Talk:Downtown/Archives/2012

The correct origin of the word "downtown"

(The following comes from "America in So Many Words," by David K.Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf. Copyright © 1997 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.)

downtown Origin: 1836

Maybe it began in New York City. Circumstantial evidence certainly points there, for the only direction in which rapidly expanding New York could grow was up the island of Manhattan. Someone heading that way would be going up from town--and New York was still something of a town at the start of the nineteenth century. By the early 1830s, the term uptown was used for the desirable new residential district away from the business center. An 1833 article states, "The property-holders up-town would have the site of the building a mile or so from the present chief seat of business."

"Chief seat of business" is ponderous next to glamorous uptown; in fact, it makes the central business district sound positively old-fashioned. So it is not surprising that some central-city booster thought of changing up to down and balancing uptown with its brisk opposite, downtown. A diarist noted in 1836, "This, at least, is the opinion of the best judges of the value of down-town property." By 1844 New York's Evening Mirror could comment, "'Up-Town' and 'Down-Town.'--We see that these names of the different halves of the city are becoming the common language of advertisements, notices, etc."

Both uptown and downtown spread beyond New York to practically every city and town in America. But most cities have not been constrained by geography into a single direction for expansion, so single-direction uptown is less satisfactory a a word for the newer residential areas. Geography and transportation have worked together to give us the suburb, which has replaced uptown in the twentieth century as downtown's polar opposite. But downtown has had more staying power. For better or worse, for renewal as well as decay, every city still has a downtown central core, even when it sprawls as much a present-day Los Angeles.

Against proposed merge

For the record, I oppose the proposed merge with central business district because Manhattan's downtown is important in its own right (as the basis for the use of the word throughout the United States), and because the CBD article is already too long. --Coolcaesar 06:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I concur. –Joke 13:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Considering the sole reason I just came to this page was to see if we had an etymology on "downtown" and "uptown" in the socio-economic and geographical sense, I'm willing to say there's definitely reasons to keep it as-is. I'm going to have to suggest this article should stay a separate entity. Hossenfeffer 18:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as a non-American (Aussie to be exact) I'd also say leave as is. Cheers, Ian Rose 01:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

As a practicing city planner/urban design professional I ardently oppose the proposed merger. A "Downtown" is based on a fundamentally distinct concept from a "Central Business District" or CBD. They perform different cultural and economic functions for the city, as a whole. A "downtown" is more closely related to the concept of a "town center"--normally the hub of many varied functions--civic, social, economic and governmental--while a "central business district" is primarily limited (whether by zoning and use restrictions or simply by practice and the evolution of the urban space) to economic functions. The cultural component particularly provides a distinguishing characteristic. The simple fact that in NYC these two have been functionally mereged does NOT mean that the concepts are the same--I could name multiple urban areas that have segregated these functions into different areas.Jwest1883 17:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the uptown/downtown = north/south definition holds up. doesn't the designation in fact originally refer to the flow of a river that most major commercial cities were located on? this certainly accords with NY and New Orleans "down" towns. and in NO, by the compass, downtown is kind of east and kind of north from uptown--so that definition's not going to float. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.11.76.96 (talk • contribs) .

This seems plausible to me. The OED etymology seems to confirm this, but isn't totally clear to me. –Joke 01:00, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Downtown isn't a uniquely New York concept. Every city I can think of in the US has a "downtown". Perhaps "Downtown New York" should get its own article, but not "downtown". According to Webster's Dictionary, and Wikitionary, "downtown" is synonymous with "CBD". Heck, the CBD article itself refers to them synonymously, and even lists the downtowns of most large American cities. What's the purpose in keeping an extremely short stub article when the information here would fit much better as a small paragraph/section in the CBD article? 70.118.243.144 00:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

As an Australian from Melbourne, I can say that many cities throughout the world are no different (see Melbourne city centre for example), only we don't use the North American term "Downtown" here. It is seen as a bit colloquial. Anyway I've created a new article "Central Activities District" be used as an umbrella article (which could easily be merged with Downtown as the definitions are analagous and CAD is the technically correct terminology), of which there would be a section within it called "Central Business District" if required. As it stands this article clearly do not represent a worldwide view of the topic. --Biatch (talk) 04:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you have never been outside of Australia. I've visited numerous world cities (London, Paris, Milan, Rome, Zurich, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.), and I skim the Economist, the Guardian, and the International Herald Tribune at least once a month, and I've never heard of this crazy "central activities district" terminology you're promoting.

