DEPACincy

My life is not different in any meaningful way now that I own a house in Cincinnati than it was when I lived in an apartment in Philly. Except now I have rooms I don't use and I have to drive places instead of taking a train. I also walk less, which sucks. But you didn't say "comparable life" whatever that means. You said only ultra rich can afford to live in those places. Which is news to all of the very happy, not-ultra rich people who live in big cities.

Yes my friend lives in an apartment and I have more space. But he gets to live in Manhattan, with all the amenities it affords. So it's not really comparable. My only point here was that the other poster was wrong that only the ultra rich can afford to live in Manhattan. You can live comfortably on a middle class salary in Manhattan if you rent a modest apartment and don't own a car. You guys seems to want to pick apart aspects of this that aren't even remotely close to the point. I never said you could own a 4 bedroom house in NYC for the same price as Cincinnati. As far as your points about car ownership I'm not even going to argue with you. It's not even remotely close to true and the discussion has been had here a million times. No need to pull my hair out arguing with a troll again.

What are you even arguing? Who here said that any new growth is sprawl? Sprawl is low density, auto-oriented growth at the edge of a city or metro. New, mixed use, dense development is not sprawl. TOD is not sprawl. When your geographic footprint is increasing rapidly while population is growing more slowly or not at all, that's sprawl.

I did no such thing. I went from not owning a car to owning a modest used car. My point is that it cost thousands of dollars per year to insure, maintain, and drive a car. It doesn't matter how modest the car is. I can't even believe you're trying to argue that. The average cost of owning a sedan in the US is around $9k per year. Mine is substantially lower than that but it is still several hundred dollars per month out of my pocket. That's the point I'm making.

I do just fine, thank you. It is just a fact of life that owning a car is a HUGE portion of everyone's budget that has to own one. I got a fairly sizable raise when I moved to Ohio, but it was basically a wash because I bought a car. That's fine. I made plenty to sustain my lifestyle before, and I continue to do so. But I'd love to be putting the money that goes into my car into my 401k instead. That's what my buddy gets to do since he lives in Manhattan. It isn't about the size of the metro area, it's about density. I thought that was obvious.

And that's fine, but we need to be honest about how much it costs to subsidize those people who want to live in the exurbs but still have access to the big city.

That absolutely was not the whole point of the streetcar. It is a characteristic of OUR streetcar, but not the point. Philly streetcars run in dedicated lanes, and even a tunnel through downtown. Ours is built the way it is because of failed political leadership. Signal priority and dedicated lanes along portions of the route would absolutely be an improvement over the status quo.

Btw, only two metros on this list have costs of living lower than the national average. Nashville and St. Louis.

But we're talking about empirical data here, not just perceptions. High-density, mixed-use development provides the most bang for your buck from a taxes collected vs. taxes spent standpoint. Low-density residential is on the opposite end of that spectrum. This has been studied to death so there is no debate to be had. Now it is true, maybe you consider other things more important. That's fine. But the whole discussion started with the statement that "successful" cities are those that adapt to sprawl. The truth is that sprawl is a drag on local economies, quality of life, and the environment. That doesn't meet my definition of successful. If you have another definition of "successful" that you'd like to put forward we can discuss that. And it is true that sprawl is more of an issue in a no-growth or negative-growth metro, but even in a high-growth metro it is inefficient. For even new resident of Atlanta, it is more fiscally advantageous to have them move closer to the urban core than it is to have them move farther away.

Even when adjusted for cost of living the list is similar: 1. San Jose 2. San Fran 3. Boston 4. Hartford 5. Seattle 6. DC 7. St. Louis 8. Nashville 9.Minneapolis 10. Houston I have many friends who have nice lives in some of the most "expensive" cities in the US. Are housing costs an issue? Yes. But the idea that "cost of living has skyrocketed so out of control that only the rich can afford a decent life there" is just some silly Fox News talking point. One of my best friends lives in Manhattan and makes roughly the same amount of money as I do. At the end of the day, he has more disposable income than me because he doesn't spend thousands of dollars per year owning and maintaining a car. This is an easy concept. If NYC's residents were spread over twice or three times the area they currently are, would it be more or less expensive to maintain the infrastructure to support them? I'm not sure why you're digging at NYC or Chicago here. Go to NYC and then go to Detroit and tell me which one has better infrastructure.

My point was that population growth is a very crude measure and, while notable, cannot tell the full story of whether a place is successful. You have to look at other variables. Also, I'd add that cities that continue to sprawl will face a reckoning when the growth dries up. They'll be full of low-density infrastructure that will need to be maintained and not enough taxpayers to maintain it because they are spread out over such a large area. The ROI on sprawl is negative in the long run.

