I really don't understand the controversy about Paige's editorial and and surprised that it has now spilled over from UrbanCincy to UrbanOhio. Why can't people agree to disagree? Paige basically laid out several problems that she had with the event, which is her opinion. Either you agree or you disagree. But some people are acting like this event is untouchable and shall not be criticized! And for publishing this editorial, UrbanCincy has sunk to the depths of the Enquirer's editorial page and 700 WLW!!!

 

I think the reason people are aptly comparing this piece to the tabloid Enquirer and 700WLW is that:

1) The price assumption of the event was way off and in fact was doubled.

2) The costs associated for the event was not researched at all and uneducated guesses were presented as fact.

3) The assumed demographic makeup of the event was based on tabloid photos and not on personal or eyewitness accounts.

4) In the article a blogger was quoted out of context and did not include his overall opinion of the event.

 

These are tactics used by the likes of COAST, Chris Smitherman and Tom Luken to support arguments against city projects like the Cincinnati Streetcar and city-wide recycling.  Starting with an established opinion and making up facts about this event in order to support the opinion is at best intellectual laziness and worst unethical reporting.  Even though I disagree with the idea that events like this cannot be held in Washington Park or Lytle Park, I do get it that others might find the event inappropriate.  However, the way the article was written is a black eye on what I once regarded as a trustworthy source of information.

Has Sloane asked Paige to be on his show yet?

FWIW, Paige did cite some verifiable numbers & all the DeB supporters did was say that she was wrong & never offered to correct her numbers (other than ticket price). Makes ya wonder...

ALSO - what's the point of wearing white when you have a ticket & a ride & there's nothing else going on at the reserved venue?

Has Sloane asked Paige to be on his show yet?

FWIW, Paige did cite some verifiable numbers & all the DeB supporters did was say that she was wrong & never offered to correct her numbers (other than ticket price). Makes ya wonder...

ALSO - what's the point of wearing white when you have a ticket & a ride & there's nothing else going on at the reserved venue?

 

Did actually you read the comments?  Because Jen Kessler did have numbers, and she gave the names of the organizers and suggested that Paige contact them. 

 

 

I guess I don't understand how it can be a poor venue choice for DeB, but it's not a poor venue choice for the city flea, bluegrass night, yoga night etc etc. can't have your cake and eat it too

 

For that matter, if we're taking issue with white/affluent uses of contested spaces in OTR, how are the apartments and condos any different? Timothy Thomas was shot and killed in an alley off Republic St where there is now expensive housing.  That seems in bad taste to have a rich white person park their car where a poor black kid was killed by the police, no? I think DeB represented something that was foreign to the neighborhood, and not the idea of the OTR hipster community, so it was automatically assumed to be bad.  I respect the fact that people are allowed to have differing opinions, but I do hold UrbanCincy to a higher standard than the Enquirer, and the editorial that Paige published was poorly researched, and written by someone who didn't even attend the event.  It made assumptions and reported false information to fit the narrative the author wanted to write about.  My family is very good friends with an African American family that lives in Wyoming, and attended DeB.  We had dinner with them on Tuesday, and I mentioned (and later showed) the UrbanCincy piece to them.  They were NOT pleased with the assertion that it was a bunch of white people in the park.  Anecdotal, I know, but these are things that UC needs to be aware of when they publish their content.

The only question now is should we rename it over-the-wine or over-the-whine?

Has Sloane asked Paige to be on his show yet?

FWIW, Paige did cite some verifiable numbers & all the DeB supporters did was say that she was wrong & never offered to correct her numbers (other than ticket price). Makes ya wonder...

ALSO - what's the point of wearing white when you have a ticket & a ride & there's nothing else going on at the reserved venue?

Did actually you read the comments?  Because Jen Kessler did have numbers, and she gave the names of the organizers and suggested that Paige contact them. 

Did actually you read the comments?

Jenny did not give numbers at UrbanCincy nor on her own site.

Her take on participating (on her site) was quite interesting, however, because it was the kind of event I just couldn't get into, so explaining her mindset and why she enjoyed it was pretty cool.

LOL, it's over 100 comments now, too.

Never mind, tree planting, transit oriented development, streetcar progress, the Western Hills Viaduct, school safety, bus shelters, I75, traffic congestion & business...

I'm totally willing to let it go, but it's aggravating how people on one side of the debate seem to be throwing out false equivalencies between the Dinner in White and any number of other events (most free, inexpensive, or not-for-profit; all of which not having whiteness as a central theme). There seem to be two discussions going on -- 1) the veracity of UrbanCincy's facts, which I don't wish to defend or care much about; 2) the appropriateness of the venue for this event, for which many of the participants in the discussion from one side (pro-DeB people) seem to not care or are unable to look honestly at the issue from the perspective of the other side.