Within 10 minutes, I quickly reviewed Web sources on Google as well as published books on Google Books and it's clear that "central activities district" is a term mostly used primarily within the urban studies community in Victoria. In contrast, "downtown" is the dominant term in North American English in both ordinary speech as well as in formal writing within the academic community (in general and in urban studies in particular), which you would have realized if you had simply run a Google Books search and skimmed excerpts from some of the 49,500 books returned.

I intend to oppose your proposed merge as original research in violation of official policy Wikipedia:No original research, insofar as you are attempting to subordinate the overwhelmingly dominant term in North American English under the heading of a rather localized neologism that has gained little currency at the international level. As an experienced Wikipedian, you should be aware by now of the Arbitration Committee's stance in favor of rigorous enforcement of NOR. Wikipedia is always descriptive, not prescriptive.

Furthermore, if you had traveled more and studied related fields like cultural geography (in which one studies various theories of urban development), you would have understood the fundamental structural differences between North American downtowns and CBDs elsewhere as well as Melbourne's CAD. Indeed, computer games like the Grand Theft Auto series (which is created by Scottish programmers at Rockstar North) specifically single out and mock aspects of American downtowns that are unique to downtowns and are not found in other CBDs elsewhere. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

[1] Central Activities Zone - straight from The London Plan. --Biatch (talk) 02:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

You do sound paranoid Coolcaesar. Afterall, if I was attempting to subvert something, I'd just go ahead and to it. I have opened it up for discussion, nothing more. Personally, I think that if anyone is guilty of pushing a localized neologism, it would be you. That is, afterall, exactly what the term "Downtown" is. The term CAD is not a neologism. It is not just used in Victoria but throughout Australia and also the United Kingdom and has been for over two decades. Victoria just happens to have many of the biggest and fastest growing urban centres. The term is used extensively in South East Queensland, another fast growing metropolis. There has been an Australia wide Central Activities District Floorspace and Employment Survey in 1981 and Engineers Australia made a submission to the 1991 International Transport Conference [2]. The term appears in the metropolitan strategies of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and London and this article refers mainly to New York, Los Angeles and Miami --Biatch (talk) 02:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'll concede the point about the term being in use in some sources in British English and Australian English, but downtown is a localized neologism only to the extent that things like Yosemite National Park or Cat's eye (road) are localized neologisms. The point is that some concepts by definition are defined in terms of a geographical context or scope, so it is impossible to generalize them into universal non-geographical concepts in any coherent fashion. Merging Yosemite National Park into Yellowstone National Park or merging both into national park doesn't quite work. Neither does merging Cat's eye (road) into raised pavement marker, because even though the two objects seem to serve the same basic purpose, the terms are geographically localized and they actually describe different physical objects, each of which has a certain design with certain features not found in the other. Same thing with downtown, central business district, and central activities district; they are not different facets of the same thing but are different geographically localized concepts altogether. This is, like, first-semester freshman college philosophy. Do you even know what is ontology?

Furthermore, you refuse to answer the question about travel, so I assume you haven't been to North America and therefore aren't familiar with the unique components of North American downtowns vis-a-vis European CBDs (which have been compared and contrasted extensively in the North American academic literature).

Also, if you wish to continue pursuing your foolish proposal of a merger, then my counterproposal is that the name of the merged article should be "downtown" based on sheer popularity alone (since the official article naming policy WP:NAME is all about favoring the most commonly recognized name for a concept). "Central activities district", searched for as that exact phrase with quotation marks, gets only 2,230 hits on Google. The phrase "central business district" gets only 2.7 million hits. Downtown returns 137 million hits. After all, the vast majority of media sources publishing in English on the Web tend to refer to downtown Tokyo, downtown Shanghai, downtown Sao Paulo or downtown [name a world city] (just run the Google searches if you don't believe me). The overwhelming majority of native English speakers are using American English, and it's also very popular around the world as the English dialect to be mastered as a second language due to the importance of American media and culture. So then, it would be reasonable under the official article naming policy to go with the term that is most widely recognized---downtown---and then include sections devoted to explaining minor regionalized deviations such as the alternate concepts of central business district and central activities district.

