Jeff

(I assume you all can figure out why that's an unfair map.) I can't, unless there is some sort of correlation for population density. Even so this is alot of criminal incidents (assuming this map does not include things like traffic violations), spread all over the city.

From what I recall this neighrborhood varies ...closer to downtown it seems more run down, but heading south, toward that Catholic church, it is in better shape. This is one of the areas where youll find some latinos. One thing I like about this set is the neat little cornershop buildings scattered around.

Thanks, Jimmy, I think one of the things I like about it is that it isn't this upscale specialty foods place....that it is a real market still. Now that I know where the parking is I will be coming back again on a busier day. What I was concerned about was the vacancies...here is a map from the site... ...210, 212, & 214 are shown as vacant, and there are some storefronts that appear to be not even on this list (that old-timey fish place that I saw is #206, Heist Fish & Poultry...that place has rotating ceiling fans and a high pressed metal ceiling and some vintage old freezer cases..like time stood still). Here is the market house, with a list of the vendors... Market House #101 Busch's Country Corner #104 Mackie Quality Meats #105 Bender Meats #107 Heist Fish & Poultry, LLC #109 Mike's Meats #110 Kroeger & Sons Meats #116 Adrian's #128 Luken's Fish, Poultry, and Seafood #130 Gibbs Cheese #134 Charles Bare Meats Esplanade #117 Tara's Coffee Shop #118 Divine Delights #120/124 Mejana Express #126 Ms. Helen's Grill #141 Ricky Jones Produce #142 - #144 Simpson Produce #145 - #147 Heminghaus Produce #148 Rialto Floral #149 Nature's Gifts #150 Poppie's Flavored Ice #312 Gaudio Produce #314 Dean's Quality Produce ..oh this is neat..there is a street market too... ...and a famers market... I am definetly going to have to come here again on a Saturday! When we where there on Sunday we got stuff at Mackies Meats, Charles Bare, Madison's, and some produce place in the Market House...

Personally I find OTR to be pretty intimidating..a place I usually avoid. However, while down in Cincinnati this past Sunday, I did finally visit Findly Market. I have lived in SW Ohio for many years now and have frequently travelled to Cincinnati, but I never visited Findly Market as it was wedged in the middle of this big slum, and I just did not feel safe parking my car on Race or other side streets street and walking to the market...I've driven by it on Race a few times, though. This time, though, there was a parking spot open right next to the market , so I parked and walked around the place. Of course, I saw the additional off-street parking, so now I know I don't have to park on Race or elsewhere in the neighborhood and walk to get to the place. The market itself seemed more like the Western Market in Cleveland than the North Market in Columbus as it seemed to be a real market catering to local people...basic things like meats and produce and some baked goods. There was some frou-frou stuff like this cafe/coffee-shop on the north side, but also some real old fashioned places, like this fish/seafood store, also on the north side (the place was closed but I peaked in). I guess the place was a bit empty as it was Sunday afternoon in January, but looking at the online guide I do see there are a lot of vacanies, too, so I wonder if this place is hurting a bit? Still, if it wasn't for the high density of Over The Rhine I doubt this place would have been able to survive, as I suspect its surviving a lot on local trade from the neighborhood as much as people coming in from elsewhere in town.

I first found out about evolutinon in a kids book on the subject in my parochial school library...and this was back in the 1960s....

OK, since no one is taking up my Ken Blackwell bet, same offer for the Senate... I bet (one beer per bet): a) Sherrod Brown defeats Hackett b) Sherrod Brown looses to Dewine. (but yeah, Hackett will be fun to watch while he lasts).

The neat thing about old postcards is that they though factories worthwhile enough to actually put on a postcard. You dont see that much nowadays.

Really...I have relatives in the Frankfurt am Main area too..north of the city in the Bad Nauheim/Friedberg area, and in Frankfurt proper.. What I noticed is that there is single family homes in suburbia there, but they are usually part of an expansion of a town or villiage....stand alone leapfrog subdivisions or houses are very very rare...the ones that I knew of where sort of manor houses from the old days...villas as you say. Of course the Germans have a very different view of urbanity and urban living than we do, seeing it more as a positive (though there is that "wohnen im grune" sentiment there, too). @@@@@ I can only talk about Dayton, but its never going to happen in here, that the city becomes desirable to all but a small fraction of the local community. A lot of that has to do with racial issues, class issues, taxes, poor schools, older and smaller housing stock, and an anti-urban bias within the people affluent enough to be able to purchase and restore older homes, and affluent in migrants...a bias which is reinforced by the local real estate community.

