jjakucyk

Another way to think about it is that it's a longer "bridge" than the ones spanning the Ohio River, and bridges are of course expensive.

It's a real street (near Withrow High School, so the zip code is correct), but the numbers only go up to the 3000's.

^How do you even construct such thoughts? That's the stupidest thing you've said all...well in the last few hours anyway.

Boo hoo tunnels are scary! My feeling comfortable while driving is more important than the integrity of the downtown built environment. Waaaaah!!!

I hope they leave the one old track in place, sort of a new vs. old thing, and to show the wider gauge of the old system.

^ I'd rather see that than the brick just dying into 2 inches of metal coping, basically the way the side walls of those buildings just stop. Keep in mind that a cornice isn't just an architectural embellishment. Yes it punctuates the vertical "ending" of the building, strongly delineating the termination of the structure against the emptiness of the sky, but it also protects the (historically much more detailed and expensive) facade from rain.

It's actually in Durham not Raleigh. But anyway, they even have a detector to activate warning lights when a vehicle is over the height limit. http://goo.gl/maps/DOoFA Maybe they need to make it a flashing red instead of yellow, but it's not as if the city and the railroad are lacking in due diligence.

So typical, they leave buildings to rot for years, decades even, without any maintenance, so of course they're not going to be salvageable. They did the same thing with Beecher Hall, while at the same time showing that they could bring back many nice older buildings like Swift, Baldwin, Old Chem, and Teacher's College. Braunstein is of the same vintage as Wilson and they did a pretty nice remodeling of it about 15 years ago. I'd bet Blegen Library is next on the chopping block, though I haven't been by there to see what state it's in lately. There's tons of buildings from the 50s-70s modernist and brutalist era, and quite a few nice classics as well, but there doesn't seem to be much love for the Art Deco/Moderne stuff, of which there's very little to begin with.

That would actually be a half decent building if they just put windows in it. I know that's difficult in a garage, but even if they did just the window grilles without glass, kind of like at the old Ford Factory or the American Can Lofts, it would help a lot. It has a warehouse/factory aesthetic that's not marred much by ramps (they're barely visible in the back). There's even a couple of very old parking garages downtown that are already like that, and at first glance you'd think they were just regular buildings.

This one I assume: http://goo.gl/maps/dpsb1 Figures, they say they're gonna restore/reuse an old building to help build support, but OOPS, sorry, we can't do it after all.

^ And replaced with what? Anything?

I wonder how this will manifest itself on the ground considering parking (sigh). It seems like either the entire property gets paved over for surface parking or they stuff in a garage that ends up destroying the streetscape on at least one side. At least this development can turn the "service" end to the railroad tracks.

Car-lite means owning one car instead of two (say for a couple) or two instead of three (for a family with one or more driving age kids). Growing up in a family of four we only ever had two cars, even though we lived in the suburbs, because my dad took the train to work every day. So when I was old enough to drive I just used Dad's car, and after leaving for college my younger brother used it. That $100/month train ticket cost a LOT less than a third car, even an old beater.

^ Enough people were raised as kids with a lot of "breathing space" and they realize now just how lousy it was and don't want to subject their own kids to it. Schools are a difficult problem yes, but suburban schools aren't better because they're suburban, they're better because that's where the good students and parents just happen to be at the moment. The notion of safety is another reason people tend to move out to the suburbs, but did you know that once kids get to be out of the toddler stage, car crashes are the number one cause of child deaths in the US? With schools and activities already spread out to the extent that parents have to be chauffeurs even if they live in the city, more and more people are realizing it's just not worth all the trouble, even though few appreciate the dangers. VMT can't keep going up forever (without a completely new technology such as Jetsons-like hovercars or transporters ala Star Trek) because simply extrapolating past trends leads to the absurd conclusion that people will eventually spend 100% of their time driving. http://xkcd.com/1007/ Throughout human history, there's been a consistent pattern whereby people want to be, on average, no more than 30 minutes from work. This has remained true from walking through trains and streetcars to the automobile era of today. The only difference is the distances covered, not the average amount of time people spend. Many of our cities have sprawled out to such an extent that this limit has been reached for most people. Traffic chokes off growth and people get fed up with it, so they find alternatives, change their lifestyle as much as they can, or move somewhere else. The suburban development pattern is a historical anomaly, an experiment less than 100 years old and supported only by a stable system of oil-based energy and transportation, well-maintained government subsidized roads and highways, and a population and financing system wealthy enough to afford it. These are all very fragile and tenuous things, and the faltering of any particular one can be devastating to the whole "happy motoring" concept and the notion of the suburban dream.

