Civvik

The party has morphed a lot from what it used to be. It is based now on anger and fear instead of conservativism. You put any issue in front of a modern Republican that has to do with restricting consumption (density, transit, carbon caps) and you'll surely mistake him for a greedy "Democrat"...or a 9 year old child. The transit issue in Cincy has always been about preserving the region's white, pastoral communities form the black, urban city. Coast is just a front for that, always has been.

I would estimate that Joe Biden has almost zero political capital in Cincinnati.

It's a really hard site to plan. It's basically your nightmare scenario: "A" streets on your front and back, and not enough block depth to deal with it. This site was my sophomore studio project. Nobody could make the dual-frontage thing work with parking, even when you pushed the requirement way down. Parking is an urban designer's worst enemy. Likewise for the building design. This is a great example of the "hidden cost" of automobiles. The developer has to pay for parking spaces, even when they are partially subsidised. In a perfect world, transit in this part of town would already exist, and the city would have a maximum parking ratio and no minimum, allowing a much more context-sensitive building to happen. For most people, even enthusiasts, there is a real psychological disconnect when they look at renderings like this and think "this is horrible," but then expect a certain level of mobility that cars provide.

In the context of the current state of the environment and our civilization, the greenest thing you can possibly do is kill yourself. There is no "market" or "profit-based rationale" or "investment recoup," there is only the 6 bilion bags of meat munching on resources on one planet, and they don't know how to get off of it when dinner's over. OK, anyhow, LEED is cute, but the work being done to re-use existing buildings in Over-the-Rhine (for example) is spectacularly more green than building a new building, even if it is downtown. Any extraction of a base resource to build something new sets off a virtually limitless chain reaction of extraction and refinement. We call this "The Economy." But if you want to be an environmental purist (and I am not, just for the record) then you must admit that LEED is lipstick on a pig.

Both companies I worked for were victims and also perpetrators of just this tactic, J. Human nature is so cuthtroat. We even lost a contract we thought we had in the bag becase a multinational engineering firm bought out a one-man shop in Florida just to say they were a local business, just for that one contract, then they annihilated every other bidder for the job.

This is a monument: This is an imitation: These are well-crafted and well-proportioned spires: This could be a party hat, but I do admit it remains to be seen. It might be very beautiful and I certainly do reserve judgement until its finished:

Some are, but like you said, they can't articulate it. What can you expect when you live in an age where buildings are products instead of monuments, and only extreme foci of wealth or public interest produce buildings of monumental quality.

I used to follow paths in my woods and pretend all of Ohio still looked like that.

The demographics aren't there yet. I think what you are seeing in OTR is the emergence of a restaurant industry, like lichen growing on a rock on a new volcanic island. If you planted a tree there, it would die a spectacular death. These places that have intermittent schedules are pushing and testing the market.

My boss used to say that business is a triangle of good, fast and cheap. You can only hit two at a time.

Love Metric. And Sarah Harmer.

It almost looks like a rendering. :) I think once things come up out of the ground, there will be a heightened sense that FWW should be capped with that park.

Cincinnati only builds flagship skyscrapers during depressions. No reason to fret, we have prior experience.

Kind of a scary statement. "America is broke."

Is that the same show as "Life After People?"

I love it.

Please, kids, critical thinking skills!

Blue Ash and Montgomery are not taking an urban approach. They are certainly seeing some higher density projects, but density does not necessarily equate to urbanity. Atlanta's suburbs are dense as hell, but they sure as heck aren't urban. This is correct. Kenwood doesn't have the bone structure for the kind of edge-city environment that you would find outside of DC, or even Clayton, MO. It is thoroughly suburban, no matter how many office towers you build into the forest. A great comparison would be Bethesda, MD and the White Flint Mall area a few miles to the north, if anyone is familiar with that part of DC.

Oh I'm pretty sure that there's a good excuse...

Nobody who knows me today would EVER believe this, but I went to the Warehouse in the mid 90's. I had shoulder length hair, chain necklaces, shit-kicker boots...and I was still too conservative to fit in there. I can't say I ever felt in danger, I guess I was just ignorant. God that was such a long time ago.

I was in Atlantic Station briefly last week, and had not been there since it was completed. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the buildings. I was expecting worse, especially compared to the renderings I saw as the project was evolving. It was one of the few times in my life that I can recall the finished product exceeding my (maybe low) expectations. I hope I can say the same for the Banks in a few years.

Somewhere up this thread I posted a Google Earth model file. You can open it in Google Earth and get a pretty accurate view that way.

Soon we will all get to find out!

The Wendy's was practically the only place I ever ate at in TUC...Oh well.

is there a plan of the streetscape improvements somewhere?