Urban Decline and Rise of The Suburbs
Starting with the 1960 US Census, Albany, Schenectady, and Troy have posted declines in population in every census until the 2010 US Census. Meanwhile the suburbs, and in particular Saratoga County, saw an influx in population. Saratoga County grew at the expense of Albany, Rensselaer, and Schenectady counties. There were many causes to this, including the building of interstates and other highways allowing for more commuting, lack of available suitable land within the urban centers, and the subsequent location of shopping centers following the people to the suburbs.
The decline of manufacturing from the northeastern United States contributed to a general decline as well. Watervliet, Cohoes, and especially Troy lost the competitive edge that came with being at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers: the location no longer meant better access to markets, waterfalls no longer made the cheapest power, and cheap labor in the southern and western parts of the nation became important to companies. General Electric moved their headquarters to Connecticut from Schenectady in the mid-70s. Within the Capital District manufacturing shifted to the suburbs as well since the suburbs had large open spaces for larger warehouses, factories, and office parks, while the cities were constrained in available land. Albany International, with their headquarters and factory straddling the Menands and Albany border, built a new factory in 1987 in rural East Greenbush, as did Garden Way, headquartered in Troy. The region's first technology park was built in the 1980s in rural North Greenbush by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
Not only was there a shift in population and manufacturing to the suburbs, there was also a shift in retail shopping as well; retail sales in the cities declined 1 percent between 1972 and 1987, having increased 63 percent in the suburbs. In 1957 Westgate Plaza became the first "suburban"-style shopping center in the area; it was and still is within the city limits of Albany however, but then two years later in 1959 Stuyvesant Plaza was built outside Albany in the neighboring town of Guilderland. 1966 saw the opening of Colonie Center, the area's first enclosed shopping mall. When built it drew shoppers from hundreds of miles from Albany. Macy's and Sears originally wanted to build in downtown Albany, but interference from Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd led to those stores choosing to move into Colonie Center instead. Problems with Mayor Corning would also force the Albany Times Union newspaper to move from Albany to Colonie in the 1970s.
Five more enclosed malls were built in the next ten years, all outside of city limits: Mohawk Mall outside Schenectady, Northway Mall across from Colonie Center, Pyramid Mall outside Saratoga Springs, Aviation Mall outside Glens Falls, and Clifton Country Mall in Clifton Park. In 1977 the first mall built within a city was completed: the Amsterdam Mall in Amsterdam. This destroyed much of Amsterdam's downtown. The next year, Troy opened the Uncle Sam Atrium, and in 1986 Cohoes attempted an Cohoes Commons. All three failed and ended up as office space.
Read more about this topic: Capital District, History
Famous quotes containing the words urban, decline, rise and/or suburbs:
“I have misplaced the Van Allen belt
the sewers and the drainage,
the urban renewal and the suburban centers.
I have forgotten the names of the literary critics.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“... the French know that you must not succeed you must rise from the ashes and how could you rise from the ashes if there were no ashes, but the Germans never think of ashes and so when there are ashes there is no rising, not at all and every day and in every way this is clearer and clearer.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along the primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one’s way to where the country is.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)