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^ Cranley

Eh, if it's on the road side of the sidewalk then it's pretty much all fair game. Besides, it's not like they're giving the land back, it just becomes grass or whatever instead of pavement, while remaining part of the public way. They did that here a year or two ago: https://goo.gl/maps/W5W5nZ32dFS2

I don't like that they did most of the lane channeling and narrowing with just paint and plastic bollards. That's going to be full of gravel and other debris in no time. They also installed some concrete curb barriers at each crosswalk, which you can see at the lower right. I'm not sure exactly what they're supposed to do other than get clobbered by snow plows.

I proposed an actual idea, it may not be the best, but it's much better than "you have nothing to worry about, look over there a squirrel!"

^ But nobody will admit to just how difficult that really would be for the amount of space required versus what's available. There's a lot of glib hand waving and dismissive "we can make it work" retorts that ring very hollow. As to Main/Walnut, I don't buy the notion that the streetcar or light rail must be on a one-way couplet. Signal priority/preemption would likely be a requirement in a two-way configuration, and even designating a street as more of a transit mall with limited access by private automobiles is a possibility. There's more than one way to make it work. I do think that any left-running track is a mistake regardless.

But have the other cities that did this seen additional reforms afterwards? Seems like only the rough areas merge, leaving the well-to-do ones and their school districts alone. Those separate enclaves just dig their heels in deeper to resist any further unification. Indy/UNIGOV has been around for decades and I'm not aware of any significant changes in its structure since it was implemented. What is interesting about it is that the wealthy communities of Meridian Hills and Williams Creek were absorbed into UNIGOV but they retained some level of self-governance for more local matters. That seems to be a better solution than simply excluding various municipalities from the merger entirely. A Dayton-specific issue is how the city snugs up against Greene County. So a Montgomery County merger would include a lot of rural area from Trotwood west and southwest towards Germantown, while not capturing any of the suburban expanse of Beavercreek, Bellbrook, or Fairborne/Wright-Patt/Wright State. At least Indy, Nashville, and Lexington are mostly in the middle of their respective counties. Louisville kind of sort of is too, but the state border complicates things obviously.

They already did it to Procter Hall. https://goo.gl/maps/wCcZn4CKLdC2

This thing is worse than Hopple in the amount of land it takes up and berms and other useless "green space" it generates. It's like I-275/Eastgate, a very suburban geometry. There's no surgical precision, which if you're going to ram a highway project through a city, you'd hope that they'd at least do as little harm as possible. With ODOT though it seems to be more of a scorched earth policy, and whatever fragments of the neighborhood just happens to be left over is good enough.

Nerds of the world unite!

It all depends on where you grew up. Span wires are the norm east of the Mississippi River (with the exception of Wisconsin and Illinois), and mast arms everywhere else, but with many installation varieties. Cincinnati and Dayton's signal color scheme (black bodies, black visors, and yellow doors) is actually unique to southwest Ohio. Go figure. The move is towards mast arms in general, but they are quite a bit more expensive. Here's a spreadsheet I got some 8 years ago (not sure where) that gives a good outline of typical state practice.

Agreed about the cobraheads. Chicago is rather striking in that regard though. As far as the traffic signals, that used to bother me but it doesn't so much anymore. One thing you can say about the span wire setup is that it's about as visually unobtrusive as possible. This is especially true with typical Ohio practice (if only Duke would follow suit). There's minimal wires and they're wrapped tightly to one another which is very clean. At least in the city they hang all the signals and signs so their bottoms align. This allows a bottom tether to be installed where needed (and I think it should be standard practice honestly, to keep the signals from swinging around in the wind), which was done at I-71 and Dana because of some weird quirk of the terrain that causes strong winds to twist the signals around. https://goo.gl/maps/DM6Kko3zGT82 Compare that to Kentucky with their loose hangar wires and generally sloppy install (gross!) https://goo.gl/maps/ChXRsh6aF9y Or Indiana and their over-engineered catenary. https://goo.gl/maps/bDpjhZ9nNKv That said, mast arms and truss arms can get to be pretty massive especially at large intersections. I don't think that's an improvement necessarily. https://goo.gl/maps/EhcqwVToC9y

