LincolnKennedy

Well, Dallas as a large city is certainly newer than Cleveland, so perhaps that is one reason you found Dallas to have better physical infrastructure. I'm not particularly familiar with Cleveland or Dallas, or Texas at all for that matter. I've transferred in DFW Airport twice, that represents the total amount of time I've spent in Texas. Nevertheless, since we are all pontificating here and no one is really going about checking statistics when we make these comparisons, the best we have to go on is comparison by analogy. Texas is a southern state, and southern states typically score lower nationwide and spend less money on education, mental health, and other types of public services than Midwestern states. Typically it is items such as healthcare and education that states spend most of their revenue on. Texas is a border state, and therefore benefits from closer access to cheaper labor (illegal labor whose money is probably not coincidentally more easily captured through a sales tax rather than an income tax, where it would go unreported); it is closer to newer, emerging markets (such as Mexico, Brazil and China) than Ohio; and it has had much greater prominence in national political leadership than Ohio has since the New Deal (John Nance Garner, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson for the Democrats, the two Bushes, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay for the Republicans). Only recently, probably since the late sixties or seventies did Texas switch over from the majority of southern states and begin paying more in federal taxes than they received in federal spending. Texas probably makes building toll roads a priority since it helps encourage suburbanization, which expands their property tax revenue as well as what I assume was a thriving and highly profitable home-building sector which more likely than not employed far more illegal aliens than the home-building sector in Ohio, for example.

Although the renderings do look weak, and the 'Calhoun Street South' moniker is apt, I'm less annoyed with the rather formulaic look than I am with the windows specifically. If people are going to live in these buildings, why not build some bigger windows that you can open and close, or maybe some with real balconies. That strikes me as being the most city-friendly element you could put out there (and some of those ceiling to floor storefront window/door like at L'express. What are they called Cramer?)

What they should do is move the law school to a downtown site, so as to make it more convenient for the state and federal judges who work in Cincinnati to be adjunct professors.

The problem with these developments compared with something like 4th Street west of Vine is that these guys are build one large building instead of rows of individual buildings standing side by side. So unless these are built with the capacity to subdivide them into smaller buildings (not condos) I don't see much 'fancying up' happening, at least not in the sense that most folks on this thread are thinking. The City should really consider what sort of aesthetic improvements they can encourage to these buildings once they are finished and rented or sold.

Jake, do you know if the Cincinnati and Westwood ROW still exists intact?

Weak, but better than nothing. Very institutional feeling, in the sense that all big developers build stuff like this.

I think transit is perfectly city friendly when it runs below the surface. A major problem with the 2002 MetroMoves plan (which makes up the above described corridors) is that it seemed, to me at least, to focus to much on abandoned right of way for the transit corridors than say, going to places where people lived. Why one would take the Central Parkway Subway transit corridor from Northside out I-74 rather than up Colerain to Colerain Township, which is the largest township in the County by population, that I don't know.

I think equations like this tend to turn people off who would normally be in favor of gay marriage or benignly indifferent. While their may be some similarities, they certainly arent' the same issue, which is what is implied by the equals sign. Lincoln, in his debates with Douglas, made a clear distinction between natural rights (which was the basis of his argument against slavery) and civil rights. These sorts of distinctions are important, particularly when you are trying to convince someone by argument.

It's generally cheaper to maintain the tunnels as is than to fill them in. There's a massive water main in part of the tunnels that City needs to have access to as well. My understanding is that the 2.2 miles of subway tunnel under Central Parkway is in essence, a 2.2 mile bridge, and is maintained as such.

This must be why my 1986 Chevy Nova could ride the rails on P Street in Georgetown but couldn't on Elm.

Thanks.

Thanks John. One of the things the guy I was talking to mentioned was that Cincinnati had a period of transition in public transit. He said it went old rail streetcars to electrified buses to diesel buses. He said that he thought the electrified buses were better. I think that with the fact that the modern streetcars would require anyone mounting steps to get on or off is the best argument for them from a technological perspective, much better than the supposed costs of shifting routes, which is largely just a smoke screen. Also, does anyone know which bus routes in current use today are essentially the same as the streetcar routes they replaced? I think this was mentioned previously on this thread.

^Thanks.

But does anyone even know if they exist and are in use by any polity?

It seems to me that the sales, particularly of the more modestly priced condos, have been quite good. The condo fees seem quite expensive to me though. What does that get you, the secure parking space?

