jbcmh81

Like the design, but still wish for taller for such a prominent location.

And as most pundits (i.e. realists) predicted, the casino didn't lead to much actual economic development outside its doors. The tiny (as in number of people) Columbus power structure knew this as well and wanted it away from Downtown so that they could create or enable real economic development DT and in the AD. I thank our overlords for their insight. There has been some, though, and I don't think you can argue that this area is worse off than before the casino was built. I don't think anyone thought it would be some panacea. It got the ball rolling, that's all. As for what will go into the AD, it is FAR better.

Low density and "suburbia" aren't quite the same thing. Much of Columbus is car-dependent by design, with land uses separated into big uniform chunks. That qualifies as suburbia regardless of population density. Adding people doesn't make the grocery more walkable, nor does it put rail on High Street. Columbus even held a special vote so it could have a suburban casino. That still blows my mind. I think you are also conflating "urban" with "walkable", and they are also not the same thing. There are plenty of urban areas that have little walkability, and there are also suburban areas that are very walkable. The claim was that Columbus was very suburban, and suburbia's definition has nothing to do with walkability, but about low-density development patterns. Columbus didn't have a special vote, the state of Ohio voted to move the casino when it was placed on the ballot. The reasoning Columbus wanted it on the ballot at all was that they didn't want a suburban-style casino (massive parking lots and all) in a very urban neighborhood like the Arena District, and Hollywood specifically stated they were going to build that very thing. The idea was also that the West Side could both use the development and jobs. Ironically, despite not being Downtown and getting a lot of criticism by some for being in a more out of the way location, it now tends to be #1 or #2 in the state in terms of revenues. And the land that was going to be the casino site is planned for a pretty massive mixed-use development. So overall, hardly a failure.

I admit it is not fair to compare Cbus to many other Ohio cities, especially Cleveland and Cincinnati, which in 1950 had urban area populations 3 and 2 times larger than Cbus, respectively. But speaking of cities you can compare Cbus to, it is doing ok. (btw..Louisville with all of it's 385 square miles(again more than 50% larger than Cbus) only gained about 2500 people...in 385 square miles. That is not 'gaining alot of people to me.) Also Nashville at over 500 square miles gained less than Columbus, adding less than 10,000 people in over twice the area. Oklahoma City at over 600 square miles added less than Columbus, adding just a little over 10,000 people in nearly 3 times the area Indianapolis at over 350 square miles added only 4,000 people, and at more than 50% of the area of Columbus, is probably behind Cbus now in 2016 in population. Columbus added almost as many people as Jacksonville, which is nearly 4 times the area of Columbus. Memphis lost population and is 100 square miles larger than Columbus. Even the thriving Fort Worth, Charlotte, and Austin added less than 20,000 each and are all much larger than Cbus, from 265 square miles to nearly 350 square miles. The city is doing ok compared to it's peers- the real deal is that in many ways Cincinnati and Cleveland are not really peers to Cbus-they are legacy cities and should really be compared to other legacy cities. We all know that they both seem larger than Columbus, and we all know why too. *Also while there is growth taking place around the Columbus region, about two thirds of the growth happening in Franklin County is within Columbus city limits, and about half of all of the growth in the metro area is taking place, again, within Columbus city limits. As to your last point, I want to offer up some maps I saw on another site that were pretty interesting. The maps look at the CSAs from 1940-2010 and measure where land was developed over each decade. For Columbus, the VAST majority of development took place in the northern half of Franklin County. There is surprisingly little major development anywhere else, even in Delaware County. The Columbus MSA and CSA population is incredibly compact in terms of where population and development actually are. Meanwhile, you don't necessarily see that same pattern for the Cleveland and Cincinnati CSA maps. It's clear that as the core cities lost population, the suburban areas boomed instead, and overall development was much more widespread. Here are the links to each gif. Cincinnati CSA: https://s3.amazonaws.com/research.buildzoom/Projects/2016/Slowdown/Maps/Cincinnati_Wilmington_Maysville__loop.gif Cleveland CSA: https://s3.amazonaws.com/research.buildzoom/Projects/2016/Slowdown/Maps/Cleveland_Akron_Canton__OH_CSA_loop.gif Columbus CSA: https://s3.amazonaws.com/research.buildzoom/Projects/2016/Slowdown/Maps/Columbus_Marion_Zanesville__OH_C_loop.gif

