Civvik

New retail on Hyde Park Square generally crashes and burns. That's not a regional retail center, it's just a very nice neighborhood center.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that at least half the suburban folks who come down for the parade won't even remember the difference between Elm and Race.

When you talk about adverse weather, I think it's important to keep some perspective that middle and northern North America is always going to be subject to temperature extremes (upwards of 120 degrees Fahrenheit), tornados, floods, ice and snow. It's not a mild Mediterranean climate. I personally think there is only limited value in comparing infrastructure choices based on weather resiliency, because pretty much everything we can build is going to be subject to adverse events at some point. Rail might be somewhat more resilient in the snow, but it's not immune, and it's other benefits are so much more important to promote.

That article said absolutely nothing. Guess someone just needed a paycheck this week.

"At" is sooo, like, Information Age, man!

That will create a nice low canyon effect on 3rd street, and make Cincinnati feel much bigger along that axis of travel. It's amazing what just a few "patches" to the urban fabric will do to pump up the appearance of a city.

I am so far removed from the exotic, far away galaxy in which governments buy things for private sports teams that reading stories like this doesn't even emotionally impact me. It's like reading something in The Onion.

Cranley should pay for it personally.

"Facadism" at its worst. There’s a storm brewing in NYC because DS+R have proposed to tear down the Folk Art Museum as part of the MOMA expansion. Their logic is that they have to redo the interior to such an extent that the only thing left would be the façade, and it’d be essentially fake – tacked on to the exterior of a completely different building, and thus meaningless and insulting to the original. While people are angry it is likely coming down, everyone agrees sticking the façade onto a different building is an even worse idea. On a smaller scale, that’s what we have going on here. We’ll probably see more faux pas like this as 3CDC seems content on following the uptown model of building nothing but completely out of scale superblocks. What’s even worse in this case is that they’re trying to dress it up like it isn’t a superblock. At least be honest about it. Agreed. When I looked at the elevation I was like..."what is THAT little...oh, jeeeez."

Glad to see that. Cincy Mid Town does not have a ton of Class A office product. The Norwood class a stuff has some vacancy holes though. Please don't take this as a personal attack, but if like to point out the problem buried right in the language you just used to think about this project. Buildings aren't "products" or "stuff." They are buildings. The purpose they serve, unless it's highly specialized, shouldn't mean anything. They should just be good buildings and part of a well designed community. We have made a horrible mistake by bringing buildings into the universe of " products."

Why doesn't megabus use the transit center?

Wasn't it instrumental in collecting clean air grants or something?

If capitalism did not redistribute wealth in some form, it would collapse under its own wealth concentration and this particular economic system would not work. This is an immutable fact. If you are stupid, or manipulative, you can waste your time demonizing the concept of redistribution. For those of us back in reality, the conversation is about which re-distributive efforts are best; both for society in a moral sense AND for the economic system in a technical sense. The end.

I think this project is as important as the streetcar. But...yeah. 7,300 jobs? Good luck with that.

A republican has not lost re-election in Ohio in half a century. Dems get swept out with the economic tide all the time. There is no way Kasich will lose re-election. There would have to be a massive scandal or downturn.

Hilarious how PG Sittenfeld went from "menacing secret-conservative from Hyde Park" to Che Guevara. All because he made one rational decision to not waste $80 million on a hole in the ground.

I think as construction on the system progresses, you will see discussion here and in the Development threads, so just check back regularly. :)

It's interesting how truly arbitrary and useless Fahrenheit is. It's currently -7 Fahrenheit here in Columbus. This sounds cold, but how cold? The problem is, once you swing past 0, your brain intuitively wants to re-reference things to 0. So -7 sounds like 7 degrees below some important reference point. The problem is, that reference point is totally random. Celsius tells the story so much better. A nice sunny warm day would be about 22 Celsiuis. It's currently -22 Celsius. It's so cold that we have swung entirely to the opposite side of freezing from a nice, warm, sunny day. That's f*cking cold.

I disagree. "Sprawl" is a slang term that means extended. Urban sprawl is an extended urban area. Suburban sprawl is an extended suburban area. So what's the difference between urban and suburban? Well, the words mean different things to different people. The U.S. Census does not distinguish between the two, and uses the word "urban" when refering to either urban or suburban. In a simplified kind of way, to me "urban" means "walkable" and "suburban" means "auto-dependent." An interesting discussion, but "Sprawl" is not slang and it does not mean "extended." Sprawl: To spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion. Haphazard growth or extension outward. By contemporary standards, London is extensive, but it does not sprawl. Phoenix sprawls. If you are going to equivocate on the term, you're making it useless as an instrument of analysis.

Would love to see these...I like a good laugh! If just one person got on a streetcar every time it stopped at a station, that would still be 1,296 riders a day. And this guy is the County Auditor. Jesus Christ.

Wow. Another...well written... article...from the Enquirer? What is happening? I'm kind of scared...

While I agree with you, he was found innocent by a jury, not the government.

You can't force people to recognize their own ignorance, or to experience their entire city and gain a greater awareness of it. Some people just like to be afraid or want everything to be the same. That's their right. And to enjoy that right, they can stay in their suburban settings locked in their houses and cars. But don't prevent those of us who love cities from designing them and enjoying them the way we want to. It's awfully oppressive for suburbanites to deny us our pursuit of happiness. The only thing I object to is that the urbanists in their pursuit of happiness want to deny all of us suburbanities our own pursuit of happiness. Far as I am concerned, let the greater majority in numbers prevail. Except Kjbrill, American suburbs owe their entire existence to federal subsidies. The FHA enabled 30-year fully amortized mortgages, enabled the mass-production of housing in the peculiarly American subdivision form by assuming the builder's risk. This started as a make-work New Deal program in 1936 and it's still around, 75 years later, wildly perverting the housing market and wildly perverting the country's culture. People really want to believe that suburbs are "capitalism" and cities are "subsidized", but the reality is everything built up until the 1930s is what largely unmitigated capitalism looked like. Many 2-family and 4-families, relatively few free-standing houses, hardly any with more than two bedrooms. This was subsidized by the FHA -- its construction, its mortgages, and everyone enjoys a mortgage write-off: This is what capitalism looks like: And our gas tax is 18 cents. It can't even pay for road maintenance. Where does that hole get plugged? Income tax. In Norway it's $5. What does that pay for? Road maintenance. Oh, that and FREE COLLEGE TUITION FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY.

There is so much doubt and disbelief in that old article that turned out to be the complete opposite of what happened that I actually think Bronson wasn't just being doubtful. There is a point at which you have to stop patronizing people for their wrong predictions as just "having a different point of view." Let's face it: they're incompetent. They cannot be trusted with planning for the future and investing in the right things for the community because they lack the ability to do so.

Google Maps has a nice new beta with a beautiful 3D aerial mode. Since the streetcar is back under construction, here it is with all the stops: