jjakucyk

Agreed. Even an at-grade "use at your own risk" crossing would be so much better than navigating the complicated mess of stairs, walkways, ramps, and overpasses at Madison, none of which seem to go the right direction or drop you off where you think they would.

Yup, new cornice brackets to match the originals, framing, mechanical rough-ins, stairs, and windows all proceeding.

^ Yes it was, a couple weeks ago now I think.

To be fair, ODOT is paying to repave Linwood. It got pretty badly torn up by utility work and has had recurring base failures above Mt. Lookout Square that they dug up and did full-depth repairs to.

^ It's already a monstrous seven lanes wide to begin with, how can it get any wider? Maybe some utility work, or repairing busted curbs (they're pretty bad on the P&G side of the street).

^ Exactly. A healthy restaurant scene for instance needs both daytime activity and evening residents. When one or the other is lacking, the only businesses that can make it are usually the high-volume low-value chains and franchises. Hyde Park for instance has so many great restaurants not only because of the wealthy residents that eat out at dinner, but also the many (usually small) professional offices nearby that patronize those same restaurants at lunch, which can be just as profitable as dinner due to faster turnover of tables. Stores and restaurants that only cater to downtown office workers are usually closed at or before 5:00 so any residents who might want to go there are out of luck. A residential monoculture, even a high-density one, is just as bad as a commercial or industrial monoculture, because ultimately it's dead for a significant chunk of the day, and that stifles business and vitality.

The tan poles blended a lot more than the black with all the limestone and concrete downtown. It doesn't age so well, I'll grant that, but the black really makes the poles stand out to me.

^ I think that's probably the future of these systems. Wires on simple straightaways, at layover points, and uphills, but wireless at junctions or complicated turns, visually sensitive areas, and downhills. Has there been any further development on the wireless magnetic induction system that was developed by Bombardier?

Is there any easy way to tell, without looking them up individually on the auditor's site?

At that price point you're also getting a robust security system, walls, fences, and other measures to mitigate crime issues. That's very likely why the garages are planned like they are, to avoid having a gate or fence that someone could climb over to get into the back yard.

^ That's just it, is there any more of a plan than some lines on a map and an overbearingly precious rendering? There's real in-the-ground challenges here that I don't see being addressed like those street crossings, Montgomery Road too, as well as the structural condition of the trestle over Red Bank, plus how exactly does this connect to the Little Miami Trail with the still active Clare Yard and a severed right-of-way behind the Mariemont Kroger? The cycling proponents have also been very dismissive and condescending to the transit advocates, hand-waving away questions about right-of-way width, bridge clearances, and station locations, showing other examples of shared rights-of-way that are twice as wide with no terrain constraints to worry about. It really does come across as a way to split the liberal constituencies of the city, effectively weakening both. Sad because isn't Cranley supposed to be a Democrat?

Or something really frightening could happen like this: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150112/lincoln-park/lincoln-park-megamansions-on-rise-including-one-on-seven-lots Lincoln Park's population has been going down for decades because of rampant NIMBY-ism, mostly due to fears of traffic, "character" and all the usual stuff. It's going to keep going down as the neighborhood becomes more upscale and multi-unit buildings become single-family or more mega-mansions are built, which is a frightening trend. I wouldn't be surprised if Mt. Adams exhibits a similar dynamic, and possibly Hyde Park too.

And yet you could build a multi-family building with much higher density instead. What's interesting is that the west side of Elm Street is zoned CC-A (commercial community, automobile-oriented) which is a bullshit designation meant to allow for large-scale commercial development with ample parking along Central Parkway. Why it has to go a full block either side of Central instead of half a block is anyone's guess. Anyway, residential uses are only allowed "above the ground floor in a mixed use building" in that zone, which would actually be preferable here. They'll likely get the variance, re-zoning, or PUD designation that will let them do this, but yeah it's pretty low-density compared to what's immediately across the street and up and down both sides of Elm too.

Granny flats would be nice, but they're not allowed. There's no provision in the zoning code at all for them (a big oversight), so it's not really even possible to ask for a variance that I know of. I think there are some allowances for them in the new form-based zones, but those are completely separated from the rest of the code. At least those garages are detached, allowing for a small Chicago style back yard rather than an attached garage with a huge paved pad between the garage door and the alley. Still, it does seem kind of strange that they filled the lot line completely, rather than leaving space for a walkway to get from the yard to the alley. Accessory buildings are usually required to be 3 feet off the side and rear property lines anyway.

Not if you want to stay there though. People fear their property taxes going up due to increased value. This is rather illogical though considering how transient most people are in the US, which means they're routinely "cashing out" their house as they move. Still, the sentiment is all about not wanting anything to change.

Trouble is that leads to anti-environmental sentiments from the people who have no idea what it was like before. "We don't need regulations, the air and water are fine!" It's the same with the anti-vaccination nutbags, they haven't seen what measles, mumps, or polio can do to a person.

But close, and one man's density is another man's overcrowding. One idiot man maybe.