 

Sure the organizers do and should have the right to put on such an event at WashPark. But they do not have the right to do so without being called out on the inappropriateness of their choice of venue. They should have just done it again at Lytle Park. Parade your whiteness somewhere less controversial.

Sometimes people put way to much into a decision that was likely made without a ton of consternation. Not everything out there is vetted, focus grouped, charetted etc etc.  How does one single out an event in a neighborhood yet not apply the same critique to capital investments going on in said neighborhood? 

Parade your whiteness somewhere less controversial.

 

Gee, I can't imagine why black people who attended the event (like the ones mentioned upthread) would be upset by this attitude  :roll:

 

Again, having an honest discussion about gentrification and its attendant issues is totally great! But making out this (somewhat silly-sounding, to me at least) event to be a Yuppie Klan Picnic is, uh, not helping people engage in that discussion.

 

ETA: there's clearly a lot of energy around this issue, maybe we'd all be better served by talking about gentrification in OTR in a broader context in the Gentrification thread?

Has Sloane asked Paige to be on his show yet?

FWIW, Paige did cite some verifiable numbers & all the DeB supporters did was say that she was wrong & never offered to correct her numbers (other than ticket price). Makes ya wonder...

ALSO - what's the point of wearing white when you have a ticket & a ride & there's nothing else going on at the reserved venue?

Did actually you read the comments?  Because Jen Kessler did have numbers, and she gave the names of the organizers and suggested that Paige contact them. 

Did actually you read the comments?

Jenny did not give numbers at UrbanCincy nor on her own site.

Her take on participating (on her site) was quite interesting, however, because it was the kind of event I just couldn't get into, so explaining her mindset and why she enjoyed it was pretty cool.

LOL, it's over 100 comments now, too.

Never mind, tree planting, transit oriented development, streetcar progress, the Western Hills Viaduct, school safety, bus shelters, I75, traffic congestion & business...

 

"Did you actually talk with an organizer of the event to confirm that people are pocketing this money? I am almost completely certain that the locals who organize do so as volunteers.

 

I chatted with a friend of mine who helped organize the event, and she said that costs for the event actually ran closer to 50k.

 

According to her, some of the costs were:

-Park rental (which is pricier than I thought it would be)

-Liquor license

-Insurance

-Security detail from CPD for 5 people for 8 hours

-The sound people, the lighting people, the set up/tear down/trash clean up people

-The buses- which unfortunately you have to rent for the entire evening, even though they're not used for very much of it- and those babies are ridiculously expensive (like over a grand a piece) and this year we had 30 of them

-Toilets

- Entertainment

-DEB event requirements- balloons, sparklers, signs for table/bus leaders

-DEB franchise fees

-Paypal fees

 

Last year they ended up short a few thousand dollars."

 

 

Sorry, she doesn't have numbers for every item, but she gets a number of 50k from the event organizers, and the full laundry list of expense categories.  Apparently actually talking to the event organizers counts for less than just guessing at the costs like the original article, though. 

I'm totally willing to let it go, but it's aggravating how people on one side of the debate seem to be throwing out false equivalencies between the Dinner in White and any number of other events (most free, inexpensive, or not-for-profit; all of which not having whiteness as a central theme). There seem to be two discussions going on -- 1) the veracity of UrbanCincy's facts, which I don't wish to defend or care much about; 2) the appropriateness of the venue for this event, for which many of the participants in the discussion from one side (pro-DeB people) seem to not care or are unable to look honestly at the issue from the perspective of the other side.

 

Sure the organizers do and should have the right to put on such an event at WashPark. But they do not have the right to do so without being called out on the inappropriateness of their choice of venue. They should have just done it again at Lytle Park. Parade your whiteness somewhere less controversial.

 

What do you mean by "whiteness"? 

Sometimes people put way to much into a decision that was likely made without a ton of consternation. Not everything out there is vetted, focus grouped, charetted etc etc.  How does one single out an event in a neighborhood yet not apply the same critique to capital investments going on in said neighborhood? 

 

There is a dialogue about what is appropriate in terms of investment in the neighborhood. But that discussion is completely different. I definitely take a critical eye to what 3CDC does, but on balance I think they're bringing more benefit than harm. OTOH, simply bringing the DeB to another venue would not have hurt the event much, but would have avoided the blow-back. 3CDC investing in another neighborhood? That would erase most of the benefit of what it's doing.

 

As for the event organizers not considering the impact of their choice of venue? They should have, if they did not. The fact would only further confirm the charge of insensitivity.

