Civvik

^ Everything is about to come together. A few more years, and nobody will say such things.

I would tend to agree with you about the fact that 2nd and 3rd act as highway collectors, but after working with some really brilliant transportation planners in my old career I've taken a bit more aggressive stance. What they would say here: All transportation is about two things: access and mobility. The ultimate in access is a finely grained, permeable pedestrian environment where a human being can touch, explore and access everything "within reach." The ultimate in mobility is an interstate that has no travel impediments. Usually, transportation ends up being some balance of these two. We live in a culture that has more or less surrendered to pure mobility. But I don't need to rehash that story here. One of the effects, though, is that we have become hesitant to tame mobility in the name of access. We feel that urban interstates, for example, must certainly provide much more economic value in mobility than the resultant access would provide if we turned them into at-grade boulevards. But that's probably a myth. Likewise, 2nd and 3rd might be important routes for mobility, but they are at-grade and downtown, which, according to a more access-oriented paradigm, is much much more important that the fact they they feed interstates. Point of this babbling: 2nd might fly out into freeway ramps at Main, but don't be afraid of that. It can be tamed by intention. There can be some kind of intensity there, just one block away. I feel like we are saying similar things, with a twist. I'm just saying that of all the spots in the core, this one has the most potential to be a grand type of space, even though it sits over an interstate and the edges aren't fully activated...yet. The intensity has good potential to show up in the next 10 years, and fuck the wide roads. Those cars can slow down.

I can't imagine that being the case. Most of the growth in Clermont County has slowed way down in favor of sprawl to the north. The Eastern Corridor will serve as a commuter route for people living to the east and working downtown, but I can't imagine it would spur new development in the way light rail would. It won't spur the kind we want. I strongly believe that Clermont has slowed because of access problems. Real Estate's my family's business, and I can't even count the number of transplants that won't even live in Miami Township because its perceived by new residents as being much further away than Mason or even Lebanon. There's nothing special about Goshen Township compared to ones in Warren County in the 1980's. It simply doesn't have access to anything. Plus I'm talking about the corridor plan in general, which is clearly to put a freeway through Newtown and is only secondarily about commuter rail.

I just don't care for Central Parkway at all. I probably sound like a wacko, but one can almost feel its utilitarian, canal spirit. It's got decent dimensions, but something about it just doesn't feel grand. 1) It doesn't have a sense of arrival or departure...you sort of veer into it from around the prison, and then it veers off again into the back of music hall. It doesn't feel like its taking you anywhere. 2) Its over-designed as a transportation route. In fact, I think it would be a lot cooler if they made it three simple lanes each way, blew out the median "parks" (which I think are quite pathetic even now), brought the lanes to the center, and gave the sidewalks the extra 20 feet or so on each side. Then plant a double tree row on each side, blow up that heinous utility facility at the western end and build something there that properly terminates the vista. Only then would it feel like a grand road and not a leftover canal that the city didn't really know what to do with. 3) 2nd/3rd and the trench just feels like a more impressive scale, the buildings on either side are more intense, the sense of arrival and departure is more meaningful, and in 15 years there will be far more pedestrian activity there than at Central. Grassy berms are the worst solution, of course. Perhaps a marquee single story building in the middle of each capped block that leave a generous area around each one for a very wide sidewalk-slash-plaza. That way you activate the cap, but leave the actual canyon-forming structures to the north and south. I dunno, just my opinion.

PS: No, I don't think Central Parkway is every going to fulfill that role. It's the back door of downtown and the bridge between a large scale urban center and a much more intimate historic neighborhood. Not the kind of grand, alpha space that I'm thinking of.

That space over FWW does have one advantage, it's the only space in the city that feels something like a grand boulevard, as the rest of Cincinnati feels pretty cramped due to the age of the original ROWs. Nobody wants to sit and regard a roaring freeway, but the scale of the space itself is quite a nice reprieve from the narrow streets of downtown. Even fountain square is not very grand by large urban standards. Will riverfront park fulfill this role of grand urban space? Probably not in quite the same way. It won't be well activated at its edges due to grade, and it itself is separated by Mehring. Perhaps something to activate the cap spaces, like one story restaurant pads or some such thing. I just really like the vista the space provides and the grand feeling.

^ Even I would not call it a disappointment, and I'm a pretty critical person. It's just a very long delay. Canceling the project would be a disappointment.

I feel most on this thread agree with your point, but i'll rehash something I've already said: The Eastside is the money side. There is a defined pecking order in society as we all know, so once they get theirs, then I believe the city will get hers b/c people will want rail just like the far Eastside. A major obstacle with rail in Cincinnati is that the locals just don't trust that downtown will ever get a decent return on an investment due to decades of evidence, causal or otherwise. There will also be more support from elected officials if some form of the Oasis comes to fruition. Putting use to the Transit Center cannot be underestimated when considering the future voting climate of rail in Cincinnati. There are a handful of stops near the wealthy east side towns on this line. But growing up in Milford, I can assure you that the terminus of this line, and the intended beneficiaries of the Eastern Corridor plan in general, are pretty middle class. The only thing this entire plan is going to do is open up more of central Clermont County to suburban development.