I agree Spring Grove would be the easiest. But I also like the idea of extending the streetcar via Vine/Jefferson/Nixon/Ludlow. You could run it in separated lanes on parts of all of those streets and you could add signal priority along the whole route. Would be a quick ride from Northside to northern OTR.

This is a weird take on what I posted. Do people that try to fight back against growing inequality hate poor people? Do people that point out that there is lower poverty in Nordic countries and that we should emulate them hate poor people? Do people who are trying to eradicate poverty hate poor people? I absolutely want there to be less poor people. Not because I hate poor people, but because I hate poverty. Truth of the matter is, when a region is wealthier (i.e. high per capita income, higher GDP per capita, higher median household income, lower poverty rates) there are more resources to help bring more folks at the lower end of the wealth spectrum out of poverty. If you are a poor person born in Boston you are much more likely to end up middle class or wealthy than a poor person born in Atlanta.

Just run light rail down the middle of Central Parkway or Spring Grove or along Ludlow/Clifton.

Sure. If you're only metric for success is population growth, many cities in the sunbelt are doing quite well. It is easy to add population when you annex all the rural areas around you and have limitless flat land to build sprawl. But not all population growth is created equal. Many of the fastest growing cities in the world are in China and India, and the quality of life in those places are abysmal. Here is an alternative metric. US metros by per capita income: 1 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C-Virginia-Maryland MSA 5,949,178 $47,411 2 San Jose-Santa Clara-Sunnyvale, California MSA 1,918,944 $40,392 3 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Washington MSA 3,611,644 $39,322 4 San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, California MSA 4,122,177 $38,355 5 Boston–Worcester–Providence, Massachusetts-Rhode Island MSA 5,819,100 $37,311 6 Honolulu, Hawaii MSA 921,000 $36,339 7 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota MSA 3,478,415 $35,388 8 Hartford, Connecticut MSA 1,183,110 $34,310 9 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colorado MSA 2,871,068 $32,399 10 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon MSA 2,345,318 $31,377 That list tells a very different story. Here's another metric. Educational attainment for metros with at least 200k people: Boulder, CO Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Durham-Chapel Hill, NC Fort Collins, CO Columbia, MO Raleigh, NC A mix of large, dense metros and college towns.

Just seems like a magic/occult store with a fun website.

There are lots of things I don't like about Pastor, and I haven't voted for a Republican since 2008. But if he ran for mayor on a solid plan to create a light rail system I would vote for him.

The OKI 2050 plan has an extension to Newport as part of the fiscally constrained portion of the plan. It also has a transit vision section with extensions to UC and from the Museum Center to the casino. It also has a light rail vision plan based on previously identified possible light rail lines. That would be a good place for the Councilman to start his conversation.

Yea, just look how successful Detroit is.

I was giddy when I heard it. Like, I said, not sure if it is true. But now I'm keeping my eyes peeled daily for more information haha. I really, really, really want to see it happen.

I heard a rumor that the building at Blue Rock and Apple is being converted to condos, maybe with an overbuild. Not sure how credible it is. Supposedly was confirmed by folks at Urban Artifact. Also, heard a rumor that the Ace Doran building across Blue Rock from Hoffner Park is being torn down and that a developer has plans for condos planned for the block bound by Blue Rock, Apple, and Vandalia. Again, not sure how far along that plan is or the legitimacy of the rumor.

Here's the thing. You must know more than the actual leadership of the companies that are locating in Boone County. Because what I'm telling you is directly from their mouths. So, I guess there are two scenarios: 1. They actually know more than you, and the public subsidies that are supposedly bringing in thousands of great jobs are actually a waste and that will continue to become more and more apparent. 2. You're right and they are wrong. In which case, their entire business model, which is based on continued reduction of labor costs, is flawed and they are going to have to massively scale back their operations to continue to be profitable. In that case, the public subsidies will also prove to be a huge waste. So the people in NKY claiming hyping it as the "silicon valley of logistics" and wasting public dollars to bring more and more warehouses to the region are damned either way.

That's fine. But I'm not sure how it is relevant to the point, which is that in 10 years there are going to be FAR less warehouse jobs than politicians in NKY are promising. And what jobs do exist are going to be low wage.

Agree to disagree. I've been to several freight workshops where companies have demonstrated how they plan to make this a reality. It's coming. And the Prime stuff is going to be the easiest to automate because of the exact phenomenon you mention. At any rate, even if I'm wrong and they don't automate, these are pretty low paying jobs, and there's not a lot of them. My point about it being a bad investment would stand.

It'll be at least the year 2120 before Cincinnati reaches 4 million.