A certain phrase comes to mind. Ever heard of "hoist by one's own petard?" --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:21, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Before you ride your high horse into the sunset, I don't really see the need to point out that have Bachelor Degrees in both Architecture (Urban Design) and Arts (Philosophy), but as to the question of travel, I don't see how it is of any real relevance really. I have travelled the UK, Australia and SOuth East Asia. Being in Australia we are saturated by American culture. It is everywhere. At the same time, if it is as superior as you make out, why do American Football, basketball and baseball have such little popularity here ? Why aren't we all buying hotdogs and burgers in Australia and going Downtown ? Of course I am familiar with the term Downtown and its meaning and that it is very much colloquial. The references to places like Downtown Shanghai come from America, not necessarily the local residents. So your point raises the very question of regional bias of wikipedia and hence why I raised the point of worldwide view. Look at the article football for example. It recognises the popularity of soccer worldwide, but at the same time gives balance to the use of the term by minority sports. As to the structural differences between a CAD and Downtown, perhaps you should point them out in this article, because they clearly aren't self-evident. --Biatch (talk) 11:46, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we're closing in on the key point in dispute. You seem to regard "downtown" as a loosely colloquial term amounting to no more than slang, while Americans do not. "Downtown" is used in formal written American English all the time with the utmost seriousness and as a term with a very precise definition. Numerous decisions of American courts (including the U.S. Supreme Court) refer to "downtown" all the time, and it is perfectly clear to any attorney (or layperson) what or where the court is referring to. It is also clear from the context that courts do not see "downtown" as incompatible with the deadly serious tone that is required of all judicial writing (in order to encourage respect for the judicial system). Kelo v. City of New London (2005) [3] is just the latest of many examples from the U.S. Supreme Court. Hernandez v. City of Hanford (2007) [4] is the latest of many examples from the Supreme Court of California, the most prominent state supreme court in the United States. In fact, the word "downtown" appears in 1,066 reported California cases (from the state supreme court and the Courts of Appeal), and is extensively discussed in quite a number of them.

I cross-checked against the AustLII database and the word "downtown" is not discussed at length in any Australian or New Zealand case; it seems to come up most often in situations where businesses have adopted it as part of their names (I assume because they borrowed it from American English). But apparently it has not come across with quite the same formal connotations, probably because New York City does not have the overwhelming prominence in Australian life that it does in American life (because so many of our TV shows, magazines, and books come from New York).

Also, I probed Google Books further and it's notable that Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, compiled by North London-based author Jonathon Green (he uses a o in place of a second a in his name), lists several obscure definitions for "downtown" as slang but does not include "central business district" or "commercial district" among them. If you look at Green's very comphensive dictionary (it's available on Google Books), it's clear that Green is including slang terms from all English dialects (which he indicates with appropriate annotations) and he's including every kind of obscure slang term (including many I had never heard of). Obviously, the leading UK expert on slang has recognized that "downtown" is not a slang term in American English to the extent that it refers to the central commercial area of a city.

Finally, as to the specific connotations of the word "downtown" in American English, it carries with it a enormous amount of historical baggage stemming from the unique history of downtowns in the United States that you're clearly unaware of, but which any American with a high school diploma has at least some minimal awareness of. It is those connotations that make it strikingly different from the central business district of Commonwealth English. Because the history of downtowns is so closely tied up with the history of the industrialization and deindustrialization of American cities in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries (which is normally studied as an integral part of yearlong courses in U.S. history in high school and at the college level), it's difficult to summarize those connotations briefly, but I will try.

The major trend has been the constant tendency of Americans to celebrate the rural life (there is a powerful American cultural trope of always pushing towards the "frontier") which means escaping the urban core by any means necessary. That is, Americans started the concept of the commute very, very early. First they commuted on foot, then by wagon and omnibus, then by commuter rail, streetcar, subway, and metro, then by automobile and bus, and finally by airplane (there is a small population of several thousand Americans, mostly in the West, who are wealthy enough and crazy enough to do a daily hourly commute by airplane).

The U.S. has also had a long and painful history with involuntary residential segregation on the basis of race. Even after restrictive covenants were invalidated by Shelley v. Kraemer in 1947, white flight from the urban core became a serious problem. It's still a major problem today, in that de facto residential self-segregation on the basis of race is evident in the suburbs of most American cities. For example, even though Los Angeles has developed significant African-American and Hispanic middle-class populations, most such persons tend to be concentrated in certain areas (e.g., Ladera Heights and Montebello), while most of the white middle class has fled even farther outward to new "edge cities" like Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks, and Anaheim Hills. Of course, as the upper and middle classes of all races fled outward from the urban cores, a large number of services and institutions departed with them. The result is that downtown may be an interesting place to visit, but an unpleasant and rather impractical place in which to live.

