jjakucyk

We need at large representatives to weigh in more heavily on things like this, because the only voices are those with vested interests one way or another. They're very vocal minorities, while the much larger ambivalent or supportive (but indirectly affected) parties never come to the table.

You're much more likely to find over/under duplexes here from 1900-1930, or fourplexes with two units on each floor from 1930-1960.

Not sure about national outfits buying up houses in and around Cincinnati for renting, but there's a lot of local players buying them up to rehab. Flippers and realtors are buying up a lot of the houses to fix and resell, and builders are buying the empty lots. Even owners aren't selling, preferring to rent out instead. If you're not already "in" then it's very difficult to get started, which shouldn't be happening anywhere in Ohio.

I subscribe to threads mostly via email, which have a "Go to this Post" button at the bottom of the message to take you to the post in question. Any subsequent posts in that particular thread will be after that point. For the last couple weeks, clicking that button doesn't go to the right post in the thread, instead it goes way upthread, like half a dozen posts or so. For instance, here's the email, and the "Go to this Post" link is : https://forum.urbanohio.com/index.php?app=core&module=system&controller=redirect&url=https://forum.urbanohio.com/topic/64-cincinnati-east-end-california-development-and-news/?do=findComment%26comment=971705&key=2433395d99a65447839081fd04a49fa2c3b3320c35e194e1db265b87a8e7c491&resource=&email=1&type=notification_new_comment Which takes me to @Dev's post from Wednesday at 01:31 PM. Could this be a cookie problem? That link seems to be parsing session IDs or other data rather than just directly linking to the post, which would look like https://forum.urbanohio.com/topic/64-cincinnati-east-end-california-development-and-news/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-971705

You do understand that "everyone must drive" and "no road project is a bad road project" is just as much a "communist, top-down, command and control" situation, right?

Imagine if instead of spending millions of dollars ($17m estimated) building new retaining walls, the city conceded that one or two lanes of the parkway were a loss and put up some jersey barriers and re-striped the road for a fraction of the cost. Then they could use that money for alternative transportation modes.

Or a parking lot, or to just leave it as an empty yard.

Nice, I didn't realize they were so close. Of course this would only be the highest *building* not the highest *structure* in the county. There's plenty of radio/TV towers that are taller. The WKRQ (WKRC) Tower in Mt. Auburn is the tallest structure in the county at 967' and an elevation of 772' for a total elevation of 1,739'. However, of the four tallest towers in the area, it's actually the lowest in total elevation because the rest (Star Tower in Finneytown, WLWT in Fairview, and WCPO in Walnut Hills) are perched on higher hills. So Star Tower looks to be the winner at 954' and an elevation of 894' for a total elevation of 1,848'. The highest natural grade in the county is the location of the Mt. Airy water tanks at Colerain and North Bend at 962' elevation. Mt. Rumpke at last measure was 1,075' for the highest man-made grade.

Narrow Streets for People

If you can't understand @DEPACincy's explanation then I don't know what would work with you. But let me try a simple example. Cincinnati gets 1/4 of its property tax revenue from downtown. Downtown only occupies 1.3% of the land area of the city proper and has maybe 5% of the population, depending where you draw the boundaries. While this isn't the case here, in many states, property taxes are the primary source of municipal funding. Yes downtown services and infrastructure cost more than 1.3% of the city budget, and likely more than 5%, but they most definitely do not cost 25%. Ergo downtown subsidizes the rest of the city. This cascades outward as @DEPACincy and I have said before.

And my point is that there'd be way fewer of those blighted, struggling neighborhoods, or even none of them, if the metro wasn't sprawling into the hinterlands.

That's just an 11% drop in metro population, you can't really believe that's caused all of Detroit's problems. This idea that growth is the only metric of prosperity is a very American/capitalist notion. Sprawling cities have to maintain growth to pay back the ponzi scheme they're built on. That's not the case for stable urban cities, but so many have been decanted to the point that they're barely as dense as their suburbs anymore, while still having infrastructure for many more people that still needs to be maintained, all while taxes are spent on the periphery. So they have to play the same twisted game.

The Detroit metro area grew from 2.7 million in 1950 to 3.5 million in 2020 while the city went from 1.8 million to 670,000. So not only have a million people left the city proper, nearly a million MORE have moved to the suburbs from elsewhere. In 1950 the city proper had 2/3 of the metro population, if that was still the case today with sprawl under control, the city would have 2.3 million people. Or look at Buffalo. The metro population is the same today as it was in 1950, but the city proper has lost more than half its population while the metro area has grown to occupy more than 2x as much land. If the population had simply stayed put instead of moving further outwards, Buffalo would be described as "stable" and Detroit would be "growing slowly." Instead, suburbanization has severely damaged the cities for the benefit of unsustainable peripheral growth.

