mu2010

What are the new land use plans for E. 79 Red line? I remember a few months ago the discussion about relocating that one and the one at 34th. Also, hopefully the OC and the rebuilding of the station can generate some Clinic-related use of 105th-Quincy. It's a far walk though.

Dayton has some cool stuff - the area around UD, Carillon Park, Oregon District, Grafton Hill, Electric Trolley Busses, Air Force Museum.

If you guys are serious about a small town, you can't go wrong with Athens. I'd probably still say one of the 3 C's though.

I know Darrtown! On the way from Oxford to Hamilton.

The problem is that it takes so longggg to get anywhere with those options. In a dense transit-oriented city, transit is often faster than driving. Right now according to Google Maps, a trip to the Lennox Target would take me 6 min by car and 25 minutes by bus... assuming it sticks to the schedules.

That happened to me when I was visiting home a few months ago, on the Red Line heading downtown all the way from Brookpark station. That would not go over well in NY or Chicago, people don't know their transit etiquette here I guess.

I was driving on 70 Westbound heading into downtown today and there is a new exit right at Nationwide Children's that is simply signed "Downtown" with no street name. I thought it was bizarre so I decided to get off and see where it led me. It is the Mound Street connector as seen a few posts above in the dispatch graphic. Just a very strange choice of signage.

That is the very first Office Max I believe.

I would recommend reading "The Power Broker" to every UrbanOhioer. I see somebody also mentioned it upthread. It's by far the longest book I've ever read, and I basically had to devote all my free time to it for two months, but it was worth it. Anyone interested in cities, transportation, history, New York, politics, or corruption would enjoy it. Although it's about New York, you can easily translate what happened there to any other city and understanding how American cities got to be the way they are today. Moses figured out how to control the money through public authorities, getting in tight with unions, construction companies, politicians, and bond issuers. Once he had all those entities hooked, he could do whatever he wanted. I'm sure Albert S. Porter was cut from the same cloth. He was a genius, grew up an idealist but turned into a jerk later on. He did a lot of good with parks, his roads and bridges are a little more debatable. http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Broker-Robert-Moses/dp/0394720245

Here's another one for you - the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge: http://www.nypap.org/content/brooklyn-battery-bridge It would have completely destroyed Battery Park. The people against the bridge reached out to Eleanor Roosevelt, and FDR (who hated Moses) had somebody in the War Department make up a story about how the bridge was a threat to national security. That's the only reason it wasn't built. It was the first time some of Moses' former crowd came out against him, and the first major battle he lost.

Is this the same building with the front lawn that everyone hated?

When my brother was at OSU (only a few years ago) him and and his friends would always joke about the corner of "fourth and fourth" as where you didn't want to end up at 3 in the morning. Good to see redevelopment pushing up into the Weinland Park area.

I can only speak for Italian-Americans and the situation in Italy, as that is my family background and what I am most familiar with. But the vast, vast majority of people who left Italy came from the poor Southern countryside, not the cities. The countryside was poor, the cities were rich. They weren't trying to escape population density or dirty European cities, they were escaping poverty and oppression. When they arrived in the US, the cities were unlike anything they had ever experienced in their lives. They settled in large cities that had pretty poor conditions, so it's fair to say that when they got here they missed wide open spaces, yards to grow food in, etc. But those needs can be addressed in an urban environment. They just weren't addressed in poor immigrant neighborhoods in the early 20th century. The issue is not a predisposition to high population densities, it's all kinds of negative things that are lumped in with "urban" environments that are deeply rooted in American attitudes. City=poor, city=dirty, city=dangerous. None of those things have to be true, but they often were/are, due to America having a long history of treating its cities (and really all real estate in general) as disposable. Why take care of a place when you have manifest destiny and so much empty space? You can just trash it and then move somewhere new. Older generations, especially in Ohio, where the cities were in even worse shape than most places, simply can't make the connection that a city would be a pleasurable place to live. My longtime Cleveland family, my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc, can't wrap their heads around the fact that people with options move to NY, Chicago, etc, and live in the city and not the suburbs. It makes their heads explode. The great irony with my family is they never stop romanticizing how great life in the "old neighborhood" was with all the aunts and uncles and cousins down the street and all the wonderful delis and food down the street.... But then they keep moving farther and farther out to exurbs and cul-de-sacs and commenting about how it's a shame we never see each other as much as we used to.

