Jeffery

The combination of IT specialization and Wright Patterson must have something to do with this. But also, lower rate of immigration in general. Dayton being a weak market economy, means not much of a draw for immigrants, so less in the "unskilled" category. So what we get are the semi-skilled (the Brookings study didnt touch much on that though it mentions this) and the high-skilled. Which also means this area is generating enough tech jobs to attract a certain kind of immigrant vis a vis places like, say, Toledo and Akron, which would be the equivilant cities, perhaps, to Dayton. As an anectode, one of these immigrants "made it" enough as a enterpeneur to endow the WSU business school , AND buy the old IBM building in downtown Dayton for his offices. Offices for his US and Indian companies (he apparently has business interests in Hyderbad or somewhere over there in the "old country") ...just a sign on how the Dayton area is re-orienting towards this tech sector.

Louisvilles Broken Sidewalk blog has a great infographic comparing light rail vs BRT and highways. They arent seriously pushing for rail transit in Louisville, but this is a nice way of illustrating different modes (to light-rails benefit).

Wow, why? This place is great! That density downtown reminds me of Cincy a bit, but with those crooked narrow streets. This place looks great

I dont follow sports at all (except for some desultory following of UofL and UofK basketball), but this article..the reactions to James leaving reminded me of the reactions to the Browns leaving...since I was up in Cleveland for a visit around the time that happened. Sounds like James wanted that championship win, and was just not getting it with the Cavs? So he goes to a team that might have given him a better chance? Sounds like a simple career move on his part? Which is I guess the case with the top level talent like James, in non-sports things. They go where they can be the big winners or work with the winning team. That was Richard Floridas example in The Rise of the Creative Class, with Pittsburgh vs Boston when it came to IT talent. I guess also, it depends on what your priorities are. Do you self-actualize by becoming footloose and traveling across the country and abroad following career advancement, or are you more place-based, close to family (extended and immediate) and freinds, and prefer to live a place that might not have these optimizing/maximizing career benefits for reasons that are not career-related?

....which is I guess another way of saying "Cheerios". My breakfast is frequently Cheerios and milk (non fat or low fat, now whole) (with honey for sweetners & berries sometimes) Even basic stuff is going up.

So far things are actually working out with my new schedule, though mainly because my connecting bus has been running late. Yesterday I managed to get back from work, go to WSU and get an Ohiolink book (on Sea Ranch, of all places...for some reason I'm getting intrest in the Bay Region Style again), and then return to hub and still make my connection back to Washington Township One of the riders is a good organizer. She xeoroxed a bunch of flyers with the name and e-mail contact at RTA for us to contact to register our complaints and suggestions. I sent off an email and got a reply that they are working on it. So RTA is responsive to customers. Im going to look for a bike tomorrow. So far my one experience with a bike shop has been underwhelming....they didnt seem to be interested in selling me a bike. I'm going to another bike shop and see if they have (or can get) that "Electra" bike I saw last weekend in a large sized frame. The bike I saw at the pawn shop is gone, unfortunatley. Dons has their bikes out on a rack in front of the store, and as we passed by with the bus I looked out and saw it wasnt out there anymore.

My magic census 8-ball says they are living in Centerville/Washtington Twp, the Lexis-Nexis area, and in Beavercreek. But how about that Pittsburgh number!!? According to Brookings that ratio is the highest of the cities they looked. Columbus is apparently considered a new gateway city for immigrants, too, based on the categorization set up by the study. I guess this is in part due to the Somali influx?

^ Ironically enough they tore down the big old industrial loft building in Daytons techtown. Cost too much to do an adaptive reuse from loft industrial to loft tech. Depends. For big R&D components you need alot of contiguous floor space ...though this does sound like a good re-use for some of Daytons old suburban (and vacant) industrial plants.

...and maybe not that many unskilled ones? Area Attacts High Skilled Immigrants Yet another sign that Daytons economic future is to be a sort of nerdistan, or, as Mauel Castells calls them, a Technopole Dayton has a lot of “high-skilled” immigrants for a city its size, says a study released today by the Brookings Institution. The Dayton metropolitan area has 330 high-skilled immigrants — defined as immigrants who have at least a bachelor’s degree — for every 100 “low-skilled” immigrants, according to the study. That “immigrant skill ratio” is higher than Cincinnati; Indianapolis; Madison, Wisc.; Portland, Ore.; Virginia Beach, Va.; and many other cities, according to Brookings. The Brookings study can be found here Ohio metro rankings, by skill ratio, are: Dayton 330 Cincy 276 Cols 219 Clev 169 Toledo 155 Akron 138 Younst 132 Regionally: Pittsburgh 392 (wow!...the Carnegie-Mellon influence?) Buffalo 166 Detroit 144 Louisville: 119 Indianapolis 89

...by Edward Durrell Stone, who did the Albany Mall around the same time (Louie Nunn, governor of KY, probably borrowed him from Nelson Rockefeller). Aslo the architect of Sinclair Community College and the County Building here in Dayton. SO, when can i expect a ColDayMan tour of Louisville?

