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Interesting, and great analysis too.

Agreed that Slate itself is liberal. But I'm not sure that isolated counter-examples add up to a counter-explanation, or that they disprove the basic point that highly conservative areas tend to be less walkable. Or that highly conservative areas tend to be less diverse. These are facts. Tendencies are facts. The extent or meaning of a tendency can be very much debatable even when the existence of that tendency is clear. No one is going around slapping a "LAZY" badge on random conservative individuals. The question is how to explain an observed correlation between the walkability scores (which are somewhat arbitrary to begin with) and the political leanings of various areas.

Do you have a counter-explanation? Generalities are an attempt to explain relationships between observable phenomena. Doesn't have to be 100% true to still be a valid point. In samples the size of modern cities and political camps, few things are going to be 100% true.

The Toby Keith bar in Cincy is a good one, as large bars go. Lots of space, good bathrooms, biggest plates of nachos you will ever see.

Liberals value walking, conservatives don't. Liberals value cities, conservatives don't.

Better yet, how about downtown instead.

When they sound more like Madonna, apparently.

^^ Yes, surfohio, that is what I'm talking about for a boardwalk. Thank you. To me that is a whole lot better than setbacks and treelawns and isolated mega-bars. BTW, Cincinnati's Toby Keith bar is in a brand new multistory mixed-use city block. So I doubt Toby's up here demanding a suburban outparcel in downtown Cleveland. And the more I think about it, the more I feel like those shouldn't be in the plan.

No. I would keep the boardwalk but place entertainment venues alongside it, instead of separating the venues from the river. I've never seen a boardwalk lined with concrete-encased shrubberies like you'd find outside the mall.

Most neighborhoods don't have bars scattered so widely. Most neighborhoods take efforts to avoid that sort of thing. Besides, I thought the point of an entertainment district was to have some clustering for synergy purposes. Like East 4th. And I thought the point of a waterfront development was to focus on the waterfront. Here it seems like an afterthought.

These 1-2 story outparcels are not appropriate for the site. I also agree with many here that the entertainment venues should be along the waterfront. I don't understand the planning logic of isolating the bars from each other or from the river. I especially don't understand why the waterfront is separated from the development by so much landscaping. The layout as a whole seems poorly conceived.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/04/old_bridgestone_tech_center_ma.html Robert Schoenberger, The Plain Dealer CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Firestone's century-old offices and tire plant in Akron may become the site of an oil, gas and chemicals research hub. Mayor Don Plusquellic could today sign an agreement to sell the 35-acre site to Amerimar Realty, a Philadelphia real estate company that has developed hotels, offices and other projects in Pennsylvania, California and Colorado. The agreement gives Amerimar a one-year option to buy the property for $5 million, giving the developer an opportunity to shop the Firestone building to potential tenants. "This is going to be big," Amerimar owner David G. Marhsall said Thursday from his office in Philadelphia. "What we want to do is really create a hub for research in the gas and oil and polymer industries."

I like the one building but I wish it were more than one. Still a whole lot of useless greenspace patches of for a "Phase 2" of a downtown waterfront development. Very suburban in its land usage, as if that apartment building is a mall and Toby Keith's is an Applebee's.

When my team plays there we bring in quite a lot of suburbanites. All of them connected with the teams playing, of course, but nobody seems hesitant to come. I don't get why there isn't more seating in this plan though. One would think that if they expect it to be a draw at all, there would be somewhere for people to sit.

This is about as far from a "boondoggle" as anything I can imagine. It's one of the only worthy projects the east side has gotten in the past decade. If this project becomes a reality, it would give the east side its first legitimate attraction outside of University Circle. If that's not a big deal I don't know what is. While I agree that there are no commercial districts on the verge of revival immediately nearby, I think this would instantly make the core of the east side a lot more liveable, and I think that would bode well for several commercial districts in the general area... St Clair, Superior, Euclid, Carnegie, and a slew of smaller strips on the numbered streets.

