Civvik

I randomly ran across this on my old hard drive. I think the original lives on Jayson's website, I had just tweaked it to make it look more real...

You're totally right. Unfortunately, the loitering will have to be pushed toward almost zero to foster a mainstream investment market in a region like the Midwest.

Wow, that's a piece of sh!t if I've ever seen one. The challenge with office is that the developer wants to extrude the floor plate all the way up to the top to maximize lease-able area, which leaves you with a box. The main problem with this is the massing; it has this giant geometric chunk that's out of scale with the neighbors and it pushes down on the entrance as though it's going to crush everyone under it like a giant shoe. Here are 3 alternatives which would have been better: Still a glass box, but better massing: http://www.rockgroupdevelopment.com/images/ca/8_east_sanfernan.jpg Repeating the residential facades: http://www.charlottecondoloft.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/the-ratcliffe.jpg (Yeah, it's condo, but it could have just as easily been office.) Something conservative, ala D.C. (This one is from Addison Circle, TX): http://www.franklinstreetproperties.com/HTML%20Portfolio%20Slide%20Shows/Addison%20Circle/Addison%20Circle%20LP/addison_circle_1.jpg Of course there are more flamboyant and beautiful examples out there, but as someone said, this should be subordinate to the museum. I don't, however, think it should be 100% filler, since that is a prominent corner.

Nice

I invite you to produce your own sketch of a well-proportioned alternative to this building, in the spirit of debate and furthering a constructive conversation.

Although this is flagrant editorializing by giving 600 words to the road building lobby (the Ohio Contractor's Association? Please...), I can't entirely disagree with it. Would I really take a train from Cincinnati to Columbus? I'm far more concerned about rail transit within metros. I wanted to see a group of $1 Billion minimum-operable-segment grants given out to metros like Cincinnati, Columbus, Orlando, Vegas, and others who failed to muster local-match segments. After that, I think the priority should be high-speed regional rail hubs that compete with regional airways. Something like Cleveland to Chicago, not Cleveland to Columbus. Or Orlando to Atlanta, not Orlando to Tampa. And those would be best administrated at the national level, like the writer says. Respond as you will, but I've devoted my life to smart-growth planning and transit, and I just don't think that statewide rail plans are the right piece of the puzzle right now.

In an ideal world, the built environment is something that is a point of pride and defining feature of our national identity. And in that, planners, architects, engineers, etc, would work in a fairly predictable environment that took the long view on both place-making and the investment of funds. Oh well. I'm seriously considering getting an M. Ed. and becoming a social science/history teacher at the high school or community college level. One of my favorite things about planning is teaching people new ideas. I'm almost 30. I've been a planner now for about 5 years, counting internships. Here are three things that really make me think, and you can interpret them as you like: - I worked for the most radically urban department in my company, with truly brilliant principals who stake their careers on densification and walkability. They all live in single family detached homes in suburbs. - In what was perhaps the perfect storm of pro-urban political and market forces in 2008, with gas prices exploding, the election of an urban liberal president, and an economic collapse (based on over-development) that necessitated a New-Deal spending package of 800 billion dollars, the ultimate outcome was giving about one percent of it to transit. - I'd kind of like to have a back yard.

Although congratulations to Randy, I agree that was hijacking the thread. Since I'm the one who made it. It was just strange to come check up on the thread and see it had become All About Uncle Rando's New Job. Why not just announce it in a new thread? It certainly deserves it. Is anyone thinking of/trying to go back to school? I am looking at going back for a Master's, and taking the opportunity to think about a career change to teaching or even medicine. Not a lot of urban design work right now, especially for New Towns (which is where I was evolving to specialize in.) Florida apparently has between a 5 and 20 year supply of housing now, depending on the metro area.

Hello Urban Ohioans, My planning and landscape architecture company here in Florida is crumbling along with the state's, and nation's, economy. I got laid off today along with many others. I have a planning degree from UC and a few years of experience as an urban designer focusing on TOD, TND and infill. I had my dream job! I'm considering coming back to Cincinnati, which is the only city that I really love and consider home. If anyone can think of any job leads, prospects, anything, let me know. And if you're a future graduate of planning or are in the same boat I am, I feel for you. In my opinion, both professional and personal, this "recession" is really a day of reckoning for the United States.

Does anyone here play World of Warcraft? There's a forum for that game called ElitistJerks.com. Like UrbanOhio, it's considered one of the best sources of information on its topic. One of the posting rules includes an immediate ban of anyone who posts to a thread announcing that they are too lazy to read what people have already spent time researching and posting. They even take the post and move it to a special thread of stupid posts. I just thought that was funny.

/vomit

1) Craftsmanship and attention to detail went out long before CAD 2) Loss of architectural detail is most directly a function of the vast industrialization of humanity that brought the bulk of us up from poverty into middle class. Yes, the Italianate rowhouse facades in OTR that we adore are lush with craftsmanship, but 40 people lived in one. There was the Modern movement, but it wasn't a conspiracy to dullify the whole world. People just used increasing productivity and technology on other priorities, like having a whole bathroom just for their immediate family. Just keep in mind when you are critical of the 20th century, that its changes were unprecedented. OK, so it gave us Hitler and Vinyl Siding, but I give humanity an A+ just for getting through it without blowing themselves up.