The building I'd like to have back, though its not gone yet, is the Arcade.

In Dayton it would be entire neighborhoods and streets I'd like to have back...in this town the sum was greater than the parts.

Well, considering I almost exclusively post pix on Dayton and vicinity it would be Dayton.

Woah...now this place is starting to sound pretty interesting. Maybe worth a sidetrip from Cleveland next time Im up there.

One of the things that i thought interesting is how this anticipated what what was actually done elsewhere...this plan was 10 years ahead of the first "downtown shopping mall" in the area, the one in Louisville. Another thing is how misguided the original Mid Town Mart concept was. You can see the consultant was pretty much brushing off this area, focusing the retail around the Courthouse Square area. However, in some of the planning documents there is a sort of tug-of-war evident as the planning staff kept on focusing on MTM as the land aquistion was already underway. But they apparently knew the die was cast for retail downtown with the opening of the malls... In the end nothing was built, except for the actual Courthouse Square block. And , a bit later, the failed Arcade redevelopement, which was consdered cutting edge adaptive re-use for its time, getting national and international (from Canadian architects in Toronto) attention when it opened via making the cover of Progressive Architecture magzine. Of course the Arcade, even then, was in trouble as the residential component was never completed. Now it is just waiting to be torn down. The roof is probably 20-25 years old now, which is the around the end of a sevice life for a built-up roof, so it is most likely starting to leak and fail. @@@@ I think Fort Wayne probably had a common sense approach to their downtown, which is to turn it into an office center. When I was there (stayed at the Marriot or Hilton downtown, next to that winter garden), I had a hard time telling what the main shopping street was as so much had been torn down. Fort Wayne did put in parks and such, and the downtown did not seem all that shabby or run down. There just wasn't much left. I do like that they kept their grand old city hall and turned it into an interesting local history musuem (including that police museum in the old jail).

I think there is some sort of crafts store in West Liberty proper, run by the Mennonites. Bellefontaine isnt too special, but Urbana has a pretty impressive collection of old victorian architecture. The town is in excellent shape. The scenic part of this route is perhaps more in the area east of West Liberty, up around the Piatt Castles and Zansefield, where there is that unexpected hill country, in the heart of the Ohio flatlands...