Also don't confuse density with overcrowding, they're two completely different things. Density is units/acre or people/acre. A highrise "tower in a park" can be less dense than a traditional city of 2 story semi-detached houses on narrow streets because the tower is surrounded by so much empty space. Overcrowding on the other hand is measured in people/unit. Usually a building is considered overcrowded when there's more people than there are rooms. These are the tenements and shanties with multiple people per room sleeping on bunk beds, and they usually go hand-in-hand with high density, but you can have overcrowding in otherwise low-density trailer parks, poor farm houses, or what have you. Historically the reaction against cities was directed specifically at overcrowding. Five families living in a single row house with no plumbing, etc. However density became vilified as well despite being unrelated.

If the US subsidized lobster dinners and Europe didn't, and thus Americans ate a lot more lobster, does that mean Americans place a higher value on lobster than Europeans?

I mentioned above that a cornice has both practical and aesthetic functions. Practical being to protect the facade below from the weather, aesthetic to punctuate the termination of the building where it meets the sky. There's plenty of old buildings out there that didn't need a cornice either because they didn't have an attic or box gutter. They still built one for the protection effects but also to keep the top of the building from petering out with a weak or non-existent gesture. Yes you can taper the building at the top to a dome, spire, or whatever, and it's done very successfully in skyscrapers like the Chrysler or Empire State Buildings. Doing neither is the more modernist approach where the wall just ends, making a building that's attempting to convey a pure shape or volume, usually standing alone, rather than articulated walls within a broader context. To the point on the purpose of decoration, the answer is NOT a resounding "no" at all. Cars and computers and cell phones are mass produced items that aren't possible to customize in the way a home can be. Nevertheless, there ARE people who build their own cars, a few even out of wood, but many are hot rod kits that certainly don't look modern, even if they're not Model-T's. Have you seen some of the steampunk computer cases and keyboards people are making? Phones are a bit harder because they don't last long and are so tiny that you can't do a whole lot to them. Nevertheless, people still want to decorate their houses, their cars, their computers, they just do it with stickers and wallpaper and upholstery, etc., they buy artwork and pottery and knickknacks, they buy patterned rugs and furniture, they hang wind chimes and bird feeders. That's decoration. That some people want old stuff and decoration, and that some people want new modern clean stuff isn't mutually exclusive. They're just choices, and frankly a lot more people prefer traditional art/architecture/music/sculpture/writing/whatever, but one isn't right or better than the other just because artists/architects/musicians/etc. declare it so. As neilworms said, there's nothing fraudulent about a wood bracket made to replicate a stone bracket, a pressed tin bracket made to replicate a wood bracket, or by extension an injection-moulded polyurethane bracket made to replicate any of the others before it.

The way "they" do it is to calculate the average time savings per person using the bridge, then multiply that by the average hourly wage in the region, multiply again by the life expectancy of the bridge, then divide by the construction cost of the bridge and see if it comes out greater than or less than one. Then you can say "look the bridge will pay for itself in just a few years!" Here's the rub of course. Nobody actually gets any money from saving 3 minutes on their commute. Even if they did, and the "benefits" number was actually true, it doesn't account for the fact that the government paid "X" to build the bridge (ignoring maintenance, operations, and future replacement costs, which are all substantial over and above construction), and even if the supposed benefits are greater than "X" the math only works if the government COLLECTS GREATER THAN "X" IN TAXES ON THE BENEFITS. This is the fraud. In places where a municipality relies solely on property taxes, for instance, which are usually around 2%, then a project only makes financial sense if the project increases land values not by 1X of the cost of the project, but by 50X. Having multiple sources of revenue like income and sales taxes, or service fees on things like sewer and water, spread out that pain somewhat, but it shows just how fragile and unproductive our development pattern is.

The cornices still serve a purpose today. They not only punctuate the vertical termination of the building, giving it a "significant" ending where it meets the sky, as opposed to "just ending" or petering out, but they still protect the facade from rain. The brick and mortar and aluminum/fiberglass/vinyl windows of today may not need as much protection as in the past, but it still helps. The funny thing is that what looks like a pretty elaborate cornice really isn't all that complicated. As a general rule, from top to bottom you have: • An overhanging soffit with an ogee crown moulding (the moulding can be purchased stock today) • Supporting brackets, usually of wood (these are the most elaborate parts of course) • Flat wood paneling behind the brackets, with either raised panels, panel moulding, or attic windows (very simple finish carpentry) • A wood ledge with a smaller piece of crown moulding at the bottom (can also be purchased stock) That's it. Here's some drawings of a new cornice made to match an existing one's parts and pieces, just arranged slightly differently. The original has a roof coming down to a box gutter, but the new one is a parapet instead. Anyway, the amount of variety you can get from pairing up brackets, doing windows vs. panels, varying spacing, turning the corner, using different crown mouldings and other trim is virtually limitless. Even so, it's really not all that complicated despite looking like it is.

There's just no logical reason for a highway interchange to spur pedestrian-oriented development, quite the opposite in fact, so the headline makes no sense. It sort of looks like Avondale is using the interchange as a way to say "hey, if we don't rezone this area now, it'll just get even more overrun with automobile-oriented crap." That's fine, but it's not capitalizing so much as it's reacting against. The status quo is like boiling the frog slowly to death, but the new interchange is a quick burst of heat that's making them jump out and say "we better get our act together."

So it's not really "capitalizing" so much on the MLK interchange but fighting against its impacts. Seems like a strange sort of urban development "make things worse here so they can be better there" kind of thing.

From the MUTCD: The additional striping is used a lot at school crossings and where there aren't traffic signals or in general where they want to make the crosswalk more visible.