The cities that nearly were.

[libbrit]

What got me thinking was this-if you look at these maps

you will see that `Merseyside`, the general connurbation centred on and to all intents and purposes outside the area, synonymous with Liverpool is actually various entirely seperate political local government entities.

Someone mentioned when discussing the rise of cities and the non rise of other cities to prominence, how seemingly it can often be something of an historical fluke.

After all, liverpool is said to have emerged because of its favourable position on the river mersey and its long coastline that eventually gifted it 20 miles of docks, allowing it to become a major port (even if now, containerisation has reduced the size and workforce of the docks probably by a factor of 90%, even though they handle more cargo than ever before). But if you look at the metropolitan borough of Wirral, on the other bank of the river, it has just as much coast line-so, what is it, fluke? It cant be population seeing as in 1700 when Liverpool first started to emerge, it was a tiny fishing village with a none existant population

So, why do some cities in unlikely locations grow to prominence and some in seemingly promising locations, not.

Thoughts, examples etc

 

[tonsofun]

Most of it is location.
My hometown of Worthing was nothing but a fishing village until the seaside boom and it became a favourable location for Princes Amelia to holiday. After that it just swallowed up the nearby villages. Considering the cons of holidaying around here, it was luck. I would say Liverpool had that same luck.

 

[Malta]

Yep, location and period. Eastern Shore of MD had the second busiest port in the state before the decline in Oystering around the early 1900s.

 

[Thande]

Patronage was important in this period as well. Even before it became big, Liverpool had a powerful and influential town corporation (i.e. municipal council) which had considerable influence in Parliament. I don't know that much about Liverpool's political history beyond that, but I suspect similar factors were at work as with my own Doncaster: Doncaster boomed incredibly in the 1850s and 60s, doubling and redoubling in size because it got the Great Northern railway works. The Great Northern railway works were supposed to go to Peterborough when Parliament decided to fund them. But one of the MPs for the West Riding of Yorkshire (Doncaster didn't have its own MP back then) was the Doncaster-based powerful and influential (one contemporary commentator called him 'omnipotent') Conservative MP Edmond Beckett Denison, and he leaned on the relevant select committees and got the railway works relocated to Doncaster. And even today the modern town is still living off the prosperity and growth that that period brought. So you see how having the right influence in Parliament at the right time can make or break a place.

 

[Odd_Numbered_Bonaparte]

I think I've posted this one somewhere before, but in the location isn't always everything file, Cairo, Illinois. It should have been huge based on location.
It's an island right on the junction of America's two most commercially important rivers, the Mississippi and Ohio, but somehow never grew beyond a midsized town until some ugly race riots bumped it down to it's current gig as an almost completely abandoned shantytown.

 

[Æsir]

Building on what Thande mentioned, the advent of the railway made a lot of cities what they are today; others in Britain include Crewe and Swindon, and there are many examples in the US like Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Omaha, and St. Louis, and Changchun in China which grew rapidly as it was where the Russian and Japanese railroads in Manchuria met. So, if different railroad companies outcompete their neighbors or different routes are chosen, different settlements could grow to be major cities and their neighbors remain backwaters.

 

[Thoresby]

Actually when you go through the list of major cities only a small number were "always" going to succeed. It will take something pretty special to stop London as the highest upriver ships can easily navigate while also being the most downstream location where a bridge can be built being a major city in pretty much any scenario, New York is another case where you are going to have a major city there whether British, Spanish, French or Native American. Berlin or Moscow on the other hand...

 

[Thande]

Actually when you go through the list of major cities only a small number were "always" going to succeed. It will take something pretty special to stop London as the highest upriver ships can easily navigate while also being the most downstream location where a bridge can be built being a major city in pretty much any scenario,

True to some extent but remember the navigability of rivers or ports is to some extent based on human decisions too. To go back to Doncaster again, in the 1690s there was a hilarious business where Doncaster and Lincoln Corporations were petioning Parliament to get funding to make the River Don navigable so they could set up a new trade route, while at the same time the villages in the Isle of Axholme were petitioning to stop the funding because their economy was based on there NOT being a trade route between Doncaster and Lincoln. As you would expect, the bigger towns got their way in this case, but often it can come down to who you know in a position of power.

