arenn

Hmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Selling assets for cash now is similar to what Detroit is looking to do with the Windsor Tunnel. I don't think per se it is a bad deal, but regionalizing a water system through a district would be something I'd be looking to leverage some type of real quid pro quo, not just money. Something that binds the city and suburbs together tighter, rather than just letting the suburbs pay cash. Cash comes with no moral obligation.

http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/07/06/story9.html Friday, July 3, 2009 Gwinnett plucks another win from the Rust Belt Atlanta Business Chronicle - by Douglas Sams Staff Writer Gwinnett County has plucked another company from Ohio. Fischbein LLC, a maker of packaging and material handling equipment, is relocating one of its manufacturing divisions from Cleveland to Suwanee. The move will bring 45 jobs to Gwinnett. Fischbein will lease 73,400 square feet in 410 Horizon Drive, a 247,530-square-foot building in Horizon Business Park.

Columbusite, I'm not familiar with where these are installed, but its not uncommon that at major suburban intersections, the default light cycle does not provide enough time for a pedestrian to safely cross a multi-lane arterial. Thus the button actually changes the duration of the light cycle.

Why? Sounds like regionalization of the utility. Not per se a bad things but what are the suburbs giving up?

Why would Cincinnati want to sell its water utility? Louisville owns its water company, and collects nice dividends from it. Indianapolis privatized its water company management, then sold the utility, then repurchased it, then privatized management again. It has been a completely fiasco. Control of utilities is a huge lever cities have. Why give them up without something major in return? Don't sell your birthright for a bowl of soup.

Rando, thanks for linking my article. C-Dawg, I agree on the sprawl issue. It's a challenge. How do you justify tearing out infrastructure in one part of town then spending money to build new infrastructure in some corn field in a region that is net not growing. This is a problem to solve. Perhaps some restrictions on using federal funding that new new infrastructure funding to regional population growth would be something to explore. Otherwise we are just building Disposable Cities. To me it is also simply a practical problem central cities have to deal with. Even growing regions like C-Bus have large amounts of hurting, depopulated territory in their core. The growth rates are simply not high enough to revitalize all that territory. Hence you have to make some sort of choice. Electing to admire the problem is itself a choice.

By the way, hats off to Columbus, which I really think is starting to differentiate itself in this economic downturn. This is a city we could hear a lot more about nationally in a few years.

I agree. It's fascinating to compare Midwestern states on their suburban development patterns. I think we've discussed this before, but in Detroit, the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, and to an emerging extent in Indianapolis, we see the "big square suburb" effect of effectively incorporated townships. This was not the case in Illinois or Ohio. I wonder what legal environment drove this and what impact it might have, if any? Detroit is hardly a mecca for economic growth, but the Twin Cities are strong. Doesn't seem to have had much of an impact. There don't seem to be a lot of large suburbs in Ohio. Indy-Columbus are nearly identical in many ways, but the top suburbs in Indy are: Fishers - 69,011 (projecting 125K total buildout) Carmel - 66, 769 (pending annexations will take them to 80K, projecting 100K buildout) Greenwood 47,720 (a massive annexation is in the works) Lawrence - 43,247 Noblesville - 42, 155 (some documents show a buildout of over 200K) A number of these Columbus burbs look quasi-land locked. I think others like Dublin are constrained by utilities issues or other agreements with Columbus.

Yeah, that's it. It's all the Census Bureau. These places aren't really declining. Ohio cities are really booming like the Sun Belt. Whatever the figures, it is very clear this is a demographically and economically sick region. Why not invest the energy in dealing with that instead of railing against the Census Bureau or NAFTA or whatever. Externalizing the problem doesn't fix anything. Let's see where we really land in 2010. Even if better than the estimates, it's still not going to be a pretty picture.

Some thoughts on NCR here: http://theurbanophile.blogspot.com/2009/06/mega-regional-reputation-and-other.html Also, I included some OTR pics further down in the post - though I'm guessing you saw them since I took them from here :)

Isn't NCR's biggest business these days Teradata?

I have to be honest, stories about big companies pulling up stakes and relocating out of the region are really bothersome to me. It's one thing to see manufacturing move overseas or struggling companies downsize, but it's a real gut punch when you are just summarily divorced. Dayton is obviously a place with huge challenges, but make no mistake this is even more pain for the whole Midwest and its reputation.

You might like this view on "blight" versus "disinvestment" http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2009/05/investment-vs-disinvestment.html

I know the Cincy crowd loves to hate Atlanta, but I have to tell you, that city has got something going on. They have heavy rail, are densifying their urban core at a serious rate, and have a strong entrepreneurial base. Consider, for example, the upstart Intercontential Exchange (ICE) that has become a fierce competitor in the financial exchanges market - founded and HQ's in Atlanta. Home Depot is a product of the 1970's, not the 1870's. They've got their problems and challenges to be sure, but dismissing a metro area that grew from 2 million to 5 million in 30 years as a Ponzi scheme is way too simplisitic. Ask Randy what he thinks of Atlanta, he'll probably give a more balanced view of its pros and cons.

