In every entry of GTA 6 City of the Week, we pick a city from the USA and take a thorough look at various factors in order to determine how well the subject would serve as a setting for the next main instalment of Rockstar Games' flagship title.
After moving away from the coasts last week, we continue to stick to inland locations as we hunt for the best setting of the next GTA game. Once again using a lake to up the candidate's chances, we return to the same region where this article series began — the Great Lakes.
Cleveland
Also known as the City of Forests, Cleveland is the second largest city in the state of Ohio after the capital, Colombus — which we'll also feature in a City of the Week article sometime in the future — with a population of just under 400 thousand. That said, the metropolitan area surrounding the city is the largest in the state, with more than two million calling the region home.
The history of Cleveland is one of revitalization. The city's origins can be traced all the way back to 1796 when it was founded on the coast of Lake Erie due to the advantageous geographical attributes. The city grew and grew, becoming a transportation hub thanks to the lakes as well as a number of railways running through or near it. At one point, due to the great importance of manufacturing in and around the city, Cleveland became the fifth largest city in the country.
While Cleveland weathered the Great Depression relatively well and continued to prosper through the 30's and 40's, things started going downhill in the 50's. Social unrest, economic crisis, massive unemployment rates and other issues struck the city. You know, defaulting on federal loans can do that.
But then the storm clouds cleared, and a ray of sunlight tore through the gloom to shine upon Cleveland — well, gradually, of course. In what was one of the most impressive comebacks in the country, Cleveland boosted development and refurbishment pretty much out of the blue and revitalised itself — hence it's other nickname, Comeback City.
By 1999, the situation in Cleveland improved significantly, and the city was ranked as an emerging global city. Modern Cleveland has become renowned throughout the USA for its medical institutions and healthcare services, and has been diversifying its profile beyond "that one industrial city that was good, then bad, then good again". After spending much of the past two decades bringing the inner city up to speed, revitalization efforts have expanded to the suburbs and outer neighbourhoods as well.
Urban sprawl is an instantly apparent characteristic of the area, as there's pretty much no stretch of the Erie shore which hasn't been urbanised, so physically Cleveland is part of a single massive agglomeration spanning the whole coast from Detroit to Buffalo. The city has countless different neighbourhoods, as well as several settlements which surround it and have grown together.
The cityscape of Cleveland is pretty diverse, with various areas within the city having their own differentiating qualities. Beyond the typical districts like the downtown business area, little Italy, China town and the industrial areas, the city has a number of unique areas defined by architecture or local landmarks. In any case, driving, walking and — since this is GTA — blasting through a virtual version of Cleveland would hardly be boring.
Looking beyond the city itself and at the larger area around it, we find a region which generally fits the GTA profile pretty well. If course, the concave nature of the shore would make turning the area into an island within Lake Erie a bit of a stretch, it's nowhere near the measure of transformation needed to make San Andreas' map.
Slicing a portion out of Ohio bordered on the east by the 271 highway, the 224 on the south, the Canadian border to the north and roughly around Fremont to the west gives us a pretty large area with plenty of interesting landmarks. You have the Cuyahoga National Park, Sandusky Bay and the islands north of it and a number of settlements which would fit the bill of secondary locations like Elyria (nice name, too) and Lorain. As in the case of GTA 5, the main city would not be the geographical centre of the map.
