DEPACincy

It is a huge problem when somebody gets hurt or is ill. I have numerous relatives who have spent their entire adult lives in wheelchairs and we have had to carry them up and down staircases all the time. Except one moved to one of the super-heavy electric wheelchairs recently and now we can't pick him up so everyone has to go to him for family get-togethers. A friend from college just broke his hip and had to spend two months in a bed after surgery. Good luck getting up and down 3-4 floors of steps going to rehab every day for eight months. I mean, yes--there are situations where it is unworkable. But for the vast majority of people it is not an issue. If you're long-term disabled you would not want to live there. I recall a conversation I had with a guy who was complaining about new townhouses going up in his town that had garages facing rear alleys. The alleys were too narrow for his dually truck to navigate he said, and he was pissed that the township officials didn't think of that when they were reviewing the site plans. I asked him if he planned on buying one of these townhouses and he said no. "Well then why on earth do you care if they can accommodate your truck? I'd imagine the folks buying them don't have a dually." He looked at me like he just realized the earth is round.

I view the stairs as a feature, not a bug. Forced exercise inserted into my daily routine. I used to live in a 5th floor walk up and loved that. People live in that situation in cities all over the world without a problem.

I mentioned this in my comment above, but could you elaborate? The Lower Eastside of Manhattan (just to pick one example) has a Walkscore of 96. Short North is 92. Easton is 34. I think those scores line up really well with what we all experience in those places. I got a 65 for 160 Easton Town Center 43219, right in the middle of the center. Used to be that malls and lifestyle centers really pushed up your walkscore (over 90 sometimes) but I think that since supermarkets have moved further away from them, the variety of stores decreased and WalkScore started adding things such as doctor's offices the WalkScores dropped. Yes, if you just put in an address in the center you'll get the highest Walkscore possible. But if you just type in Easton, Columbus, OH you'll get a "neighborhood" average, which is 34. Short North has an average of 92, but if I put in 1209 North High Street it shows me that the score is 95 for that exact address. Malls were never a positive for Walkscore because it places high emphasis on pedestrian connectivity. Malls surrounded by huge parking lots kill connectivity. Maximum points are given to amenities within 5 minutes, and the decay function they use has always been built in. Block length, intersection density, and population density are all included variables and have been from the beginning--and they tend to make lifestyle centers score lower than traditional urban neighborhoods.

Interesting. The reason I use my oven so much is actually because I live alone haha. I can make a casserole on Sunday and get several days worth of meals from it. Easier than making something on the stove top every night I think.

Wow, that's so crazy to me. I probably use my oven just as much, if not more, than the stove top. I make casseroles all the time, and I'm a millennial. Never even considered that maybe i'm an outlier.

Not saying that John Street hasn't been an issue in the past, because I believe you. But maybe things have changed? I am over in that area on foot quite a bit and have never felt threatened and have never seen any shady behavior. The biggest problem is that it is pretty desolate at night, which will change soon, especially during FC Cincy games.

Yes, it's insane that we require any parking for micro and studio units. Ideally, there would be no required parking in downtown zoning districts. That's what they do in smart, progressive cities.

Why couldn't they park there? They have monthly spaces available. Most apartment buildings don't come with free parking. These residents could pay to park in the Banks garage just like you or me.

I'm pretty sure they are NOT income-restricted. Here's some info on the program, including the homes that are for sale: https://www.cincinnatiport.org/what-we-offer/reach-home-rehab/ Thanks! I drove over there this weekend and saw these homes. It looks like it could really be the start of something great for the neighborhood.

The variety of businesses in the Short North hasn't really changed. A few galleries closing doesn't mean there aren't galleries to walk to, nor does it mean that no new types of businesses have opened. I think this is just a debate in futility and semantics. The scores are far from perfect. Another example of their imperfection is using population data at the tract level. Up until I think last year, the Census had the Short North losing population, which would affect the score also. Does that also seem reasonable? Just about every gentrifying neighborhood has lost population, so it would apply equally to Over-The-Rhine, Tremont, etc., no? Also what population data would you prefer? The block group level data has some really high margins of error so I think tract level data makes the most sense.

Well Census estimates only come out periodically and this conversation is related to those estimates so I'm not sure why it would be an issue to have it here until new data is released.

I mentioned this in my comment above, but could you elaborate? The Lower Eastside of Manhattan (just to pick one example) has a Walkscore of 96. Short North is 92. Easton is 34. I think those scores line up really well with what we all experience in those places.

I think we've established pretty well that all measures are flawed. Walk Score has the problem of making a ton of inadequate assumptions, due to the complexity of the notion of walkability, including the difficulty of quantifying and collecting information about things such as the nature of businesses or urban design features. But it's still an objective measure, in the sense that the algorithm treats every place to which it is applied equally. And in a lot of cases, the comparative numbers agree with my and others' subjective and objective experience of places. Particularly in the case of comparing Ohio cities and neighborhoods, walk score seems to do a better job of measuring urbanity and walkability than using population density as a proxy for the same -- the proxy relationship which is an implicit assumption in your analysis and one with which a lot of people here disagree. Rather than explaining why Walk Score has problems, which I don't think anyone would disagree with, why don't you look up each of the 3 C's and check out the neighborhood lists, then tell us which scores by comparison to each other seem blatantly wrong. If you can find a sufficient number, you might convince some or all of us that the metric is discredited in the discussion at hand. This. Any measure will be flawed, but Walkscore is consistent and that's the important part. Also, a bunch of these posts about Walkscore seem incorrect. Short North has not seen a drop in it's Walkscore at all. It's a 92, which is extremely high, and I believe the highest neighborhood in Columbus. I use Walkscore regularly for work so I'd notice if it had dropped over time. Also, someone brought of up Easton, which has a Walkscore of 34. That seems very correct to me, so I'm not sure what point was being made.