Another issue is the tendency of Americans, (until recently outmatched by the UAE and China), to build insanely tall skyscrapers in downtowns and develop visually striking skylines surrounded by several hundred square miles of flat suburban sprawl.

So the point is, today, the typical American downtown consists of a tall skyline punctuated by a handful of supertall skyscrapers (like the Sears Tower in Chicago) which are predominantly occupied by offices of major corporations and law firms. Downtowns also have large federal and state courthouses, various government offices, a sports stadium or two, and a few cultural institutions that have traditionally inhabited downtowns like operas, symphonies, musical theatres, museums, libraries, and ballets. With the exception of New York City, most American downtowns empty out at night and become virtual ghost towns, as the workers in the towers flee along the Interstate Highway System to the relative safety of their large detached single-family homes in the suburbs. While supermarkets are a common sight in inner city areas in Europe (e.g., Monoprix has several in inner-city Paris), it was a major news story when Ralphs announced two years ago that it was going to open the first major supermarket in downtown Los Angeles in decades. At night, American downtowns are predominantly inhabited by (1) the security guards patrolling the skyscrapers, (2) the police, (3) the homeless, and (4) a small population of rich old people or rich single people living inside heavily secured high-rise apartments or condos, who can afford to travel out to the suburbs or pay people to do it for them when they need access to services no longer available in downtowns. For example, it's hard to find a Home Depot or a Lowe's home improvement warehouse near most downtowns, but someone living in an upscale apartment building would simply complain about a problem to the landlord, who would dispatch the maintenance man to a store in the suburbs to purchase the necessary materials to fix whatever is wrong with the building. A young rising middle manager might not be able to afford the few ultraexpensive furniture boutiques that still exist in some downtowns, but would simply drive out on the weekend to an Ikea in the suburbs to buy cheap furniture. Upper and middle-class families generally don't live in downtowns because the quality of American inner-city public schools is so terrible. Good private schools are available in downtowns in a few cities, but they tend to be inordinately expensive.

Beyond the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown is a large ring of severely blighted, rundown inner-city neighborhoods inhabited by homeless people and a mix of poor people either on welfare or barely scratching out a living in dead-end minimum-wage service jobs. Depending upon the particular city, some such neighborhoods are racially mixed to some extent, while others are not (and may be predominantly inhabited by members of specific minority ethnic groups). Many of these neighborhoods often have large sections full of empty burned-down lots resulting from the race riots of the 1960s (this is particularly severe in the South Side of Chicago, and in large parts of Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia). The only retail services available tend to be small mom-and-pop grocery stores, liquor stores, convenience stores, coffee shops, auto repair shops, fast food restaurants, and cheap motels (flophouses), because most major retail chains, restaurant chains, and hotel chains prefer the relative safety of the suburbs. Shopping malls and department stores are also rare in inner-city neighborhoods. For example, Macy's has a small downtown store at Macy's Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, but to find another Macy's store, one has to go out to wealthy suburbs like Pasadena, Beverly Hills, or even middle-class Culver City, while there's no Macy's in South Los Angeles or Inglewood. Some downtown areas can't even support any department stores any more, such as downtown Oakland, California, which lost its last department store (a Sears) several years ago.

Meanwhile, most Americans live far from the downtown of their metro area, in middle-class or upper-class suburbs that are almost always incorporated as separate cities. So when they have a problem with the city government, they can complain to the city council of a small community of 40 to 60,000 people, whereas if they were living in the downtown area of a big city, they might be one of hundreds waiting in line to talk to the city council (after having to fight their way downtown and look for parking). "Downtown" without qualification generally means the downtown of their metro area and connotes high-density buildings, overworked police, homeless, carjackings, congestion, difficult-to-find parking, white flight from the urban core, hassle, and expense, while "downtown [name your suburb]" means the lovely Main Street of their charming suburb or an arterial road lined by beautifully landscaped shopping centers with ample parking, friendly security guards, no homeless people, and facilities to serve every possible need. Nowadays, with the rise of edge cities, many Americans rarely need to go downtown; they can attend or participate in many kinds of cultural or sporting events in relatively safe and easy-to-access suburban facilities. For example, Flint Center in Cupertino, California attracts cultural events and celebrities from around the world, which reduces the need for residents of western Silicon Valley to have to drive to downtown San Jose or San Francisco to see such things.

