jjakucyk

If so, then why is it presented as a photorealistic rendering? In 1st and 2nd year architecture studios I recall professors criticizing students for showing excessive levels of detail on their schematic plans. One that sticks out in my mind is that there was even hardware on the bathroom stall doors, along with grab bars, paper towel dispensers, etc. The explanation from the students was that they just inserted a pre-made bathroom block from AutoCAD which already has all that stuff in it. But that's not the point. It's inappropriate to be showing that level of detail in a preliminary drawing because it makes it look finished and unable to be changed. That can be a problem when presenting to clients, which is why sketched or squiggled drawings are better when starting out, even if you drew them in the computer first. The same goes for renderings like this. It certainly doesn't look preliminary, so why go to the trouble of presenting something that doesn't work?

Good designer or not, this design has absolutely no relationship to the street or sidewalk. It is wholly inappropriate for this location. Perched on a hillside overlooking the city? Maybe. Kenwood? Sure. A prominent corner in OTR? No way. What's even happening on that corner anyway? Is it a room? A partially outdoor space? For all we know it could be a parking ramp.

Wow, maybe on Wilshire Boulevard in 1972.

Looks like St. Francis de Sales is restoring their clock. I noticed the hands missing on one of the faces about a week ago, and just yesterday it was looking all pink and weird. When I got closer I realized they took all the glass out and that's foam board covering the openings.

Seriously? That's the attitude that got us Paul Brown Stadium. Here's the way this works. Most projects like this, as well as highways, convention centers, or whatever, trot out projections about economic returns. Let's assume for the moment that those projections are actually legitimate, which is questionable to begin with, but anyway. The presentation goes something along the lines of "government spends X for project, project generates greater than X in economic impact, ergo project is a win." The problem is, that's a completely fraudulent analysis. The government spends all of X in real cash money, but they only get back taxes on the economic impact, not the full amount. The bulk of that goes to private parties. So let's say for example a new arena needs $300 million in subsidies. The lifespan of said new arena is 30 years, and it's expected to yield $30 million/year in new business. That means there's $900 million in total economic output, which makes it look like a 10 year payback with 20 years and a total of $600 million in free money after it's been paid off. But hold on, the government isn't getting all of that $30 million/year, just taxes on whatever that is (income, sales, hotel, property, etc.). So unless all that economic development is taxed at least 33.3% (which it's not) then the deal doesn't even break even. With so many projects financed this way, it's many levels of government are bankrupt or close to it. This is the epitome of corporate welfare, or private profit public debt.

And how much taxes are generated on that theoretical $39 million a year?

That's trivially easy to get around though. Like when someone applies for a mortgage and are told they need to sell one of their cars, which they do, but they just buy it back as soon as the mortgage is approved. Something that would certainly help zoning-wise is to loosen the minimum lot sizes and setbacks. There are so many lots that are completely unbuildable because they're not wide enough or don't have enough total square footage. That's a nonsense knee-jerk reaction that attempts to legislate small houses (and even small apartment units) out of existence because, heaven forbid, a poor person might live there. Setbacks are similar. Does requiring a 5 foot side or front setback really achieve anything? You're not getting a view from the side windows, and does anyone even open their windows anyway? If you want light and air from the sides, create an interior court. Fire concerns are already handled by the building code.

I'd place more blame on the neighborhood council than the HCB.

Cranley Administration Cancels Riverfront Bike Trail and Fails to Notify Anyone In the Cincinnati Enquirer's article: Ohio River bike trail hits dead end as money woes force Cincinnati out you don't see Mayor John Cranley's name, but you should. Former Mayor Mallory agreed to the project and if was still the Mayor the article would have at least included a phrase saying the Mayor's office had no comment. That would be enough to connect the Mayor to the issue. Instead the transportation and planning director was thrown under the bus (sorry) for this in-action. http://www.cincy.blog/2017/09/cranley-administration-cancels.html

I guess the danger is that if neighborhoods get priced too high before they achieve the critical mass of density to support true walkability and transit use, then any renaissance could become self-extinguishing because of traffic and parking problems. Just look at all the NIMBYism that's already prevalent in Hyde Park and Oakley in no small part because of traffic and parking concerns. That will also hurt the streetcar, as well as bike lanes, improved bus transit, light rail, you name it.