History repeats itself as farce. Back in the 1930s the government (Congress and FDR) backed-off from stimulus ...AKA "New Deal"....spending due to concerns about deficits and not balancing the budget, and there was a double dip in the Great Depression, which we didnt really start digging out of until the later 1930s, partly due to "prepardness" defense spending, which was another form of simulus. As we can see there wont be any defense spending stimulus, either, this time around, since we should be widing down from the shooting war aspect of the WOT, and theres no Cold War competition in the offing, yet, with a rival superpower (which helped goose the post WWII economy). This economic situation should get interesting, should we slip back into recession.

Yes, I was thinking about it. I know some of the other riders are not happy, either. But fighting a bureaucracy is maybe not worth it since, as you note, I do have choices. The system is still working for me for non-work rides, though, like going into the city on weekends or grocery shopping. And...im pretty close to buying a bike. There was one at a pawn shop downtown that looked like it would fit me....'Marin County' brand. And I saw something at gay pride that looked nearly perfect, called an "Electra", three speed. It looked like a great sturdy utility bike if I put baskets on it.

My car-lite experment is probably going to be ending soon, due to changes to the RTA schedule. The return bus from work is now getting back downtown much later, seriously screwing up my connections. Instead of being able to take a transfer to a bus that runs right by my apartment (about 1/2 hour), I would now have to wait an hour for that bus, making what was once a 1/2 hour trip to a 1 and 1/2 hour trip. Too long. Alternative is to take the express bus to the hub and then wait, again, for a bad connection, or I walk the 1 mile or so back to my place. Something I don't really want to do during these hot & humid summer months. I'd say I could drive to the hub and take the express to and from the downtown transfer. But they changed the times on the express too. So my connection downtown to work would be too tight. On paper its do-able...assuming no inbound traffic jams or accidents screwing things up. Which is one reason I dont like the express. Interstate traffic making it not such an express, or its a crap shoot as to whether traffic messes up the schedule and, thus, making transfers at the hubs. I guess it depends on how much ones time is worth. I guess I could kill that long wait for bus 17 by going to a bar for some drink and conviavilty, or maybe the library to do internet stuff.

....says the headline of this longish Dayton Daily News article on the recent city-county merger of Louisville, mainly the economic development benefits of merger.... ....Though the regional unemployment rate in April, 9.6 percent, was slightly higher than the 9.0 percent of the four-county Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area, there is a momentum here that is contagious. Manufacturing jobs are surging — three times the rate posted by the Dayton area in a recent year-to-year comparison. Four corporations have moved into Louisville since the merger, bringing more than a 1,000 jobs each, according to data from Greater Louisville, Inc. And when it comes to downtown redevelopment, there is almost no comparison, as evidenced by the $238 million KFC Yum! Center arena that opened in downtown Louisville last October.... Personally, I still think the Dayton region has some better fundamentals than Louisville due to having two big colleges with engineering and business programs, combined with the miltary R&D and IT sectors here. It seems this area, this Dayton region, is somewhat ahead when it comes to human capital And, in general, the school systems (the suburban systems) are superior to Louisvilles. But "they" (the DDN and certain political figures) keep on pushing this merger concept as a big benefit here, something that won't fly in a community as socioeconomically divided as the Dayton metro area. THe big fail here in Dayton, compared to Louisville and even most Ohio cities outside of Youngstown, has been keeping the downtown viable as a buisness location.

Its been a long time since I posted and, guess what, I still am riding the bus. There was a hiatus in May due to being in Louisville on personal business, but this month its back on the bus. This weekend I did two things by bus. After work I had dinner with a freind and also spent some time doing First Friday events. On Saturday I did Gay Pride by bus! It was a LONG day, starting with an eary visit to the 2nd Street Market, doing some stuff with another friend (library and coffee at Press), then the pride events. Took the bus back, too. On Sunday I experimented again with grocery shopping via bus. Found out that its an easy rdie to shop at Kroger AND Trader Joe (since they are across the street from each other). Interestingly enough the suburban buses are pretty busy on weekends.

