Abstract
In A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt, Aaron Cowan invites us on a Viewmaster slide show, scenes from four cities—Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore. The impacts of tourism development in these four cities is not always picture postcard–perfect. These are, indeed, four cities that are nice places to visit but, depending on your social, economic, and racial or ethnic identity, may not always be great places to live. All four cities are referred to by Cowan as Rust Belt cities, although he does not directly engage in a debate over what some would consider a pejorative term. The book is divided into two sections: Part 1 examines the evolution of two downtowns—Cincinnati and St. Louis—each of which placed their bets on attracting convention business. In Part 2, the focus shifts to Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and each city’s attempts to revitalize their downtowns by creating sports and entertainment spaces.
In Part 1, Cowan takes the reader on a tour of two post–World War II downtowns, Cincinnati and St. Louis, that faced similar problems and came up with similar solutions—how to reimagine the central city and in the process attract out-of-town conventioneers. In the case of Cincinnati, by the 1950s, the grand old downtown hotels, such as the Gibson Hotel, faced obsolescence occurring at an exponential rate. The Gibson, like many prewar downtown hostelries, lacked air-conditioned rooms and flexible meeting spaces for conferences. Even the ambient light from the Gibson’s grand chandeliers caused problems when they interfered with conference presenters’ slide presentations. All of this did not end well for the venerable hotel. It faced a similar fate as many other historic downtown hotels in the post–World War II era—a date with the wrecking ball. And, while some may wax nostalgic for the late great Gibson, when the demolition dust settled, the question that remained was this: Should downtowns be reformulated for city residents or should the central business district cater to out-of-towners or something in between? This is a recurring question and theme throughout the book, and helps the reader connect the four featured cities together into a cohesive narrative. Cowan makes a keen observation when he focuses on the themes of urban anxiety and greed as the motives for St. Louis’s downtown redevelopment. The author notes that, “. . . the St. Louis convention center was the product of successful exploitation of fears of urban decline combined with a compelling (if unrealistic) promise of unbridled economic revival” (p. 76). And certainly Cincinnati and St. Louis were not alone in looking to a steady stream of conventioneers to revitalize downtowns. Unfortunately, other cities continue to apply this approach leaving taxpayers to underwrite the costly urban experiments.
The second section of the book is titled “Cities Are Fun!” and indeed they can be, but not always for those who actually live there. In Part 2, Cowan focuses on the impacts of downtown tourism development using the examples of Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium and the Inner Harbor festival marketplace in Baltimore. The life span of Three Rivers Stadium was much shorter than that of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The ballpark it replaced—the venerable Forbes Field—stood for 61 years and was home to the Pirates, Steelers, and even the University of Pittsburgh football team. Forbes Field was an inner-city ballpark, similar to Wrigley Field in Chicago in that it was surrounded by neighborhoods rather than acres of surface parking as are the newer suburban stadiums built in the post–World War II era. The erasure of Forbes and the erection of Three Rivers signaled a change in Pittsburgh’s identity within sports culture, economics, and tourism. Three Rivers Stadium’s life span was just 30 years, but the shift from Forbes to Three Rivers to today’s PNC Park reflects the changing demographic of sports consumers. Forbes Field was organic, a part of Pittsburgh’s old smokestack economy. Shiny new ballparks like Three Rivers were divorced from urban neighborhoods and catered to wealthier and more mobile suburbanites. Today, with Pittsburgh often appearing at the top of many “most livable cities” lists, it would be difficult to argue that the city has done a poor job of reinventing itself from its steel mill economy. But the point that Cowan makes with both Pittsburgh and Baltimore is that there is a historical, geographic, and human cost to the choices cities make when they reinvent themselves, and the beneficiaries may not always be those who are a permanent part of the city’s fabric.
Then, of course, there is always the question of authenticity, one that is raised most prominently in Cowan’s discussion of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor project. Initiated in 1978 and modeled after the concepts behind the reimagining of Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston and using the same developer, the Rouse Company, Baltimore hoped for similar success in repurposing its long-neglected waterfront. Some bemoan projects like Baltimore’s Inner Harbor as the “Disneyfication” of authentic urban landscapes. Cowan notes that festival marketplaces, “have come to embody . . . the worst excesses of the postindustrial city” (p. 151). Critics of Harborplace and similar developments say festival marketplaces have little to offer the minority residents that are most frequently displaced to create them. But tourists do not seem to have as much angst about such destinations as do academicians. When it comes down to it, tourists often prefer standardization over authenticity. Hopes that Harborplace would offer a venue to support a diverse and local retail base were dashed when its floor space became increasingly occupied by national retailers and franchises. You know a destination has lost its local flavor when there is a ribbon cutting at a new Cheesecake Factory. Rouse Company projects in other cities, including Toledo, Ohio and Richmond, Virginia, have failed to deliver a cure-all for urban decline. Cowan outlines three reasons why festival marketplaces have not lived up to expectations: (a) lack of local shoppers to sustain retailers during nontourist seasons, (b) absence of complementary destinations that connect to the festival marketplace visitors, and (c) failure of developments to connect to waterfronts or a “city’s front door.”
Overall, A Nice Place to Visit is a nice book to read, but I do have a few minor quibbles. There are a few editorial glitches, including a paragraph that is nearly repeated word-for-word on pages 143 and 147 but with different citations. A map would have been warmly welcomed. The underpinnings of Cowan’s arguments are inherently spatial and understanding the locational relationships between say, the St. Louis Convention Center and the aggrieved African American North Side neighborhood, would have been better understood with the inclusion of a simple map of the area. Cowan does an admirable job of discussing race, postwar suburbanization, and the shifting form and function of downtowns, but there is little mention of gendered spaces. For example, the author addresses shopper dissatisfaction with downtown department stores, but fails to connect the preferences for shopping centers with women’s consumer behavior. Women, the most likely customers of a department store, helped create and reinforce suburban shopping landscapes. Although Cowan’s critique of tourism and urban redevelopment in the Rust Belt is written from the perspective of a historian, I would be comfortable using this book for assigned reading in an urban or economic geography class. In fact, it would be a pleasant read for anyone interested in urban tourism. The book itself is a nice place to visit. Cowan’s narrative is conversational and engaging as well as scholarly—no mean feat. It is also very timely, given the author’s attention to racial disparities and lingering tensions in cities such as St. Louis and Baltimore.