arenn

Thanks for posting, I appreciate it. That post seems to resonate since it's driving huge traffic today.

Possibly. I actually think Cincy would be better if it were bigger though. The smaller Midwest cities struggle to make the urban investments they need. Scale would help. I've said of Indy many times there's nothing wrong with it another million people wouldn't cure. Similarly for Cincinnati, though the number of new people required is lower. If the metro area population was three million (legitimately three million, not by adding Dayton), it would really ignite a lot of the redevelopment I think. The problem right now is just the frustratingly slow pace. If OTR really reaches its potential, it could have a huge impact on making the core city explode.

By the way, I'm with the San Francisco analogy. Cincy's geography and some of the frame houses remind me of SF. Too much brick I suppose, but we can live with that. How about a brick Midwestern San Francisco?

Reference or clarify this, please. The person who's responded tho this assertion with referenced data is making you look like an idiot. Population Growth 2008-2009: USA: 0.9% Cincinnati: 0.6% Net Domestic Migration 2008-2009: USA: Zero (by definition) Cincinnati: Negative Foreign Born Population 2008: USA: 12.8% Cincinnati: 3.6% Unemployment Rate: USA: 9.7% Cincinnati: 10.9% GDP Per Capita (2008 in 2001 constant dollars): US Metro Average: 41,737 Cincinnati: 37,970 Just a few highlights of some core statistics. There are others, but these were straightforward to pull from standard sources (Census, BLS, BEA)

Huh? Cincinnati just needs to rejuvenate its own built environment, which blows almost every other city out of the water.

That op-ed guy seemed like a typical disaffected Republican upset with national policy moreso than local.

Yup, Putnam and Brown County have no business being part of the Indy MSA. Both Indy and Cincy benefited from more counties inflating their MSA size over time, though Indy did have one legitimate metro county taken out of its MSA after it petitioned to be removed. Regardless, I think the notion that Cincy is 200-300,000 people bigger than Indy is fair.

CSA is rarely used. MSA is the most preferred measure. Cincy has 15 counties IIRC, many more than Indy or Cbus. However, some of them are tiny Kentucky counties which hardly count. The key is my book is that a lot of the talk of how Cincy is now over two million (or over three million if you add in Dayton) is simply map manipulation, not real growth. FACT: Cincinnati is lagging nationally in almost any real demographic or economic indicator.

I am from Louisville originally so can give some perspectives on that city. Growing up in the 70's and 80's, Cincinnati was definitely perceived like an "older brother" type of city. I'm assuming that's still true now. To some extent Cincy was viewed as the nearest "big city". But more importantly, Louisvillians never got upset about playing second fiddle to Cincy or being talked about that way. This is in huge contrast in how people in Louisville view say Indy and Nashville, cities they hold in contempt and refuse to acknowledge as anything but at best equal to (and probably inferior to) Louisville itself. Indy is three hours from Chicago. It's an easy day trip by car. This makes Chicago the clear "big city" for Indy. Virtually no one in Indy ever thinks of Cincy except for IKEA, Kings Island, a few Reds fans. The IKEA thing does show that Cincy retains some super-regional assets. Cincinnati is also a bit bigger than Indy or Columbus, though certainly by much less than it used to be. A lot of Cincy's "growth" has come from adding counties to the MSA, but if you compare like to like, I'd probably put Cincinnati about 200-300,000 people larger than Indianapolis - or around 12-15%. Louisville is much smaller.

Most people invest in debt via debt funds to provide diversification and reduce risk. I don't have any money in distressed assets, but I do have money invested in high yield bond funds.

France also has high levels of immigrants who generally have higher fertility rates. France bans collecting statistics about racial or other origins, so we don't know how much of its high birth rate is due simply to more recent arrivals from North Africa, for example. Itlay's lower rate of immigration might show what native birthrates look like.

Thank you!

If you are talking about clevelandscene.com, I believe the answer is Yes, though they didn't talk to me for the piece. They just alluded to some of my writing.

Great analysis, Jeff. Ft. Wayne has an active Burmese refugee settlement movement. Lexington is doing pretty well. Looking Madisonish. I'm not a big fan of international immigration figures for interior cities outside of Chicago. My hypothesis is that most foreigners who move to the Midwest first entered the country elsewhere, thus don't show up in the international migration figures. Louisville is doing really well on domestic migration. Of the 12 metros I regularly track, it was #2 in total net in-migrants, 2000-2009. Pittsburgh hit a migration inflection point. They also have natural decrease, which is pretty rare. I'm not ready to pronounce Pittsburgh "cured", but if there is any really hard whacked Rust Belt city that is looking like it is turning the corner, it's Pittsburgh. Columbus increased its population growth in a year where that was rare. I expect them to take over the top spot in population growth from Indy in large Midwest metros soonish.