And yet the lobbying efforts of those low-density residents have led to them paying the same (or nearly the same) rates for most utilities despite them costing more to provide. They receive more tax-funded projects than they pay for, especially roads, highways, and sewers. They also take advantage of city/urban services and cultural institutions that they may not pay for in anything but a token way, but demand unfettered access too. It's city residents subsidizing suburbanites, and on a larger scale metro residents subsidizing rural. It's the opposite of the Fox News narrative, but it's demonstrably true. If someone wants to live a suburban/exurban/rural lifestyle, why should anyone else help pay for it? In most cases it's literally the poor subsidizing the rich.

Streetcars can have dedicated lanes/right-of-way just like light rail can have street running, there's nothing mutually exclusive about them. Besides, the streetcar already has dedicated lanes across Ft. Washington Way, 2nd Street, Henry, and Race between Findlay and Elder. The more the better.

To be fair, the right-of-way through Northside was cut off by I-74. The rail abandonment/consolidation happened before I-74 was built so no underpass was ever constructed for it. Even so, a route via the west bank of Mill Creek following Beekman and State through Lower Price Hill isn't a particularly direct route to downtown, nor is it all that populous. Something via Spring Grove through Camp Washington, Brighton, and the West End is much more advantageous.

LOL what? Nearly every city in America has been doing that for 70+ years, and look how that's worked out.

Weren't places like that de rigueur on Calhoun Street pre-turn-of-the-millennium?

I've biked some pretty unfriendly streets, but never Western Hills Viaduct or Hopple. I've only done 8th, Gest, and Millcreek. I don't have any need or desire to go that way though. Usually I'm coming down Spring Grove or Central Parkway. If I want to mix things up, I'll take Millcreek to State/Beekman and then head back east on 8th or Gest. There's just not much good riding on the west side, and even if there were, crossing the Mill Creek Valley is only the first challenge, then you have to get up the hill and not a single one of the roads is good for that.

Amen to that.

It's like the Champs-Élysées (at least before the access roads were turned into sidewalks) but without quite achieving the proper scale of buildings or sidewalks in comparison to the huge amount of space dedicated to cars and bio-swales. Still, I'd say the Bothell, WA designers did a lot of things right, considering that would otherwise be a 13-lane monster. Newport's street has the advantage of being smaller, but it's completely barren. There's no trees in the planting strips, and there's also no accommodation for trees at the parallel parking bays or sidewalk, so it might just as well be an 8-laner for all the opportunities they're squandering.

Let alone able to survive the conditions to which they'd be subjected even if they are actually planted.

In a way yes, since no turns are allowed. The frontage/access roads on either side have parking and access to the various properties. The tough part is that to drive from one access road to the other (legally) requires you to go to the roundabouts at the Taylor Southgate Bridge or the 4th Street Bridge and loop all the way around. https://goo.gl/maps/5BomYUeNE9Tcs5xP6 I actually find it ok for biking, as you just use the service road, but there's no way to bypass the roundabouts and the merge back onto the "main" road requires a lot of neck craning, whether in a car or on a bike. Regarding flooding, if you draw a line due south from the Taylor Southgate Bridge roundabout, everything west of there to the Licking River is in what FEMA calls an "area of reduced flood risk due to levee." So there's still flood risk issues. In fact, the Ovation site looks to be in a high risk A area whereas it goes to B and C the farther south you go. This may be due not so much to risk from levee failure or river flooding, but in a 100 year event stormwater behind the levee may not be able to be pumped out fast enough.

I'm not, sadly. The details could be fine as drawn, but are screwed up in execution. In the push to lessen construction cost, substitutions are made in the field that may not be appropriate or fully thought out. Some contractors brush off architect's details and specs because "that's not how we do it." Sometimes the proper sequence of construction/assembly isn't followed because of weather or delayed supplies, so materials aren't installed with proper overlaps and seals. More often than not it seems like the workmen just plow ahead on things without checking details or properly thinking through what they're doing. "Real men don't read instructions." That's more likely with the low-bid contractor or even the C-team of top contractors, but they build a lot of stuff. Of course because of all this the architect's fees are now too high, so site visits are cut and the contractor is told not to call the architect with questions because it'll just cost more and delay the project. Go down the road a few years though, and here we are.

I heard that water was infiltrating behind the brick and metal panels, causing the windows to rot. They're being replaced with fiberglass windows so they won't be damaged if the wall leaks can't be adequately fixed. So I don't think there's anything wrong with the windows, they've just been getting soaked.