New York is another case where you are going to have a major city there whether British, Spanish, French or Native American. Berlin or Moscow on the other hand...

New York would arguably be less important if it was part of a country that also included Quebec, because you have access to the St Laurence as a means of getting into the Great Lakes system. (I'm exploring this in my TL, albeit mostly on the advice of others who know more about the subject than I do).

 

[Faeelin]

New York also wouldn't be as important in a divided America without an Erie Canal. I mean it's a great harbor, but in the 18th century New York was not as important as Philadelphia in part because the Hudson didn't go anywhere.

 

[Thoresby]

It wouldn't necessarily be the King of the Eastern seaboard but Manhatten Island is such a good place for a city you are going to have something big there.

 

[Æsir]

New York would arguably be less important if it was part of a country that also included Quebec, because you have access to the St Laurence as a means of getting into the Great Lakes system. (I'm exploring this in my TL, albeit mostly on the advice of others who know more about the subject than I do).

From what little I know though, there is the problem of the St Laurence freezing over in the winter, which resulted in a lot of Canadian exports going through Boston and Portland by rail until the government had Canadian National export out of Halifax instead.

 

[Dumanios]

Delaware, Ohio lost the bid for capital of Ohio to Columbus by one vote.

 

[Æsir]

Delaware, Ohio lost the bid for capital of Ohio to Columbus by one vote.

There are quite a few cities in that period actually that could've it the jackpot and been selected as capitals, such as a bunch that were almost Washington DC like Columbia, Pennsylvania and Havre de Grace, Maryland (the later of which, at least according to the town's website, which I assume is completely and totally unbiased, also failed to become a capital by one vote).

 

[Roberto]

As a resident of the suburbs around Washington DC, this thread resonates especially with me. There is really no reason for my entire county to be as populated as it is besides our proximity to the capital, which was placed more or less arbitrarily (ie for political and not geographical reasons).

Really makes me wonder what the towns in my area would look like if DC was never built.

 

[Westphalian]

In Germany, many cities have become important as residences of the local count or prince: Hanover, Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden, Schwerin. Karlsruhe was even designed as capital instead of Durlach. Bremen and Hamburg, OTOH, are very old trading cities. Along the Rhine, Cologne and Mayence are ancient, whereas Düsseldorf is newish (est. 1288). The Ruhr cities are mostly new, with a few medieval places like the Abbey of Essen and the Free City of Dortmund among them.

With a PoD in 1400, for example, Germany would probably have quite a few different metropolises - not necessarily places that do not exist at all in OTL, but those who are rather bucolic towns: Celle, Straubing, Urach ...

 

[Umbric Man]

As a resident of the suburbs around Washington DC, this thread resonates especially with me. There is really no reason for my entire county to be as populated as it is besides our proximity to the capital, which was placed more or less arbitrarily (ie for political and not geographical reasons).

Really makes me wonder what the towns in my area would look like if DC was never built.

I always imagined Alexandria would be a somewhat big city in place of DC, if only because the Potomac could extend westwards via a canal (and in OTL George Washington wanted a canal built from it to the Ohio, so the concept existed) and Alexandria's juuuust far enough from Baltimore, Richmond, and Norfolk to serve as a metropolis for the region.

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Williamsburg could still be big, but the Revolutionary War saw Britain (naturally) take away funding for William and Mary college, AND Thomas Jefferson moved the capital to Richmond due to his dislike of W&M and not wanting to be around it (!!). These two factors killed it immediately, and hopes to revive based on physical geography fell flat as Williamsburg was by then out of luck for railroad paths (what with not being capital), but on high ground just out of reach of the sea and especially at its now-village status!

Had Williamsburg stayed capital, I imagine it would still be big enough to eventually expand and gain seaport access, and/or have railroads pass through it.