jonoh81

Not sure where this goes, so I'll put it here. Woda is proposing a 3-building, 84-unit apartment project at 3150 Allegheny Avenue on the East Side.

Now imagine what it could've brought it had they not used half of the site for parking.

I really just don't understand why they can't build apartment buildings on a grid with sidewalks and a central park area. Any parking could either go into a single garage or underground. It would make the whole project so much more appealing, walkable and they could fit in more units on the site and end up more than covering the expense of a garage. It's just such a stupid waste of land and opportunity.

Bridge Park is a good base template for suburban density and walkability, but it's not without flaws. I definitely agree that having so much of it be similar heights and designs from a single developer does make it feel sterile to some degree. It's the same way I feel about the Arena District, Grandview Yard and to a lesser degree the Jeffrey development. There's nothing seriously wrong with any of them, but none of them feel like organic neighborhoods because all the buildings have the same essential design and feel. You can very much tell they were planned communities. They lack the charm and interest that other neighborhoods have. That said, these are rather minor complaints given the number of positives.

The Short North did the same thing with seemingly 47 different Cameron Mitchell concepts.

Strangely, none of those calls seem to be coming from any other Columbus suburbs, let alone Columbus itself, which continues to build absolute crap like Hamilton Quarter.

Density and walkability are not the same thing, though. Low density development can be walkable and high-density development can be unwalkable. And I don't know if the standard argument for Columbus is that it feels particularly dense. If anything, most seem to argue that it feels far less dense than the other 2-Cs.

From the Census or where?

You said you went to the block level to get weighted density, but where? I know you can get population figures at the block level, but where did you get the area sizes for them? Also, how long did this take? There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of blocks for entire cities. Calculating density for all of them seems like it would've taken a while.

I would argue Columbus' relative flatness would support even more sprawl outward, not compactness. If there are no topographical limitations to expansion, then it would be a lot easier to keep building further out. So if anything, its compactness goes contrary to the expectation.

Columbus is very compact. If you look at the 3-Cs overall, Cincinnati and Cleveland spread out quite a bit more in terms of development, but much of that area has a more consistent mid-range density in part because they've both had massive depopulation over the last 70 years. Cincinnati has recoverd slightly from its low point, but not enough to make any significant difference. Columbus is far more compact- that's why people always claim you can drive 20 miles in any direction and be in farmfields. But within that compact development area, population densities can be relatively high all the way out to the edge. And it's the only city that's seeing significant repopulation in almost all urban areas.

Doesn't Nationwide own a bunch of land there too?

RIP ChiChis architecture.

Somewhat related to sprawl, here were the density profiles for the 3-C counties in 2020. Top 10 Tracts with the Highest Density Cuyahoga 160604- 26613.0 160603- 17636.9 1033- 14305.9 101101- 14270.8 119502- 13644.2 1023- 12925.3 1053- 12787.6 119501- 12648.4 102101-12636.3 101501-12428.9 Franklin 1121- 34759.3 1810- 28261.4 1302- 24707.3 1301- 20588.7 17- 20171.7 12- 20081.1 1110- 17693.4 10- 16269.7 16- 12693.1 6992- 12445.4 Hamilton 25- 20656.7 10- 17620.6 26- 15726.8 2901- 15496.8 33- 14447.6 9- 14241.3 17- 13861.0 30- 11422.1 7- 11339.8 264- 11009.9 Columbus continued to have the highest density tracts of any of the major cities in the state. % of Tracts 10Kppsm or Higher Cuyahoga: 6.54% Franklin: 5.47% Hamilton: 5.3% % of Tracts 5K-9,999.9ppsm Cuyahoga: 36.67% Franklin: 33.53% Hamilton: 26.55% % of Tracts 2K-4,999.9ppsm Cuyahoga: 38.56% Franklin: 42.68% Hamilton: 45.13% % of Tracts Less than 2Kppsm Cuyahoga: 18.24% Franklin: 18.29% Hamilton: 23.02% % of tracts can be somewhat deceiving given that tract sizes in the counties differ significantly, but they do line up with the density rankings overall. A better measurement, though, would be how much land area of each county is represented by density levels. Total Land Area in Square Miles and % of Total County Land at 10Kppsm or Higher Cuyahoga: 6.4/1.39% Franklin: 5.47/1.01% Hamilton: 2.7/0.66% At 5K-9,999.9ppsm Cuyahoga: 67.6/14.76% Franklin: 66.76/12.26% Hamilton: 29.6/7.31% At 2K-4,999.9ppsm Cuyahoga: 157.5/34.41% Franklin: 179.05/32.93% Hamilton: 127.3/31.38% Below 2Kppsm Cuyahoga: 226.3/49.44% Franklin: 292.41/53.78% Hamilton: 246/60.65% Cuyahoga and Frankling are far more similar with each other than they are with Hamilton, which has the lowest density levels across the board. Attached is a more detailed breakdown of density for each county.

