Jeffery

The city that gets the least coverage at UO has been getting a lot of attention from the Knight Foundation. They have something called the "Soul of the Community" project that is working in various cities, Akron among them....link A new study of Akron and 25 other cities shows what people are passionate about in their communities. The three-year “Soul of Community” study focused on places where John S. and James L. Knight were passionate about their newspapers. The Gallup and Knight Foundation concluded people in Akron are passionate about openness and beauty and social life more than leadership and safety. Gallup researcher Katherine Laughlin says the survey offers new approaches for communities to organize themselves for economic growth. Akron, Ohio (with links to .pdf reports and zipped spreadhseets and media coverage)

^ I was wondering if there was something like that in Cincy, like the famous Filbert Steps off Telegraph Hill in SF, where houses front the steps instead of a street.

I finally used the steps about two weeks ago. Walked from Bellvue Park down some steps to Ohio Street, then the short flight next to Phillipuskirche to get to Findlay Market and walked downtown to the Banks. Returned the same way, but via Main, and saw a flight of steps up the hill in-line with Main Street...didnt go there, though. Deffo going to use those Ohio Street steps more to work a visit to Duttenhofers in with a trip to Findlay Market. Next day, was more ambitious but did things more as a flaneur, with no set route. This time I walked through Pendelton, then across the street to Liberty Hill and wound around Liberty Hill, using different flights of steps, till I reached Gods Bible Seminary up on top of the hill. Libterty Hill: Such a cute story-book neighborhood..never knew it existed until that day! Found that Pendleton House that is in that pen/ink/watercolor (?) notecard you can get at Park + Vine. Steps are fun and great cardio exercise. Im going to do more of those. BTW, thanks for the tips on Mnt Adams via steps. I was wondering how easy it is to reach via downtown.

I think the closest Great Lakes city to Rocheser might be...a big might...Milwaulkee...the way the downtown is oriented around a river and that the river splits the downtown into two parts...

Ive been to Rochester twice now (& a big "thank you" to ColDayMan who told me to "go!" when I posted that query about a road trip to R from Buffalo two years ago). I do not catch the Dayton vibe, tho I was expecting it. Dayton seems deader and more decimated by urban renewal and more fragmented...& doesnt have something like a whitewater river and waterfall in the heart of town...R seems to engage the river more. Rochester did an outstanding job with that High Falls district. Good to see that. Only regret during my two visits is that I did not see any of the older neighborhoods, the way I did of Syracuse and Buffalo. Of the upstate citys the one that seems more Dayton-scale is maybe Syracuse, though they have a more intact downtown. A substantial part was demolishied but what survived is fairly of-a-piece. I think Rochester did get the eastern/southern European influx, as did Syracuse and Buffalo...I recall finding something out about this online. Syracuse certainly did...Italians and Poles and also an Irish community and neigborhood. @@@@ I was suprised to find out about the Rochester subway (found out about it online), which was, as Jmeck notes, more of a terminal railroad for outlying transit lines, bringing them into downtown. But I think that was the original purpose for the Cincy subway, too. I wonder if that big high rise with the flying saucer on top was designed by Paul Rudolph or his firm, as it looks like his style a bit.

..I'm sort of wondering where the demolition money is coming from. **** An 80% drop in population is pretty amazing, actually. Is there anything at all left...perhaps some suburban stuff along a highway or near a freeway interchange? I thought since this is a county seat there might be some reason for being, if just for government stuff.

"Defunding transit is how you smack down urbanites, environmentalists, and people of color, all in one fell swoop. It’s how you telegraph a disdain for all things European. It’s how you show solidarity with swing-state suburbanites who don’t understand why their taxes are going toward subways they don’t even use. And it’s how you subtly reassure your base that you’re not concerned about the very poor."

This article in Salon looks at the Tea Parties attempts to defund mass transit as a new front in the culture wars: The Tea Parties War on Mass Transit

I heard that report on Manufacturing increasing, but thought it was nationwide, not just the NY Fed district?

You dont hear much about Japan being in deep water. And we have the same debt rate as France? heh.

...finally made it to the Banks this weekend. I can see how that new street leading to the Red's ballpark will be a hot location for food & drink. It works good with that stadium entrance. Looks like something called "Tin Hat" will be opening on that street. Though I usually like that infil style architecture so far the place seems sort of sterile. It's not working as well as I thought it would, in terms of aesthetics or urban design. Not sure whats up with that. Still hoping the riverfront park will turn out OK.