The intersection of the housing crisis and population is a problem in many US cities. Places that aren't growing very fast or are shrinking (and Ohio has plenty of these) have a much harder time adjusting to the overhang. Gov't smoothing the pain might help a city like Columbus grow into its oversupply, but not other places.

Oh, add bike share too :) Columbus should definitely look at something like the Indy Cultural Trail solution

My view is that you should integrate green space and recreational activities into the urban fabric itself. Downtown streets tend to have sidewalks flush to the curb. There is plenty of opportunity to add rain gardens/swales with landscaping and native plantings, street trees. Add sidewalk cafes. The Indy Cultural Trail is a great example of how to include this + bicycle amenities. Green roofs. Public art. That sort of thing. Pocket parks and well executed plazas (following the research from Whyte/PPS) can even be good. It should be straightforward to remove traffic lanes for all of this. My experience of downtown Columbus shows the streets to be largely over-engineered, as they are most places. At least one lane could probably be robbed in most places with no ill effect.

Come on, that building looks like a commie block. It's like a classic interstate highway hotel design. Terrible. Lest you think I'm getting down on Columbus, Indy has a bunch of them even worse than that. What bugs me is not that a private company decided to erect low quality architecture on a prime downtown site, but that so much tax dollars are going into it. Public investment is the big lever to insist on quality architecture, so it always disappoints me when it isn't delivered. On the whole, I'm a big Cbus fan and think the Arena District was done very well, but this hotel isn't worth of the city.

Amen. Three problems killing old media: 1. Market changes (a legitimate issue) 2. Gross mismanagement 3. Staff clinging to old business models and ways of doing things than any UAW member ever dared. Aaron.

rider, yes, I understand that. I just find it ironic that a report is calling for more "open space" when so much of downtown is already vacant and clearly underutilized. Of course, Columbus is far from alone here. Downtown Indianapolis looks even more parking lotted to me.

It's interesting that the overview presentation says one one slide that there's a shortage of open space downtown then on the very next one that 24% of it is taken up by parking lots. I'm reminded of Jane Jacobs: "Parks are volatile places. They tend to run to extremes of popularity and unpopularity. Their behavior is far from simple. They can be delightful features of city districts, and economic assets to their surroundings as well, but pitifully few are. They can grow more beloved and valuable with the years, but pitifully few show this staying power. For every [good example] there are dozens of dispirited city vacuums called parks, eaten around with decay, little used, unloved. As a woman in Indiana said when asked if she liked the town square, 'Nobody there but dirty old men who spit tobacco juice and try to look up your skirt.' "In orthodox city planning, neighborhood open spaces are venerated in an amazingly uncritical fashion, much as savages venerate magical fetishes. Ask a houser how his planned neighborhood improves on the old city and he will cite, as a self-evident virtue, More Open Space....More Open Space for what? For muggings? For bleak vacuums between buildings? Or for ordinary people to use and enjoy? But people do not use city open space just because it is there and because planners or designers wish they would." If you ask me downtown Columbus could use a lot less "open space" and a lot more buildings. There are many better ways to integrate park like attributes into the urban fabric directly rather than as segregated districts. Great to see the upturn in residential growth. That's very healthy. Employment doesn't actually talk about employment, just office space. Private sector employment in downtown Columbus is declining, as it is in basically every other similar sized city. It's a huge challenge without ready solutions. I've done an massive amount of thinking and R&D lately about what would go into a really transformational downtown strategy. It's too bad I wasn't in a position and missed the opportunity to try to partner with or bid on some of the Columbus work myself. I think it would be an amazing downtown to try to take to the next level.

Cleveland isn't the only city where it's difficult to do business: http://www.indystar.com/article/20100322/LOCAL18/3220335/Zoning-holds-up-Eastside-business-expansion

CVG's "domestic" demand is below the capacity Delta provides. That's the definition of an interchange hub. Let's face it, the CVG hub is doomed. With so few flights, it's almost not worth calling it one now. The bright side is the leases that Delta signed that they did not reject in bankruptcy. That will protect the airport somewhat.

I read the Clevescene article. They criticize the Reason series but offer no better plan of their own. As for Jacoby at the the Boston Globe, IIRC he is their libertarian columnist (how did so many members of a marginal political group get so many plum columnist gigs?) and so can be expected to support Reason.

I don't know if anyone watched the last episode in the series, "Bring Back the People". Whether you agree with the pieces at the beginning and end or not, I thought it was the most effective presentation of the case for living in Cleveland that I have ever seen. A great collection of people and amenities in a real package that doesn't seem overly salesy.