Reimagining Urban Identity within a Legacy City

Abstract

Toledo is well known as a legacy city in the academic world, but the public might be more familiar with its nickname ‘The Glass City’, a function of its long history of glass manufacture with many of the largest glass companies in the world having their origins here. As part of the thriving industrial economy in the region and especially as a part of the auto industry centred around nearby Detroit, Toledo grew rapidly in the early and mid-20th century but was unprepared for loss of manufacturing in the region and the many cycles of change that followed. In this paper, we examine the transformation of Toledo’s downtown in the last several decades as a way to illustrate spatial transformation following population and economic decline in a legacy city. The research team focus on select examples of large-scale investments in the downtown that illustrate four themes in the reimagining of Toledo’s urban identity and examine their varying success as urban catalysts in shaping the spatial and economic transformation in a post-industrial context.