Eigth and State

I almost went to art school. The art building was full of grafiti and the art students dressed like weirdos, and that pretty much turned me off of art school. :-P

Excellent. Thanks again. Cincinnati had 6 markets. Findley Market is of course still there. The others were the Pearl Street Market, located about where the football stadium is now; Court Street Market, which became one of the more attractive and functional parking lots, and still hosts some street vendors; the Sixth Street market, which became a highway ramp and part of the convention center; Piatt Park; and the Fifth Street Market, which became the Government Square transit facility and part of Fountain Square plaza. So, all 6 still hold some kind of public function.

I had an incident in Northside where some locals gathered close around me and demanded to know why I was taking photos. I got out of there. From their tone I inferred that they were either afraid of being evicted or that their neighborhood would be torn down for development. Of course, I was just taking pictures of architecture. I have also been questioned by police or security but haven't had a problem yet.

Hubbert had another way of saying the same thing. For about 200 years, the economy expanded along with hydrocarbon use. The money supply expanded along with the economy. If the economy stops expanding, but the money supply continues to expand by inertia alone, then the money supply will grow faster than the economy and we will have inflation.

Will the change be for the better or the worse? My guess is that cheap hydrocarbon energy is not going to be replaced with alternative energy. It is simply not going to be replaced.

^----True, but the canals facilitated their own demise by providing the infrastructure upon which to build the railroads.

The folks on the peak oil forums are calling for widespread shortages of gasoline in the United States over the next two months due to already low inventories coupled with hurricane-related shutdowns.

^----"Theres no way in hell i'd be hanging from the side of the PNC tower like that dude was!" I used to do that kind of work. I enjoyed it.

^----"You can definitely live car-free in Cincinnati ... but you pretty much have to live in one of a handful of neighborhoods." It helps if your job is also in one of those neighborhoods, or is downtown. So many jobs are located in auto-oriented areas outside of bus range.

^--- Also, the divorce rate is zero, or nearly so.

How about an UrbanOhio meet at the fair? :-D (By the way - you can see the Cincinnati skyline from the top of the AstroWheel.)

^---"People left farms for city work." In our first century, farm families had about 10 kids. When industrialization came along, farms provided a population base to migrate to the city. The family farm has all but disappeared in Ohio. Farms are no longer a big source of migrants to cities.

This is the old moat in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It has a pair of one-way streets on either side. This would be approximately the same scale as a canal in Central Parkway. This moat in Thailand, however, is fed by a natural stream to keep from becoming stagnant.

^---- In our first century, we had both a high birth rate AND a steady stream of foreign immigration. The birth rate has stabilised to near replacement rate, and the foreign immigration has nearly stopped.

Ok folks, before this gets out of hand... The original Miami and Erie Canal was fed by feeder dams on the Great Miami River. The level of the water was about 80 feet higher than the level in the Ohio River. Water flowed from the canal to the Ohio River, not the other way around. Central Parkway is about 80 feet higher than the Ohio River. It is not possible to divert water from the Ohio River to Central Parkway without pumping.

4500 vacant buildings?! Oh dear. :-o

^-- You are not totally off the wall. You have done some very impressive work.

Thanks again for a job well done. I may not have been able to present it as well, but I have been trying to spread the word on this theme on this board for years. I consider myself an optimist. But I also consider myself a realist. I just got chided in another thread for saying something about a declining city. Folks, the demographic data projections show a very different future than what we like to imagine. Jeffrey has been focusing on Dayton, but most of Ohio shows the same trend. According to the U.S. Census, Ohio as a whole is projected to peak in population in 2018 and then decline for the forseeable future. If you don't believe it, you can look it up. Ohio is projected to be the 4th state to peak. There are four components to population change. They are births, deaths, immigration, and emigration. In Ohio, our birth rate is low and dropping; our death rate is low and rising; emigration and immigration are both relatively small, with most of the movement staying within state boundaries, but the net effect is emigration. The last two centuries have been characterized by population growth, with the most growth in raw numbers occuring in the 1950's, 60's, and 70's. We are coming to a turning point, and are leveling out; the next 30 years are likely to be characterized by decline in population. What else can I say? Please don't hate me.