I got into a discussion with a person this weekend about the streetcar, and he said that he thought a streetcar with rubber wheels (but still electrified from above) would be better than one that runs on a fixed track. I tried to speak of the advantages of the fixed track due to 1) the curb level access available on the modern cars; 2) the fact that so many prominent institutions are on the proposed streetcar route that the theoretical flexibility one might get from the wheeled streetcars would be moot, since Music Hall and Findlay Market (for example) haven't changed locations in a hundred years; and 3) that I had never seen, nor heard of any town using wheeled streetcars instead of fixed track ones. But I admit that the suggestion through me and I didn't feel that I had confidently refuted the assumptions of superiority of the wheeled variety of streetcar. Has anyone seen or heard of these types of streetcar? Also, anyone have a good series of talking points one can use in discussions such as these?

I wasn't comparing gay marriage to pedophilia. I was making a point that the state decides which marriages are legal and which are not, and what sort of sexual relations are legal and which are not. Whether you are pro-gay marriage or anti-gay marriage, it doesn't matter: the state has the sovereign right to regulate contracts, and marriage is a contract. That's not going to change whether gay marriage is legalized or not.

So you are saying that the government shouldn't intervene when an adult tries to marry a 12 year old? I'm not trying to harp on you but clearly it is the government's prerogitive to create and enforce the law, and (the reason I brought up all that stuff about sacraments and marriage and religious traditions) marriage is primarily a contractual arrangement, and it is certainly the prerogitive of the government to enforce contracts. Also, you seem to be confusing rights and liberties. Thanks for explaining that for me.

This seems to me to be a pretty weak statement. You say, "Whether or not you or I think it is right or wrong or would want to do it ourselves is not the issue." Your next sentence is, "It is up to each person to make decisions based on what they believe." Don't these two statements sort of cancel each other out? I've always wondered, what legal rights that they currently don't possess, do gay couples expect to get from gay marriage being allowed? Easier adoptions? Survivor benefits? I know a lesbian couple who went to Massachussetts to get married and have their wedding, despite the fact they live in Indiana and will be moving to New York, and their marriage will be unrecognized by both of those states. The trip to Massachussetts struck me as simply discouraging people from attending the ceremony due to its inconvenience to most of the invitees. It is interesting to see how much heat this issue generates, particularly because marriage is essentially considered an economic and legal arrangement not simply by the state but also by the vast majority of cultural and religious traditions. Only the Catholic/Orthodox tradition views marriage as a sacrament, meaning that it is a rite that conveys divine grace, blessing, or holiness to the believer who participates in it (although other traditions, LDS and Bahai for example, speak of marriage as a 'sacred covenant' which I suspect is just their term for a sacrament). Anyway, the vast majority of marriage traditions in the world seem to view it primarily as an alliance between families, and only recently (since the 18th century) has it been considered that romantic love should exist alongside, and then, as a spur and reason for the marriage.

^I'm assuming it was an attempt at humor. Schul is the yiddish term for going to temple.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor According to that webpage, GABP is a pitcher's park.

Look, I don't know how many times it has been said, but it is EASIER to evict someone from Section 8 housing than it is to evict a regular renter. And the largest Section 8 landlord in the City (and in Over-the-Rhine as well) Tom Denhart, went BANKRUPT, so clearly the product he was offering wasn't desired even by people whose circumstances allows them to enroll in the Section 8 program. Also, someone on this forum mentioned that District 1 (of which Over-the-Rhine is a part) has the lowest crime rate in the City. So how do these facts jibe with your statement above? There is also the issue of enforcement. I lived in a shithole apartment on Court Street for a year in 2001-2002. The next year I lived in an incredibly nice apartment in the 1100 block of Walnut. My experience was that activities that were tolerated by police (specifically loitering) in OTR were not tolerated once you crossed Central Parkway going south. Let's stop blaming poor people as being the abettors and incubators of crime. It is silly, it is ahistorical and not fact-based, and it is a notion that is bandied about far too frequently on this forum.

They could seriously put the names of all the low income renters living there right now on a list and guarantee them all that they will be provided a similar sized apartment and there would still be room for all the gentrifiers OTR could handle.

Well, the high is going to be right there across the street, and on Race between 12th and Central 3CDC has developed a number of those townhouses into condos as part of the Gateway project. Plus people still go to the area all the time for events at Music Hall. When the Streetcar finally begins rolling past, that's going to mount to a whole lot of new money invested in that area. I think you are being overly pessimistic.

I think I've mentioned it before on this thread, but I've taken a nap in that park in the middle of the day and I wasn't even approached, let alone harassed (maybe I blended in). I really think the problem will sort of resolve itself once more regular folks start living and hanging out around the Park. The only thing the City might want to do to alieviate the problem is move the Drop In Center (which has also been discussed on this thread).