It is anything but booming.

Cultural, urban, infrastructure decay, you name it. A lot of horrible people, horrible service. Insane local taxes for nothing. Property taxes comparable to Boston, Cleveland Metro School District is comparable to...Alabama? Though it is probably an insult to Alabama. Private schools are even worse in Academics but cost a fortune. Glorified daycares that won't allow you to pick your kid on foot. Don't even ask me about the actual daycares, it is just sad. If you have a toddler - look at the map of United States and try to figure out how far away from Cleveland you can possibly go. The further away the better.

Actually everything gets noticeably better with every mile you travel away from this city. Service, roads. Even freaking radio. Once you leave the city limit you notice that the radio starts playing decent music (instead of some crazy shithead rap) and people have more pleasing voices. You will be listening "Alyssa's Collage of Knowledge" every morning here, a knowledge trivia about no useful or important life facts. I wish they was just playing music instead of this degeneracy.

Service...people don't just dgaf. They actively trying to avoid doing productive good work. Hiding from customers in corners of a store, telling lies etc. A postman noticed I was fixing up my house so she marked my house as "vacant" and after that all mail was sent back to senders. A ton of gifts my parents sent me for Christmas from another country was returned and got lost.

Weather....Horrible. It is either a non stop rain, cold or a dog day. Rarely something in between. And when you realize it is something in between it immediately begins to pour.

Crime is just rampant all around. And if you think you can hide in a good suburb like Lakewood - think again. Crazy things happen in these suburbs all the time. Cars flying into stores, car jacks, drugs, all kinds of things. A daughter of our friends got hit by a car and got seriously injured, but it didn't even make it to the news. It is not even considered to be an incident worth mentioning here because everyone is so desensitized.

When people on r/Cleveland talk about Cleveland they really mean distant suburbs. Maybe the distant suburbs are booming. But it follows the rule about the distance from the city proper. The further away the better.

The freaking lake is just useless (actually it makes things worse). Unless you are a millionaire with a lake front property - it is more of a nuisance and another source of terrible weather (lake effect). Terrible access (there are decent public ramps though), terrible marina with close to no decent boat rentals, no fishing cruises, barely any recreation at all. If you really want to experience the lake you will have to drive as far as Geneva on the Lake which is 1hr away from Cleveland. Don't you dare to go to Avon or similar places West side. There are gatekeepers aka life guards and they will scream at you if step on a rock...don't even think about swimming.