DEPACincy

You're welcome! Yea, the fact that Cbus and Cin-Day may soon connect along the I-70 corridor stuck out to me as well. And I think topography has a lot to do with the way the development of these metros has turned out. Here is terrain for both Cincinnati and Columbus:

And here's the entire state...

Also, looks like I slightly misinterpreted their scale. They divided the tracts into classifications between 1 and 10 and then made 9 and 10 urban, 1 and 2 rural, etc. But they rounded to the nearest whole number, so a tract in the 76th percentile would be classified as an 8. So that means their urban classification is roughly the top quarter of tracts and their rural is roughly the bottom quarter. Outer ring is then about the 25th percentile to the 54th percentile and inner ring is the 55th percentile to the 74th percentile.

Here is Cincinnati. Red is rural, light red is outer ring, light blue is inner ring, and blue is urban.

They also divided pavement density into deciles and used the highest of the two measures for their classification, so the office park situation is rectified. They do, however, acknowledge, that there are some discrepancies caused by prisons but most are in rural areas with very large Census tracts that dilate the population density of the prison. I'll throw together some quick maps of their data for Cincy, Cbus, and Cleveland so you guys can judge their accuracy based on your lived experience.

No, it's national deciles. So its standardized across the entire country.

They took every Census tract in the entire country and divided them into deciles based on density. The lowest two deciles were categorized as rural. The top two were categorized as urban. And the middle ones were divided between inner and outer suburban. So basically if you are classified as "urban" you are in the top 20% of density at the tract level.

I would like to see the business district in Northside really take off. The Gantry development still has empty commercial space and many of the existing businesses seem to have the second and third stories boarded up when they would make great apartments. Plus, there are empty storefronts still sprinkled throughout the business district.

All Day IPA from Founders is one of my favorites. Also, Slightly Mighty by Dogfish is superb. I'm looking forward to more local light IPAs.

I'll also add, here are the least rural counties: Cuyahoga - 0% Hamilton - 0% Summit - 0% Franklin - 1% Lucas - 2%

The NY Times recently looked at what percentage of the population in each county in the US is urban, inner suburban, outer suburban, and rural. Basically, if you're in the top 20% of density you're urban. Bottom 20% is rural. And the in-between is split between inner and outer suburban. Here are the top five for each category in Ohio. Urban Cuyahoga - 34% Franklin - 29% Athens - 22% Lucas - 20% Hamilton - 17% Inner-Suburban Lucas - 65% Hamilton - 62% Franklin - 57% Montgomery - 56% Mahoning - 55% Outer-Suburban Miami - 84% Geauga - 81% Clermont - 76% Warren - 70% Greene - 69% Rural Adams, Monroe, Morgan, Morrow, and Vinton all 100%. Holmes is next at 90%. And just for fun, I combined the urban and inner-ring numbers to get a total for medium to high density: Urban + Inner Ring Franklin - 85% Lucas - 84% Cuyahoga - 84% Hamilton - 79% Montgomery - 67% One thing that I think is interesting is that the population of Athens County is highly urban, coming in 3rd in the state. The students living in dorms and dense housing near campus obviously dominate that. Athens really is an urban planners dream for a city its size. Highly walkable, dense, and vibrant. Athens County also ranks fairly high on the Rural metric, so basically there are very few people in Athens County living at medium densities. Another thing that's interesting is how urban Lucas County is. On the Urban ranking it is higher than Hamilton, and on the combined Urban + Inner Ring ranking it comes in higher than both Cuyahoga and Hamilton.

To bring this back to airports, I have to say I'm still not convinced that SWOH would benefit at all from a new international airport. I see much more benefit in adding light rail from CVG to downtown Cincy. Business travelers really want a short trip from the airport. They do not want to fly into a cornfield in Monroe or Jeffersonville and drive an hour plus to their destination.

