BigDipper 80

It strikes me as a little weird that after even bothering to save the high school in the first place, they now want to close in that courtyard into a glass box. Although I guess if/when this gets built, if it helps get more people passing through the building it'll be a win for COSI and for the riverfront.

NEW DEVELOPMENT: Pizzeria, bar, coffee shop, antiques mall planned for east Dayton On a section of East Third Street where there’s nearly as many vacant stores as occupied ones, good things are happening behind closed doors because of some local entrepreneurs. Work is underway to give a former funeral home new life as an antiques marketplace and coffee shop. A tire shop that closed is being cleared out and may become a pizzeria that has won over diners in northeast Ohio. A coffee roasting operation has moved into an abandoned garage. And a shuttered donut shop that has been collecting dust has been bought by someone who wants to reopen it as a bar and restaurant. More below: https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/local/new-development-pizzeria-bar-coffee-shop-antiques-mall-planned-for-east-dayton/8etLdNDmauKIhB5rmRgZgM/ -- I'm still amazed at how quickly Huffman is turning itself around. I still wish the area could have become a coherent Hispanic district, but I'm just as happy to see more hipster business opening up around there.

Hmmm......bet I can guess where that Sandusky stop is. You'd be able to pre-emptively lose your lunch on the Hyperloop so that you don't have to worry about accidentally puking on someone while riding the Raptor.

^Maybe the Museum can partner with the Levitt Pavilion being built two blocks away?

Just did a quick calculation using the American Survey info from the Census. For the 1950 core of Columbus only, 35.3% of all buildings were built prior to 1940. That's higher than all the post-1960 period combined. The 1950s were the second biggest period, at 18.5% of all buildings, so extending the range to 1959, the total jumps to almost 68%. So more than 2/3rds of the core buildings are about 60 years old or older. What that means is that a lot of Columbus was built in the 1940s. Most other towns ground to a halt for WWII but Columbus did not. Also, much of Columbus was built in the 1930s. By that time, we were seeing a lot less in the way of apartments over retail, buildings with no setbacks, NBDs and large urban apartment buildings in favor of duplexes, 4-unit buildings, mansions and bungalows. So our pre-1950 areas are not always the same as other cities' pre-1950 areas. We have a lot more Clintonvilles than Corryvilles. The NBDs we do have are a very small portion of the neighborhoods compared to their vast swaths of residential-only development. So the numbers say density but the development patterns don't. It's actually EASIER to have high density numbers when you don't have businesses taking up space. This, I believe, is where the friction comes from on here. I always thought it was interesting how German Village, being as large, as intact, and as old as it is, doesn't really have a true "commercial street", in terms of an architecturally-distinct strip. There's a concentration of restaurants along Third and other stuff scattered throughout the neighborhood, but you don't really have a Fifth Street like the Oregon District does (which is probably the closest analogue to GV in the state). My only guess would be that it was in the part of the neighborhood that got wiped out for I-70, if it ever did have one.

And I think this explains why the endless contest of trying to claim one city is the "best" or "more urban" is a completely pointless debate. Even on down through Dayton, Youngstown, Hamilton, hell even Bellaire has some great vibrant density (relative, for Appalachia). We're talking about a bunch of mid-sized, middle-power, middle-density (yes, even Cincinnati) cities that have about the same level of influence on their respective 1/3 of the state. Let's be real, the average person rarely can judge how "urban" or "big-city" a city or metro area is. How quickly we seem to forget that 90% of America thinks Cleveland has exactly two buildings because of Mike Polk.

^ A lot of this comes from a combination of the routing of 675, the fact that you can live in Warren or Greene and pay those counties’ taxes, and the fact that nearly everything in west Dayton is not desirable to build next to. I could never see some new suburb pop up just west of Trotwood, or god forbid west of Drexel, where developers could expect to get any sort of premium for those homes.

My family lives in Mason and about 1/4 to a 1/3 of their social group commutes to jobs in the southern Dayton suburbs like Springboro. When I was growing up, I don't think my parents knew a single person who did this. Thanks bwheats for providing that data source, I've never seen it before. Unfortunately it sorta disproves my anecdote. Although apparently Springboro is actually in Warren county, so it's not captured by this data. Perhaps we're just in a weird sweet spot for this kind of commuting. Montgomery to Butler: 3,750 Montgomery to Warren: 7,000 Butler to Montgomery: 4,500 Warren to Montgomery: 13,000 There's all sorts of weird boundaries that come up between Cin-Day, not the least of which involves Springboro and Franklin counting toward Cincinnati's MSA population. Then you also get stuff like ODOT's District 8, which includes Preble and Greene counties but not Montgomery County, so you have two different ODOT districts doing different work in the same metro area.