It's just that there's nothing inherently urban about wires. In much of the world, it's the cities where there are no wires, because that's where the wealth and density is sufficient to cover the cost of undergrounding. There was a big push starting in the 1920s to underground wiring for reasons of civic pride and city beautification. There were also studies about proper street lighting and paving surfaces that came about at that same time too. Unfortunately when the depression hit, the focus was put on streets and roads as that was easier for the government to put WPA effort into since the streets are government-owned, while the electric utilities are not. After that, with cities being strip-mined of their resources in favor of the suburbs, any undergrounding plans or policies had to be shelved. As with many things, the US suburban experiment has turned our cities backwards from what you see in most of the world. Japan's excuse is that overhead electric is more resilient to earthquakes. The same can probably be said for San Francisco, but that certainly hasn't stopped them from burying wires. The thing is that in Japan, Europe, and pretty much any place that has some semblance of civility, they at least hide the wires on the main streets. Even if it's just feeding from behind in an alley, like in Chicago, that makes a huge difference. It's tough to impress people with your neighborhood business district, the "high street" of the neighborhood if you will, when it's strewn with wires.

^Clutter in the sense of a variety of buildings and street furniture and such is one thing, but janky wood poles with a rat's nest of wiring jumping around all over the place? Give me a break. There's nothing about it that isn't ugly, and I think you'll find that your opinion is overwhelmingly in the minority. Plus what you don't see is the tree canopy that could be there instead. It's even worse for the people on the upper floors of those buildings, who have to look directly at the poles, wires, and transformers. Advocating for keeping power lines is like advocating for not fixing potholes, not painting buildings, and not cleaning up litter. It's a huge turn-off for most people. Yes, it is possible to do utility poles in a cleaner more tidy fashion. They do it in Europe all the time. It's easier there however because of their higher secondary distribution voltages compared to what we use here. So rather than having multiple transformers and their attendant wiring on every block, they can have one larger transformer tucked away somewhere that serves several blocks at a time. They'll then use metal poles and still do service drops underground in preparation for full undergrounding at some point in the future. Plus none of the telecom stuff is put on the poles with all their junky repeaters, backup batteries, and other crap. Those are more likely under the sidewalk in a small concrete vault that only requires lifting the sidewalk panels away to access. Even with wood poles it CAN be done nicely, but it takes some craft that's lacking in the US. https://goo.gl/maps/R3ZcBA14KmE2

Outstanding photo. Here's one from a bit earlier in the 1920s, before Sears was built at all. You can see bits and pieces of this gas station in the photo above. Talk about classy. There could be a surprising amount of that north wall still intact, though certainly goobered up. It may not be so hard to restore as expected, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Post-rationalizing BS. What I find interesting is that these sorts of moves muddy up the design and make the elements harder to read and less impactful. In a case like this "richness" is "confusion." Classical buildings with a rigid arrangement of windows can be arguably more contemporary in their treatment of pattern, ala Mies van der Rohe and his glass and steel boxes. I guess those sorts of moves are "too easy" nowadays, just as lining up a row of trees is too simple for today's landscape architects. "Don't constrain me!" Yet all this shifting or curving just makes everything an undifferentiated mush. The existing side wall in the rending above is a perfect example of a pragmatic vernacular approach. Gridded and regular where it can be (an expression of form) but irregular to accommodate a different function inside like a stair (an expression of function). The rigidity of classical and modern arrangements can be interpreted as form above function, but these needlessly shifting random elements are also purely about form, and are all the more offensive because of their (usually) completely arbitrary derivation. This reminds me of two newer modern buildings with similar design inspirations, but which take completely different approaches. The first is the building at Gilbert and Eden Park Drive (I forget who recently moved in there). The roof line follows the slope of Gilbert Avenue then inverts to fly up in the air and help punctuate the corner. That's a strong simple move that works really well, down then up. It helps to organize everything else going on underneath it too by providing a strong reference line between the ground and the sky. https://goo.gl/maps/Zr5PQPkcP5s Compare that to the new American Red Cross building along I-71 at Dana. This is somewhat of an inversion, where there's a strong solid mass of a building over a sloped roof that somewhat reflects the terrain. The problem is that both of those moves are destroyed by needless added complexity. The solid mass of the building is broken up with a couple of very weak ins/outs and ups/downs, while all the random window and material articulation further confuses the reading of that mass. I sure hope the window size and placement has some bearing on the interior function, but I doubt it. https://goo.gl/maps/mY7Dnr12Rbr The sloped roof is the biggest fail of the design though, not in its basic conception but its execution. The up/down/up/break rhythm completely loses all impact. It probably looked interesting in a side elevation, but when approaching it from the highway it just looks like a broken collapsed heap. https://goo.gl/maps/UFFNpmRkMvB2 The elements are all there to make an interesting composition, but it was all squandered by needless surface articulation.

