neilworms

^-This is kind of why on this forum we wish for better transit in Cincinnnati, it would allow for greater connectivity between different parts of the region and tie things together better. Right now Cincy is a series of villages and doesn't act like its its own cohesive town. Though there are also cultural reasons for this, people have developed a stick in the mud tribal attitude, something Cranley exploited which basically means my parish/kroger/neighborhood is better than yours and who cares about anything else. I love a ton of neighborhoods in Cincinnati though when I lived there I felt weird that I was so comfortable exploring stuff outside of my comfort zone, few people actually did that. This HAS to change if Cincy is to realize its potential I think starting with making the question "What high school did you go to?" as ridiculous to Cincy as it is to the outside world. Finally professional jobs are pretty strong in Cincy (lack of low skill jobs are a problem everywhere in the US, so the issue is more national policy), but due to the culture having a reputation as being backwards and most people not realizing just how beautiful Cincy's core is they look it over. The real way to encourage growth in Cincy is to not sabotage its economic foundations but instead rewrite its culture to allow for more acceptance of the outside world and more appreciation of its assets in the context of the rest of the country.

I believe I read it was the first non east coast american city to be settled. It still pisses me off that history happened the way it did. Cincinnati and Chicago are so interchangeable. Cincinnati could have easily become Chicago today if it wasn't for a few setbacks in history, with a million plus population, and hundreds of skyscrapers, while Chicago could have easily become Cincinnati today. I disagree. Cincinnati could have been somewhat larger, and *perhaps* double its current size, but that would have required some dumb luck, and we are already very lucky to have had P&G happen here. Basically we needed 3-4 other giant companies to have happened to have started here. To get really big, a city has to have a period of time when things *had* to be in that location. An obvious example is Hong Kong during the Communist era. San Francisco was the only protected harbor for hundreds of miles, NYC was a deep water port at the mouth of a large river, etc. Cincinnati only had a very brief period of time when things *had* to be here. If technology had progressed more slowly, perhaps Cincinnati would have grown somewhat larger in the 1800s because there would have been no viable alternatives. But the fact is that the straight line of cities along the south shores of the Great Lakes is a big deal, and Chicago was the obvious jumping-off point from all of that commerce to the agrarian Midwest. And Chicago had nothing but flat land in all directions, so big money stooges couldn't hoard all of it as happened in Cincinnati. I agree with Jake on this point, however there are odd exceptions and that's usually due to sheer cultural willpower. A good example is Seattle Vs Tacoma - Tacoma was where the railroad ended and was in a natural port, probably one of the best in the US part of the pacific northwest, but Tacoma never became the alpha US city of the region, Seattle did, and Seattle did largely because of a campaign of boosterism that was extremely successful leading a less than ideal port to be the primary city of its superregion. Cincinnati doesn't have that kind of thing in its cultural DNA - it could have taken a route where it tried to fight against the natural/political barriers that were against it being a major inland cultural center/city but it didn't really do so and eventually developed into a place weary of new ideas that it is today. I am wondering though when that cultural conservatism took hold because it seems for a time Cincy was an innovative place? Furthermore Chicago's growth was largely due to rail surpassing canals as a means of transport. Chicago was at a better location to take advantage of both rail and canals due to a gap in the Appalachian mountains making it far easier to connect to New York City and the east coast. Its connection to the frontier was stronger too due to the canal/rail corridor's proximity to the Missouri River. Finally, the Civil War devastated the south, and much of Cincy's business was it being an inland connector between the rural south to the industrial north - with a weakened south that weakened Cincinnati as a whole. P&G was a very fortunate thing and Cincy was still a pretty strong city until about 1950 or so (San Francisco or Boston of the same time period were pretty comparable cities, I think the divergence between the three started to happen after this point). Today, Cincy still has some impressive legacy institutions but it really needs to work on leveraging them to stick out from the pack - working on its conservative and detached/provincial outlook would help as well.

I was wondering about that date when I posted it, thanks. Still 1802 is extremely early for a non east coast American city.

