Jeffery

I'm going to have to revist this museum. I was there during Oktoberfest one year, shortly after it opened, and never finished seeing all the exhibits, which were pretty well done, IMO. Probably as good as the new Indiana State Museum and the Holocaust Museum. That level of exhibit design. And yeah, some of this discussion is just plain wierd for UO. Well, maybe not given the anti-government sentiment (opposition to govt. sponsorhip or support for museums in general and this museum in particular). I can see the racial or special-interest angle. The museum is about "them" and who cares about "them" and "their history? It's about "them" and not "us". So the attendance is weak becuase it doesnt interest enough people. Yet I think that will be case for most special -interest museums. It's like that "Latino" (aka Mexican) Museum in Pilsen in Chicago. It gets white hipsters (becuase non-black ethnicity is "culturaly diverse", and thus "cool") and latinos and thats about it. Or railroad museums, which pretty much just attracts parents and grandparents w. kids (maybe) and railfans...and railroad museums struggle unless they get outside support, like the California State Railroad Musuem (funded by the state) in Sacramento. Interestingly a good model for federalization would be a railroad museum. Steamtown over in Scranton PA was federalized and is now run by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site (and they are focusing in on interpreting regional railroading as well as steam locomotives in general). Another issue is parking, which isn't that obvious down around the Freedom Center. Maybe better signs on that.."Freedom Center Parking..this-a-way"? With a place like Museum Center and the Art Musuem its pretty obvious as those places are surrounded by parking lots.

They have some good baked goods and what looks like good sausage (so it seems, didn't get any sausage). West Side would probably be a regular destination for me if I lived in Cleveland. Mayday made some good suggestions. I followed the one about City Roast and sitting on the balcony. Good way to take the place in. That little West Side Cafe is pretty good, too, agree...

It was the "energy crisis" caused by higher oil prices that helped cause the economic malaise of the 1970s. It compounded the inflation that was setting in at the tail end of the Vietnam era. This oil price shock combined with aspects of the 1960s counterculture and the ealry environmental movement to create a sort of "Green/Sustainable Living" subculture or cultural trend somewhat similar to what we are seeing today...though that era was more "low tech/grassroots" vs the high tech solutions being explored in our time.

Woodward reminds me of a wannabe Michigan Avenue, with those grass islands and street trees in the sidewalk closer to the street. Rather nice. It's wide but it "works" due to the buildng heights, as I mentioned. The cool thing about Detroit are those little parklets that sometimes appear at intersections, like Harmonie Park and that one on the west side of downtown that used to be a transit hub, I think. They are unexpected...you "discover" them as you wander around downtown.

The wide streets don't read that way since the downtown is so tall and the street angles block the vistas. You do get that "lost in space" feeling around the edges, though, where parking lot land starts up, and on certain exceptionally wide (even for Detroit) streets like the one thats also sort of a parkway, by their symphony hall.

This is bad? It's just a trailer park with a big factory or something in the backround and high-tension wires. You need to come to Dayton to visit west suburban Drexel. Now that is a setting for a COPS episdoe.

Since when is Cincinnati cosmopolitan? Yeah I like the place, it's got it's moments (actually a lot of good ones) but "cosomopolitan" is not a word I would associate with Cincy.

No Youngstown either. I guess some places have finally bottomed-out. And vacancy rates might have shrunk due to demolitions. Lower vacancies since the houses are gone. As I said before places like Dayton might be on the front-end of a process that Detroit is at the back-end of. We are already starting to see arson picking up, tho no "Dayton Devils Night" just yet (though it would be kind of cool to sit in the cocktail lounge atop the Crowne Plaza and watch the fires, if it comes to that).

Yeah, the magnitude of job loss in Ohio dwarfs the losses in Kentucky, with the exception of Cincinnati & Akron. Bowling Green and E-Town are classic sunbelt boomers. Good interstate acess and, in the case of E-town, a military assist to economic growth due to Fort Knox (think of similar military economies like, perhaps, Fayettville NC, or Killeen TX) This lost decade has been featured in local media in Louisville, about that metropolitan areas' stalling economy, with a big concern about education levels. What's suprising is how poorly Lexington has done, as the Bluegrass was, for most of the post WWII era, the big growth region in the state.

It depends. The Short North is a regional draw, pulling in customers from across the metro area (as well as visitors and, perhaps, people affiliated with OSU). That is why it's so busy and the ground-level storefronts are filled. I suspect there isn't enough money or customer base in the adjacent neighborhoods to support this level of of action, so the market has to extend beyond these neighborhoods to make the Short North click. The question is "Can the Columbus area support more than one regional retail/eat/drink district or strip, developed at the same or similar level as the Short North?" If it can't, or can't support much more, then similar corridors in places like, say, Old Town East (not that familiar with the area, just an example) might not develop to the same level. The local residents will provide a customer base, sure, which will support some level of retail/eat/drink stuff, but there might not be enough out-of-neighborhood patronage to support much more than that.

