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Comment by thearn4 | Hacker News Reader

Annexation was a strategy used by Columbus OH some years ago to continue growth past the limits of its suburban sprawl (and officially past the size of Cleveland, making it defacto the largest city in Ohio). Cleveland has been talking about doing the same for some time now, but I don't think the state government has been very supportive. Cleveland proper isn't large in itself, but the metro area is about the size of Austin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistic...

A negotiation for merger between Cleveland and East Cleveland was shot down last year because of some pretty ridiculous demands by the EC leadership:

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/08/east_clevel...

Some discussion at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cleveland/comments/4zeubq/east_clev...

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As a resident of the Columbus Ohio area for many years the equivalent to East Cleveland would be Whitehall. Whitehall is an inner-belt suburb that has nothing but [now] dirt cheap housing with a high crime rate. Meanwhile a 20 minute drive to the north is one of the fastest growing areas in the country, Delaware County. All suburb with upper six figure homes, retail, medical, and a near zero crime rate. One can use Columbus as the perfect example of what happens when affluent people keep moving further away from the city core. Far flung suburbs are building like crazy, like Dublin and Westerville in Deleware County. Gahanna is getting swallowed by Columbus annexing, New Albany's aggressive annexing may save part of the city from going "ghetto" in 25-30 years. Reynoldsburg, Pickerington, and Pataskala all annexed to block Columbus from swallowing them whole too.

Inner suburbia like Whitehall is not coming back. Highway infrastructue shuffles more traffic between suburbs around Columbus and many other citys rather than traffic into the city core. Poor people displaced from hip new downtown building are moving into these abandoned inner burbs and bringing all the crime with them.

Very helpful context. While a lot of comments here have brought up points regarding the density of suburbs, I'm not sure they are familiar with East Cleveland or the sort of inner ring suburbs that exist in a less-sprawly city that includes street car suburbs like Shaker Heights and what I think is the densest city between Chicago and NYC in Lakewood.

I'm glad someone pointed this out. There were many offers to get EC to join CLE proper, EC was negotiating like they had some form of power; for fans of Parks and Rec it reminds me of the Eagleton Pawnee merger scenes where the Eagleton people are shocked they must give up their precious amenities when they can't pay for them.

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