JoeL

Perhaps people are unaware, but Savannah used to be a total hellhole. Perhaps not on the level of OTR circa 2001, but certainly similar to OTR 2009. (It's actually rather heartwarming in the sense that it proves OTR is not nearly too far gone to preserve.) Also, while Savannah and Charleston certainly draw from their old South "narrative" that's hardly the measure of their success. The vast majority of tourists have exactly zero personal connection to the history of either town. Nor were these towns a massive tourist destinations prior to their gentrification. At least not at today's level. A good number of tourists simply want a gentrified "old town," and OTR has the potential to supply that like few other districts in the nation. If anyone is hell-bent on a narrative, the Germans and especially the Beer is more than enough of one, in my opinion.

I think Savannah's historic district is even quite a bit smaller. I'm constantly telling people that OTR would be the next Savannah or Charleston if it becomes fully gentrified. It would, without exaggeration, become one of the biggest historical tourism destinations in the country. Despite the demolitions, the building stock is just too special. But unfortunately, as we all know by now, it's a bigger issue than just preservation. Until all the non-profit/social service orgs are pushed out, OTR won't develop as a serious tourist destination.

Providence is a really interesting case. From an urban planning standpoint, they've done almost everything right. Most major infrastructure projects over the past 15-20 years have been very well done. The result is a rather beautiful urban core. On the other side of the coin, the city government is impossibly corrupt (which is probably why they've been able to push through absolutely *perfect* urban redevelopment). The city has virtually no private industry, high taxes, insane debt, and a huge bloated bureaucrasy. At this point, the city only exists to provide inflated pensions to its army of employees. Providence - while a stunning renaissance on the surface - is a shocking house of cards, economically.

I have a delayed reaction regarding UncleRando's post from February. I was shocked to see a city manager actually promoting consolidation in Northern Kentucky. Personally, I'm a huge proponent of consolidations. I think NKY mergers would also be very positive for Cincinnati, as a more unified NKY government would be able to bring in more business from outside of the region, as well as money from Frankfort. This would have a positive spill-over onto Cincinnati (as opposed to today, where they mostly function as disorganized bedroom communities). Anyway ... would such a thing even be possible? How would municipalities merge if they're in different counties? I had assumed that the Licking River's division of Kenton and Campbell counties would be an insurmountable bar to any consolidation attempts.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Lanskeith17 is right. Construction standards are a lot lower today, and it doesn't matter if it's urban or the "cookie cutters" out in Mason. Even for the older buildings in OTR, at the very least their roofs are probably new construction. They probably even used some of the same subcontractors that work out in Mason. Were any of the Gateway Quater's new construction framed with wood and plywood? Hopefully not, but if so, it's probably the same standards as the suburbs for better or worse.

That COAST blog basically outed them as fake small govt activists. The highway system is one of the most overtly Socialist programs in America. Not to mention the government's biggest single domestic expense this side of an entitlement program. Here is COAST's supposed mission statement: I don't know how the hell they expect to limit taxes and spending if one of their leaders is absolutely GUSHING about how he LOVES the government's massive spending on an ill-fated Socialist highway experiment gone wrong.

That ranking is completely flawed for the reasons I bolded above. It's not measuring which economies are actually worst. It's merely measuring which ones have fallen the farthest since Dec 2007, without measuring their final strength. In other words, they are only ranking the current rate of change, not the result of the change. It's really really stupid. It's like measuring a race by comparing each runner's result to their personal best, rather than the order in which they actually finished. (Note: there's nothing wrong with the study. It's just that this newspaper is misinterpreting what the study means) Not to ruffle any feathers, but certain cities on the "worst" list (like Tampa and Jacksonville) are still much stronger economically than virtually any city in Ohio. Lower taxes, smaller deficits, more population growth, etc. Even though they've "crashed", the size of their previous "booms" has basically cancelled it out. Of course, this is yet another reminder of how bad things are in Detroit, as it still declined the fastest, even though it wasn't part of the inflated real estate boom like CA and FL.