I don't remember the exact quote, but on the That's So Cincinnati podcast Jason Williams asked Landsman if we'd see any movement on making the streetcar free before the end of the year and Landsman kind of acted coy and said something to the effect of "stay tuned." Don't know if that's a sign that we'll be getting a Christmas present in the form of free fares?

Wait, am I missing something? What's wrong with CLE? It is 15 minutes from downtown. That's a superb location. And there is rail access! What would building another airport do? Also, as a Cincinnatian, I don't see the need for a CIN/DAY airport. CVG is about 20 to 25 mins from my house. A CIN/DAY airport would likely be an hour or more. Why would I want that? The cities that do the best have airports that are accessible to downtown. Boston and Philly are great examples. We'd be much better off spending money to connect CVG through downtown and up to Dayton via rail than to build a new airport.

But how do we know that's not exactly what they are planning to do? They aren't removing Bauer Avenue. And as far as we know they aren't tearing down the buildings north of it, so those could still be rehabbed. We don't know what the plan is at all, only that there will be a garage (could even be mixed use?) on the block bounded by Central, John, (soon to be former) Wade, and Bauer. Maybe they plan to have ground floor retail in the garage and build residential north of Bauer and have Bauer be a focal point. Maybe they plan to build residential as a part of the redevelopment of the ballet site? Who knows?

No doubt, the bulk of money being spent is coming from outside. But what is the breakdown for number of people who walked/ubered/scootered/bussed vs. those who drive. Also when people drive they are parking for the day usually. You're not driving to Fountain Square for a concert then driving to Eagle for dinner then driving to Rhinegeist for drinks then driving home. You park once and you get around another way. And this also misses the point a bit anyway. Certainly, big money is being spent in Downtown/OTR by people from outside those neighborhoods. But what is the balance of revenue for the average business in OTR? We're not talking about Rhinegeist or Rosedale. We're talking about the corner store, the fast casual lunch place, the coffee shop. For those businesses, their money is overwhelmingly coming from people that live and/or work in OTR. Certainly the BIG businesses are creating a larger demand for parking, but excessive parking also HURTS the small businesses because when people drive to their destination they don't stumble across the corner store or the t-shirt shop or whatever.

Let's be realistic here guys. This is the area we're talking about. Much of it is already taken up by a parking lot. The buildings on Wade would be directly facing the stadium so they'd be a hard sell for residential. It's possible the team is going to work the buildings on Bauer and Central Parkway into the garage. Overall, we're also talking about a pretty small footprint for a garage of that size. I'm as anti-parking as anybody but this doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. EDIT TO ADD: On Bauer, the Hair Design building is really the only one worth saving.

This is accepted as common knowledge, but is it true? I would imagine that the bulk of money spent in OTR are by people living downtown or in OTR and walk to businesses, or people taking Ubers/scooters/bus. And the fact of the matter is, it's not hard to park in OTR. There are always spaces available in the Washington Park, Mercer, and Ziegler garages, and there are always spaces available near Findlay Market. Can you park directly in front of your destination? Not necessarily. But that's an unrealistic expectation.

Definitely not. Look at Rittenhouse Square, the ritziest urban neighborhood in Philly, for comparison. There are two units for sale above $10 million (One is $11 mil and one is $25 mil). They are located on the 46th and 48th floor of high rises. There will never be skyscrapers in OTR so that's not going to happen. On the other hand, there are over 100 homes for sale between $1 mil and $5 mil. That's the sweet spot. And you can still get a 400 square foot, 1 bed, 1 bath for under $300k. So there will always be affordable options as developers continue to squeeze smaller units into the neighborhood.

Wow... That is... something.

Boomer is a state of mind.

It's a little more like Kin-Wid. Then there's Manayunk (Manny-Yunk), Passyunk (Pa-Shunk), and Schuylkill (Skoo-cool). And also Moyamensing Street, which is pronounced just like it is spelled but means "pigeon droppings" in Lenape. Pigeon Sh*t Street.