True, but even in 1880 Cincinnati only had the most rudimentary sewer system, for example. Like basically only the downtown core of today was served on every street. Most of OTR and the West End had just a few streets with any sewers at all. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/cincinnati_sewerage_1880.jpg I'd need to dig up my history of the Cincinnati Water Works to recall how things progressed with that, but I think it was similar. Either way, both cities were founded at pretty much the same time, though L'Enfant drew up his plan for Washington when Cincinnati had barely been settled for 2 or 3 years. I think Washington probably has more old infrastructure because they built it earlier as part of the plan with growth in mind. Here it was more on an as-needed basis, and a lot of it got expanded or replaced over time, so it's likely newer but more haphazard. Nevertheless, Washington has some pretty monstrous main streets, unlike here, so it's less likely for all their utilities to be in the way, which helps because they have a lot of problems with their underground stuff as it's gotten so old.

^ But infrastructurally? I don't know about that.

If only they could do a truly urban gas station like you see in a few places in Copenhagen. Then you could keep the gas station and still fix that whole end of the block. Many of these buildings fit the overall design typology of U Square too. http://goo.gl/maps/hepqG http://goo.gl/maps/05jBw http://goo.gl/maps/Glo9K http://goo.gl/maps/y6CEn

It's also important to realize that even though there are plenty of people who don't want to own a car, or who want to drive less, many are forced into it because there's simply no other viable option. Just like not everyone who buys a house in the suburbs really likes suburbs, but if they can't afford better, or its closest to their job, or the schools are better, then that's the only option there is. So when ODOT says we need to build the new Brent Spence Bridge because driving hasn't decreased in southwest Ohio like it has in other places (which is most likely BS anyway) the reason is because other than in some very specific living arrangements, there's simply no other choice but to drive. No matter how much you try to live in Over-the-Rhine and walk to daily needs and such, if the only job you could find is in Blue Ash or Erlanger, well then it's pretty difficult to live car free even if you want to.

^ Sure they should, they're an example of a type of municipal service that isn't currently and doesn't need to be constrained by city boundaries. That can just as easily apply to other things like police and fire protection, libraries (which already are countywide for the most part), street maintenance, trash collection, etc.

^ Agreed. Much like I said in the UrbanCincy comments, I think it's far more likely (and probably a lot more mutually beneficial) for some of these inner suburbs to merge with each other rather than with Cincinnati. Silverton and Deer Park already have a joint fire department, and I assume there's other service sharing agreements as well besides just the overlapping school districts. That's probably the first thing to happen is merging of certain departments rather than even full municipal consolidation.

Are these projections from 1998 or something?

^ That's the spirit, it sucks already so that means it's ok to just make things worse rather than working harder to overcome the location's inherent flaws. This is why we can't have nice things.

It looks like my senior architecture thesis project, which was crap (sadly). It follows the current trend of arranging the windows randomly to try to...look trendy I suppose? The recessed first floor is the kind of thing that sounds good on paper (let's build an arcade which will draw people in) but ends up being kind of a foreboding no-man's land that's only useful on rainy days.

I think I'm gonna cry.

And many neighborhoods in Chicago are virtually wiped clean of buildings, ala Detroit. I know Chicago is very aggressive with demolition too. Maybe being too strict means it's easier to demolish than to maintain? I don't know if that's really a good thing. I'll admit I don't know a lot about real estate law, but I wish we could see a situation where the city would "repossess" buildings from delinquent owners and sell them for $1 to someone who's required to bring them up to a certain habitable condition within some amount of time. The problem is that any fines, leins, or delinquent taxes accrue to the property, rather than the owner. A new owner should be able to come in and get the place fixed up without having to settle the debts accumulated by someone else. Am I completely off-base here?