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Then just do more residential. It doesn't all need to be retail/office, let alone a big-box power center. The only saving grace of Oakley Station is that it has a decently connected internal street grid. Marburg is unfortunately wide, but it could be converted into the 3-lane plus parking layout of the other streets by reassigning the outer lanes to street parking. These streets are basically the same cross-section as at The Banks. So the whole thing could be redeveloped to a higher density more walkable and urban pattern just by filling in the parking lots and going multi-story. On the other hand, the huge single-use structures like Kroger, Meijer, Target, and Crossroads are not conducive to good urbanism. Basically anything that's against Disney/Ibsen (all of which turn their backs to it) is garbage. Also, while internal connectivity is good, connectivity to the rest of the neighborhood is not. Especially the neighborhood south of the railroad tracks that is perfectly walkable and a stone's throw from the Madison Road retail corridor. Instead the only way across is to take the awful sidewalk ramps and stairs at the Madison Road underpass. Yeah it's a decent route to Madtree, but at a minimum there should be a ped/bike crossing from Appleton to Factory Colony, as well as Verne or 34th to Disney.

How is it so difficult when three out of five cars are the maximum that are ever run, and normally it's just two?

Is that rendering supposed to be something to aspire to? Brick crosswalks don't make an area pedestrian or bike or transit friendly, nor does having 6+ lane mega arterial with piddly 5' sidewalks right up to the curb and buildings with gaping dark spaces and garage entrances everywhere.

I thought after all the streetcar drama that it's on the utilities to move for road projects, but not rail projects. Didn't Duke have to eat the cost of moving their substation next to Brent Spence?

Northside maybe to some extent, but the zoning in Hyde Park and Oakley is so tight that building permits are mostly being issued for remodels or tear-downs and rebuilds. Permits aren't a good indicator of growth, but maybe for vibrance or desirability.

Hyde Park Square is what really differentiates the neighborhood from Avondale, Westwood, East Walnut Hills, or even Clifton, but if you ask a lot of residents they treat "commercial creep" like some sort of cancer.

I'll reserver judgment on the design/quality until I see the windows installed. They can make or break something like this, but the brickwork is harkening back to the Art Deco apartments in the area and even the corner building that Cock & Bull just vacated, and it looks good. I don't see anything industrial about it. It's just a box, and it's honestly not much different from this building that's right on the square https://goo.gl/maps/oqMczfJ8tzAgRJrt7 As for scale, it's the little one-story and barely-two-story buildings between here and Edwards that are the weird ones. I do think the reduced front setback is a miss though, not from a walkability standpoint, but compositionally to fit with the other buildings on that side of the street. Of course on the north side of Erie it's all over the place, and if the tiny buildings get redeveloped or replaced, they should be closer to the street like this one so a new rhythm can be established.

The addition was compensation for what was lopped off the building for the first bridge. Longworth Hall was Longerworth Hall in the past, now it's going to be EvenLessLongworth Hall than it already is.

Duke had to move their substation infrastructure to be out of the way of the new bridge.

^ Something something, blue bloods, something something.

The gaps in connectivity are a problem. The fix is to connect them of course, not to say "look nobody's using it so there's no need to spend more money on it." The 200-foot gap at Elmore is infuriating. Connect that through and you have a decent route from Beekman Street to Winton Road (the Spring Grove Avenue/Mill Creek bridge could be better but it's not the worst thing). Winton to Este is another ballgame completely. The rebuild of Spring Grove between Winton and Mitchell was a huge wasted opportunity to address the most dangerous section of what is otherwise a pretty good street to bike on. They made zero accommodation for cycling unfortunately.

It's one of those paths that could see some more rec use if it got cleaned from time to time. The mud, sticks, and wood chips make it pretty hazardous.

^ If it were done it would also be critical to make sure the street grid isn't turned into a series of massive stroads feeding into I-75. Just look at what ODOT did to Gilbert, Reading, and Lincoln to accommodate the MLK exit. In fact they would've done more to Gilbert north of MLK if it weren't already widened for the planned but never built Victory Parkway exit. Mitchell and Hopple too are just chock full of pavement. You can't simply plug an exit into an existing street anymore, it requires miles of widening and reconfiguration of the existing grid to make traffic flow, according to the engineers. That feeder into the grid at 6th Street would probably end up being something like the massive Ohio Street exit off the Kennedy in Chicago, clipping the grid and funneling massive traffic onto the surface grid. You'd almost need to extend the 2nd/3rd collector/distributor system up to Ezzard Charles to prevent these "barf points" of traffic (which can also be called choke points depending what direction you're going).

