As I do every other field trip I enjoyed this one also. This trip was probably by far the most informative one yet.
I believe Akron survived as an industrial city along the canal for many reasons. Because of the Canal being located right along the city it gave businesses many opportunities for moving and shipping products to other places, without the availability of cars. While the city has fallen downhill they are trying very hard to bring industry back to Akron. One of the most thriving businesses currently is actually the University of Akron. Even though it is not really a business it is doing very much for the city as a whole. With the purchase of the old silos of Ferdinand Schumacker the university is also in the process of building brand new sports facilities with the last zips game at the rubber bowl last week. Projects like the north loft apartments that we toured bring money to the city. One thing that the city falls short on these goals is many factories such as Goodyear and Firestone are downsizing. Therefore losing money for the city.
While I wouldn't consider Akron a great city it far from just a city. Akron's industry benefits greatly from its strategic location. While having water transportation along the canal they also have the availability of trains. WIth the canal in its location the combination of CLeveland andAkron makie it a thriving corridor because it provides a direct route to lake erie. The one thing that Akron and Cleveland lack though is the availability ofa subway transit system. This system is very beneficial to the many other thriving cities in our country.
I enjoyed this trip and I am looking forward to the next one.
Feelings for First Semester
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Five months have passed so quickly as we are moving on to the last week of
first semester in a period of seven days. We have had great times being
busy, la...
10 years ago
6 comments:
I am glad you liked the trip. We saw a lot of things this week. Excellent point about the University. Sometimes I wonder if the downton revitalization can be sustained if it depends so heavily on the school and restauranteers? In some cities the only solutions ever discussed are bringing new retail in. The well has to run dry sometime doesn't it?
If you check out my other responses, I too agree that mass tansit is missing in our area.
Currently, the Akron industries are not benefiting from their location near the canal because the canal is no longer in operation.
I was going to say that the Canal doesn't really have anything to do with Akron now because it isn't in use. However, my sister seems to have beaten me to it.
I think that you did a good job of talking about what is helping the City of Akron and what isn't exactly helping.
I think mass transportation infrastructure is something that is seriously lacking here in Ohio in general. Maybe if the ODOT would invest in mass transit instead of building more and more roads and encouraging more and more people to drive and waste more resources, we'd have some sort of Akron/ Cleveland subway system.
I totally agree with your point about the mass transit. Whenever I go to San Francisco there is transportation everywhere, California has a train system that runs up and down the entire state. If you wanted to you could take it all the way down the state. The city and outer suburbs have busses everywhere and you see a buss almost every other block going somewhere. I think this would be a great contribution to Akron and actually the entire area.
But it would take a while to get people to use some of this transportation in Akron. Not many people actually ride the bus here. It'd be great if more epople did though. There'd be less need for those annoying car garages...
But everybody has their own car these days and people have gotten used to that so I think some people would veiw a bus and/or train system as a step backwards.
Check out the new Metro Transit station that city, county, state, federal, and private money built.
http://www.ohio.com/news/37092994.html
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