Cavalier Attitude

What exactly is the divider between Ohio City and Detroit Shoreway? I always assumed it was about W 50th, but that ad for the W 47th development was saying Detroit Shoreway.

I enjoy the name but expect most outsiders would be unfamiliar with it. Also a fan of Firelands.

This makes me wonder where NE OH begins and SE OH ends. I grew up in unincorporated area "near" West Palm Beach (that was the closest nearby metro area, but I could have said other closer suburbs). It was always a game trying to explain where I was from. Even if I said "near WPB", most Ohioans don't know where that is unless they are very familiar with the state. Reason being that most Ohioans seem to be more familiar with the west coast as they go down 75, while east coasters take 95 down to the east coast.

I'm sort of confused by the premise of this article. It seems pretty common for people to tell me they "grew up in Cleveland" but that actually meant "somewhere within an hour of driving into the city". Maybe they are responding to me saying I live in Cleveland (in the city proper in my case). Can you blame them for just repeating what they hear? If younger (rural?) people have little cultural connection to Cleveland, and most of their lifetime was in the "struggle years", maybe that association is negative. Maybe they had two working parents and never even got to visit the city so the association is just non-existent. It seems like this is more of an inter-media tiff than anything. Brand wars with city names.

I think if you want to solve Tower City area traffic problems, there has to be some coherent way to funnel cars from the garages to the highway. The routes that feed into Ontario get clogged up, and East Ninth is frequently at capacity. Westbound and eastbound traffic gets caught in the crossfire. People exit the Public Square parking garage onto Prospect (to then immediately turn left onto Ontario) in front of cars haphazardly, leading to missed lights and backups. Sadly I am not sure how this could be solved without a major redesign.

I'm not sure about that development honestly. Hard to see the direct impact if they go through with it, but on the surface it seems fine to me too? The Tremont complaints about the 40-something unit with no parking (proposed) were complaining that already-at capacity public parking would become too scarce. It's hard to carry over those exact same complaints because it's a different place and smaller scale.

Nearby residents seemed skeptical that there would be enough parking and space for five units. Hope it works out.

Neighborhood Launch looks great. More of that please. I think Lumen sort of looks great at some angles and awkward at other angles. The thing that is a bit jarring to me about it is the transition at street-level from the east. It is very modern, "secure looking", kind of monolithic at the street level, and to the east of it is an intersection and then the low-rise buildings and CSU. But that is something that can be improved by building up the surrounding area a bit more to incorporate the design.

It seems like there is almost universal backlash (not just from urbanites but from most everyone it seems) to "bland infill", "cookie cutter" buildings, etc. The 4-7 story wood-frame-with-multiple-facades building is the classic example of this. Having read a few articles, it seems like the proliferation of that type is because architects are taking pre-made templates, tweaking them a bit, and then handing them over to builders to reduce cost of designing something brand new. There is also dislike of very artistic buildings that sacrifice practicality for their design. My specific example for this is the Hunters Point Library in Queens. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/nyregion/long-island-city-library.html Another problem is starchitects over-promising and under-delivering. I don't have an image handy but it was a building in Toronto (a library I think) that had a gleaming unique metal siding design, and the end product looked very generic and cheap. Another anecdote I have is of Gates Hall at Cornell University, which was a $25 million project donated by the Gates Foundation, very fancy and steely and shiny, but plagued with roof leaks for the first several years of its use. But surely someone somewhere made some good looking solid sturdy buildings in the past 20 years, right? 😄 What are your favorite examples? Any in Ohio?

This is really awful. I went to Nashville last year and had a good time, but it felt like a city in transition, and one that was transitioning to this bland infill and electric scooter rubbish. There were still some cool neighborhoods and charming suburbs. I hope they will be able to hold on.

Yeah, I don't think this design meshes well with its surroundings, but it would fit in a lot better if the heights end up being somewhat uniform.

I'm confused, didn't this help lead to the collapse of the economy twelve years ago or so

Not sure if it's been talked about before, but the Cudell Station intersection always bothers me from a pedestrian perspective. I noticed this when I saw jaywalking in various parts, and then realized that (as far as I can tell) there is only one pedestrian crossing across Detroit (at West Blvd). The entire section seems to be inconvenient to pedestrians, and it seems like there is more land devoted to cars than is necessary for this juncture (both in terms of the parking lot and the various odd junctures). Specifically I am talking about the stretch from Berea to West (plus part or all of the parking lot) would make a good target for a redesign for better pedestrian infrastructure and usable greenspace. Maybe improvements could flow into the Rec Center green area. (The eastern part is the bus loop.)

Yes, overall it is a bit flat, I keep it for the dividend. 4% is nothing to sneeze at. Pfizer announced a possible 90% effective Covid vaccine so there is a lot of hype right now. link https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/09/covid-19-vaccine-candidate-effective-pfizer-biontech

To my fellow PFE owners, congrats on betting on the winning horse.