Civvik

I have a question I don't know if anyone around here can answer. I come from a family of seven kids, and growing up I only played one sport: Soccer. I never needed major surgery growing up. My younger brothers played soccer, football, basketball and lacrosse. They broke their feet, broke their noses, and one of them has had extensive shoulder surgery. This was all covered by my parent's insurance. Yet I know that we all had the same premiums. What's THAT all about?

Paris, Charlotte, Berlin, Hamburg, German Inter-City, French Inter-City, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington...I don't even know. If you've ridden one good rail system, you've ridden them all. I think the important thing is (at least for Americans) just experiencing ONE system on a daily basis, ONCE in your life. Then it all makes sense.

This is understandable, but from now on ALL content provided by Urban Ohio members including pictures, needs to be STRICTLY protected. There has been repeated use of original material by the media, without permission.

Making any tax system less progressive increases the GINI. History has shown that an increasing GINI destabilizes nations. As you can see, wealth has been consolidating in the USA since Reagan, and as of 2006 had reached an all-time high.

My personal belief is that this is a complete lie, fabricated for marketing purposes.

I agree. What is on the street signs now? Are you sure it's not just honorary names, and then when actual addresses are built there, they will use the correct street names?

...no, I can't understand leaving Akron out. These are five possible stops between Cincy & Dayton. This starts to become a commuter service or some metro rail service vs a statewide regional rail thing. Almost all European and Asian systems are locals, with express service overlays. It's all in the traffic control and station switching. No, you can't have the train blow through a local station at 350 KPH, but it doesn't have to stop either. On the ICE in Germany, we blew through plenty of stations on our way from Hamburg to Frankfurt.

Publix has a complete monopoly on Orlando.

FINISH YOUR ARCH UNDERGRAD. FINISH YOUR ARCH UNDERGRAD. FINISH YOUR ARCH UNDERGRAD. If I haven't made myself clear, FINISH YOUR ARCH UNDERGRAD. Then, get a MASTERS DEGREE in Urban Planning or Urban Design. It doesn't matter which, as long as it's studio based and well regarded. I'd look at Georgia Tech, Harvard, Berkeley, Cincinnati, U of Miami, FL... DO NOT GET A PLANNING UNDERGRAD. This is what I did and it's the WRONG order of operations. You need that practical construction and design education both in practice and on paper, for people to take you seriously as an Urban Designer. So, once again...FINISH YOUR ARCH UNDERGRAD.

Oh, Michigan. You're there whenever I need to escape to that strange alternative reality where everyone buys a domestic.

The problem is that Publix isn't in the Cincinnati market. Publix does a lot of urban stores with smaller footprints. They can be a little more expensive, but nothing that becomes prohibitive. Kroger on the other hand is very reluctant to do anything outside of their comfort zone. You also have the organic grocers out there who are more willing to do urban stores, but the demographics must be very strong for them to make that move, and I'm not sure Corryville meets those specs. I think y'all have picked up on what I was saying, which is that Kroger has no excuse in not having an urban location. It's a Kroger problem, not a Cincinnati victimization. I mean really, Publix is from central Florida. Not the most cosmopolitan roots. Although who knows...maybe it's Cincinnati's culture that underscores Kroger's conservatism. And yeah, Publix is a much better grocer than Kroger. Although I was impressed by the new Kroger in Kenwood.

It has always stricken me as odd that in 20 years of America rediscovering urban living, Kroger has never built a flagship urban store in its hometown. Blah blah blah, groceries run on narrow profit margins, but other companies have done it. I wonder just what that grocer is going to be at The Banks... If Orlando can do it, Cincinnati can do it:

I knew CCV would jump into this at some point. God those guys need to get laid.

Weedrose, this is a particularly dangerous attitude. We shouldn't be designing and building structures ESPECIALLY AT THIS SCALE, to last for only 25 years! This project will be successful if it attains LASTING SIGNIFICANCE. If it does not, it will be viewed as another failure for Cincinnati, and it will be a huge zit on the face of our city, which other cities will laugh at for the next however long it takes to get the political will to spend another vast amount of money to demolish and rebuild. I've said this several times on this forum, and I'm glad to see that Council member Qualls agrees with me, and that the design review board is doing their job. Civik: Cole+Russel MAY be capable of good designs, but they sure as heck have not been demonstrating that for a long time. They are the Walmart of Cincinnati architectural firms. How the exact team that produced the unorganized fiasco of a building that is the new SCPA in historic OTR got the largest, most publicized commission of the decade is an f-ing mystery to me. The design review board needs to keep the leash tight here, or we'll end up with a Gateway Condos project X 10. :drunk: Also, thanks Enquirer for providing us with one image of the actual design...sheesh! :x Cole Russel isn't bad at all. I certainly don't think they failed in Mariemont, the project just had a richer budget: Seriously, this thing is about working with what budget they have. There is plenty of architectural talent out there, even in big firms. When worked at SCB in Chicago for instance, basically a big modernist condo factory, they had some brilliant designers.

Cole-Russel is certainly capable of producing good architecture, they have done many of the infill projects in Cincinnati. They have proven that they have an acceptable grasp of placemaking and emulating historic styles. It must just be frustrating for both sides because at this point, The Banks must have a really tight program in order to be profitable, and creatively their hands are tied. Meanwhile, the Urban Design Review board keeps demanding better (understandably, but still frustrating.)

Poor project. You can't make cake out of clay. This thing doesn't have the budget for "signature" architecture.

Hmmm looks liek something i'd whip up in Sketchup in 45 minutes right before a presentation...

Someone needs to post decent renderings here for there to be any worthwhile discussion. Sorry that can't be me, I'm in Florida.

WTF are you people talking about. It's almost impossible to make any kind of judgment based on that grainy, oblique picture-of-a-picture.

There was of course a LEED initiative by urban designers in the mid 2000's called LEED-ND. I attended some of the planning sessions for it when I was working in Chicago. It was a mess, and was bogged down in how to quantify impacts that are complex at the regional level. It never really went anywhere.

True, but independent of what the zoning says, banks still have loan standards for such things. Cincinnati could easily adopt a TOD overlay for such things.

I don't post anything about anywhere smaller than Columbus. In fact, I rarely post any factual information at all. Actually, come to think of it, I recently posted my desire that everyone in Dayton actually move to Cincinnati, so the region could be more competitive. Maybe I should leave this thread now...

The streetcar wouldn't break Cincinnati's future. But it could make Cincinnati's future. This is the problem with Cincinnati in general, and with governing by referendum in particular. Group-think tends to be too averse to risk, at the expense of gain. The stadiums are a good example - the real reason voter's approved the stadium tax was to avoid losing the franchises, rather than proactively building a new riverfront.

I wonder if this would merit litigation in the supreme court if it did pass?

^^^ I wish that were Cincinnati. :( We'd have a train!