ETA: there's clearly a lot of energy around this issue, maybe we'd all be better served by talking about gentrification in OTR in a broader context in the Gentrification thread?

 

I think the debate is more specific to Diner en Blanc as it being held at Washington Park in OTR. If the debate veers away from relevance to the OTR event, then the topic should go somewhere else.

I'm totally willing to let it go, but it's aggravating how people on one side of the debate seem to be throwing out false equivalencies between the Dinner in White and any number of other events (most free, inexpensive, or not-for-profit; all of which not having whiteness as a central theme). There seem to be two discussions going on -- 1) the veracity of UrbanCincy's facts, which I don't wish to defend or care much about; 2) the appropriateness of the venue for this event, for which many of the participants in the discussion from one side (pro-DeB people) seem to not care or are unable to look honestly at the issue from the perspective of the other side.

 

Sure the organizers do and should have the right to put on such an event at WashPark. But they do not have the right to do so without being called out on the inappropriateness of their choice of venue. They should have just done it again at Lytle Park. Parade your whiteness somewhere less controversial.

 

What do you mean by "whiteness"? 

 

The fancy white clothes and their symbolic representation of wealth and white privilege of the vast majority of attendees.

While not a regular contributor on UrbanOhio, I have been offered an opportunity to address some of the issues brought forth by my editorial.

 

1.) The meaning behind the Surburbanite theory was lost in the amassing defensive comments.  It was written satirically, inspired from Robert Putnam’s research in Bowling Alone. The book discusses the decline of social interactions since the growth of suburbs in the 1950s. Surburbanites paying for face-to-face interaction; a theory so ridiculous it was intended to amuse, but unfortunately was taken at face value by readers. It was a humble lesson to learn as a writer.

 

2.) Regarding the numbers, there was one miscalculation, one that was immediately corrected when brought to our attention. The use of a person icon and a bus icon in place of worded descriptions on the Diner En Blanc website caused confusion. I understood the icons to indicate a separate fee for both bus and admission, not either or. One error, immediately corrected, should not discredit the entire article which cited links to other numbers researched.

 

3.) As for revenue, transparency of cost is important for consumers, especially when there is additional effort and out-of-pocket expenses that are not included in the ticket price. An independent estimate was conducted after sources suggested the costs may be inflated.  An estimate, which was reiterated with an itemized list in the comments, is not to be confused with fact. It may be more, it may be less. The objective was to examine the possibility of organizers profiting, whether in excess revenue or as a franchise fee, after advertising that ticket proceeds contributed directly to putting on the event.

 

4.) The editorial was effective in that it stimulated discussion about differing viewpoints. It was not intended to discourage people from attending Diner En Blanc. The dinner’s image would benefit from organizers being aware that location also influences the perception. Both guests and onlookers should enjoy an event's spontaneity rather than be puzzled by it.

 

OTOH, simply bringing the DeB to another venue would not have hurt the event much, but would have avoided the blow-back. 3CDC investing in another neighborhood? That would erase most of the benefit of what it's doing.

 

As for the event organizers not considering the impact of their choice of venue? They should have, if they did not. The fact would only further confirm the charge of insensitivity.

 

I disagree that it is their responsibility to know the potential impact of choosing that location. It is a beautiful park in a beautiful neighborhood. It is available to rent. They rented it. It was a fancy picnic that required some kind of advanced registration and fees. I get why the optics look bad to some people, but it really wasn't that bad.

OTOH, simply bringing the DeB to another venue would not have hurt the event much, but would have avoided the blow-back. 3CDC investing in another neighborhood? That would erase most of the benefit of what it's doing.

 

As for the event organizers not considering the impact of their choice of venue? They should have, if they did not. The fact would only further confirm the charge of insensitivity.

 

I disagree that it is their responsibility to know the potential impact of choosing that location. It is a beautiful park in a beautiful neighborhood. It is available to rent. They rented it. It was a fancy picnic that required some kind of advanced registration and fees. I get why the optics look bad to some people, but it really wasn't that bad.

 

Exactly!  And has any real blow back occurred? Not sure complaining online counts as blow back and I don't know anyone who attended but it seemed folks had a good time.  More good times in the biggest small town in America!

4.) The editorial was effective in that it stimulated discussion about differing viewpoints. It was not intended to discourage people from attending Diner En Blanc. The dinner’s image would benefit from organizers being aware that location also influences the perception. Both guests and onlookers should enjoy an event's spontaneity rather than be puzzled by it.

 

I appreciate your willingness to come here, but this point struck me as odd.  by this reasoning, any editorial that caused people to talk would be considered "effective", no matter how incorrect its factual assumptions were or how incendiary its language was.