I've been in that area a lot in the past couple years, and the explosion of McMansions there never ceases to disappoint me. Good luck setting up a "neighborhood downtown" when the neighborhood is built like Solon. Horrible, horrible planning. I'm not sure how Hough comes back from it, honestly. It will never pass as Solon, but there's so much Solon-style housing scattered around it that it can't really be anything else either. Horrible, horrible planning. That said, League Park is near the top of my priority list. "Green space" with a history and a purpose. The sort of thing that draws crowds like a sale at Penney's. Major upgrade for Hough when this gets done.

Thank you for the quick reply! This should be well past the stage of negotiation and disappointment by now. This is a multi-million dollar screwup that impairs the functionality and marketability of our transit system across the board. The notion that we're still kindly begging them to provide an acceptable product after this much time is ludicrous. I fear that RTA may have hampered its position by "making due" with these obviously defective machines for so long. They should have been rejected and sent back to the vendor in as soon as the problems were discovered, i.e. as soon as they were first plugged in and tested. Then again, these seem like design flaws that should have been obvious long before the vendor was even selected.

And back on topic, I've been meaning to post to Jerry for a while that RTA should periodically check that the credit card slots in the fare machines haven't gotten stuff jammed into them. The last time I was at the airport, the one fare machine that was working would barely take my credit card - had to give it quite a bit of elbow grease to make it work. I almost had to..... GASP..... Use cash. We are aware of this. Vandalism has been an issue. We have "roving" repairmen who go to machines as soon as they are reported. It is difficult to keep up with all the sick people in this society who have no brains and nothing better to do than interfere with good people trying to use public transit. Not defending it, not saying it isn't vandalism... but are you sure the offenders have "nothing better to do than interfere" or were they perhaps transit riders who became terminally frustrated with the machines? While we're on the subject, weren't these machines supposed to be fixed by the vendor at some point in the last few years? Despite earlier assurances, I've seen absolutely no improvement since they were first installed... not even to the display lighting, which was so poorly done it looks unprofessional.

Looking around at other cities that doesn't seem to be the case. And the trend of people moving back in has really just begun. I would venture that things look better for urban retail right now than at any point since the internet began. Regarding the casino environs, that parking deck looks a whole lot better than I expected it to. A very pleasant surprise.

As such, the Hanna Annex conversion is a really big deal. My biggest wish is that development moves south along 14th. PHS looks great until you gaze in that direction and the city feels one block wide.

I must have missed something... when did this "multiplier effect" become such an issue? I don't see how you can have long term job creation with a glaring residential deficiency. As for subsidizing new residential, the city does that constantly and on a large scale. Doling out public money for residential construction is nothing new. The only difference being sought here a more urbanist mindset in how the money's doled out. For starters, a stronger residential component in the current lakefront plan. The last thing downtown needs is more small shops to fill. There are dozens sitting empty right now.

Same thing happened recently at Cadillac Ranch. Should have been anticipated. More and more this sounds like a project that CSU couldn't afford to do right. Jackson has to side with the union, he's got no choice politically. So now he's forced to oppose CSU. Wonderful. Then again, if local construction wages are the reason we can't get anything built in a high-demand environment, maybe these guys are part of the problem. They certainly seemed like it, protesting in front of East 4th Street while East 4th Street was transforming downtown for the better. But it's a complex issue and these protestors are pawns in it. The Dimora trial and other scandals suggest that construction firms have way too much power around here. Constant storyline of exorbitant profits at taxpayer expense. Bringing in out-of-state workers to that end does seem to merit a giant inflatable rat. Construction increasingly requires taxpayer funding, which requires taxpayers, which I do think requires a fair share of the funding going to local workers. If the current regs make that optional, current regs should change.

Northfield already draws nobody, and it won't draw much more by adding slots. It may capture some of the slots-only players who'd come in from Akron. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that we'll see horse racing banned within our lifetimes.

Medical Marts are wholly unproven... convention centers have a terrible track record as civic investments. And as noted, the city already subsidizes residential all over the place, in more ways than one. This is about choices. Giving residential the short end of a lakefront development plan is a choice, and in my estimation, it's a bad one.

Alternatively, we could inject retail back into downtown and make all of those neighborhoods more marketable in one stroke. This seems to have worked well in a lot of places. The neighborhoods were designed around downtown retail and they cannot function properly without it.