DaninDC

I think this is why the Urban Land Institute guy (quoted on another thread) called Smart Growth, "cute sprawl". Although they do good work, you only see a firm like DPZ designing from-scratch developments way out in the suburbs, or in this case, in a rural area. Previous projects they've done include Kentlands (in suburban Gaithersburg, MD), and Seaside, Florida (the town in "The Truman Show"). I have to wonder why, if they value these principles so much, are they never engaged in an urban infill project???

We get that benefit in my office--they give us $65 a month in transit fare, and we can have up to an additional $45/mo withheld pre-tax. The firm writes it off as a business expense. President Clinton actually signed into law the legislation that requires all federal agencies to offer the transit benefits to their employees. Technically, all transit agencies are supposed to have these benefits available, but it is up to each employer whether or not they participate.

On that note, DC is looking to open its first street railway since 1964 by next year. It will be a 1.1 mile street-running line (with overhead catenary) connecting the Anacostia Metro Station to Bolling Air Force Base. The District DOT is paying for the line, which is costing about $10 million. There are also plans to install streetcar tracks along H Street NE, beginning at Union Station, when the street is repaved soon. Service is expected to begin in 3-5 years.

Everyone knows there are no hot chicks in the sprawl.

Tomb With a View http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2007-01-10/news/feature_1.html

Ah, so that explains why The Big Egg is now a Vietnamese restaurant!

From someone who has a severe case of suburbanitis, thanks for sharing!

Careful there, X. I suggested that idea way back in this thread, and it was promptly shot down as being inappropriate.

As promised, MTS, my point-by-point response. Granted, Cleveland is drastically under-retailed as of this moment. If you reach market saturation in the future by building a whole slew of strip malls and power centers, however, who is going to lease vacant storefronts? This naturally leads to a decrease in real estate values of the unleaseable space, leading to abandonment, delinquency, and so on. Would you rather I blow sunshine up your behind? It's my belief that being a sycophant isn't going to help matters much. At the same time, this board isn't here for me to bitch about my own neighborhood, or complain about the delays on the Metro this morning. I don't try to be condescending--I try to offer a different perspective and thoughtful criticism based on my own observations from the East Coast. When I'm in the middle of the downtown of a large American city in the middle of a weekday afternoon, and it feels damn-near apocalyptic, something has gone wrong. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Twenty-nine. See above. As a design professional, I'm critical of the entire built environment. I get paid to have high design standards. Deal with it. I grew up in Maple Heights, and lived there for almost 19 years. As a kid, I would go downtown to see my Dad at work; go into the city to visit family; shop at Higbee's, May Company, and Woolworth's; get on the bus to see the Indians, or for a concert; hang out in the Flats/WHD when home from college; grab a bite to eat or a cup of coffee and hang out with friends. I recently came back from a 10 day Cleveland bender where I attempted to single-handedly keep several bars and restaurants in business. Do I get my Cleveland passport renewed or not? The name of my community is Capitol Hill. Your 5-10 mile barometer is faulty--because of higher population densities, there is a lot more in 5-10 miles here than in Cleveland. With that being said, there is a strip mall about a mile north of my house (it sucks), and the closest mall is in Arlington, Virginia. Cleveland is propped up by Key Bank and the Cleveland Clinic. Detroit is propped up by GM. New York is propped up by Wall Street. Los Angeles is propped up by Hollywood. Re-read your statement immediately above--you can't have it both ways. But because we're so propped up by the federal government, we are not able to tax 40% of our land, are not allowed to impose a commuter tax, and pay $2000 a day for the Vice President's daily commute. Would you rather I compare Cleveland to Buffalo, so that Cleveland looks better by comparison, and nobody's feelings get hurt? The population of the District has stabilized around 570,000, and is expected to show an increase in the 2010 Census. Oh yeah, this despite nobody being able to afford to live here. Should I feel sorry for people who decide to cash out on their houses and move to the burbs? Of course not. A lot of those people are profiting hundreds of thousands of dollars simply for owning the same place for 10 or 20 years. Then they abandon the city, except for driving in on Sunday to attend church. You want positive suggestions? Look for my manifesto soon.

MTS, I will respond to your points in some detail later today. I intend to begin a new thread to elaborate more thoroughly on my frustrations with Cleveland, and what can be done with Cleveland to make it a better place to live and work.

Well, MTS, if you must know, I've offered suggestions, but "holier-than-thou" folks like you summarily dismiss them. Why this is, you haven't made clear. I notice you haven't responded to my idea of putting a Target store (or something akin to that) at W 25th and Lorain. Or did you selectively not read that comment? I notice you haven't commented on the need to fill currently vacant storefronts. Don't you think SYC will make it LESS likely to lease vacant neighborhood retail space? Of course, I recognize there is a double standard, as I don't live in Cleveland, and therefore automatically know less about urban design principles than anyone in Cuyahoga County. Cleveland is extremely frustrating. It's almost as if it ignores what is happening in the rest of the country. The approaches being taken toward redevelopment are very slapdash, and are not well thought-out. There is not a consistent strategy, let alone a clearly established motivation, for improving the city. It's a half-assed idea here, another half-assed idea there. Thank God for Bob Stark, who I believe is the last best hope for the City of Cleveland. Unfortunately, all the wonderful things about Cleveland are often shadowed by the hellbent determination to remake Cleveland into the largest suburb in Northeast Ohio. I, for one, am not satisfied with the crumbs that Steelyard Commons is. It's lowest common denominator development. Anyone who thinks otherwise can just drive their ass 5 minutes down 176 and across the Valley View bridge and kiss my behind. People in Cleveland deserve vibrant urban neighborhoods that work for them--not another gimmick where people "hope" it "inspires" more development in the city. It's time to get rational, instead of trying to rationalize everything. Cleveland deserves to be the great city it once was, and could be, if it weren't for people so willing to accept whatever bullshit scraps are thrown their way.