I was impressed by Steubenvilles little skyscraper cluster downtown. @@@ Hutington/Ashland are or where pretty industrial, but Huntington also used to function as service center of entreport to the coal country to the south. This function was usurped by Lexington. Huntington does seem like a larger city in some ways. One interesting aspect is how "narrow" it is, squeezed into the Ohio river floodplain. Along the base of the hills just south of downtown (just a few blocks) is a very nice in-town residential area (like the Cherokee Park area in Louisville a bit) built along an Olmsteadian-style parkway, that connects up into a larger park in the hills. Very nice city living there. Another interesting area is the east side of town, which is actually older houses built on hills, from what i recall..the town climbs a bit out of the floodplain. Ashland also has "hill" neighborhoods when you get out of the river bottoms (and also has a big park in the middle of their older part of town).

...tho the Millender Center really sucks.

Detroit probably has the best Midwest downtown outside of Chicago. Too bad its so empy, huh?

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em, we're going down....

Yahoo finance: Top cities that are "running out of people" (IE shrinking) "The population of the United States has increased steadily by roughly 2.5 million people every year since World War II. Throughout prosperity and hard times, Americans continue to have families. Many of the country's regions have expanded to accommodate this population increase. Some cities have grown faster than others as the result of being at the center of some important new technology or job market. Others have lost residents because of failing industries and migration. Nevertheless, some of these cities have continued to grow slowly, or at least remain relatively stagnant, buoyed by the rising tide of the national population. There are some cities, however, that have experienced such severe hardship and decline that their populations have actually decreased significantly.... >snip< ...the cities (the article has a blurb with each), and I think NOLA is a special case, so maybe shouldnt be on this list. But the place could be a harbringer of the future if we see more natural disasters hitting urban areas? 1. New Orleans Population: 354,850 Population Change 2000-2009: -128,813 Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -26.63% Home Vacancy: 21.5% 2. Flint, Mich. Population: 111,475 Population Change 2000-2009: -13,266 Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -10.63% Home Vacancy: 18% 3. Cleveland Population: 431,369 Population Change 2000-2009: -45,205 Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -9.49% Home Vacancy: 17.5% 4. Buffalo, N.Y. Population: 270,240 Population Change 2000-2009: -21,970 Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -7.52% Home Vacancy: 17.2% 5. Dayton, Ohio Population: 153,843 Population Change 2000-2009: -11,961 Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -7.21% Home Vacancy: 18.9% 6. Pittsburgh Population: 311,647 Population Change 2000-2009: -22,056 Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -6.61% Home Vacancy: 14.1% 7. Rochester, N.Y. Population: 207,294 Population Change 2000-2009: -12,180 Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -5.55% Home Vacancy: 15.3% ....and to think I've been to all these except for NOLA and Flint.

The chart you posted only goes back to, say, 2007. And can we keep politics out of this thread? There are enough "political" threads on this board already.

China is going to be the big green energy manufacturer, not the US. Interestingly, the Germans are going green, too.

I don't have a TV?

Listening to the Wendy Waldmans stuff. Definetly of its era. Which is a good thing. Music for driving around the city on a sunny, hazy winters's afternoon, sun getting low, AKA "mellow". One can see the influences, perhaps, of Carol King, Joni Mitchell, and Laura Nyro...or you can put Waldman in this category of woman singer/songwriter. Maybe closer to Nyro than the others. "In the Cleveland the skys are cloudy and gray/ To the kids there it's always seemed that way/ Its all part/ of the main refrain" (or something like that in the lyrics). The first cut, Owl & the Eagle, is a good country/rock number, but it's atypical as the rest of the album as more that Nyro-esque jazz influence, maybe.

From what I saw I think Tremont is further along on the gentrfication route than Northside. It also doesn't have a main "busy street" spine like Hamilton Avenue.

I think you answered your own question. Short North has the level of retail/food/drink stuff because it's a regional destination (and maybe a secondary "strip" area for the OSU community). If it was just the population on either side of High...Victorian Village and Italian Village... using High Street would there be the same level of storefront occupancy and retai/food/drink activity?

Rob is right about the restoration. They did an excellent job. I was fortunate to see the building back in the 1970s, when it was some sort of school. They had the grounds and rotunda open to the public and it was quite impressive and a suprise, given how low-key and backwoods this part of Indiana is. If I recall right a railroad museum used to run an excursion train here from French Lick?

Yeah, they were available as late as the late 1980s or early 1990s. I had one but it got really beat-up. The cartography was pretty good. The same company used to publish those huge real-estate atlases from the 1880s or 1890s into the 1950s, I think.

I was thinking of getting a bike this year but decided to pass on it. It would be too much hassle. I'd have to put a rack on my car and drive to the nearest bike trail. Which sort of defeats the purpose (aside from silly kids-stuff tooling around the subdivisions).

^ ...becuase its a lot about "community" and 'subculture'. Lone wolves don't fit into scenes like that, be they bikes or other things.