Last I read they were demolishing the 1940s addition but keeping the original 1920s part. The only problem is that the 1940s addition is more than half the building, including the corner entrance.

I think the benefits of those flashing crosswalks are mostly feel-goodery and little else.

But no mention whatsoever of giving up on the road project.

Also if you want to build some smaller houses on small lots, you'll find that many are too small for zoning, so you have to buy two and consolidate them, or buy three and divide them into two, etc. This adds a lot of overhead and difficulty to what should be a simple project.

^ Yes but the site plan for this housing development doesn't show anything like that. The houses are actually very close to the sidewalk.

^ Yes it does, between 9-Mile and Beckjord Road at least.

The city has been sloooowly rebuilding curbs and sidewalks on Spring Grove Avenue between the Western Hills Viaduct and Hopple Street. They're also adding curb bulb-outs at some intersections that will complicate if not preclude the installation of bike lanes in the future. Even without bike lanes, it would make cycling in the parking lane which is mostly unused, especially in the evening, impossible. I can't find any current engineering plans, but all of Spring Grove is part of the city's bike network plan. I smell Cranley.

^ Don't forget the cheap Home Depot "stained oak" kitchen cabinets and white appliances. I've seen a lot of that and it makes me sad.

I used to ride out that way a fair bit. It was never that fun because it's so boring, but it's one of the few open flat roads with very few stop lights and intersections around. There's also a lot of nice roads going up the hill out of New Richmond, and this is the only way to get there with Old Kellogg being discontinuous. Regular group rides died after ODOT put in the rumble strips on the white line. Many of us argued against installing them because they act to trap the cyclist in the shoulder, making it much more difficult to avoid debris. Large groups used to practice pacelining here, riding mostly in the right lane, which is plenty visible with a decent group of people, and the rumble strips put a stop to that. Plus they only benefit motorist safety while marginally harming cyclist safety due to their jarring nature and tendency to hold water. In this case, they didn't help anyone, sadly.

Where I grew up, a full gutting of a house, let alone the gutting of a bathroom or kitchen, was completely unheard of. I guess people occasionally got new kitchen cabinets, but for the most part, everyone had kitchens and bathrooms that were original to the house. The only major improvements people did to there homes were finishing basements, a new deck or patio, or putting in a pool. People added storm windows but didn't get new windows. It would great to see a study tracking the extent to which all of the cable shows have influenced home renovation behavior. That kind of depends on the age and era in which the house was built. A lot of houses from the 1920s and before had major bathroom remodels done in the 1940s and 1950s simply because of the significant change in fixtures and finish types that were popular. Many a claw-foot tub, pedestal sink, tall-tank toilet, and white subway tile were ripped out in favor of built-in tub/showers, vanities with extra storage, one-piece lowboy toilets, and pretty bold colors. Houses and apartments built in the 1930s however generally had those from the start, and even with some of the more garish tile colors (pink, yellow, black, teal) have a level of quality and chic that has lasted until today with not a lot of excess maintenance required. The same goes for the kitchen. Pre-depression they were all about big cast iron and enameled ranges, wood ice boxes, freestanding hutch cabinets, and large porcelain sinks on legs. Think of the kitchen from A Christmas Story, you think that would last much longer? It's all quite primitive and difficult to clean. By the late 1930s the trend is for actual cabinets like we know them today, much more sleek and built-in. So those 1920s and earlier kitchens were quickly gutted and redone around the same time as the bathroom, and maybe they got a facelift in the 1970s when it was finally time for new appliances. By now anything holding on from the 1970s would be hopelessly worn out, and it was mostly all built-in by that time and made with questionable laminates, veneers, and finishes. Kitchens from the 1930s through the 1950s are just a bit more modular and generally of better build quality (if not appearance) so they can be repainted, new hardware screwed on, freestanding ranges and refrigerators replaced as needed without having to bust them out of the cabinetry, etc. An interesting parallel (or reversal?) to this is the refrigerators themselves. The big old GE "Monitor Tops" that have the cylindrical condenser coil on top are actually decently efficient and quite reliable even by today's standards. In fact there's many still running. It's the post-war refrigerators that are junkers and huge power wasters because of the introduction of automatic defrost and bigger freezer compartments, which they've only fairly recently been able to make more efficient. The old refrigerators were also much more heavily built since they used the heavy door and latch to squeeze the gasket against the frame rather than the newer ones that use magnetic gaskets. So here's a situation where someone who bought a refrigerator in the 1930s or 1940s could have kept it running for decades without a problem, but someone in a 1950s ranch would almost need to replace theirs as often as their rust bucket car.