.....with all this inventing going on maybe they'll invent a time machine?

Hah, the thread parent stayed in the same hotel I did! I was planning on staying closer to dowtown, in the 'Chip Strip' but got this instead. Lucky that I did because it was a good location! That great Rust Belt Books place was just a few blocks away. Great little neighborhood!

...and it's funny about Cincy. I'm addicted to that city. I can't seem to get enough of the place. Sometimes it seems Im down there every weekend and have been using arts things as an execuse to stay over at that Garfield Place hotel. I ALWAYS stop in Cincy either to or from Louisville or I just go down there just to go. Its almost like I'd get an apartment down there if it wasnt so far to commute.

^ In the military they used to say your last duty station was always your best.

This is one of the leading indicators, so it looks like we could be setting up for a recession, or at best stagnation or very slow growth. I wonder if this fuel price surge choked off a higher growth rate?

I guess Im a convert to Louisville. I am a native of Chicago and of course that will be my hometown and everyone loves Chicago...though its become a bit too upscale/yuppie/affluent for me. I moved to Louisville with my family and spent my jr high, high school, and college years in Kentucky, in Louisville and Lexington. I used to think I was just very partisan about Louisville (rose colored glasses and all that), but it seems others think its pretty cool, too. The place just gets better and better as time goes on, rather than declining the way Dayton is. I was a convert early-on to Louisville. I think you'll find a lot of Louisvillians are quite proud and appreciative of their city, a lot of positive energy and buzz there, wanting to make the place better and make it more interesting. People support things there. No I am NOT a convert to Dayton. I am "used to" Dayton. I am "resigned" to Dayton. With all those pix and diagrams threads I've posted on the place starting in 2005 (and the research used to set them up), and with that Daytonolgy blog, it was a big exercise on making Lemonade out of a big urbanist lemon. But what can you make out of that sour and bitter lemon that is the Dayton region? So I don't do much of that anymore nor bother commenting much on this place here at UO since its a lot more interesting to talk about Cicny, Cleveland (a massively underrated city) and Columbus, since these places actually have a lot going for them. I've lived here for over 20 years and the place just treads water, If I was to be charitable I think its too small, too poor, and too square (or use whatever word you want to use...conformist, conservative, ignorant, etc...) to ever come around to being a place like Louisville, or even Lexington. It's depressing to be here, and also a bit laughable (yet pathetic) watching how the locals pat themselves on the back for their various mediocre and half-hearted attempts at urban revival. About the only good thing I have to say about Dayton is the live music scene & WYSO has given me good times and good listening, that I like hiking the reserves, that Charlies in OND carries real rye bread (imported from Canada), and that Yellow Springs and Cincy are nearby. I guess I never in my heart really moved here. I guess the place wasnt so cold when I had my partner, but now I notice it more, the way the place is lacking. But a job is a job and I just work here.

Like I said, the High Street corridor...Short North up into Clintonville....is where the action is and other areas wont really take off until this corridor is more or less 'finished'....until there are no redevelopment or re-use opportunities availble or empty storefront spaces available, or property values/rents rise enough to make people look elsewhere. At that time youll see things pick up in some of these other areas.

Gas prices have really dropped. They are around 3.76 / 3.77 per gallon now. This is a big back-off from the $4/gal and up that was earlier. And this over a holiday weekend. Though this is still $1/gal more than last year. Wonder whats up? Maybe this up/down/up/down, but then stablizing for awhile at a higher price than another up/down cycle. I guess this is how we will see the price creep up. Unprecdented highs, than a back-ing off to a lower price, but still higher than before?

The Statler was HUGE. I recall that thing when I was in Buffalo last spring. The lakefront urban renwal stuff is a fail. Yeah, its nice they have those new condos and apartments down there but the place looks like a suburban multifamily development, and its cut off from downtown by that freeway. This is one of the things I noticed. The people there are very outgoing! I had some good times during my brief stay. ..and its LESS ghetto than Dayton! There are neighborhoods in Buffalo that could be in Dayton (Black Rock) but are in much better shape than comparable Dayton areas (Twin Towers, Old North Dayton). And they still have an outlying neighborhood market hall (near that old terminal building).

I think its actually a land grant college, but after looking at these pix, heck, yeah, Cornell is fabulous. Take a look at that setting!