Haha... I wasn't trying to knock you for taking a cliche shot, I should have said it's one of the most 'common shots.' it's a famous shot for a reason :)

Love and Honor <3 Eridony, the shot where you have the sundial/McCracken Hall/Central Quad is one of the most cliche photos of Miami's campus, but wow, yours might be one of the best I've seen, with those flowers in bloom. Betas were one of the top chapters in my day as well (06-10) Htsguy, but they did get kicked off recently for hazing, I think last year. I think they're renting their house out to another chapter.

I've said this before upthread, but hopefully when the Cincinnati Streetcar is a rousing success, some minds will open up at RTA, ODOT, etc...

Interesting thread on reddit - Columbus about this today: Note - there's some swear words. Personally, I feel that redevelopment efforts should be focused on areas that are struggling as opposed to ones that are doing great. One guy halfway down says that a big reason for this has to do with appeasing international students because they have so much $$.

I'm not so convinced that it's not Hoyer parting way with the Browns. Why would he resign here at this point? He'll do decently elsewhere, without the circus.

I like it, I just think they overhyped it. Also, the current state of the national media is that anything the Browns do will be ridiculed, so that explains the national reaction.

"The only black people in Minnesota are Prince and Kirby Puckett" -Chris Rock

The funny thing is of course that the rail industry was the most strong, virile symbol of the laissez-faire 19th century america that those guys love so much. The rail magnates fought tooth and nail against Theodore Roosevelt et all and their trust busting at the turn of the century. Ayn Rand wrote about railroad magnates in Atlas Shrugged, for chrissakes. This is why I am really rooting for that All Aboard Florida project. When people start making money off rail, that's when the political shift will happen. It already has with inner city redevelopment, mixed use projects, etc.

Anybody at the graduate visit day at Levin College right now? It starts in ten minutes, I'm sitting in the back.

Polaris is barely even drivable, let alone walkable. Anytime I want to go to an establishment on Polaris Parkway, I invariably drive past it and have to turn around and double back. You can't see anything from the road, and there is only a driveway to the retail plazas every half mile or so. It's a maze. There are a lot of apartments in the area though and I bet multipurpose paths would get used, as weird as they would be. Good for them for thinking about this - definitely a sign of changing trends and ways of thinking from 15 years ago when they built the area.

I have always been envious of Chicago's continuous parks/trails along the Lake from North to South, as opposed to our mostly private yards, industry, and airport. My pipe dream would be a multipurpose trail from Edgewater Park to Wendy Park, over the river (maybe on the rail bridge?), down to North Coast Harbor, and then into a great East Side Edgewater Park in place of the airport, continuing and terminating at that lakefront park near MLK Blvd. I recognize that that is mostly fantasy at this point but it's my 100 year dream. Point is, if Cleveland ever gets the growth and prosperity to justify closing Burke for redevelopment, at the very least the land closest to the lake should be reserved for a park. Currently, we just have too much open space already, as awesome as the fantasy of this lakefront 'hood would be. It would cannibalize progress elsewhere. We should leverage the airport for its strengths.

The "top" districts (according to conventional wisdom) in the eastern half of Cuyahoga County are Mayfield, Beachwood, Orange, Solon, and Chagrin Falls. I have to give my alma mater a plug here... Mayfield Schools are absolutely as top notch as Beachwood or Solon, even if they are not as known for it. The people are a good mix of blue collar and uppity white collar as well as some immigrants and minorities, but parents in that community value education which is key. My sister is graduating this year from Mayfield and my educator mother is still very happy with it. I would say if you're thinking about going as far as Beachwood or South Euclid-Lyndhurst, you should take a look at Mayfield as well. If you want the more urban experience, you are correct in looking at Shaker and CH. While the state rankings make them appear to have far more problems, I'm not so convinced that a student with supportive parents who wants to succeed would have any less opportunities at those districts than in one of the above districts I mentioned. As StrapHanger and Mov2Ohio said, ODE's ranking metrics are based solely on the percentage of students that meet a certain goal, like graduating or passing a test. A large number of students from lower income households that don't place an emphasis on education can really throw those rankings off, even if a school's programs, teachers, and standards are solid.