natininja

Wow, crazy to hear about the Brazilian place. I'm gay too and have never seen or experienced anything like that in Cincy. Glad to hear the rest of your trip went well! Maybe our frustration with walking over the band of highways made it sound worse than it is. It's not a tough walk by any means, but it could be more inviting. Where are you guys from?

If by 'terrorists' you mean 'oil interests', you are correct. An over-simplification, but even extreme facetiousness is not out of the ballpark.

Ummm....I've been to all of those cities except Leningrad Saint Petersburg. YES! I would LOVE to be a part of that club. Besides...Communism is SO 20th Century. If he's trying to keep up with the Tea Party he should be labeling it Socialist. Whatever, COAST... Socialist and Muslim are interchangeable.

Some of the most densely populated states are receiving more than they give, according to that map. Even the classic urban case of DC is a net recipient. The rule is broken in several cases.

yeah, do want!

Are they even digging up the main streets now? Unless they are digging up Calhoun and McMillan, I don't get the utility question. They were doing some street scaping in the area a couple years ago. My bet is they didn't do anything with the streetcar in mind. Soon they should be doing work on Short Vine, which I would think they would do with the streetcar in mind, given the route is planned to go right through there, and the project is quite a bit further along than it was a couple years ago. I do wish they would reach an agreement to bring the streetcar through University Plaza! Edit: Hope the mods do some pruning up in here. It's bad enough we are talking about the streetcar, but Copenhagen and Mason? Really?

Is late 2014 too optimistic to hope for running streetcars?

The Lager House is slated to open on the 27th (with a sold-out private opening on the 25th). Can't wait till I can make it there. Moerlein redeems 2 dreams by David Holthaus When it opens to the public on Feb. 27, the Moerlein Lager House will be a fine place to enjoy good beer and good food on the Cincinnati riverfront. But that’s only half the story. The rest of the story is the long-awaited redemption of sorts for downtown Cincinnati, where development of more than 50 valuable acres along the Ohio River had been frustrated for years. Now, the new brewpub and restaurant has potential to be the destination for the between-the-stadiums development that includes The Banks. At the same time, it provides a vital link to Cincinnati’s rich, but once endangered, brewing heritage.

I guess they can do both, but it should be their top priority to make the area near the river more inviting, precisely to make a vibrant whole for greater Downtown. Towers are one way to get residents, but there is such a large space of fast food joints and parking lots that they might as well build more horizontally to fix the situation.

Similarly to how suburbanites have been impotent to stop the streetcar, it is incumbent upon residents of these communities to protest what they don't like, as others have very little say. Even if spending money on zero-sum developments hurts the whole region, it's beyond our reasonable control. If you want to see instances of people from this board going up against big developers in protest, look at the historic preservation movement. I think you would find many people here in favor of an "urban growth boundary" similar to what exists in , e.g., Oregon. However, it doesn't seem to be a prudent battle at this time, and with I-75 developed basically to Dayton, the idea of a ring boundary is already impossible -- that cat's out of the bag. (Can you imagine Warren or Butler counties agreeing to something like that?! Or Clermont County? Or Governor Kasich?) Another thing we tend to do is not focus on individual projects in suburbia, but try to nip the encouragement of sprawl in the bud. You'll see a lot of use speaking out against the Brent Spence Bridge supplement, the I-75 widening, and the Eastern Corridor "expansion of I-74". Not only is it more effective to attack the source, but as most of us in the area are citizens of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, we're in a better position to be listened to. Even still, when the feds want to throw lots of Chinese money at sprawl encouragement, it's pretty hard to stop.

Sounds awkward and non-factual.

NKY needs to work on making the trip over the bridges more pleasant for people not in cars. They really don't need to be building towers right now. Especially no more towers with no ground-floor retail and big lawns. Gotta say, I don't hear people talking about NKY anymore in terms of being a model for getting things done. I think the faultiness of that is finally starting to sink in.

We were all thinking it! ;-) Goddamn, wish they never took it down.

^ I feel sorry for Eighth and State, too, because people are piling on him pretty harshly. More harshly than normal, and he always does this same thing.

^ The city had to respond when Duke rattled its sword. You make it sound as if the city were the first to do so, when it was Duke that went to the media. My bet is the ground breaking ceremony's date was determined by the feds, and therefore not a sign of the city standing its ground against Duke at all. The thing is, we could be having exactly the same conversation if Duke had said 16 or 80 feet instead of 8. At some point, the distance is relevant to the way you talk about the issue. The Business Courier's research cements my belief that distance is under 8 feet. Whereabouts would you put that number?

6th Street to get there, do some bar hopping, then riverfront route return? :-)

Did you read the Business Courier article about utility distances?

^ Not sure where that street would go. You wouldn't be able to fit much on it in the way of buildings, with 71/471 in the way. Looking at Google Maps, it does look like 6th Street has the most direct route, as Eighth and State said. Maybe you can try them all and report back what you think. ;-)

kjbrill, just because we are discussing it doesn't mean we like it. Who is saying this or Liberty Town Square are good things? Frankly, most of us would prefer virtually nothing be developed in these areas. Look on this page, the way people are joking about developers' use of the word "infill" for greenfield development. We'd prefer the green fields stay. BTW not to be picky or insulting, but in case you are curious and don't know, the word you were intending to use is "moot" not "mute".

It really is a shame how cut-off Mt. Adams is from downtown. It would be interesting to have a charette or something to try to think up cost-effective ways to make a more inviting connection. It could be worse, though. At least these pedestrian paths do exist.

If you think non-Apple electronics products aren't also produced in slave-labor factories, I've got a bridge to sell you. Many of them are produced in the exact same factories as Apple products, but of course, it's fashionable to single out Apple while ignoring every other company that employs the same labor practices. I don't think it's bad to single out Apple, given their prominence (world's biggest company!). Particularly since they charge so damn much money over the top of what other companies charge for the same parts. (They aren't even passing the slave-labor savings onto their customers -- maybe that's cynical, but it's true.) They want to be industry leaders? Fine. Show the industry how a profit can be made with fair(er) labor practices.

Marketing and industrial design. Don't forget the industrial design. Apple is a coup of form over function.

I don't know why people get so up-in-arms about other people buying Apple products. But I definitely see why people think they are sub-par and not worth buying. You get stuck in the "everything must be Apple-approved" world where everything you can get for other branded machines (including the machines themselves) costs 25+% more. That's ignoring the more geek-centric lack of customizability. If you want to future-proof your machine, you are SOL because the latest technologies are usually not compatible with Apple products. Not to mention the technologies which Apple wholesale refuses to adopt, like USB 3.0. Can't have that. You're stuck with old tech and a Thunderbolt port, for which there are few accessories and the ones that do exist are outlandishly pricey. If money is no object for you and your technical demands are minimal or very specific, by all means, buy Apple products. (The "money is no object" part is probably responsible for much of the backlash.)

I think people feel so burned by the stadiums that a transit tax is a tough sell, despite the fact they are completely different. I suppose we could take a card out of the coast playbook and just put it on the ballot every year until it goes our way. Going to the airport presents yet another difficulty, due to the airport being located across state lines. OKI needs to get all the dual state stuff sorted out. Until Metro and TANK combine, I will hold little faith that an airport connector is imminent. If I had any influence on OKI, combining regional bus services under one umbrella would be high on this list of priorities. It should be a bipartisan issue, reducing inefficiency of duplicate services and improving transit options in one fell swoop. Of course, the competing interests are not so much Republican-Democrat as Ohio-Kentucky.

The southern way might be more pleasant, since you can walk through the parks on the riverfront then cut north. But I guess it would depend where you're coming from which route you want to take.