BigDipper 80

Boo! Now I have to wait a few weeks before posting all my Bay Area photos! Great set as always!

^That's been my prediction for a long time. There's a sizeable number of people who I've seen predict that another urban collapse is imminent, but 1) there will be a few more families each generation who stick around in public schools and get involved with the PTA and stuff, and 2) there will be less pushback from parents worried about their kids moving into the "big scary city" since they themselves used to live in the city.

I was in downtown Cuyahoga Falls yesterday and the Front Street conversion is looking really nice. It's going to give a nice shot in the arm to that area which is frankly pretty dead right now, but I'm sure it'll fill up pretty quickly once traffic is restored. Akron on the whole is looking pretty lively these days.

I don't even think you have to go that far as to say that the governments are necessarily that more progressive, it's more that they really have no choice but to make those monies available if they want their states' major metro areas to keep functioning. Smart people at the local level in the western parts of the state(s) are able to snatch up some of those funds simply because they're there and they have to be. If you didn't have the moderating forces of Philadelphia and NYC, I'm sure the state governments in New York and Pennsylvania wouldn't be too terribly different from Ohio's.

^I've long held that the advantage that Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh have is that they happen to be in the same state as NYC and Philadelphia. Although those two Eastern cities are very different from their Rust Belt brethren further west, those Rust Belt cities are able to capture some fringe benefits at the state level that results from being directly politically and economically tied to the Northeast megalopolis. None of the 3C's have that same sort of lifeline, which puts them at a decided disadvantage compared to the Rust Belt cities of PA and NY. I'd argue that this is a pretty significant reason why Pittsburgh has managed to come around faster than Cleveland has.

Ohio GOP governor candidate Jim Renacci picks Cincinnati City Council member Amy Murray as running mate Renacci, a Northeast Ohio U.S. House member, is seeking the Republican nomination to replace Gov. John Kasich, who is term-limited. Murray adds a Southwest Ohio balance. More below: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/11/ohio-gop-governor-candidate-jim-renacci-picks-cincinnati-city-council-member-amy-murray-running-mate/940500001/

They definitely were smaller than my garage, which is about 16x20. The low ceilings definitely make things feel a bit claustrophobic too, and I'm only 5'7" tall.

How would bikes get down to Central, anyway? Would they have to go off the path and into traffic to turn left onto the jughandle? Would you just illegally ride your bike on those narrow sidewalks? Ideally I think a bike-ped bridge that swings off of MLK from the north and slopes to Clifton would be ideal to connect to Central, but heaven knows this administration would never consider it.

Eastsiders and Westsiders couldn't agree that this just makes sense? This just blew my mind that Westwood Northern Blvd. and Madison Rd. are actually the same street. That's *nothing*, up here in Dayton we have a road that's alternately named Turner, Shoup Mill, Needmore, Harshman, or Woodman depending on where you are, plus it has the honorific title of Wright Brothers Parkway.

^I got a little confused with the explanation, but it sounded like a lot of previous efforts were complicated by the fact that the property had been divided into multiple parcels with multiple owners, and one owner from New York was being very uncooperative/negligent, which was making it really hard to get anything done. It sounds like all of the parcels are controlled by a single owner now, which should hopefully be a good omen. It was also mentioned that SOM is very interested in whatever ends up happening with the building and have allowed access to their archives for research purposes.

The script and the acting look "meh", but this is clearly a passion project for Estevez and it looks like everyone was doing it for fun instead of a paycheck or an Oscar. Great shots of Cincinnati, though! Also the trailer was cut weird. I don't think a movie about a library under siege lends itself to a trailer cut like an action movie.

The Steam Plant looks great!

New business planned for Wright Dunbar in West Dayton A real estate agency plans to buy and occupy a building located in the Wright-Dunbar business district. Vintage Investments LLC plans to purchase a two-story building at 1024 W. Third St. from the city of Dayton for $50,000. More below: http://www.daytondailynews.com/business/new-business-planned-for-wright-dunbar-west-dayton/mQenECR4hRKOEq48QPXSdP/ ---- I also saw some work going on inside the old post office on Williams. Not sure what's going in there yet.

^You must have clicked the wrong link somehow. If you filter by location, you can select just the Ohio restaurants, and the three listed in the Bizjournals article are what show up.

I'd rather have him put more units into the existing footprint and reorganize it so that there are appropriate "streets" and have a more Banks-like or lifestyle center feel, but that doesn't seem to be what's going to happen here.

Kind of sad how easy it was to completely dismantle the nation's streetcar networks but how hard it is to get rid of even a short stretch of freeway.

I'd describe them as "small for a hotel room". Much smaller than your typical new-build 1-bedroom apartment. If you wanted to install kitchens, you'd probably need to combine two units.

I was on the tour, it was cool to finally see the interior of this hotel. Boy oh boy does it need a lot of work, but I still have high hopes for this property.

^Where did this belief come from? Was it rooted in some idea that the only way to create a strong black middle class was to replace Hough with a suburb? Obviously Hough had a particular stigma among both whites and African-Americans, but it seems foolish and naive to assume you can't build a solid mixed-income neighborhood with denser, non-McMansion housing.

Well, that hurts to look at...

I don't know if it was mentioned anywhere else but the Fifth Third building changed the logo on the top of the building and I think it looks a lot worse with the white "cap" than it did with the black.

^It's a contraction for "isn't it" but it's definitely a British thing and not an American thing so I have no clue why I started using it.

I've noticed recently that I've started to use "worsh" and "innit"; I assume the first one comes from my old Pittsburgher roommate but I don't think "innit" is any sort of regional things around the Dayton area.

I wonder if this could eventually lead to a sort of "day of reckoning" among sports franchise owners when talk comes up of trying to get a city to pay for a new stadium. Maybe the dynamics are different with MLS vs. the NFL, but I'd like to hope that Columbus saying "we aren't going to be held hostage by you" would send a strong message to other cities to stand their ground. Alternatively, if the City manages to essentially "call Precourt's bluff", other team owners won't have as much of a leg to stand on when trying to extort money from a city. But of course, it's all a racket anyway and I'm sure teams would come up with some new way to steal money from taxpayers.

Streetcars getting stuck in traffic is a major problem that I noticed when I was in Toronto a few months ago. College Street in particular was completely gridlocked, and the people I was traveling with (who aren't urbanists by any stretch but aren't completely afraid of public transit) made multiple comments about how they weren't sure what advantages the streetcars had over buses when they were getting stuck in the same traffic as the buses anyway.