Doing some research into the urban renwal era I found a three volume collection of studies, surveys, and plans in the downtown library, that span the mid 1960s to 1970 or so, that are sort of the genesis of the Courthouse Square plan, also incorporating what was called Mid-Town Mart, later to become Dave Hall Plaza. One of the interesting things in the volume are a set of plans developed for downtown by Baltimore-based architectural and planning consultants RKTL. There was also two design conferences held, one as sort of the kick-off of the planning effort in January 1967, the other near the end of it, in 1970. For all the time & money spend nothing really came of this effort, except perhaps the 1970s plan for Courthouse Square and later the Arcade renovation. In any case, interesting as a historical look and a "what if" "In late 1966 a variety of important actions were underway in Dayton’s Central Business District. The new freeway, I-5, had just opened in December 1966, land acquisition in the Center City West Urban Renewal Area was approximately complete; Mr. Beerman had been awarded the contract for the redevelopment of Center City West approximately 20 months previously and two small buildings were under construction; property acquisition was just getting started for the Mid-Town Mart Renewal Project; Sinclair Community College was searching for a site; and Dayton’s obsolete stock of office space provided an obvious potential for several dramatic additions to Dayton’s skyline.... ....Many people in the community recognized the potential for coordinating this development to maximize near future downtown growth and change and direct into a cohesive growth." Phase A of the effort appeared to be one of "planning to plan"...one of studies, PERT charts, data gathering, etc. Phase B was when the consultant, RKTL, developed a series of designs for downtown...schematic for downtown as a whole, but somewhat more developed for the Courthouse Square area...Courthouse Square was apparently a focus due to the government functions moving to the new "civic center" in the urban renewal district west of downtown....The redevelopment of downtown was seen as happening in phases...ultimatly connecting "Mid Town Mart" with Courthouse Square.. Courthouse Square as it was..the old and new courthouses, and the DP&L midrize next to them... Phased redevelopment... Final redevelopment scheme ...with some highlights labeled Courthouse Square area was detalied out a bit more, as mix of offices and shopping, connected to peripheral parking areas, incorporating the Rikes department store, and extending north of Rikes to 2nd Street and east towards city hall.. The plan also envisioned an extensive skywalk system, connecting peripheral parking lots, garages, a transportation center, with the core of downtown and residential areas facing the river... One wonders about the inspiration for all this. As RKTL was based in Baltimore perhaps the Charles Center plan was perhaps a model..which incorporates high rises, skywalks, and plazas... This could have been the vision for downtown Dayton.... It is interesting, too, that RKTLs later version of the plan incorporated a big theatre at the corner of 3rd and Main, perhaps inspireed a bit by Baltimore's Morris Mechanic Theatre, located at Charles Center Here is version 2 of the RKTL plan. In this one they incorporate the Convention/Exhibition Center, which was to be located in the Mid Town Mart area. Construction for the Convention Center began in 1970 and was finished in 1972. As in Version 1 RKTL generated a more detailed plan for the Courhouse Square area...this version shows a skyscraper at the current location of the Mead Tower, so that aspect of the plan was carried over in the 1970s Courthouse Square concept as executed... Cross section.... The plan labled showing some of the features...note that the second level is seen as crossing Third Street via a skywalk flanked by retail, similar to the Columbus and Cincinnati downtown malls do. Underground parking garage (reminds me a bit of Fountain Square) Cross Section And a colored map showing how this complex would have fit into downtown. Also note how they envisioned Main Street to be narrowed and a large green space or mall be set up down the middle. The recognition that Main was just "too wide", so had to be narrowed somehow. The plan also saw downtown redeveloped as a set of plazas connected by skywalks, with large parking garages. The "transportation center" concept also appears here in the "Mid Town Mart"/Dave Hall Plaza area...this was was actually executed as a parking garage and two bus stations (one is now Chins/Elbos), connected to a hotel and the Convention Center via skywalks (remnant of the very extensive skywalk system originally proposed). Of course nothing was built on Dave Hall Plaza aside from the Stouffers, later Crowne Plaza. What was to be the retail core of Mid Town Mart ended up being "temporarily" landscaped until a use could be found; 'temporary' being 30 years now. A rendering of the plan, looking north up Main. In concept the Courthouse Square retail/office complex seems a lot like Eaton Centre in Toronto...a large galleria, multi-level retail and upper level office, w. parking, anchored by two department stores (one, The Bay, being an older store "across the street", like Rikes would have been in the Courthouse Square scheme). Also the incorporation of a historic feature; in Dayton it would have been the Courthouse, at Eaton Centre it is an old church. And the Courthouse Square complex ground floor plan color coded... What was actually built...drawn in red over the RKTL proposal. You can see how bits and pieces of this where realized, but not as an integrated structure. The way retail was developed was particularly disjointed as the two "anchor stores" (Elder-Beerman & Rikes, later Lazarus) are across the street from each other, while the "shopping mall" (Arcade Square) is a block away. Nothing really was built of the skywalk system, just the one from the parking garage to Courthouse Square. Some final remarks from the planning documents of that time. Given the fate of downtown shopping malls in other nearby cities perhaps its fortunate that the RKTL plan was never executed as it would have most likely ended up a white elephant. "WILL DOWNTOWN DAYTON MOVE (OR HAS IT?)(Nov. 1969) Already South Dayton Mall (SDM) is anticipated to overshadow the present CBD retailing function. SDM will have 2.2 million sq. ft. of retail space consisting of 106 stores. Downtown Dayton presently comprises approximately 2 million sq. ft. with Rikes Department store accounting for 600,000. Adjacent to the SDM are an additional 168 acres already zoned for commercial used. Some of Dayton’s existing merchants are estimating that 40% of their total sales will be generated by SDM. This may, in fact, be a conservative estimate. Office buildings are already locating in nearby areas adjacent to the mall. A million-dollar building is programmed to be built southwest of the 741-725 intersection. The $8 million NCR training/office complex is currently under construction. In addition many smaller buildings such as the Shell Oil Company regional office headquarters…. are in various stages of development. The County Planning Commission has zoned 113 acres to the east of the SDM for commercial use. There have been numerous requests for rezoning the areas immediately north of the SM from south 725 to Yankee Street. The areas directly south of the SDM are either being held for speculation…or are in the process of being studied for high-density commercial planned unit development. Thus while the office space function is still most strongly associated with downtown…large office parks are bound to be built in the next five to ten year period provided the center city creates no counter-trends, …Downtown Dayton has waited too long to begin the replacement of its obsolete facilities, and a variety of factors are working to pull office/sleeping room and retail space users out of the traditional center city. If they continue to be unopposed these forces will work to shrink downtown Dayton’s share of the regions economy…Time is not longer on the side of Downtown Dayton. Immediate steps must be taken." SECOND CONFERENCE on URBAN DESIGN (March 1970) The 1970 Conference came into being in an atmosphere of doubt and dimmed hopes. Not enough had happened; after three years, the effects not only of the RTKL plan but of other major planning projects in Dayton where conspicuously invisible. The Conference was an attempt to review current efforts, to rally leadership, to renew purpose, to help the move the community from planning to action in the face of mounting economic difficulties, political stalemate, and a leadership which seemed to be suffering a failure of nerve…the result was a lively conference heavily weighted on the side of planning as distinguished from design. Mr. Rogers, representing RKTL, gave a concise illustrated exposition of the Dayton Plan and presented some success stories from other cities, in the course of which he brilliantly pinpointed the motivating forces which had brought these developments to fruition---motivating forces which up to that point he found lacking in Dayton….