Forgive me if it's already been posted here (I'm sure it has) but what's the deal with the houses on St. Leger Place? I think these are a part of the Port Authority's redevelopment? But are they market rate housing or income-restricted?

To a certain extent yes. But like I said, there's all kinds of hidden taxes and fees that come along with development. Parking requirements are one. Usually you have to build structured parking in an urban setting to make it fit and structured parking costs $25,000 per space on average. I don't know what the parking requirement is in Pendleton but if it's the normal 2 per unit, that's a $50,000 cost per unit. A developer building a 200 unit apartment complex would be on the hook for an additional $10 million cost that might not be necessary. That's a huge impediment to development. On the other hand it's damn near free to run a surface lot because we all bear the costs, not the owner. Seriously, everyone should read The High Cost of Free Parking. It'll change the way you look at the world.

You're correct.

It's actually not on the list of official neighborhoods, which makes it a perfect example. I can't believe I didn't think of it. https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/reports-data/census-demographics/

Oh definitely. I just love Philly and those streets so it seemed like a good time to share that love haha.

It's funny you know so much about me. I actually live downtown and my girlfriend works at the Courthouse, so I guess you're wrong on two accounts. I park in a garage right near there that has only been full once since I've lived here, and that was during Blink. On a weekend. As for your second part, I have no idea what you're talking about. We currently have parking minimums all over the city. I'm all for abolishing them and letting the free market decide how much parking to build. Right now the scales are tipped in favor of MORE, MORE, MORE. We literally have government dictating to developers how much parking they should have, and it makes it incredibly hard to actually build anything because it is expensive to build structured parking.

Again, it's not another neighborhood. It's a Venn Diagram. The east side of High Street is in the Italian Village but is also part of the Short North.

It's not strange at all. It exists in many places. Broadway is both a street in NYC that is very long and a place in NYC that refers to a short stretch of that street that runs through Midtown. Short Vine in Cincinnati is in Corryville and refers to a short section of Vine Street (only recently officially renamed Short Vine). Avenue of the Arts is a district in Philly that refers to the stretch of Broad Street south of City Hall that serves as the border of Rittenhouse and Wash West. Wall Street. The Miracle Mile in Chicago.

Right, profitable for the individual who owns the lot because the rest of us absorb the negative externalities. You should read Donald Shoup, it'll change the way you see all of this I guarantee it.

There are tons of cheap garages near the Courthouse. That area of downtown is the most parking saturated. Surface parking kills neighborhood vitality and is a wasteful because a higher use could be contributing so much more to the city. We all pay higher taxes because there are tons of surface lots downtown. We need to institute a high surface parking lot tax like some other cities do. Some cities tax surface parking at up to 30%.

So you guys are telling me the 2 main neighborhoods making up the Short North... are not in the Short North? K. There are these signs all over the area. I could only find a picture of this one, but I know they exist in Italian Village also. I also think that even Harrison West and The Circles also have signs like this that say "Short North" on them. Again, the High Street corridor may be thought of as the heart of the Short North, and it is, but that's not all of it. It was originally the entire area just north of Downtown south of 5th, several blocks on either side of High. Italian Village is the east side of High, Victorian Village on the west side. Why do you guys think that both neighborhoods have development commissions that have a direct say in development along High Street? Even the Short North Block Watch includes 6 different areas- High Street, Vic Village, Italian Village, The Circles, Harrison West and Dennison Place. Yea, others have addressed this already but parts of Victorian Village and Italian Village are in the Short North, which was an informal term originally used disparagingly to refer to the stretch of High Street just north of downtown. Go to Google Maps and type in all three and it'll show you the boundaries. But you're right that many people use the term to refer to different things. That's why I stated that neighborhood boundaries are semi-arbitrary anyway. Actually it seems everyone has said a different thing. The people that actually live there know where they live, they put in on their neighborhood signs, its on their websites... but what do they know. No, nothing said has been inconsistent. It is a Venn diagram, like jmecklenborg pointed out. Short North is the mixed-use area along High Street, extending one block in each direction. Victorian and Italian Villages are residential neighborhoods to the west and east of High, but they overlap with the Short North area. Now that Short North is trendy it's popular for people to use that term for a much larger area, but it hasn't been traditionally used that way. For example, I have a friend that lives in The Circles. He tells people Short North because they know it and they don't know what The Circles is half the time. The Circles are traditionally not part of the Short North since they are north of 5th. The civic association and block watch groups for all these nearby neighborhoods call themselves Short North because it's popular, that's all. How can a neighborhood overlap with another, but not be part of it again? That just seems like semantics to me. Perhaps the definition of what makes up the Short North is not the same as it once was, but it's always been more than just High Street. There's never been an imaginary line that separated parts of the Villages away from the other parts. That's pretty much the last I'm going to debate this, as it seems the only thing we're going to agree on is that 5th has always been the northern extent. I guess the best way to think about it is that Short North is the name for the main business district that serves as the border for both neighborhoods. I don't think that's difficult to understand? And when the name Short North became trendy people started applying it to more than just the business district. Maybe in 50 years it'll all be called the Short North and we won't use the names Victorian and Italian Village at all, but I hope not.

Good luck moving in and out though. It's not that difficult actually. I helped my friend move into one. Just park the Uhaul at the end of the block and walk stuff down the street. Block lengths are short so it's not a far walk. Navigating angles inside the house can be difficult but it was way easier than the fifth floor walk-up I used to live in.