Wow ... this has certainly been an interesting story to follow. Although it's worth mentioning that the potentially illegal actions have nothing to do with preservation. It's illegal for a mortgagor (the owner) being forclosed on by a mortgagee (the bank) to try and sell-off any fixtures. It wouldn't matter how historic or un-historic they are. Fixtures are part of the house and therefore the property of the mortgagee. However, when someone buys the house at auction, the new owner could still rip out all the historic details if he wanted to. Even if Rose Hill is declared an historic district that would probably - at best - restrict what can be done to the exterior. So an owner could be forced to save the windows, but that's about it. I'm not aware of anything that would prevent even a total interior gutting if an owner were so inclined.

I'm not familiar with all the demographics, but is Delhi the best financial analog to Westwood, or would St Bernard and/or Norwood be a better fit? In my limited experience, St Bernard and Norwood tend to have much worse streets than Cincy, and they might be better representative of what Westwood could face.

I agree that further balkanization would be negative for the region generally. However, could this not be a long-term positive for the city of Cincinnati? It's no secret that Westside neighborhoods like Price Hill and Westwood have been on a relative decline. What are the demographics of the neighborhood like right now? Does it generate more tax revenue than it spends? What about in 10 or 20 years? If market forces keep pushing the section 8 folks over in that direction, Cincinnati might actually benefit from a secession. Or is that too speculative or too far in the future?

If the views along Columbia Parkway are so important, why are they completely overgrown with bushes and trees that are sometimes well over 10 feet tall? You certainly have some river views, but the majority are obstructed by brush at this point. It puts a bad taste in my mouth that people would use "view preservation" as an excuse to regulate tall buildings, when preserving the view is obviously so unimportant to them in the first place, that they can't be bothered to trim a few branches.

I don't think I understand the question. The sirens are for tornadoes. There were none threatening downtown. The first warning was for Clermont County only, then more recently it was expanded to Brown Co. and now a potential tornado was spotted near WestChester - hence the sirens more recently.

Sooo, how many street legal all-electric cars are even registered in Hamilton county? Four? Five? Or, for that matter, how are the meter maids expected to identify them on sight to avoid ticketing? Oh well, I guess that's what the press conference is for. They should have the nerve to do a special incentive program for Smart Cars. I've seen a bunch of them around town, with seemingly more all the time. There might actually be people to take advantage of such a program.

I've never seen a problem with bus/transit wraps. I think there's a huge difference between a dedicated advertizing structure (like a billboard) and putting advertizing on an existing surface (a building wall, a bus, a bus stop shelter). The former is a visual blight which clutters the landscape and negatively alters the urban environment. The latter - I think - can serve an an enhancement to existing structures and vehicles.

Dang ... I don't know what schools are like in Ohio, but growing up in Florida, we talked about Native Americans all the time. It was a huge part of our history cirriculum. I think there are several reasons we don't use "genocide" to describe the decline of Native Americans. - Disease was far and away the largest culprit. A lack of immunity to European diseases wiped out up to 90% of the populations of certain tribes. Particularly in South America, explorers often found decimated civilizations that had fallen appart years before the first European settlers b/c the diseases travel faster - The worst attrocities occured before "America" existed as a country. Obvious exceptions abound, but the worst of the worst was done by Spaniards, British, French, and yes ... other Indian tribes. - The American attrocities were largly against the great plains tribes. Since America was actually at war with these tribes, I think that's dulled some of the potential cries of "genocide." It was armed conflict against nations that considered themselves sovereigns. I think the most obvious example of American abuses against Indians was what we did to the Cherokee. Unlike the Plains Indians, the Cherokee wanted to become Americans, and had no interest in armed conflict against the US. They bought land, started farming, and generally wanted to become citizens. But then Andrew Jackson shipped them off to Oklahoma because politicians in GA, NC, and TN wanted their land. Consequently, I think that's why the "Trail of tears" gets by far the most focus in the history texts.

^ I agree Civvik. That's why I'm optimistic about the 100 Walnut rendering. It looks almost exactly like the renderings for Atlantic Station's office buildings, and those turned out to be very nice in person.

Normally, I'm a staunch supporter of a grid. But after looking at Flint's outskirts, I absolutely understand what you're saying, dmerkow. Flint's "suburban" roads were obviously planned back when they thought the city was going to be huge. So they have this absurd quasi-urban grid network extending out into - not even suburban - but downright rural land use. There's absolutely no point, especially since the city is contracting.