Electric and probably cable are above ground, but everything else is underneath, including phone. Moving things like sewers and fire hydrants aren't trivial, but I agree $20M sounds excessive. On the other hand, it takes about $1M/mile to simply resurface a typical city street with asphalt (say 40' wide, with a handful of manhole covers, storm drain inlets, and some striping to work with). That may or may not include some work on curbs, but otherwise it's a simple "mill and fill" where they grind down the top, fix any sunken grates or covers, and lay down two thin layers of new asphalt. So with Liberty being a mile long from Reading to Central Parkway, along with being nearly double width, that's about $2M for a simple rehab. Once you start moving curbs, regrading, establishing new curb cut locations and utility accesses (water, sewer, gas, and any other service laterals going to the south need to have their demarcation/shutoff valves moved so they're still in the public right-of-way), then I can certainly see it ballooning a bit. Of course, to go through all that and still leave the electric and cable overhead is criminal, IMO.

seicer[/member] is that your former next door neighbor to the north?

Why not?

To be fair, as nice a building as that is, it was much newer than the other historic stuff in Mt. Auburn. 1920s vs. mid to late 1800s. So I can see why it was excluded.

Apparently not. I suspect the way the border extends just a bit south of Wellington is the reason for the building setbacks being what they are.

It's the only substation I can think of that has no above-ground transmission lines serving it. Yeah there's ones out there where the distribution wires leave the substation underground, but the higher voltage transmission lines usually come in from overhead. I'm sure that would elevate the cost of relocating it depending on where the transmission lines come from.

That's about the only benefit I can come up with. The thing is, Norwood is the only potential to really boost the numbers by any meaningful extent, and even then it's barely 20,000. Any of these other places are just rounding errors unless you really get aggressive in assembling a lot of them together at once.

Yes but they also fall into the usual trap of "I don't know what the solution is, but it's not this" that many pundits seem to like. Chuck especially is very allergic to the idea of solutions at all, preferring the term "rational responses." Ok, what rational responses then? Even that seems to be hard to tease out of him. Strong Towns has really started going off the deep end of "hurr durr big gubmint bad" in a very off-putting and tired rhetorical kind of way.

The more I hear about this the less convinced I am it's a good idea. The article talks about how Cincinnati should take the high road and be the regional leader by taking on these struggling municipalities. As if central cities haven't suffered enough. If you want to make that argument, then St. Bernard should be on the docket too, but since it has a decent tax base due to the Ivorydale factories it's left out of the conversation. Talk about a double standard. Since they're independent, we can see clearly that these entities are not solvent. The reasons behind that are varied, but annexing them won't fix it. The supposed efficiency of combining services and "eliminating waste" looks to me to be nothing more than a fantasy. Eliminating a couple of offices and redundant employee positions is only going to save enough money to pave a street for a couple blocks. Maintaining the built infrastructure (streets, pipes, curbs, lighting) is killing a lot of these towns and nobody realizes it. Annexing places like this doesn't make the problem go away, it just hides it. If we were to de-annex most of the city's neighborhoods, we'd find that downtown, OTR, and maybe parts of Uptown are about the only places carrying their own weight, and then by a very large margin (downtown alone yields 25% of the city's property taxes but doesn't consume even a tiny fraction of that amount of infrastructure or services).

Neighborhood

Looks fine to me, what's the problem?

I do expect that if this goes forward and DOTE gets their hands on it, we'll see more of a "turbo" roundabout type of design that allows for two through lanes from the Ludlow Viaduct to Hamilton. I'm not sure how that works with 5 approach roads though.

I like it. With a roundabout you get the neckdowns automatically. Plus, it makes all traffic slow down, whereas at a normal intersection the through traffic with a green light still has a tendency to speed through as much as possible even with neckdowns.

You mean Wilson513?

One reason is the lack of transit, so it's harder to fill up the space with pedestrians since it's easier to just drive somewhere else. Also because of our wider streets, it's even harder still to make the street feel bustling and activated. That leads to it feeling dangerous and creepy. Proper pedestrian streets are usually less than 30 feet from building front to building front. http://newworldeconomics.com/narrow-streets-for-people/ http://newworldeconomics.com/narrow-streets-for-people-2-subtleties-of-street-width/ http://newworldeconomics.com/place-and-non-place/ http://newworldeconomics.com/the-triad-of-city-design-failure/ http://newworldeconomics.com/toledo-spain-or-toledo-ohio/