Cleveland Rots > Rocks

Drew Carey has completed his 'Save Cleveland' series for ReasonTv:

Here's number 6, the last:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a39z0VZa5I

- Cleveland compared to Houston... Cleveland has TWO MAJOR handicaps.
And allus been to Houston more than a day or two know neither of them is 'Weather'

 

hmm TWO major handicaps. One is certainly taxes. Not sure what the other would be. Could be corruption or could be that much of Houston's sprawl has remained within Houston city limits while Cleveland's sprawl has occurred by a flight to the suburbs.

 

I should have posted the reasonTV site.

Watch them all.. pretty good.

http://reason.tv/

 

Thanks for posting this 'fog. I knew Carey was doing this but I probably never would have bothered to watch if you hadnt put it up. Having lived in Houston for 6 years and Cleveland for 13, the comparisons of the two make the series extra interesting. Most of the points they bring up to show how the Houston way is better, I agree with but there are a few things they didnt consider.

One of Cleveland's advantages over Houston is the old historic architecture. I feel that needs to be preserved because it is a strength that can and has attracted people to the area. If it takes government regulation to preserve that architecture then I say do it. And because of Cleveland's economic climate, I doubt historic preservation will happen without some government intervention. The change I would make though is to provide tax incentives restoring and maintaining historic structures. For instance, the government can say "I'm going to tell you how to restore and maintain this building, but I'm going to give you a wicked low tax rate for doing that". If Cleveland and the surrounding old inner ring suburbs like where I live did that, Cleveland would start looking a lot nicer really fast. Problem is you then have to have government employees to monitor that, but since Cleveland already has those employees I think this would be a big step in the right direction.

In comparison Houston's boom is relatively new. Very little to no zoning makes more sense when you are starting from scratch.

As far as the city running the West Side Market, I know that sounds bad, but you have to ask whether it would even still be around if the city didnt. I'm sure the city owning the market is done out of a desire to preserve it. I took my brother from Houston there when he visited. He is big into cooking and he thought it was the best market he has ever been to. Absolutely loved it. Fine, privatize the market but do it in a way that insures it will stay in it's current form because even with government employees running it, it is a strength of Cleveland.