I think "Gentleman's Quarters" might get you sued: http://www.gquarters.com/ http://www.thegentlemensquarters.com/main.html

Which I've also said is a P.O.S. development. No dance needed, but I'm really tired of the unsubstantiated "urbanism is only for the rich" suggestions.

It was never a choice between a dirty industrial pit and a forest! It's a choice between building urban, or building the same cheap, suburban crap you can find anywhere else. Cleveland no longer looks like Cleveland, and is getting less so by the day. But hey--there's cheap, plentiful parking! Hell, while we're exploring the irony of bulldozing a steel mill for plastic cartoon buildings where people earn poverty wages, let's demolish the BP Building and put an Amoco station there. And MTS, *I* have low expectations? You guys are the ones thrilled with this generic bullshit architecture. It looks like someone Xeroxed Macedonia and plopped it on the banks of the Cuyahoga. How innovative!

No one is arguing against creating jobs!!! Thanks for pulling the old "take whatever crumbs you can get" line of reasoning. Cleveland - Lowest Expectation Location in the Nation!

Nope. Not really a fan of much that's been built lately. I like the Superior Viaduct apartments, though, and Jacobs Field is a good place to see a ballgame. The Chicle Townhomes project is a good, albeit overdue, idea. Other than that, much of what gets built in Cleveland these days is generic, predictable, and anti-urban.

I don't have to like every hare-brained idea to be positive about Cleveland. It's kind of like, "Support our president, or you hate America", isn't it???

My apolgies, wimwar. I really meant "MayDay". StrapHanger, I understand what you're saying. But if you want a Target in Cleveland, why can't you put it at say, near W25th and Lorain instead? To me, that would seem to help the Ohio City neighborhood a great deal, and create foot traffic for other businesses. Repeat with the rest of the stores, in other neighborhoods. Instead, all sorts of retail is being overconcentrated at one out-of-the-way site. Maybe it's not going to hurt any neighborhood retail (we could be so lucky), but it's certainly not *helping*, either. In fact, the study referred to above concluded that SYC would have a negative impact on Dave's Supermarkets, which is actually an independent, homegrown retailer that has had much success and is very committed to the city and its neighborhoods. What kind of signal does SYC send to other would-be independent retailers??? And w28th has my opinion pegged. I guess it's my fault for mistakenly thinking that Cleveland was once one of the great cities of America, and could return to that someday. But if you're happy competing with the Bedfords, Parmas, and Macedonias of the world, knock yourself out.

Now you're being disingenous, MayDay. I'm generally very positive on Cleveland. What drives me absolutely bonkers is that the city thinks it can behave like a suburb and continue to survive. This strategy hasn't worked for the past 60 years, and it isn't going to work now. The cities that ARE doing well are the ones that are focusing on urbanity--not cookie cutter schlock architecture found in every American suburb. When is something going to change??? Next thing you know, the city will find a way to bulldoze a prime parcel of land to build something that looks exactly like Legacy Village. And as you damn well know, Target isn't the only store at SYC. Stop oversimplifying.

Think of it this way--if you need to head to a drug store, you're not going to use the one in your neighborhood if you're going to be at SYC anyway. Same as for other businesses like book stores and record shops. Wimwar, you keep equating "neighborhood businesses" with speciality niche retailers. It's the bread-and-butter places that are going to lose their asses. So yeah, you'll have your very own suburban parking paradise right outside downtown, but at what expense? And let's not forget that for some city residents, the suburban shopping centers are still going to be closer to them than SYC. This is going to help Cleveland as much as Tower City and the Galleria did.

But even that is not surrounded by an ocean of parking in a relatively remote, accessible-by-automobile-only area. The Target will front on 14th Street, much as the Best Buy and Container Store in Tenleytown front on the sidewalk of Wisconsin Avenue. And then there's the Metro station right there. SYC is just a bad joke in a place that has largely forgotten how to be a city.

How ridiculous can you be? The City of Cleveland approved the P.O.S. that is Steelyard Commons. If you're going to throw stones back, at least recognize that a city cannot approve development that occurs IN ANOTHER STATE. Waiting for neighborhood storefronts to empty out as folks head for the concrete masonry and EIFS wonderland of SYC....

You mean like putting a suburban big-box shopping center within a stone's throw of downtown?

Actually, I think Detroit would be a bit tougher than Ohio. The local economy in Detroit is less than stellar right now. Detroit also doesn't exactly have a record of respect for its historical buildings, although there are more renovations taking place in recent years.

But if I'm not mistaken, Houston's single 7.5 mile light-rail line has a higher ridership than any of the RTA rail routes. I don't necessarily agree with this. Some of the finest pedestrian-oriented areas in the country are in the South, including Charleston and Savannah. Richmond was once a thriving city, and is very much suffering a post-industrial hangover. Atlanta was founded as a railroad hub, but I believe they demolished their grand old train station. Southern cities don't seem to have suffered (Charlotte, for example) because they were backwater towns compared to the mighty industrial centers of the Northeast and Midwest. Most of these cities never saw significant investment until the era of air conditioning, though, so they "started new" after suburbanization and gaudiness became the de facto principles of development.