how can that be true? cols has just over twice the population (850cols/388cle=2.2) and almost 3x the area of cle & cin (210/75=2.8 ). so if the cle population holds, and yeah thats a big if *sigh*, but if so, and if cols stops annexing, cols would have to go just a parma or so over a million in population to top that density. cinci is similar no doubt. You are probably making the common mistake of assuming that much of Columbus' population is out near and along its boundaries, but the reality is the opposite. Most of its population is closer to the core, just like in Cincinnati and Cleveland. As the guy with the data mentioned earlier, I have personally gone over the numbers in numerous ways, from measuring different square mile areas to going down to the census block level. In all the ways I have looked at in regards to city limits, I have found that just 1 way does Columbus not come out on top- in the CBD. Columbus easily has the lowest Downtown population of the 3- or did so as of 2010. Go just outside of that area, though, and the story is much different. And if anyone feels like I have unfairly manipulated numbers, they are free to go do them themselves. The Census offers all kinds of ways to do it if one is willing to put in the effort. At the current rate of growth, Columbus will hit 1 million before 2030- probably between 2026-2028. The fact that Cleveland's population continues to fall, unfortunately, means that the density gap is closing all that much faster. As far as Cincinnati, Columbus passed it sometime in 2014 or 2015.

The census doesn't break down origins of population growth like it does for counties and metros. However, one can extrapolate somewhat by those numbers. The metro area and Franklin County gain about 25% from foreign immigration, another 25% domestically, and about 50% from births vs. deaths. The city is likely not much different than that, with perhaps a bit higher % of foreign migration than the metro as a whole. Some evidence for that is that the population that speaks a foreign language at home within the city is rising fast.

Columbus has annexed less than 20 square miles in the last 16 years. About 210 square miles and 711,000 in 2000 to about 225 square miles and 850,000 in 2015 -adding 15 or so square miles(much of it in the extreme south of the city and not developable land)while adding nearly 140,000 people. The rapid annexation talk was played out about 20 years ago. And Cbus is about to pass Indy(and may have by now)-only 3,000 people behind in the latest estimates-while Cbus has 225 square miles and Indy has 365 square miles. That population surge from 787,000 to 850,000 happened with virtually no new annexation since 2010 It is played out, but it doesn't change the fact that they did. They have made great strides in urbanization in the last few years, but having 225 square miles in your city limits, quite a bit of which is suburban style, makes it way easier to hide population loss at the neighborhood level. If you bring it down to the less than 80 square miles that both Cleveland and Cinci have, you'll see a much closer population. It will still have grown fast in the last five plus years with urbanization, but it would not be nearing 900,000 people. 225 square miles isn't even correct. Even throwing any water, it's no more than around 220. Without it, it remains at around 217-218. Either way, this is actually close to the average size of the 50 largest US cities. It is hardly a standout. It's hard to argue that much of Columbus is low-density suburbia when you consider its actual population density. It now has greater density at 218 square miles than Cincinnati does at 79, and is perhaps a decade from passing Cleveland in density as well. Since I don't see people arguing that either of those cities are made up of suburbia, it's hard to figure where Columbus gets this title. And actually, the Census does comparative population by area size. Columbus would still easily be the largest city at 80 square miles.

First, if it is happening outside of Columbus' boundaries, then it isn't Columbus sprawl. It can't control the building patterns of surrounding suburbs and cities which have entirely different leadership and development standards. Second, actual sprawl within the metro area has been decreasing. Only 14 square miles of development has occurred in greenfield space in the past 5 years in the entire 10-county region, which is significantly slower than what it was even 10 or 15 years ago. Slightly less than that has been infill development in existing urbanized areas, which is also an increase from what it once was.

Sorry, but Columbus does not grow its population through annexation. Since 2010, it has grown by less than half of 1 square mile, and most of that was low-population township land. Its annexation rate has been steadily shrinking for decades. In the past 35 years combined, it has added fewer square miles than just the 1970s alone, yet its population growth rate has accelerated and is even exceeding those years in which annexation was at its very peak. It's high time that the "Columbus grows through annexation" talking point dies already.

I made a map of demographic changes in all of Franklin County's census tracts since 1990. They show some interesting and surprising things. In the urban core, it is not just a matter of whites replacing others, as that is happening in relatively few tracts. http://allcolumbusdata.com/?p=5026 In terms of the number of tracts being integrated, I looked also looked at Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties to see how many tracts were integrated in 2014. I didn't do maps for Cuyahoga or Hamilton counties because I cannot find decent black tract maps that I can edit. I did, however, look at the demographics of every single tract in each of the 3 counties. Here is the bottom line. In Cuyahoga County, there were 104 integrated tracts of 444 county tracts, representing 23.42%. In Hamilton County, there were just 36 of 222 that were integrated, representing 16.22% of the total. In Franklin County, there were 93 of 284, representing 32.75%. This was in 2014. I am working on the numbers for earlier years to see how this total is changing over time. Another thing I noticed is that, within the integrated tracts, Cleveland's had the most that included a sizeable Hispanic population, while only Columbus had a sizeable Asian component.

Oh look, another reduced-scale project that looks like crap. Because... Columbus.

So if I ran the numbers for those cities and they didn't have the same density issues, what would be the excuse then? I guess we'll find out, because I am doing them and will post them here.

This is no surprise that Cincy has a higher percentage of under 2500/sqmi density. This number from ParkScore still does not include all of the area in Cincinnati that has hilly unstable soil that is unable to be, or is costly to develop. Spend any time driving around, and you'll see there is a lot of it, especially in the western portions, and along the arms of the city that stretch along the river. Your numbers only serve to reinforce that the city is a series of pockets where development can occur, as opossed to a city that develops on what was essentially an open field. There are plenty of cities with hilly terrain that still have higher density. What the suggestion here is that there can never be any real density comparisons because of geographical or other differences, which I think is kind of silly. Every single city has something that works against their density. I'm not sure why Cincinnati is being made out to be a special case.

Just want to say I love your site and the amazing way you can compile data. I do want to point out that much of the problem people have with Columbus and density seems to be not the density, but the 'kind' of density. There is the walkable density with shops, restaurants, etc. nearby, and then there is the suburban style density where apartment complexes may be jammed in and you get the density, but you still have a suburban style layout, non-grid, Wide suburban arterials with no sidewalks, dangerous for any pedestrians, shops and businesses isolated due to zoning and setback from the unwalkable arterials with huge parking lots between the stores and the streets. I bet portions of the South Hilliard area around Hilliard-Rome road(the vast majority south of Roberts Road actually within Cbus city limits)would qualify as high density, but the area is a damn mess navigable only be car( and that is a hellish experience in and of itself much of the day in that area). Hell I avoid Hilliard-Rome if at all possible. It may be density, but it is definitely not desirable density. I think others commented about how some California coastal suburban areas are very dense(10,000 + per square mile), yet are basically just like other suburan car oriented areas, just with much smaller lots and homes jammed together. Of course it would be very difficult to define, and then measure, 'desirable density'. I can't even imagine how it could be defined and then measured with city to city comparisons. I would think that this 'desirable density' would be much more likely to be found in Cincy and Cleveland, since they were mostly built out before the suburban freeway era, but I think other problems factor in such as quality and age of housing stock, etc. that may offset much of the benefits of an area being walkable. There are areas of cities that are walkable, but are deteriorated and practically warzones-they may be walkable, but who would want to walk there? And is there the desire, the need(demand), the money, or the will to turn these areas around? Would a better way to compare densities be comparing the 1950 boundaries of the cities rather than the current areas within city limits? Actually, I think if Columbus was the same area size, you would not see any real difference in terms of walkable, "desirable" density (the urban core of Columbus- 1950 boundaries- is roughly equivalent to the current sizes of the other 2), and vice versa, if Cincinnati and Cleveland were 220 square miles, they would have as much of the same that you're referencing with Columbus. I don't think Columbus was built much differently than the other two, but its boundaries include a lot of post-war development that the others do not, and people see that and the perception is that it doesn't have much quality urbanity. The Hilliard-Rome Road corridor is not dense. The road itself bisects 2 census tracts- 7953 and 7954, with had 2010 densities of 3312 and 2480, respectively. These are lower than the average for all the city's tracts. This versus tracts in the actual core with densities regularly over 5,000, 10,000 and up to 30,000 around Campus, which is the greatest density in the state. I will have to look for the 1950 densities. I did them at one time.

I am doing this comparison with all of Columbus' peer cities nationally as well as major Midwest cities. Pittsburgh is a peer, so I will provide those numbers when I have them.

Which matters for the way jbcmh81[/member] got the results, because you could have a one square mile census tract with 1,500 people, two thirds of it a cemetery (or golf course, or large institutional campus) and one third of it neighborhood streets, and the entire thing would be counted low density, even though the people living there would be at density higher than 2500 Ppsm. I don't think it's a stretch to say considering the way Cincinnati developed in the basin only slowly spreading out to the hillsides there's a lot of situations like that. I didn't use census tracts. And I just gave figures that removed all that stuff.

So ParkScore gives an approximate % of the city area that is parkland (they count cemeteries, monuments, golf courses, etc. btw). So after doing a bit of math for all 3 using those figures, here were the final totals for each city regarding city area below 2500 PPSM. Total Area Columbus: 45.090 Cincinnati: 29.302 Cleveland: 20.693 Total % Below 2500 PPSM Cincinnati: 37.60% Cleveland: 26.63% Columbus: 20.76% So Cincinnati remains 11 and 17 points higher than the other 2 even removing all water and all parkland.

Not sure what you mean by fully occupied. Even at its peak, it probably wasn't fully occupied, but city density then reached 6,711 in 1950. Regardless, it is impossible to account for every single geographic or manmade feature that might be reducing density (the city area sizes I used didn't include water), but that goes for all 3 cities. I used block groups because they're one of the smallest area measurements the census uses, so it helps to reduce some of the contamination. I've looked at some of the census data too, what jumped out at me was that urban neighborhoods that had suffered neglect (like for example Brighton) actually have smaller populations than suburbs in the city limits like Mt. Airy where the built environment is less dense but the housing is (almost) fully occupied. Which may be partly because of reporting issues for neglected neighborhoods, but partly speaks to the scale of abandonment. In any case there's no large area of exurban style subdivisions within the city limits that would explain the data. Interesting pdf's on the city website: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/reports-data/census-demographics/ So urban Cincy is abandoned enough to cause this kind of discrepancy? That would be a huge problem if it caused a 20 point difference from Cleveland.

If they are single family home neighborhoods, they most likely are going to fall below the 2500 PPSM unless they are tiny lots and/or part of the old grid pattern built pre-war, and provided vacancy isn't that high there. Also, this isn't about walkability, anyway, which is difficult to measure even when you have a specific definition.

I think you guys are missing the point. Every city suffers from geographic and other features that would counter density over any specific area. People don't actually live on top of each other with no roads, yards, hills, lakes, farms, cemeteries, etc. So Cincinnati, sorry, is just not a special case, and unless you could separate all that stuff out for each of them, it is really a moot point. Even if you dropped off 20% of the total to try and account for hills and other things, it would still be above the other 2 in %. And that would be unfair because you wouldn't apply the same metric to each of them. So either way, Cincinnati has the most low density. That doesn't mean it doesn't have some dense areas, but this is a measurement of the entire city based on very small parts.

Not sure what you mean by fully occupied. Even at its peak, it probably wasn't fully occupied, but city density then reached 6,711 in 1950. Regardless, it is impossible to account for every single geographic or manmade feature that might be reducing density (the city area sizes I used didn't include water), but that goes for all 3 cities. I used block groups because they're one of the smallest area measurements the census uses, so it helps to reduce some of the contamination.

Figured this went here... I have been working on determining how much land of each city is comprised of low-density population. I used 2500 per square mile, as I have seen that referenced in other works as the base point at which low density sprawl begins. I looked at census blocks within each of the 3-Cs and divided their populations from their given density and got square miles. I added up all the square miles within those blocks that had population densities below 2500. Here were the results. The data was from 2010. Total Block Groups with a Density Below 2500 PPSM Columbus: 67 Cincinnati: 58 Cleveland: 41 Total Square Miles with Density Below 2500 PPSM Columbus: 62.460 Cincinnati: 41.722 Cleveland: 25.663 Total Square Miles, Less Water, for Each City Columbus: 217.17 Cincinnati: 77.94 Cleveland: 77.70 % of Total City Area Composed of Density Below 2500 PPSM Cincinnati: 53.53% Cleveland: 33.03% Columbus: 28.76% Now, whether you consider low density to necessarily equal sprawl is another question, but it at least suggests low population areas, which could mean either rural or suburban. Given I only looked within the city boundaries, rural seems less likely too me.

It's not true, and I'm not sure where they got their numbers from. There are quite a few places with higher crime rates in the state.

Ohio is not anti-urban. Certain members of a particular party are.

I'm not even sure it's really possible to reach our peak populations again with improved living conditions. This is a huge factor that rarely, if ever, gets talked about. Back in 1900 people crammed themselves into tinier living spaces than they do today. A house that may have once housed two parents with 6 kids might house just 2 or 3 people today. Single occupancy buildings Downtown might now only house 1/20th the amount of people. It's entirely possible that every single plot of land in Cleveland could become occupied and we'd still be nowhere near that 900,000 mark. And that's fine. It's just a sign that the people who live in Cleveland live in better conditions. And the same thing has happened in every city in this country that grew before the turn of the 20th Century. NYC, Boston, Philly, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincy, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, etc. Yes, several of those suffered from mass abandonment as well, but even places like NYC that have seen nearly nonstop development since the 80s have just barely moved ahead of their peak population. Manhattan and Brooklyn are still below their peak populations (Manhattan by hundreds of thousands) but that's just because living conditions have improved. Being a resident of OTR in Cincy, that's one thing I think people forget when they talk about the peak population of 45,000. Sure, that's a ton and awesome. But even if fully built out it's unlikely we'd be any more than half that. And that's because we're not cramming people into 90 square foot units that have a communal bathroom for 30 different units in a building. And that's a good thing. Newer cities that grew up after the turn of the century, and more specifically after WWII, don't have this problem. Living conditions now aren't that different from post-WWII development. Therefore even as things change the population won't plummet due to massive shifts in living conditions like what occurred between 1900 and 1950. Exactly. Americans quite simply prefer more elbow room, and once it was practical to get it that's what they went for. In yard size as well as house size. This is the primary driving factor behind "sprawl". Actually, the primary driving factor behind sprawl is subsidization of infrastructure and green field development.