Indeed, even their so-called "walkable" downtown is anything but, and it's not bikeable either. Tooling around within Summit Park I agree could be appealing to some people for a little while, but that'll get old fast. It's also smack in the middle of some truly awful rush hour traffic with no way around it. I biked to work in Blue Ash a handful of times, and I'm generally not too afraid of most streets, but Kenwood and Pfeiffer suck, and the few possible alternate routes are all clipped at critical locations making them useless. If Blue Ash wanted to they could be like Carmel, Indiana. They are flush with office income taxes and could create a network of bike paths, trails, etc., and really punch up their downtown. Instead they seem to be just pissing away their gains on a park you can only drive to, while settling for bland office parks and bland suburban subdivisions. It's a very Cincinnati kind of mindset, sadly. But you know once the newness wears off, which is already happening, they're going to find that that they have very little left to offer.

Yup, I think it was Travis who made the analogy that it's like the new Ziegler Park pool, if it was only filled half way with water. Everything else is there and it's top notch, but turning down that one dial sabotages the entire investment. It would be super easy to fix too, but for the political posturing.

The whole "job creator" thing is something of a myth, not unlike trickle-down economics. It's a bunch of supply-side fraud that the powers that be have been doubling down on for some 40 years now, and the only gains have been to those at the very top. At a more local level, these so-called "business friendly" low-regulation cities/counties are just selling out their constituencies for some low-wage crap jobs subsidized by the taxpayers, and likely leaving them with some environmental mess to clean up later. For the most part, jobs are created in response to a demand for goods and services, not the other way around. Yes there is some feedback between supply and demand, but no company will add jobs/workers if they don't have the work to do. Cities like New York, London, and San Francisco are evidence that a "business friendly" environment is not necessary for a strong economy, since those are all very high-cost and high-regulation locales. West Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama should be booming because of their low-reg policies, but they don't have the talent or the agglomeration or the markets to attract that business. It's the bending over backwards to woo businesses with subsidies, concessions, and payola that is the race to the bottom. If the only choice is "private profit public debt" then the smart move for the city is not to play that game at all.

Maybe so, but it's a very steep street and actually dangerous for someone with a hefty build to bike down, especially with coaster brakes.

Scaling the hills on a bike is hard enough, and the routes approaching downtown lack bike infrastructure compared to other streets. Gilbert has the width and lack of traffic to be an excellent bike route, if the hell between Elsinore and Court Street can be addressed. Ironically the worst place to ride Gilbert is the part with the bike lanes, not because of them, but because of all the other automobile-focused idiocy that's going on in that section. The safest and most direct route to Uptown would need to be either West Clifton or Vine, which to work would require trading away some street parking, and you know how that goes. Other streets like Ravine or Sycamore are too steep to safely descend, and I bet even an ebike would struggle depending on the weight of the rider.

If I could make one rule for YouTube it would be that you're not allowed to record a video with your phone of a video playing on a computer.

^ Seems like most people are going to Joseph Beth, LongHorn, First Watch, or BW3, and that's where it's tightest. It's also a tough haul from the garage to there with no sidewalks.

Still they could have planned for a connection to be made after lease terms were up, but they blocked it on the new side too. The Talbot's space looks to be sectioned off just right from above, with parapet walls on both sides, but they filled it in anyway. The whole place really is a disaster, and the only reason it's successful I think is because of its proximity to Hyde Park and Oakley. It has no inherent positive qualities, and even the driving experience is awful, especially from the Madison Road side.

It would never make it through a hearing/review. Vinyl cornices aren't a thing, nor is that huge arch on the first floor. The review board would deny it instantly for those two things alone.

It's like the new construction you see in Queens. I bet there's a bank of gas meters right by the front door too.

I never liked that Cock & Bull painted over the glazed terra cotta base of that building. It's one of the few commercial/mixed use pre-depression art deco buildings in the city (especially that still has its original steel casement windows), as compared to all the 4-plexes that are more from the 1930s streamline modern era. I'll be surprised if there's any way to remove the paint without destroying the terra cotta beneath, but I'll also be equally surprised if it doesn't start to peel pretty soon too. https://goo.gl/maps/fW7eaa7nXm2GQwcs5 vs. https://goo.gl/maps/Sx4WQqGZFVmMExAf7

Wasn't Circle Centre Mall having some troubles lately? I guess they just did a big renovation last year, but I want to say it hasn't been doing so great as it was when it opened in the 1990s. Its proximity to the convention center has been a big boost, at least for the food court, but I don't know how well that's been fairing either (I haven't been there since before the RCA Dome was demolished).