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The OHS history museum over at the state fairgrounds used to have an exhibit on Columbus history.

.the link to a website that has this and other maps....also hypertext to Indiana and Kentucky graphics, as requested by ColDayMan...(plus other states): Ohio Wildland-Urban Interface Maps, Stats, GIS What i posted isnt the best resolution...check out this one for more detail and one will see its more fine grained....the developement that looks contiguous on the maps upthread is'nt really when you zoom in: Ohio I'm really impressed with the granularity on these maps...

Im not sure..i was just sufring around google images....and found it. I thought it was odd they where using square km not square miles. Using that measure you would get a higher density reading, no?

Did you read some of the responses on the "Black Blog"? Comments ...it gets pretty ugly. Please tell me this is just the local lunatic fringe online at these various sites.

Surfing the Great Lakes.....you listen to Ministry instead of the Beach Boys, and the backdrop is blast furnances and refinery flares...not swaying palms.... ...interestingly, the best time to surf the Lakes is in winter, when the waves pick up....(at least on Lake Michigan, according to online reports) ...check out Great Lakes Surfing Association ...and the book.... or this DVD..Unsalted... "A thousand miles from the nearest ocean - where tens of millions of people live and work in America's heartland - there are a few who live another reality. With modern technology and a passion for an ancient pastime, these hearty souls will drop everything to experience the unexpected - waves. While the rest of the Great Lakes region is packing away its beach chairs a small, diverse and eclectic group of surfers start tuning into the weather. They live and breathe by buoy reports and will drop anything just to surf. Their quest to surf along the wide and farreaching lake coastlines requires more dedication, cold heartedness and schedule flexibility than any other surf region on the planet. Their lives hark back to the very genesis of wave riding cultures where everything was dropped when the waves came up. " "One part obsession, one part addiction and an unending quest for adventure makes Great Lakes Surfers a truly rare breed. Add 40-knot winds, 15 foot waves and frigid temperatures to a storm ravaged inland sea and they'll tell you it's a recipe for fun. Join filmmaker and surfer, Vince Deur on a road trip around 5 Great Lakes to meet the surfers who have made surfing these stormy waters a way of life for nearly 40 years. He is searching for the answer to the most obvious question...why they bother? Why would a lawyer, an artist, a fireman and a retired factory worker all immerse themselves into such a harsh environment? What is it they are really looking for? Watch it and you'll see!"

Some maps showing housing density in units per square KM, by census block group. Pretty fine grained look at it... First the state Then Southwest Ohio Interesting to see that low density of housing units between Dayton and Columbus, east of Dayton and Springfield....larger farms so fewer houses? Also maybe a better visual of exurban sprawl than "urbanized area", as this shows higher density for areas that might not be urbanized....ribbon developement on country roads and smaller hobby farms???

Seems like the classic definition of slumlord.

This makes education even more important as Ohio young adults need to be prepared to compete when they graduate and leave the state to look for work.

Dayton's "statement skyscraper", in the sense that the thread parent means, would be the Dayco building, used to be "Prestige Plaza", on I -75 at the OH 725 interchange. Dayco is probably one of the taller buildings outside of downtown...Dayton doesn't really have any talls outside of the CBD (there are a few exceptions), and this would be the one most visible to freeway traffic.