rekxu83

It's incredibly encouraging to see that building going in. It looks great and hopefully will serve as an example of the kind of infill that OTR needs.

I've never been able to get into SC 4, my cities didn't come out the way i wanted them too! Probably just don't have enough patience. I still play SC 3 occasionally, and of course 2000. Never played the original either.

Gotta go with the full loop. At least eventually. It would be a crime to deny access to the Ludlow Ave business district. Nice maps, by the way. Thanks for taking the time to come up with these.

3343 Ruther Ave

I have dreams at night of being able to hop onto a Streetcar on Fairfield Ave, take it to Newport and across the river to the Banks, Findlay or Uptown.....

HUGE win by our muskies. I know it's been said before, but Sean Miller is just a helluva coach. This win should vault us into the top 20. Man, this squad is shaping up nicely!

Yep, I just hope that the streetcar makes it over to Ovation/NOTL and Covington. The Purple People Bridge has an entire side that's not being used. Throw some tracks over it and connect with Cincy's streetcars!

It seems to me you can 'prove' anything if you arrive at your conclusion before looking at the evidence.

I had no idea intelligent adults still don't believe we landed on the moon..... Kind of scary.

Has anybody else noticed the 'CRUST' graffiti around town? It seems to be everywhere, is it some sort of gang or just a prolific graffiti artist?

Way cool. They even show Riverfront under construction! Also, if you go south a little from Crosley field, you can see Union Terminal with its concourse still intact.

That would be asking entirely too much from the SUV and Minivan crowd.

Isn't this where Balki is from? Looks like a gorgeous place.

Straight. Married. 1st kid on the way. Am I allowed to complain about the term 'breeder,' or would my being offended actually be offensive? Don't want to hurt any feelings.

I would say Glendale is charming in spite of the fact it was one of the first suburbs not built on a grid. Grids=Good.

^ Newport has done a great job with infill. We actually looked at some of the new houses being built over by Pompilios. They look well-made, and blend well with the rest of the neighborhood. Forgot to mention Monmouth, too. Reminds me of Cheviot's business district on steroids for some reason. It's much healthier though. Just gotta get the Brass @ss outta there.

1.) Mt Adams - Incredibly unique. A true treasure of a neighborhood. The dense housing, thriving business district, and of course the hilltop setting combine to make this my favorite neighborhood anywhere. Enough said. 2.) Hyde Park - My wife lived here when we got out of college in an apartment on Observatory, and I actually spent about 3 months there as well. It's deserving of the hype - great street grid, beautiful houses, the swankiest business district around, and Arthurs! 3.) OTR - Based on potential alone. This would be the easiest #1 pick if it was truly on it's feet, but while there has been terrific progress and newfound energy and excitement, it still has a ways to go. I think anybody who appreciates good city planning absolutely worships this place for what it once was and what its well on its way to becoming again. Special place. 4.) Clifton - I'm lumping Clifton proper and Clifton Heights together on this one, they've always been the same neighborhood in my mind. Moved out when I was 17 to live in a house in Clifton Heights with my buddies so it will always be pretty special to me. Plus you can't beat the gas light district, another superbly laid out 1st generation suburb with great housing stock and the Ludlow business district a short walk away. 5.) Mt. Lookout - Lived here while my wife lived in Hyde Park right out of college. Great idea. Bars, pizza, sushi. Gorgeous (and expensive!) houses. All settled into a little nook between two hills. 6.) Oakley - Hyde Park light. Great housing stock and a completely rejuvinated business district make this a great place to be Hyde Park 'near'. It's a great neighborhood on its own though. 7.) Norwood - Norwood is at a place right now where Oakley was maybe 15 years ago. That said, Norwood has something to offer that Hyde Park and Oakley don't generally - HUGE HOUSES. The area around Floral and the president streets has some of my favorite houses in Cincinnati. The other side of Montgomery will take a little longer to catch up, but the place has a pretty decent present and nothing but upside. 8.) Mt. Auburn - The 'other Mt.' Sitting right on top of OTR, you get some of the best views of the city. Plus housing almost as old and almost as beautiful as OTR. 9.) Bellevue - I live in Bellevue b/c it's on my list. Not the other way around. Despite disparaging remarks made about my neighbors (it is definitely Kentucky, I'll give you that), Bellevue has a great socio-economic mix. It's been called gritty, appalacian-y, whatever, take a walk through all of Bellevue and I think most people would be surprised. Bellevue's ace in the hole is its revived business district on Fairfield, which is what drew us here in the first place. 10.) Newport - Historic District - Newport to me is almost 2 seperate neighborhoods. East and west, and I'm ignoring NOTL b/c people tend to crap whenever it's mentioned. West Newport is pretty bad, though it does have signs of life. East Newport is just a great collection of brick row houses and quiet leafy streets.

Randy "forgets" about NKY. Shocking! :wink: Thanks for the Bellevue NBD shoutout, I'll make sure to tell my neighbors about it while we're shooting at each other from across the holler.

? I am sure if the return on investment was still there they would continue to operate the US domestic operations. I'm not sure you can turn these economic events into a one country craps more on another country discussion. I am sure there are plenty of US companies that have layoff and closed German facilities in the past as well. It was a generalization sure. All I'm saying is that German companies are notorious for expanding into the US largely so they have flexibility to layoff their workforce if necessary. In Germany laying off workers is like pulling teeth, plus you have to give them generally at least a full years salary, and usually a lot more. Of course if DHL was doing well they wouldn't lay them off, but you know they're going to wipe out their American operations first if they need to get their balance sheet in order.