For those who care enough to look it up, Christopher Alexander has an interesting criticism of skyscrapers in his book, "A pattern language"

Something to keep in mind is that many areas, especially suburban areas, are zoned for a certain kind of development in terms of use, setbacks, and density. For example, the traditional storefront with 2 or 3 stories of residential on top is banned in most suburban areas. The area is zoned either residential or commercial. If it is zoned residential, the code probably calls for a minimum lot size, say, 1 unit per half acre. If it is zoned commercial, the parking is usually dictated by the code as one space for every 500 square feet of retail floor area, or something like that. The zoning concept is built into the developer's plan to such an extent that it is rarely challenged, or if it is challenged, it is only changed in some minor detail. So, if you are in the development, real-estate, or construction industry, this is nothing new to you. In general, few people are aware of zoning and what a big impact it makes on development. That being said, if the street is automobile oriented, the development will likely be automobile oriented. If the street is pedestrian oriented, the development will likely be pedestrian oriented. Few streets do both well, and somewhat ironically, narrow streets that are congested with automobiles are often oriented toward pedestrians.

^--- The project is being held up by the E.P.A and Army Corp. of Engineers over a permit to modify the natural stream. Whether you are for or against the project, you have to admit that it's not fair to hold up the project for this long just to make a yes or no decision. The decision is supposed to come soon. Whether the developer is still interested or not is another question.

It seems that Dearborn County, Indiana has more of the large lot single family home type development rather than new subdivisions. "Move out to Indiana" is synonomous with "Move out into the country" in Western Hamilton County.

Thanks for taking the time to post this. Excellent work!

Here's a chart for building permits in Hamilton County over a longer time period, 1960 to 2000. Sorry for the poor scan. Source: Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission.

Feel free to google "Peak Oil" or "Hubbert's peak" for as much information as you want. The "Peak" in "Peak Oil" refers to the rate of extraction of petroleum, in volume. For example, the global use of oil today is about 80 million barrels per day, of which the United States uses 20 million barrels. (All of the figures in this post are round numbers.) Petroleum comprises about 40% of our total industrial energy use, with the other 60% being mostly coal, nuclear, and hydropower. However, due to the fact that petroleum is a liquid, petroleum provides 90% of our transportation energy, mostly in the form of gasoline and diesel fuel which can be burned in internal combustion engines. We started with a finite amount of oil in the ground. No one knows how much, but for sake of argument our best estimate is 3.0 trillion barrels of petroleum. We think we have consumed 1.5 trillion barrels already, which happens to be the halfway point. The heart of the peak oil phenomenon is this: so far, we have been consuming oil at an increasing rate. In fact, in 1990 the United States was consuming oil at a rate of 15 million barrels per day. Now, we are consuming at a rate of 20 million barrels per day. A common mistake is to make a straight-line projection into the future. I saw a television commercial that says that by 2030, we will need 30% more oil. It is hard to imagine any other way. The fact is that there is simply a finite amount of oil in the ground. We think that we have reached the maximum extraction rate, said rate being 80 million barrels per day, and this rate will never increase. In fact, it is about to decrease, such that by 2030 we will be extracting, say, 50 million barrels per day. Of that 3 trillion barrels, 2.4 trillion barrels, or 80%, will have been extracted between the years of 1970 and 2040. The idea of "Peak Oil" is also known as "Hubberts Peak," after M. King Hubbert, an American geologist who investigated this phenomenon in the 1940's. He correctly predicted that oil production in the United States would peak around 1970. He also predicted that global production would peak around 2000. He was a little off; more recent predictions put the peak date anywhere from 2005 to 2012, with the most popular peak date at 2008. We will likely not know for sure until ten years after the actual peak date. The price of gasoline at the pump is of course related to oil supply, but there are so many other factors such as taxes, distribution, weather and seasonal factors, value of the currency, and political actions that the price of gasoline could warrant its own discussion. Those who have been following the oil industry are not surprised that the price of oil has risen, but some of them are, in fact, surprised that it rose so fast. Peak oil is a long term trend. The best explanation of the price increase is that it simply surprised everone in the industry, who in turn overreacted. The problem is in expectations. How many people bought an SUV in 1999, assuming that the price of gasoline would be about $1.50 per gallon for the next 12 years? How many industry decisions were based on a assumption of $30 a barrel oil? Finally, no one can tell the future, and no one knows how this will turn out. What sets the Peak Oil people apart is that they are using a different model to project the future, a future that is so different than today that it is difficult to imagine.