I lied. I went looking for the original 2008 paper anyway. It actually wasn't easy, as it seems like all the other websites just cited the Time article too. :) You have to pay $5 for the paper. Here's the abstract: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14036.pdf

I'm too lazy to dig up the actual papers, but here's a link to a Time Magazine article which provides a great summary. It's actually two studies - a 2008 multi-university study, and a 2005 Columbia university paper. It gives you the names of the professors, so you might be able to dig up the originals from there. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1818255,00.html

It's fraudulent for any article on gentrification to not reference the recent landmark study on the subject. For those not familiar, a multi-university study examined data from thousands upon thousands of neighborhoods before and after gentrification. The study concluded (despite their own initial assumptions) that almost all the supposed negatives of gentrification don't actually happen. Low income residents are not displaced any faster than in typical renter turnover in non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Furthermore, low income minority residents in a gentrified neighborhood saw a significant increase in their houshold income, over non-gentrified neighborhoods. I don't remember the exact numbers, but for one group it was as high as 33%. Anyway, point being that even if 3CDC were converting occupied housing into condos (which they aren't), it still wouldn't be a bad thing. These anti-gentrification crusaders are ignorant at best, frauds at worst. I'm going to give this student "journalist" the benefit of the doubt, and just presume it's ignorance from a poorly researched article.

Local is not always better. This is particularly true for casual dining establishments. My hometown in Florida had an independent sports bar open up next to our brand new arena ... and wow, was it bad. Regardless of how mediocre places like ESPN zone or Buffalo Wild Wings are, it pales in comparison to the disaster that is a poorly managed independent sports bar. The restaurant business is a tough one, and it pays to have someone with experience behind the counter.

I'm sure most people on this forum won't take too kindly to neighborhood complaints, especially like the comment quoted above. However, I think there's an interesting truth to what he's saying - albeit in a rather unsophisticated way. The current planning trend is to spread out public housing. It's a repudiation of early 20th century planning, which intentionally tried to concentrate poverty into the urban core with housing projects. So modern day "best practices" want to spread out public housing - and I think that's a good strategy. However, that's not really what's going on here. These plans were made once Westsiders gained a majority in the Housing Authority. These Westsiders are quite openly bitter about the Section 8 influx into their neighborhoods with the gentrification of OTR. Yet, this project is way too small to actually help the goal of deconcentrating poverty. It's basically just a giant "F**K YOU" from one neighborhood to another. It's sort of like, "We Westsiders have to deal with this section 8 stuff and now that we're in charge, look what we're going to give you." So it really is "class warfare" although not the kind you might expect. It's the middle-class Westsiders making a statement against the upper-middle-class Eastsiders. Now, I don't think this specific public housing plan is a huge problem, simply because the number of units is so small. I doubt it will have a huge effect on property values. However, I think the motivation behind the project is extremely disturbing. You don't plan a city based on spite, and I think that's exactly what's going on here. Furthermore, public housing does tend to kill property values (although again, I'm hopeful that this project is too small to matter). So I find it disturbing that the Housing Authority would be so gung ho about potentially de-stabilizing one of the city's most solid tax bases. It's one thing to spread out poverty. It's quite another to target your most stable tax generators and give them yet another financial incentive to move out of city limits.

LOL ... that blog doesn't exactly seem like the most credible news source, to say the least. However, as I mentioned in another thread, the MLS shows that a ton of properties in OTR recently went "sale pending" particularly along the proposed streetcar route. I can't speculate about nationality, but it sure looks like someone decided to buy up a bunch of properties North of Liberty all at once.

Perhaps quasi related - the MLS shows that TONS of buildings along Race and Elm just went "sale pending" at about the same time. Might be 3CDC or another large investor waiting to capitalize on the streetcar and/or the quarter's success.

I hope you're right, although there's potential for that to have the opposite effect. As an anecdotal example, my block in Cincinnati city limits had at least 3 duplexes converted to single family within the last 2 years. The same things that make city living "cool" can also lead to tiny average household sizes. Property values are up, but household size is down. Also, I wonder about - again in Cinicinnati - the effects of gentrification on overall population numbers. A couple thousand very poor people have left the inner city in recent years. Presumably not all of them stayed within city limits. Frankly, I consider that a good trend. But in terms of the census, there's no way that young professionals are replacing them at a 1 to 1 ratio.