Chicago and San Fran are both newer than Cincinnati - both of which were incorporated around 1840 (Cincinnati was 1788). San Fran became an incredible boom-town around 1850 (the gold rush) and Chicago really didn't kick into high gear until the mid 1870s after loosing 2/3rds of its original building stock. Most of what's left in Chicago is 1880s-1910 that looks and feels similar to Cincinnati. Chicago's victorian neighborhoods are huge, but the quality of the housing stock isn't generally as good as what's in Cincy. (A few areas in the gold coast and Lincoln Park are impressive but much of its working class areas that were equivalent to OTR don't compare - Chicago's [not the loop which is where all the innovation really happened] real peak IMO is early 20th century with craftsman houses greystone 2/3/4 flats and courtyard apartments - its some of the best I've seen of that style neighborhood). San Fran is higher quality than what's in Cincy, incredibly ornate sequoia wood victorians with the occaisional brick corner building here and there. Though at the same time 1/3rd of all victorian era architecture was lost due to the 1906 earthquake. On the flip side the timing of that earthquake was such that it left some really impressive Edwardian and Art Noveau architecture in its place - the tendernob (or lower nob hill) is one of my favorite urban neighborhoods in the whole country it feels like a pastel harlem, or an old photo of downtown Cincinnati come to life minus the Italianate. OTR is extremely special, there is next to nothing like it in the US. Yes it was a common architecture of the mid-late 1800s but little of its level of quality remains - it seems that post 1870 that style of architecture became more simplified and less ornate unless it was a place like San Francisco. Most neighborhoods like this were wiped off the map between 1930-1970 and even then few were as dense or ornate as Cincinnati's.

Macy's is currently pouring more money into renovating that Herald Square store than they are renovating/building all of their other stores combined. Obviously the higher up, the less money they make per square foot, but they are still cleaning up everywhere in that building. The Cincinnati Macy's probably does okay because costs are very low, partly due to subsidy. Of course, one could say every suburban mall location is heavily subsidized because of the free infrastructure provided and maintained for them. I haven't been in it in about 15 years but apparently the New York store is still running the wooden escalators. The old Marshall Fields store in Chicago (another flagship store) still does Christmas displays - Macys does put extra work into stores they have in major cities in major shopping districts.

NKY is like a sleeping giant. The business district in Covington is particularly strong here's hoping that it doesn't go the way of Walnut Hills where the comm council winds up demoing like half of it for pocket parks :P - It really gives me a good feeling of what much of the dense fabric in Cincy was like pre WWII (though smaller and somewhat more southern in vernacular). Bellevue appears to be the only area that is really taking advantage of it (they also have some of the most intact stock too).

I think maybe the great earthquake of 1906 motivated the city early on to cherish and preserve it's built environment. Why needlessly tear down historic structures when mother nature is capable of doing so on a mass scale? Sounds plausible to me. Also, the near constant growth of SF over the years also probably has something to do with the preserved nature of it's housing. It's easy to appreciate historic buildings when they're in good condition and brimming with life. It's a little tougher to appreciate the value of a historic building when it's vacant, deteriorated, and otherwise blighted. Chicago had a similar catastrophe in the 1870s but doesn't have nearly as strong a desire for preservation (though stuff that is equivalent to the Goetz house is preserved in Wicker Park the beer baron row is protected at least I'd argue that preservation community has more teeth than it does in Cincy but its a shadow compared to what's in San Fran). Chicago took a path of complete new city, and by the mid 20th Century it instituted one of the largest urban renewal programs in the whole country (Cincy wasn't too far behind at least according to the book about community relations that also happens to be the best source we have on the west end's tragic fall) and generally isn't as preservation friendly as San Fran in spite of the similar age and similar catastrophes at key moments in their growth. Outside of the loop and a few other key areas Chicago is a tier below Cincinnati in terms of neighborhood vernacular (though it was a place of much innovation - perhaps its cultural theme is that of rebirth instead of preserving the old?). San Francisco feels like an older city even though both were founded in 1840 - the rebuilding of San Fran was done more conservatively. I'm still blown away at how many Italianates in Chicago had their cornices ripped off btw...