I've been overnight in Scranton twice now. Both times at that Lackawanna Station hotel. Ink did a great job catching the vibe of their downtown. The first time there was a benefit night at the downtown bars and I did a music/pub crawl thing. The place has better nightlife than you'd expect (and you'd expect maybe 'Springfiedl')....place is remarkably intact though you can see some urban renewal stuff it was mostly infill/reconstruction like near the hotel. First time I drove the valley to Wilkes-Barre and back. This time I went to Steamtown and the mining museum up on the hill. History here is quite interesting. Industrialization came in part as a way to use the "idle labor" of the wives and daughters of the miners to weave linen....so this became a textile center as well as a mining center. That's right, and driving around I was expecting to see evidence of a lot of abandonment...empty houses and vacant lots. I really didnt see that at all! And thats my only complaint with this set...no neighborhood snaps. That's what really impressed me about Scranton and nearby towns...that their inner city areas dont have that "shrinking city" urban vacancy feel to them, including the neighborhood business areas....

bump for black history month

Yes, Hts121 we all know you are an Obama apologist and establishment Dem type so you are going to spin this in a postiive way. There is indeed a political angle in how one spins the numbers and I would appreciate it if you keep your partisan BS to the Politics subforum. Anway, from the article: Which is pretty much what has been the track record on jobs creation for Ohio, that I've been tracking from the BLS monthly employment estimates. If the rate accelerates that would be good news. The DDN artcile also indicates that we are into a recovery. Its just a weak one in terms of jobs creation vis a vis the scale of the collapse.

Can you imagine the hassle it mustive been to transform the irregular metes & bounds landholdings of Manhattan, completed with country villages like Harlem, into the gridiorn plan. I guess all the landholders were somehoe assigned city blocks and compensated for the street rights-of-way? The real estate/surveying/valuation & compensation aspect of this mustve been a nightmare.

BLS stats say that employment is increasing but not at a fast enough rate to take us to pre-recession levels anytime soon.

Jobless rate plunges to lowest in 3 years says the Dayton Daily News headline, but the article tells you whats really happening.... Ohio’s unemployment rate nose-dived in December to its lowest level in three years, according to data released Friday by the Department of Job and Family Services. But the drop ...was mainly the result of discouraged workers shelving their job searches. So, it's fake. The economy isn't creating the jobs and putting people to work. People stop looking, and the "unemployment" % artificially goes down.

I think Austin Pike area is going to be what 725 was in the late 1970s and '80s

Tedolph is a groupie of the 1%

Those arent really cabs but post coaches. Note the post-horn logo on the sides. Yellow and black are the colors of the German post office.

I was thinking of it more as an already-existing redistributive mechanism, and one that has an element of "reward for working" to it since one has to be working (earned income) to qualify.

From what I saw of Greektown, it was pretty good....yes that little street is not long but the casino side works pretty well in the context of the little retail stuff across the street. That's what I would have been open for...

For RageRunner...some history....since he correctly called this early based on the housing market performance... Documents show how Fed missed housing bust Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy. Newly released transcripts of Fed meetings during Bernanke's first year as chairman show that, among Fed officials, he often expressed the most concern about housing. But no official, according to the transcripts, recognized the extent of the damage a housing bubble would cause. A year later, the housing market's collapse helped send the nation into its worst recession since the Great Depression. In fact, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then a Fed official, expressed confidence in September 2006 that "collateral damage" from housing could be avoided...

One way to deal with the concentration of wealth, of the benefits from the current set up in the 1%, or whatver %, is via distribution. The way to do that is via some sort of Robin Hood tax, and use the revenue generted to subsidize a massive expansion of the EITC, using the tax code to redistribute wealth. People would file but would get more than simple credit, it would be a credit plus some other number as an income supplement. Call it Credit Plus, since you'd be getting a credit plus something beyond a credit. This way the tax would actually be revenue neutral, in that it not would subsidize "expanded government"...meaning one could still have an austerity program....it would go back to the 99%, so to speak.

Here's some more on middle class mobility...downward mobility....for the tail end of the baby boom and the "millenials".... Middle Class Dropouts ...not the gender and especially the racial disparity here: "...One's foothold on the middle class is more secure if you are a white man. Thirty percent of white women and 38% of black men drop out of the middle class, while only 21% of white men do. Things have only gotten worse in recent years. The Great Recession has likely made it harder for many people to remain in the middle class, experts said. ...the article talks about a Pew study that takes a long term look at what happened to people who were born in the early/mid 1960s vs their parents. Which sort of verifies what i've observerd. However, the article also talks about youth. Young adults may find it particularly difficult to hold onto their parents' middle class status. That's because they are having a much harder time landing jobs, particularly well-paying positions in their field. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds was 14.4% in December, compared to the national 8.5% rate. This could hurt their earning potential for decades to come, which has earned them the nickname "The Lost Generation." Then, on the same page, there is this "We're Number One!".... Americans make up half of the world's richest 1% Yay! USA #1 ! USA # 1 ! Huzzah!