Also, new Florence and the Machine album. People seem to either love her or hate her. I feel like she's one of those singers who became an instant caricature of herself, and is better appreciated about 20 years later. Oh, and some obligatory Nina Simone, this time mixed with Jeff Buckley in a mild dubstep/electro-lounge mash-up of their covers of the legendary Lilac Wine. As they both vie for arguably the greatest cover of this song of all time, this track is a stroke of genius:

I don't like a lot of R&B/Hip Hop but Take Care by Drake is pretty good. He's mildly auto-tuned, but the incredible production quality of this album and some really good guest artists make up for it. Title track:

Hey man rail might get grants and matching funds, but stadiums can ease traffic congestion, improve mobility for the poor, increase density, and reduce our reliance on foreign resources. Oh...wait...

^ I think that would be opposite the baseball stadium, there's also a blank spot lining the little park with the stage that was recently finished.

They do this all the time. A few months ago they asked Leslie Ghiz to speculate on some city issue, upon which she said "well, I don't know for sure," and then they took that single quote and printed a two paragraph article about it. A lot of times I think there just isn't much to say on a certain day, so they just print little turds like that. Maybe it will end up going to a once a week paper with a digital presence that is updated daily. Maybe that would actually increase its quality.

Honestly, nothing too impressive. I'm not bullish on this project. In fact, if it happens, I'm really happy the streetcar is also happening, because by itself the eastern corridor rail could set an underwhelming precedent for rail in Cincinnati and negatively impact public opinion. Meanwhile, the streetcar could be a frequently seen, intimate, and transformational example of fixed transit in the city.

Can any of our resident historians here explain to me why an MLK interchange was never in the original I-71? Dana to Taft is one of the longest urban stretches of interstate I can think of with no exits.

I like the Freedom Center, personally. I think it's appropriate, aesthetically. But I don't dismiss people's criticism of it.

I know who it is. I'm just confused by Sherman's caption.

The material choices they've made on the park so far are world class. It's going to be a really nice park. Unfortunately it's starting to highlight how nasty the Banks apartments turned out. That cream colored cinder block is truly shameful and the fact that its on the city's front door...I just don't know, man, I hesitate to speak in hyperbole but that kind of thing really shows a city/nation/culture that's cheap and shameless. It looks like the inside of a high school cafeteria. Some day that location is going to be pretty high demand, at least if things evolve there the way the plan envisions. That our development economics didn't have a way to recognize that and put in something that reflected more value...it's really a failing of our system. It probably sounds like I'm harping on something as small as a material choice, but that cinder block shows that we have forgotten the value of making nice places, we failed to use our creativity and technology to come up with some nicer material choice at the same price, or we just don't give a shit. Either option is pretty sad.

I got a few this weekend as well. These are from an iPhone 4S. (Leaving them large to show detail.)

^ I'm confused...

I hope Strickland does re-run. He was a good governor who left no real scandal, and it was a real shame that he got washed out in the ridiculous 2010 republican tide that has amounted to nothing.

Monumental-ism in most American cities is already handicapped by gridiron block patterns. I don't know if this helps buildings like the Mercer Commons one (because you can never really experience its full facade in one glance) or hurts them (because you experience everything in a progressive, linear fashion because you can really only approach things from a parallel axis.) I don't think that red stuff on the Walnut Mercer building is brick. It looks to be some kind of panel.

Here's to hoping the construction quality is high. I'm relieved they are finally breaking ground, I know a few people who having been counting on this investment to propel their own projects.

^^ I would not respond. I'm not sure if he is even allowed to post in these sections anymore.

^^ I should point out that I do think that a lot of what the neo-classicists and new urbanists have done is anachronistic, especially when you create entire communities with historically inspired architectural guidelines. You get into them and just feel creepy. That's definitely along the lines of what you're talking about. (And that's a big concession for me to make, considering that I spent a lot of my planning career designing these kinds of places and painstakingly crafting their design guidelines.) I guess I think that OTR is so overwhelmingly historic already, that it's not really out-of-place to simply fill in the holes with the same color putty. As long as it could be done with a sense of craftsmanship. Jjakucyk: Those examples you posted, and I think most examples of contemporary expressions of older context, would become less unique and less vertical repeated over 150' of frontage. That's obviously the challenge with this project, as was the challenge at The Banks. That's just a lot of frontage and whatever you build there ends up becoming more about itself and less about being a complement to its surroundings.