After a few days in San Francisco, we ventured across the Golden Gate bridge to check out some of the other communities of the Bay Area. First up was Marin County before heading up to Petaluma and Napa, before finishing up in the East Bay. Onto the photos! 1. IMG_2557 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 2. IMG_2570 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr First stop, Sausalito! I wasn't too familiar with Marin County prior to this trip, but it's pretty shocking how pastoral things get as you head north. 3. IMG_2571 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 4. IMG_2575 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 5. IMG_2583 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Sausalito has a large houseboat population. 6. IMG_2597 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr We tried to go to Muir Woods, but it was *slammed*, so we went to Muir Beach instead. Truly gorgeous. 7. IMG_2600 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Next stop... Petaluma! 8. IMG_2607 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Some truly beautiful Victorians. I was very surprised with the quality of the architecture in this small city. 9. IMG_2610 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 10. IMG_2613 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 11. IMG_2618 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Reminds me of Medina or something. 12. IMG_2621 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 13. IMG_2633 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Aaaannnd up to Napa! Some eccentric vineyard owner decided to build a replica castle stocked with very snobby sommeliers. 14. IMG_2641 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr I can see why grapes grow well here... it looks a heck of a lot like Tuscany. 15. IMG_2646 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 16. IMG_2671 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr A very nice public market in downtown Napa. 17. IMG_2628 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr A cool little midcentury building in Napa. 18. IMG_2695 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr After a quick pop to the Jelly Belly factory, we headed out to the East Bay. I had to make a pit stop to see the Pixar studios! 19. IMG_2699 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Some very California homes in Berkeley. 20. IMG_2700 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 21. IMG_2703 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Some Brutalist-Japanese campus architecture at UC Berkeley. 22. IMG_2705 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 23. IMG_2706 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 24. IMG_2713 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 25. IMG_2714 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 26. IMG_2716 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Fantastic marquee! 27. IMG_2717 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 28. IMG_2719 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Love this streamline house. Such a cool location. 29. IMG_2730 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Since we missed out on Muir Woods, I went to find a redwood forest in Oakland. 30. IMG_2732 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Oakland reminded me a lot of Toledo! ;) 31. IMG_2734 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 32. IMG_2741 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 33. IMG_2742 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 34. IMG_2745 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 35. IMG_2747 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr One of the many hipster neighborhoods in Oakland. 36. IMG_2748 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr 37. IMG_2754 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Goodbye from Alameda Island!

I thought they redesigned that? I'm honestly not sure. I haven't followed the more recent developments on this project. ODOT does still have renderings of the jughandle on their website.

That's the part of the project I've always been opposed to. What's the supposed benefit to adding that jughandle? To eliminate left turns from 490 to E 55th northbound? There doesn't seem to be any real benefit to extending the expressway another couple hundred feet.

"MedPark CLE Boulevard [/member] The Triangle".

Perhaps this is a really dumb question and I confess to be completely ignorant as to how international rail service either works here or abroad, but would it be theoretically possible for VIA to provide, say, a Chicago-Toronto route through Detroit and/or Cleveland & Buffalo? If we can't get Congress to pay for Amtrak, it would be nice if there was a way for our Canadian friends to tap into and help serve the Great Lakes region.

In the most common use of "boulevard", there's a divided, landscaped median with trees in the center of the road. I'd consider it at least somewhat interchangeable with "parkway", which is what West/East Blvd really is. I think it'll end up being called a boulevard because that's probably the most accurate way to describe it (See Nortwest Blvd in Columbus or Edwin C. Moses Blvd in Dayton).

I forgot that Cincinnati also has a "real" jughandle at Vine Street and Galbraith Road. As far as I'm aware it's the only one in the state.

Navigating the West Side is already impossible, blocking left turns with Jersey barriers will just ensure that anyone who crosses the Mill Creek will never manage to leave.

^Cincinnati's already got one at Hopple, and there's one proposed for E 55th at the Opportunity Corridor in Cleveland. Although they're more appropriately connector roads than jughandles in the NJDOT parlance, I suppose.

I assume that the bus they sent is the dual-mode that has an internal combustion engine in it that Dayton bought for trial purposes, but I could be wrong. Some of the next-gens have ICE’s, and the other ones are battery powered.

I always found it to be a weird experience to ride directly next to the Hilliard Road bridge no I-90 but be 15 feet below it. Great photos of a great neighborhood(s)!

In an unprecedented display of regional unity, Dayton has sent one of its Next-Gen trolleybuses down to Cincinnati to help keep the ice off the streetcar's wire! Eat your heart out, North and South Korea! ;D (photos courtesy of GDRTA by way of the Dayton Trolleys Facebook page)

Lakewood is also a nice case study in how "density" (note the suburbanite scare quotes) doesn't necessarily mean Manhattan, or even OTR, in terms of built environment. You can live in a reasonably dense, reasonably walkable neighborhood or city and still have a single-family detached house, a small yard, and a garage.

This guy probably has one of the thicker Cleveland/Northern Cities accents I've heard in a while:

Biking in downtown Dayton is about to get easier Getting from downtown to the University of Dayton campus on a bicycle can be tricky, since there’s a gap in the bike path that often requires riders to dodge cars around the U.S. 35 interchange. But the city of Dayton plans to close the gap, not only connecting those areas, but also completing a trail that links Kettering to downtown and beyond. More below: http://www.dayton.com/news/local/biking-downtown-dayton-about-get-easier/SZNfeaRkAZLqxrZ8JMhx0J/ --------- Good on Dayton for continuing to expand and improve its already-substantial bike network. These changes will do a heck of a lot to fix the handful of gaps in the bike path network that I struggle with when commuting by bike... especially the Warren-Jefferson connector. The area between US-35 and the railroad viaduct is downright scary to bike through currently.

I get that, but there are other cheap metros that are, well, more interesting. But maybe techies don't care about that and want to still be somewhat close to Burning Man.

It just strikes me as so bizarre that these Bay Area people keep leaving one of the densest, most vibrant metro areas in the country for the likes of Phoenix and Vegas. Although I guess Phoenix sprawl really isn't that much different from the ugly subdivisions that dominate most of the cities south of SF and Oakland.