It's also just counter to all evidence of the impacts of bike lanes. Study after study has found them to be neutral at worst to very positive for local businesses along routes. Any supposed traffic conflicts can be solved with a good plan. Also, if we're not going to build transit alternatives because of a fear about the impacts of car traffic, we're not at all serious about transit alternatives.

When more than 2/3rds of the Ohio counties losing population are rural, it's not because of their road quality. It's because they have no jobs, no prospects, and it's getting worse especially with rabid and regressive conservatism driving what few young people there are away in droves. Spending billions on roads out in the country where fewer and fewer people live is a waste, and long term, it will just impact funding for other transportation needs because all those rural roads require constant subsidization.

That just makes the crappy use of land at the Lucent site worse to me.

It's absolutely naive of DeWine to believe that the corporation that intentionally underfunded maintenance and safety to line their own pockets and therefore caused the disaster can be taken at their word that they're committed to doing the right thing now.

Bollinger Tower was built before there were tons of Karens in the neighborhood, and they were probably just happy to have any development there at all. It's probably why it's so much easier to build in Franklinton. They love the attention and finally seeing a positive trajectory in the neighborhood, but sooner or later, the neighborhood commission will also gentrify hard and we'll be seeing the same BS.

The sprawl in the 1950s also largely predated most of the highway system, though. You would get things like Linden with its small single-family ranches that were still built on grids. But the 1960s were completely different, with endless cul-de-sacs.

"Collapsed" how, though? I wonder what was going on in the 1960s with schools.

Given that fertility and birth rates are dropping locally, nationally and globally, the whole "but families won't like less space" is becoming much less relevant over time. And I don't think 1000sf for a small family is really all that unreasonable to begin with, especially within a walkable environment. We don't really need as much as space as most modern American houses provide. It's become more about status than any true necessity. 1200sf or so used to be the average size of a new US home, and they were built for families in mind.

I know that in Columbus, school enrollment began collapsing literally the same year as busing started diversifying district schools. It happened everywhere around the country, though. A huge part of the early suburban flight was predicated on racism (and arguably still is to some degree)- along with subsidizing massive highways into the boonies.

Mostly unrelated, I went down a rabbit hole the other day looking at other former graveyard sites in the city, and there are at least 2 other sites where there are probably bodies remaining. There was a Catholic cemetery beginning in the 1840s at Washington and Mt Vernon. It became the site of St. Patrick's College, then Aquinas, then Columbus State. They apparently did not move all the graves, as several were found during the original construction of St. Patrick's. I couldn't find anything as to whether efforts were made to remove them all. The other big one though is the former East Graveyard, now the site of Livingston Park. It was bounded by Livingston, 18th, Stone and what was then called Pendelton- now Children's Gateway. It was open from about 1839-1876 and despite very wet land condtions, had several thousand graves. In 1882, the city purchased 3 lots in Green Lawn to move the bodies, but only about 10 boxes of various remains were moved. Another 70 individual graves were moved by families. There didn't seem to be any further efforts made after that, so there are potentially hundreds of graves under the park. The northern edge of the park now stops at Children's Drive, but it originally extended north to Stone Avenue. Today, part of a hospital building sits on top of the site, but most of it is just surface parking. I wonder if anything was found during the building construction.

Yes, the layout seems to intentionally destroy the forested area. All for only 22 homes, no less. It's a terrible waste of space even without that part.