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Sorry, haven't had a chance to read the whole thing. But that map is interesting. It seems to indicate that artists like areas with lots of rentals, like Cleveland Heights and Lakewood. Many artists are in no position to sign a mortgage, or maintain a home, yet efforts to attract artists seem geared toward selling them houses. I'm not sure that lines up quite right. Maybe the community orgs should instead buying properties and renting them to artists.

From the NYT Detroit article, it sounds like holdouts in the sparse areas would get reduced city services, as an overt nudge to move on. Re inventory, I strongly believe we need to reduce it. That doesn't mean I necessarily accept the shrinking city model, I just think some of that inventory needs to be turned over. Shelf life expired. And the amount of wreckage we have around here does keep prices very reasonable, but it also repulses investment and new residents. Our main selling point should not be the fact that nobody wants all these houses. To me, that's more of a surrender than tearing them down.

True that.

Strap, I think the widespread observable results of Urban Renewal speak for themselves, and they look nothing like that concept. Every era produces nifty plans that get no traction. There's no way that picture was going to get built during Urban Renewal. Instead we got CSU campus and Erieview plaza, perfect examples of then-dominant thinking.

Most of Cleveland's inner city housing is shotguns and duplexes, which probably need to go. The problem with "urban renewal" was the plan behind it... suburbanize everything, reduce density, put fortresses and parking lots and bare grass everywhere. This thinking led them to remove a disproportionate amount of apartment stock and mixed use commercial buildings. They weren't trying to renew the city, they were trying to erase the very concept of city life. That doesn't have to be the result now. That was just one (very bad) plan. Glenville could be rebuilt more urban and more sustainable than it is now or ever was before. But expecting all that housing stock to come back into style may be asking a bit much. Timeless it isn't.

There's no way that current downtown growth offsets all the neighborhood losses, but growth somewhere is at least something to build on. Bottom line is this has to happen if there's to be any hope at all. Cities can't just be respositories for the lower class.

Your point is clear, but my point is that other factors distinguish this particular project from the counterexamples you listed above. Those all involve expanding some form of transit infrastructure. This is not an expansion of anything. It's a reduction. I realize there are operational enhancements for the 55 bus involved, but to what extent do those require the resurfacing and/or the median? Quite often, landscaping and other beautification projects are funded through special assessments of some kind. BID, TIF, what have you. Here we have transportation funds being used to shrink a roadway, as well as for beautification purposes. It's an eyebrow-raiser if nothing else. But I completely agree with you on the PD's rightward slant. It's plain as day, and I find it absurd when people still try to call it a liberal rag.

Did you observe anyone actively harassing anyone else? Because that's the crux of the issue here.

Interesting insights. I would always prefer a street flush with "cops on the beat" over cruisers shutting off the road. I think if we could muster a law enforcement presence on nearly every street corner, most of our problems (perceived and otherwise) would be solved.

I'm a liberal democrat, and I have no problem with calling out projects as taxpayer-funded. In this case the lack of suffcient taxpayer funds is a big part of the story. And it is possible to fund many improvements through special assessments rather than taxpayer funds. When the project mostly benefits properties immediately adjacent to it, a case could be made that special assessments are the more appropriate option.

They're shitty.

This happened to me (and most of the other nght students) during law school. We had to pass up a lot of opportunities because they involved unpaid work during business hours. Invaluable experience, there for the taking... as long as you're wealthy and don't need to hold down a job. And we were always told (by the rich kids) that if we just had more initiative, more desire, we'd be able to find time in our schedules like they did.

The article says they want to charge for parking at the current surface lot, in order to finance a garage to replace it, thereby reducing surface parking in the long run.

In the business of moving people, or things, transit times are a key metric. Perhaps THE metric. If an airline or delivery service is always late, nobody cares about its volume. Especially when it's a monopoly. Of course it'll have volume. It may even start believing it's entitled to that volume regardless of its performance. So we're really supposed to ignore the fact that our new transit system cannot come close to meeting its transit time promises? We're suppsed to equate that with some unattainable Quixotic fancy? Because it came with new sidewalks? That's ludicrous. That's the defintion of a bait & switch. The 20-minute service level is still being advertised by RTA, in writing. How can that not matter? This is a transit system... the quality of its underlying sewer pipes is really not the point. It should be judged on its performance as a transit system.

BRT was not sold to us as a way to increase capacity on the 6 route, or as a way to replace the 6 route's buses. Promises were made regarding the transit time and overall efficacy of the system. RTA still has signs up promoting 20-minute rides to the Garfield Monument. When that's the service level you advertise, achieving it doesn't mean you've somehow perfected mass transit... it means you just barely escaped the threshold of full blown failure. Nobody is asking for perfection. But the time has come for BRT to perform as advertised. Not one soul in this county agreed to pay $200 million to increase capacity on the 6 route. That was not the deal. RTA has no business pretending it was. And then there's the quality problem with the "shelters" and the fareboxes...

Interesting. I wonder if there's a way to convert bungalow burbs like Garfield Heights into this arrangement.

New bus stops and service upgrades, without tearing up a brand new road to replace it with another one. Sounds like a good deal.

You missed the happy hour I went to. I tried to sing a Survivor song at karaoke. There's a story in my eyes... turn the pages of desiiiiiiiire...

I had my window busted out on W26th last year.

I like that idea. Recently someone suggested express routes from the MM/CC to the hospitals, and the response was that this would amount to an illegal "charter" operation. I don't understand... seems similar enough to the 55F. Is there a minimum number of stops per mile required?

Idea #1: Don't leave this thing standing in its current condition.

Abandoned and partially-demo'd hulks most certainly impede development.

Based on what standard? Just scanning through the previous page of this thread, it appears that there are still major operational problems. If this is something that "works well," I'd hate to see what's considered a failure.

Agreed. Not clear why they chose to ruin the structure without clearing the land.

Worry less about where the edges are and concentrate on establishing a center. Then have the visual branding flow outward from there. Not clear exactly where that center should be, but so what. Pick a couple decent blocks and start decorating.