These German companies love to lay off US workers. Seriously, a big reason many of them expand into the US is simply b/c it's far easier to reduce their US workforce than it is to lay off German workers.

Your aerial tours of Cincinnati are always appreciated. Great set Gordon. Queencitydisco just got added to my favorites as well.

Let me know how that fallout shelter you're building is coming along.

He meant natural resources, as a whole, have not become scarcer over time. Your examples prove his point exactly. Do we not have ships anymore? Did we stop taking picture b/c Silver Nitrate was too expensive? No more piano's? The Optimistic Model argues that resources should be treated as infinite, at least in the economic sense. Here's why: Known reserves are uncertain. More may become available through discovery or new extraction techniques Resources may be used more efficiently, or recyling technology may catch up Equivalent resources/technology will come about. ie fiber optics instead of copper for communication So that while we may run out of old growth timber for our boats, we'll still make boats. We still take pictures, now mostly with digital technology. Oh, and I just had a buffalo burger at Ruby Tuesdays :wink:

Just to frame this arguement properly. What we're talking about here is what's known in the field of Natural Resource Economics as the basic Pessimist Model and the basic Optimist Model. The Basic Pessimist Model started with a study published in 1972 called The Limits of Growth and updated in 1992 under the title Beyond the Limits. They are both based on models developed at MIT by Jay Forrestor. This study reached three main conclusions: 1.) That within 100 years, with no major change in the physical, economic, or social relationships that we have, society will run out of nonrenewable natural resources. When this happens, a complete and sudden collapse of our economic system will occur. Manifested in massive unemployment, decreased food production and a decline in population. 2.) The second conclusion is that a traiditional piecemeal approach to solving this problem will not succeed. To illustrate this, the authors doubled the amount of known resources in the models and societal collapse still occured b/c of increased pollution driven by greater industrial devlopment. If they took out pollution, then food becomes the binding resource, and societal collapse still occurs. 3.) The third conclusion states that the only way we can stop this overshoot and collapse scenario was to immediately put limits on population and economic growth. Julian Simon is the man who gave us the basic Optimist Model. He published a study in 1981 called The Ultimate Resource, rejecting the traditional overshoot and collapse scenario. He brings up several good points in the study. One of which is that the overall amount of arable land is still increasing, and even in places where it's decreasing (US), technological innovation is still increasing productivity. Another, is that contrary to popular belief, natural resources have not become scarcer over time, any apparent lack has been due to problems with human behavior than to a physical lack of availability. Pollutions levels have declined as population and incomes increase in industrial societies. Furthermore, Simon points out that our economic and even our political systems respond to apparent scarcity in ways that minimize or eliminate its impact. A quote from his study: "The main fuel to speed our progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination. The ultimate resource is people - skilled, spirited and hopeful people who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and so, inevitably, for the benefit of us all" One final point from me. Our view of the future is often clouded by our understanding of the past and present, as well as by our technology both present and right around the corner. Often, any projections we make of the future are limited by these factors, and can seem completely ridiculous in retrospect. Some example: In 1486 a committe established by the King and Queen of Spain to determine the feasibility of sending a ship to the Indies across the Atlantic determined that the ocean was probably infinite and not navigable. And even if it weren't, a return journey would be impossible In 1835, a british railroad engineer declared that any means of transportation at velocities exceeding 10mph was near impossible The chief geologist of the US Geological Survey in 1920 reported that only 7 billion barrels of oil remained to be recovered. His prediction: that we would be out of oil by 1934 at the current rate of consumption. In 1934, however, we had consumed nearly 12 billion barrels, and there was another 12 billion in proven reserves My point is that history is riddled with these pessimistic projections and yet our race continues to grow and prosper. I'm definitely an adherant to the Optimist Model. We do have some real challenges to face in the near future, such as the availability of potable water in the developing world and even US west, and reaching peak oil will cause our society to completely transform itself....but we will continue to grow, both in economic wealth and population. My take on future cities is they will probably look a lot like they do today, except more dense. I do believe the scarcity of oil will cause people to move back to city centers or first generation suburbs to be closer to transportation. Like somebody mentioned earlier in this thread, our cities will probably feel more European, or at least more like San Fran, New York or Chicago. I don't think we'll continue to see buildings get taller and taller. Regular skyscrapers like the kind we have in the US will stick around, but there's a point where the craziness that's going on in the middle east stops making economic sense (if it ever did). Only in the absolute densest and wealthiest places on earth will buildings continue to be built at such heights.

I'm sorry? Did I fall asleep and wake up in 17th century England? I wasn't aware Cincinnati was in danger of burning to the freakin' ground. When was the last time a city in the US burned to the ground? Chicago? San Fran? Both WAY before modern fire fighting skills/technology. There may be the odd fire b/c of the abandonment (Grammars during the hurricane), but your apocalyptic scenario of the entire neighborhood burning down is pure fantasy. Two things about those abandoned buildings in OTR: 1.) They are absolute tanks. Built at a time when world class brick layers and architects were just walking around the streets looking for work. Most of them are over 150 years old, they've lasted this long, including the past 50 years or so in a state of extreme neglect. They'll last another 10 or 20 while they get rehabbed. 2.) A great deal of those abandoned buildings are properly boarded up and owned by 3CDC or other redevelopers who have a vested interest in not having their assets destroyed. Along with the success of the Gateway Quarter, and the decent development along Main st, OTR is a lot closer to a comeback than you give it credit for. And if it doesn't happen the way we all hope, it won't be because of a ridiculous fire. Please.