Ouch

The biggest vinyl village developer in Indianapolis, CP Morgan, recently went out of business.

Hi - I didn't see a great thread to put this in and didn't want to start a new one, but I did a longish post on Columbus similar to my Cleveland and Cincy ones. Hope you enjoy. http://theurbanophile.blogspot.com/2009/05/columbus-new-midwestern-star.html It does include a section on what Columbus needs, so it is on topic I guess.

Sorry if this is a repeat, but Fast Company named Cleveland one of the 13 most creative cities in the world. http://www.fastcompany.com/multimedia/slideshows/content/fast-cities-2009.html?page=3

Indianapolis is far from utopia. In fact, there's more than a remote chance the city-county will implode in coming years. I think Columbus is in a better position than Indy, frankly. Indy's trend lines are heading the wrong direction. I'm as much on the outside looking in there and hoping for better as any of you are in your city. What do you think the odds are of the Cavs winning it all this year? A major sports title could be a big morale boost for the city. As with the artists article in the NYT, some positive news would be welcome. How many heavy industry type installations are still present in Cleveland? I'm talking steel mills, refineries, chemical plants, etc. I was thinking about this the other day wrt Northwest Indiana. The area has challenges to be sure, not least of which is that it isn't part of a core city. But we simply aren't building new heavy industrial zones in America today. I've got to believe there could be some attraction to reusing the existing sites. BP is spending over $3 billion to modernize their Whiting refinery, for example. We could certainly use more refining capacity in the United States. Could a modern startup type heavy industry concern unburdened by legacy business practices make a go of it?

Again, I don't mind people telling me they think I'm full if it. I'm used to that :) This post seems to have struck some incredible nerve because again it generated huge comment traffic, and very thoughtful traffic. Somebody just emailed me something very detailed and even longer than the original blog post. I'll probably ask for permission to add it as a comment. A couple things jump out at me: - It almost seems like, except for the very largest "global cities" in America, there is an inverse relationship between the presence of a rich urban history and major legacy assets, and present day success. Why is that? - There's something to the state capital thing. If you look at any city of any size in the Midwest with above national average growth, all but one of them are a state capital with over 500,000 people. (I'll admit I haven't done the full study. Ann Arbor might be exception, but the one I was thinking of is Kansas City - which also has some legacy of urbanism). - The thing that really jumped out at me from the comments and was most troubling was this notion that it was difficult for newcomers to meet people and fit into social networks in Cleveland. That is completely the opposite of my experiences in Chicago and Indianapolis, two cities where it is exceptionally easy to meet people and make connections. I've posited before that being a state capital tends to make a place more open, since there are always outsiders coming there for government related purposes (being in the legislature, meetings and events, lobbying, visiting, etc). Strap, I don't want to give the impression that I think I have Cleveland figured out. Hence my making a question mark out of the title. As Alon Levy noted in the comments, any problem you can attribute to Cleveland is a problem other regional cities have. I always thought Cleveland was industrial, but always thought of it as more of a headquarters type town as opposed to an Indiana branch plant town. Maybe de-industrialization more of a factor here than I credit.

Hi. By the way, feel free to strongly disagree with the blog post. In fact, feel free to add your comments. There are 90 comments on it - a record for me, most of them thoughtful and constructive - I welcome disagreement. If you read through my blog, you'll see that I am definitely a tough grader. I'm extremely tough on Indianapolis and have dinged Chicago even on several occasions. The Midwest has manifestly not made the grade, and sugar coating it isn't going to change things. As for the fact that I admit I haven't visited Cleveland, I think that's an understandable reason to raise an eyebrow - which is why I mentioned it incidentally. I would, however, ask that you judge the post based on what it says and whether it is right or wrong rather than who wrote it. Morrison lives there and I quoted him. Longworth is a respected journalist who had even stronger words than me. Jim Russel is a blogger who has tirelessly championed the Cleveburgh corridor and he is exasperated. Since this is the I Love Cleveland thread, I will say that I love the Cleveland Orchestra. Those old George Szell recordings are some of the greatest price/value anywhere. The orchestra's reputation is still high, and I blogged about that Grammophone survey that rated them like the top US orchestra and one of the very top in the world. If I am in doubt about which recording of something to buy, I always default to the Cleveland Orchestra recording.

The idea of bringing college students into the CBD core is a good one. Chicago's "Loop U" - the array of colleges that hold classes there - mean 50,000 students attend school in the greater Loop area. Think about the impact of that on street energy, retail, etc.

Thanks for the kind words - believe it or not my picture was on the front page.

Thanks, rage. Be sure to tune into the blog tomorrow.

Ok, gotcha! It's too easy to push my buttons I guess.