This will tell some of the story. http://jchriscarmichael.com/InShadows/Deinstitutionalization.html Many of the "problems" of people in drop-in centers are not solved by counseling or job training. There are kind of two layers of poverty, that which is hidden in large households and informal homelessness, more often women and children, and that which is very obvious, like bums, most of which are males with deep substance abuse or mental illness.

All viable options, but there are dark horse(s) that you haven't mentioned. That being said, I know nothing of the short list, and especially not the finalist if one has been selected yet. Righto. There are so many others... boutique hotels are the "hot" thing now and every major hotel company has at least one product that would meet this label. 5 years ago it would have been W or Kimpton for sure. I will say this much, having a Westin already in the city makes a W possibility VERY, VERY promising. In Charlotte, the one that went in next to the new NASCAR museum was a Hilton Garden. I'm not sure W would be the right profile for The Banks. But you never know!

My company's sources are predicting a 2011 recovery.

Go to hell, lady. Nobody in life "deserves" anything. Who is the park for? The park is for human beings. Not your proto-human homeless that you have such little expectation of normal human behavior that you shepherd them like pets, defending their "right" to piss on the sidewalk. What do we have in life, if not our own sense of order and value? We have nothing. We have this woman, defending the behavior of her animals and this insane concept that everyone has a right to everything. If real people -those who participate in this tenuous exchange of give-and-take that we call civilization- want to take back a park, or a building, or a block, or a city, that they had previously forgotten, nothing will ultimately stop them. Becuase Bonnie Neumeier seems to have forgotten that she and her homeless pets were just borrowing a place that "someone" had forgotten about. And that "someone" wants it back. That "someone" is civilization.

This is Above and Beyond. That whole CD is actually pretty decent. Google Ahmet Atasever, he has a free podcast session every week and its pretty good, and you can download them all and snag a lot of very recent trance hits.

Been listening to a couple German indie bands. Klee, http://www.myspace.com/kleemusik and Wir Sind Helden, http://www.myspace.com/wirsindhelden

It is my professional opinion that the Banks is not moving as fast as it could, but that doesn't mean they aren't on schedule or are somehow lying to the public. That said, it is also my professional opinion that occupancy 16 months from now is something you would probably only see in China. The comment about QCS having a decade-long advantage in design and engineering is not accurate. Nobody at QCS was going to pay for 30, 60, 90% CD's before the project had a funding direction.

And, amending the city charter a-la-carte is a nasty precedent, similar to amending the US constitution as a tool to influence the issue-of-the-day. Such an ammendment could be construed to prevent the city from having any spending discretion at all.

I would imagine the Green Party and NAACP would be against a streetcar because it is a harbinger of gentrification.

It's funny how Cincinnati takes so long to develop that planners imagine something in one recession and break ground in the next one. It's not that developers like lots of parking, it's that it's the cheapest and often default condition. Think of parking not as a force of evil, but as a ghostly symptom of lack of money and creativity (often both.) Cincinnati's urban core environment is neither rich enough to routinely justify structured parking nor sophisticated enough to reduce parking ratios. Y'all have got to remember that although Cincinnati is beautiful and full of corporate headquarters, it's still just a down-on-its-luck rust belt city. And I'm not just banging on Cincinnati. Let me give you an example: In Charlotte, the city imposes minimum density and maximum parking ratios, and they have a special fund called SCIP that provides money for "critical infrastructure improvements" just like realigning Vine Street. Can you imagine how that would impact the Kroger redevelopment?

This proposal looks fine to me. They really just need to build something on the other side of the damn street. Retail like that does best when its on both sides. Also I don't feel these buildings need to be spectacular. Its just filler. There's nothing wrong with filler. The high school tower terminating the vista doesn't need competition in this case.

Cincinnati's combination of hilly routes and strong ridership might justify adopting electric trolley buses. It takes a big initial investment in catenary and buses, but their superior acceleration under heavy loads and on hills would help to address the running-speed issue. ETBs have lower maintenance costs and longer service lives than their diesel counterparts. They're quieter and don't stink, and a system can be configured with regenerative braking so that buses descending hills or decelerating feed power back into the system. Catenary is also like track, it is a stationary investment that developers see as bringing a predictable increase in land value, and it spurs more development than bus routes.

-Solar Panels dont necessarily "damage" the environment, they just change it. Solar panels in the desert may preclude one ecosystem and introduce another. -Current solar cell technology translates solar energy into electricity only in the red wavelength. The blue and green wavelength remain a technological challenge but it is within sight of resolution. Reason: it requires different materials to translate different wavelengths and how does one stack all three on the same cell? This would make solar panels on northern homes cost-effective because they would be three times as effective. -Any means by which we draw energy from our environment will have an impact on that system. Tidal, wind, solar, etc. There is no free lunch. -Perhaps the most revolutionary prospect in all of this is the de-centralization of our energy grid, like farmers who ferment their manure and sell the energy back into the grid, or even homeowners doing the same thing with solar cells.