Anyway, I don't have all night to give you a freshman college course on American cultural geography or American urban studies. You really need to come visit some downtowns in the U.S. and walk them on the ground to understand how screwed up they are. Try running a search for "downtown" on WorldCat and try reading some of the huge amount of literature that pops up. But I have more than adequately established that there are enough differences that a merge is inappropriate at this time and will continue to oppose the proposed merge as an violation of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:19, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

2007-02-1 Automated pywikipediabot message

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 10:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Treating downtown as equivalent to inner city is original research and is inaccurate and inappropriate

Downtown is not equivalent to the inner city in most American cities. For example, South Los Angeles is considered to be an inner city neighborhood, but it is over five miles away from Downtown Los Angeles. Similarly, Hunters Point in San Francisco is considered to be an inner city neighborhood, but it is four miles away from Downtown San Francisco. Can anyone give an example of any city in the United States where the inner city is exactly equivalent to the downtown? (Besides Detroit.) If no one gives me a counterexample, I'm changing the lead paragraph back to the original longstanding text. --Coolcaesar 17:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

If there's an error, it's in the sometime usage of "inner city". In what sense are these California residential neighborhoods "inner"? The inner cities of Chicago, New York, London and Tokyo are The Loop, Midtown, the Square Mile, and Chuo-ku, respectively. As it happens, I live in one of these, but all are primarily commercial and only incidentally, if at all, residential. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim.henderson (talk • contribs) 16:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

It's quite well established that the term "inner city" is used by experts on inner cities to refer to the entire core of a city including residential, commercial, and industrial neighborhoods. Take a look at the thousands and thousands of scholarly books that discuss inner city housing on Google Books: [5]. --Coolcaesar 17:48, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Also look at the American Heritage Dictionary definition: [6] --Coolcaesar 17:54, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'm fixing Jim.henderson's bad edit. It's been almost two weeks. --Coolcaesar 06:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

opening photograph

Anyone find it strange that the article giving a general description of "downtown" opens with a photograph of midtown manhattan?... I mean, just after that is an etymology describing downtown Manhattan as the root of the word "downtown." Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use a picture of downtown Manhattan? I would change it myself but I'm not familiar enough with how to do that on wiki. You guys have thoughts? 206.223.252.241 06:14, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

There may be some better examples at Lower Manhattan. By the way the same image is also seen on Portal:Vancouver. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 08:27, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Manhattan-centric?

Isn't this article a little overly centered on Manhattan? It's a fairly long article and only the last two sentences are about "Most other North American cities". --Varco (talk) 02:37, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is properly centered on a crowded little island of the coast of New Jersey. Sometimes a thing is invented in a place and that's the center. That's why the history of alphabets is Levantine-centric or the history of railroads is Anglocentric. That's the center the thing came from. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:55, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

References

They are all from 3 pages of one guy's book. The article is need of more depth of citations. --Biatch (talk) 23:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I've read some of the book on Google's book preview here (if anybody would like to check out if the referencing is correct, as I tried to). Killiondude (talk) 09:36, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

City centre

As a Brit, my knowledge of the usage of 'downtown' is incomplete, but it seems to equate to 'city centre', the usual British term for the longest established / most significant part of a city. Is this term common enough worldwide to introduce into the opening sentence:

"Downtown is a term primarily used in North America to refer to a city center or central business district ..."

But check out the views on this topic in the Central Business District article. Earthlyreason (talk) 09:00, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

NOLA

Downtown in New Orleans is anything north and east of Canal Street, including the French Quarter, while uptown is anything south and west, including the CBD and Tulane U. This is because of the Miss.'s flow around the city's "cresent" in a generally eastward direction, hence uptown is "up river" and visa versa. Citation should be forthcoming. --Leodmacleod (talk) 06:59, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Please eliminate perspective note

The top of the article says "The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with North America and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page." But the article states at the beginning that it is primarily a North American term. OF COURSE the examples and perspective are primarily North American. Move to delete the note. Wakablogger (talk) 22:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Done. It appears to have been originally added by User:Biatch, who has a tendency to do crazy things like that. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Australia

Ive inserted Australia in the page cos they use downtown aswell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.149.92.36 (talk) 06:42, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Umm can someone not delete australia please, downtown is used here aswell--122.149.84.65 (talk) 00:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Please provide a source for your nonsensical assertion. The Australian urban studies literature uniformly uses CBD and uses downtown only as an Americanism. In fact, we've had edit wars in the past with Australian intellectuals who wanted to merge this article with central business district because downtown is NOT commonly used in Australia. --Coolcaesar (talk) 04:09, 11 October 2010 (UTC)