Fairview Avenue) to points north around the turn of the last century, kicking off subdivision activity. The furthest out plats were the two Fort McKinley plats (was there ever a fort here?), “Albert” (platted by 1910), the “Maplewood Addition”, and Green Meadow.



The Precious Blood convent was located here in 1923, just beyond the outermost cluster of subdivisions, and held a substantial block of property on both sides of Salem

The interurban line up Salem ended sometime in the 1920s (replaced with bus service), and the depression killed real estate activity (houses of the pre-Depression area on these plats can be identified, usually, by their bungalow and four-square style)

The Green Meadow plat did not survive but the others did, having a small collection of houses from the 1920s and 1930s.



During and after the war new construction first infilled vacant lots on the existing plats. By the late 1940s and early 1950s new subdivisions appeared. Brentwood Village on the old Green Meadow plat was probably the first of the postwar plats. By 1956 the undeveloped property between the prewar interurban plats & Salem Avenue and the Precious Blood land was filling in with subdivisions.





And the situation today. The convent had sold off most of its holdings (the first to go was the 1948 establishment of the Precious Blood across Salem from the convent), including a subdivision just north of Free Pike.

Today a portion of the convent is now a nursing home (Maria-Joseph).

Another view of the red brick convent with church towers, now the Maria-Joseph nursing home (the sanctuary is open to the public, though).




The present day convent:


(I’m not sure about the relationship between the two buildings, or which was built first)

Early 20th century suburban Catholic stuff is probably pretty common in cities with big Catholic communities. A good example of this (akin to Precious Blood) is Techny, in the north suburbs of Chicago.

And interurban suburbia might be an interesting development approach to follow as it is the ancestor of Peter Calthorpes “Transit Oriented Development” model. Though these plats predate widespread use of the auto the people who first moved out here in the 1920s probably did have cars and commuted with them.