Lets pause and think about those other places that have "embarassments of riches", was there a cataclysmic event in San Francisco or Boston that led to this? In Boston I'm going to guess it was the City Hall, though I'm less sure about San Fran as its biggest loss was pretty comparable to what Cincy lost but on a much smaller scale... What about Savannah or Charleston?

I mean, the Enquirer did just publish an LTE where some guy said that Music Hall and Union Terminal were bland and boring, and we need to paint them bright colors to make them pop! I'm pinning a more blame on the elites. Leadership in Cincinnati has set an example of terrible appreciation/management of its assets and doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks either (which isn't always a bad thing, but in Cincy's case it would be good for its culture if it would open up a little bit more and be a bit more welcoming/bit more able to see how they fit contextually with the rest of the country and or world). DAAP is a great design school and there is no doubt there are talented architects in the region especially due to DAAP, but they aren't the only ones in charge of putting together projects ;)

The last point is probably the most frustrating for Cincinnati. Why wasn't the Goetz house protected as a landmark back in the 1970s given its history and ties to one of Cincinnati's chief beer barons? It boggles the mind.

I think the difference is with Denver is that the urban environment wasn't very great to begin with. Its better than most cities in the west, but nothing compared to the east coast, and a few key midwest cities (Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati) - they don't really have a point of reference for better architecture and the population boom is putting pressure on them to build fast. From what I've seen there isn't even equivalent neighborhoods to German Villiage or Short North in Columbus - there at least is something there as a point of reference - maybe that's why Cbus has better infill at an earlier stage in its development? I guess that's what's surprising about Cincinnati - yes there is bad infill everywhere but its more dramatic when you have such an incredibly beautiful city get it - it mares what was once a pretty awesome environment and cheapens what should be a great city by the time it finally gets around to turning around. I kind of gasp everytime I see formerly run blocks (saw an article about a street in Northside with some great pictures) where italianate townhouses get revived - Cincy's vernacular is so good compared to most american cities and the people of the region have done a terrible job taking care of it and have been slow to embrace the idea of urban living its frustrating. San Fran has the opposite issue - they realized what they had was unique and protected it, now its reaching a crisis point of affordability due in part to these protections. I don't think Cincy should go to that extreme but it deserves so much better than the hand its been dealt in the last 60 years. Bad infill isn't unique to Cincinnati, I feel what's unique is the attitude locals have towards its assets, other cities with its assets weren't given such a terrible treatment, and got the TLC they deserved many years before Cincinnati finally got around to fixing it. The two other cities I can think of with excellent historic vernacular that are behind (but still ahead of Cincy in a lot of ways) are St. Louis and Baltimore, but those cities suffered far more from deindustrialization than Cincy did, the local economies are more to blame, in Cincy its almost entirely cultural so there is no excuse for the poor care of its assets other than a culture that is insular and has a bad attitude about such things. (Plus Cincy's vernacular is better than both of those cities - its really one step below San Fran and Boston).

Often overlooked in these conversations, Izzy's always got it, with their two CBD locations. Skyline is sort of there as well, but really should have a presence at either the Banks or in OTR, given how widely popular they are. Totally agree on the rest. Izzys still focuses a bit more on the lunch crowd than it does on residents. Ditto for Skyline - as has been discussed the guy who runs the skyline at court/vine is probably loosing a ton of money by not being open later. Though what's probably most shocking to me is a lack of interest in having "flagship" stores on the banks, ways to spread goodwill about the region to out of towners who might be passing through to baseball games give tourists a taste of local culture in a friendly easy to access package - the banks should be perfect for that. Again insular focus.

I'm still shocked how ambivalent the local cincy companies are towards urban revival. Greaters is the only one that gets it with their OTR store, which I'm sure is a practice format for a store in Chicago once they finally make it to the city here (probably delayed versus the suburbs due to a corrupt system of permitting that is in dire need of reform). I'm not sure what the holdup is for UDF, Skyline Chili, or LaRosas - they all should be focusing on capitalizing on growth in the urban core - the writing is on the wall, I'm wondering if its just sheer parochialism that's holding them back.

It depends on the city they are coming from, but I tend to feel that Cincinnati is a pretty underdeveloped urban real estate market and its infill reflects that. The student stuff is mindblowingly bad in some cases, about the only uptown infill project I like (and even it has that dumb top floor that should have had brick veneer instead of vinyl) is the building Taste of Belgium is in. Maybe I just have an inherant anti-cincy native bias, given the severe level of insularity that the city has - they don't know better things and don't care about better things (its not in their small universe) even though historically they had them. This culture is showing signs of budging but its still held back by too much inertia. Out of towers may have better infill if they are used to working in intense urban environments. I think Columbus for instance has better developers, the wood companies should open an office in Cincy, they'd be such a perfect fit - which is all the more shocking because Columbus really doesn't have as good an urban enviornment as Cincy does... Chicago as a whole has better developers, but we aren't without some absolute duds too. Though I do understand the arguments about property values and regulatory environment as well as it being a bigger city that attracts higher level talent. I constantly wish Cincinnatians would aim a little higher though, how can people be so blind to what they have? Its absurd. Great Traditions is upping the game and some of 3CDCs stuff is better so I do have some hope, perhaps its just a matter of the market maturing as well as creating an environment where there is a bit more pushback from the community. I have this feeling of resignation about Corryville, most of the good stuff is long gone even buildings that in any other city would be landmarked. I understand the student population pressures, but there had to have been a better way of doing this.

They offer discounts for mpmf too watch their twitter :) I used it last year

Yeah 2012 was my absolute favorite year. The Emery was increadible and all the venues off Mainstreet created this awesome echo effect when bands were playing there. I'm really hoping that they Emery will come back eventually - here's hoping the whole UC / Requiem thing is resolved... looks like they are trying to reach a settlement: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2014/07/29/uc-emery-theatre-building-should-remain-tax-exempt.html

Said this before, but Court Street would be a landmark area in any other city its dying to be rehabilitated.

^-I'm super impressed with what Nate's put together so far. Very good system for Cincinnati's unintuitive bus routes. I think there only needs to be a few tweaks and it will be great. I hope there is buy in from local businesses in areas like Uptown, and Northside that are well served by transit outside of downtown.

Changing the culture is a good first step

No what happened was they submitted a design to the Bengals for review and Mike Brown being the 8@#P(&*)(#@ that he is, refused it. The board then had to enter negotiations with him so that he could extort more money out of the county. This was all over 6 feet! I have nothing nice to say about that jerk. Everyone here should watch John Oliver's segment on stadiums.

Indeed. If your main intentions is to go bar hopping, like my friends do, it's not really appropriate to go to Kaze or Bakersfield drunk like a skunk (and there usually closed anyways by the team were done drinking). OTR definitely needs more simple hole in the walls, and carry out window places that just prioritizes on greasy junk food for the drunken crowd. Because the only thing truly available is either Cincy by the slice, or Gomez. And you can only eat pizza and tacos after a long night of drinking for so long. OTR has plenty of good resturants, it actually was lacking in late night options (this is why NOM was created) though as I understand it its now a lot better than it was.

The bus was my primary mode of transportation in Chicago. I do not bother with buses in cities like Cincinnati. The community does not treat it as a serious mode of transportation, so neither do I. PS: This thread is for rail, not buses. Don't let the convo stray too far or it'll get moved! Seriously? I used to live in car-free in Chicago and now I live car-free in Cincinnati. I'll take Cincinnati's buses over Chicago's any day. Fix two things about Cincinnati's buses and they would be better than Chicago's - 1) More frequently running lines that go more places 2) More diverse crowds of people who ride it. #2 is an easy fix, and may help eventually bring about #1. Also, MetroPlus is a wonderful addition but I wish it ran on weekends... here's hoping the region is smart enough to vote for the future levee which will expand that system. Its not as good as rail, but you have to walk before you run. These cards wear down a lot easier and are harder to use - the plastic rfid cards allow for faster boarding - Metro is using outdated technology here - this is another place for improvement, but at the very least they have these now and aren't using tokens/cash plus they have day passes for dirt cheap now. Great feature, but Chicago does do the same. You can see where the bus of your choice physically is by looking at chicagobustracker.com Transit is a fantastic app, and is particularly useful in Cincy where multiple low frequency routes run close to each other but not on the same street - this way you can more easily plan which one to take (look at route 20 or 27 in Northside to downtown vs the more frequent 17/19 - 20 and 27 are faster routes but don't run as frequently with this you can choose accordingly and walk a couple blocks to those routes if they are convient and save a few mins on your trip). I love how transit app actually shows all routes near you (I use it just about every day in Chicago as I can take two routes (I'm off a rare diagonal bus line) to get to work.

It was particularly awesome after MPMF when they had music (which did get noise complaints eventually) after the show. I could get a snack before heading off to bed and hear a few more bands too - extended the effective time of the festival to 3am and they managed to convince not just local bands to provide music (though I would have been happy with just that :) ). It really bugged me when I saw NOM post on facebook about being in the parking lot of Whole Foods in West Chester, I thought that was seriously off brand (NOM was fundamentally an urban concept meant to appeal to an urban crowd) particularly when I saw pics of conservative looking families there - I knew something bad had happened so I decided to investigate whey it changed. It was little surprise to me when it died shortly thereafter - the leadership was just not there to keep it going.

NOM fell apart because the original owners (out of towners) jobs moved and they transferred it to life long locals who didn't understand how to do cool things - they actually were talking about hosting events out in West Chester before it died then said whoops we don't have time to do it (look at the last post on their facebook, they didn't even try - its symptomatic of a inbred complacency I see all to much of in Cincy). It was too creative an idea for most life long Cincinnatians to be able to handle. Harsh criticism, yes, but its the truth is that the people who have no perspective in this region can't run cool things most of the time. I'd love to see this change (and there are signs of it) but ugh...

The bus was my primary mode of transportation in Chicago. I do not bother with buses in cities like Cincinnati. The community does not treat it as a serious mode of transportation, so neither do I. On the flip side changing the culture starts at the grassroots. Much of Cincy doesn't have great transit, I'll agree wholeheartedly, but if you live in a neighborhood that at least has something usable and are going to a neighborhood that has the same, lets say from by the university to downtown then take advantage of it. The more people like you who ride what exists the more transit is considered a normal thing that normal people use and not something for the destitute and poor. Perhaps the end result will be cultural change. It will take time. This is part of the reason why I consider the frequent transit map Nate Wessel made, as well real time bus tracker information to be important steps towards normalizing the idea of transit being transportation and not a social program. Cincinnati's backwards attitude towards transit is a problem, particularly for a city that is as urban as it is. You solve a problem by attacking it on all sides and IMO this is one of the biggest problems the city has - the streetcar is a great way to normalize transit usage, but you need to really drive home that point and that's the responsibility of everyone who supports a change in culture and as urbanists I'm sure all of us WANT the culture to change. Also as I've mentioned earlier in this thread, speak up if you have a problem with how buses are being operated, I give props to Metro for at least having an active social media presence. The more people with standards who ride transit speak up the better the system will get on a day to day operational basis. Real reform will take money and investment (as well as less backwards leadership) but you should at least work towards a goal of making Cincy a more transit friendly city and everyone has to start somewhere. I do my part, I use metro when I'm in Cincy when it makes sense for me. With Uber/Lyft and bikeshare I can get everywhere I'd like to pretty much when I'm in town without needing a car. When I do it I get an incredible feeling that I am making a difference and fighting against a culture that I hate with a passion. The on topic police strike again! Any conversation about the future of transit being brighter in an area where transit isn't taken seriously is going to include some form of bus transportation. You can't build rail everywhere even Europe and Japan do have buses. If you are so rigid in your conversation all it takes is a simple change to the topic name from rail to just mass transportation then OMG we are on topic ;)