 

Also, your editorial is basically charging DeB attendees with flaunting their privilege and asserting white privilege.  I'd say that those assertions would have the effect of discouraging people from attending DeB, no?

 

In any case, I'm certainly not going to stop reading UrbanCincy or your work on UC just because I disagreed with an opinion piece of yours.  Keep on being engaged in Cincy! :)

I disagree that it is their responsibility to know the potential impact of choosing that location.

 

Agree to disagree on this, I guess. I believe it was insensitive to overlook the implications.

 

I get why the optics look bad to some people, but it really wasn't that bad.

 

I basically agree with this. But I think it's bad enough to call them out on it. Maybe other people will think twice about doing something similar. It's not like anyone is suggesting some course of action be taken against the organizers. So the pro-DeB people are basically arguing that the "bad optics" should not so much as be commented upon.

 

Exactly!  And has any real blow back occurred? Not sure complaining online counts as blow back and I don't know anyone who attended but it seemed folks had a good time.  More good times in the biggest small town in America!

 

Enough that we're talking about it. Whether future event organizers will take note of this or not remains a question. My hope is that enough people are talking about it that people looking to host an event act more sensitively in the future. That won't happen without this dialogue.

4.) The editorial was effective in that it stimulated discussion about differing viewpoints. It was not intended to discourage people from attending Diner En Blanc. The dinner’s image would benefit from organizers being aware that location also influences the perception. Both guests and onlookers should enjoy an event's spontaneity rather than be puzzled by it.

 

I appreciate your willingness to come here, but this point struck me as odd.  by this reasoning, any editorial that caused people to talk would be considered "effective", no matter how incorrect its factual assumptions were or how incendiary its language was.

 

No. The metric she proposed is "organizers being aware that location also influences the perception."

 

Also, your editorial is basically charging DeB attendees with flaunting their privilege and asserting white privilege.  I'd say that those assertions would have the effect of discouraging people from attending DeB, no?

 

I can't speak to the editorial, but it doesn't seem to me the attendees had any say whatsoever in the venue. If I paid good money to attend and later found myself distastefully placed in Washington Park, I could either a) leave and suck up the cost, b) leave and try to get a refund (which could be a big hassle for little beneficial impact), or c) stay because I spent money, time, and effort to be there. Frankly, I wouldn't personally hold it against anyone for not jumping into the White Knight role in those circumstances, though I'd see it as noble to do so. (Pun very much intended.) I don't know if Paige meant to lash out at attendees or not, but I do not mean to do so with my own criticisms.

 

 

 

 

3.) As for revenue, transparency of cost is important for consumers, especially when there is additional effort and out-of-pocket expenses that are not included in the ticket price. An independent estimate was conducted after sources suggested the costs may be inflated.  An estimate, which was reiterated with an itemized list in the comments, is not to be confused with fact. It may be more, it may be less. The objective was to examine the possibility of organizers profiting, whether in excess revenue or as a franchise fee, after advertising that ticket proceeds contributed directly to putting on the event.

 

 

 

 

This is the part that has struck me (and others) about the editorial, Paige.  You don't have anything other than an estimate either, right?  Did you contact the event organizers to get any figures, or to let them know that this is what it looked like from your calculations? 

 

(Glad you are posting here.)

So they are sensitive to the neighborhood and the event happens in adult park, indian hill, etc etc.  Can we then complain about folks not utilizing the urban core?

^ I probably wouldn't have noticed the event, in that case. Though I wouldn't have said "you know, this would have been better off in Washington Park!" I'm sure there are hoity-toity events in the burbs all the time. Let me say now I am not complaining about them not being in Washington Park, whatever and wherever they might be.

 

Last year it was in Lytle, and didn't receive the same criticism (certainly not the same amount). So I think the dichotomy you've defined is a false one.

All of us have attended reds games right? Do any of you know the costs versus profit breakdown of your ticket? Also in sporting events, you often have to buy food, drink and most people have to pay for parking as well. Significantly more costs than just a ticket price. I found the whole cost argument strange.

The thing that I don’t get is why people paid for something like this? Why not just get together with friends and have a picnic in the park? Why would people living in OTR drive to Kenwood to get on a bus to come back to OTR and have dinner in a park with their friends when they could just do that anyway? The irony of the organized, structured, yet supposedly seemingly spontaneous event strikes me as odd. I couldn’t care less about the whole white privilege gentrification angle; my criticism is on the cliché yuppie dorkiness of the entire thing.

The thing that I don’t get is why people paid for something like this? Why not just get together with friends and have a picnic in the park? Why would people living in OTR drive to Kenwood to get on a bus to come back to OTR and have dinner in a park with their friends when they could just do that anyway? The irony of the organized, structured, yet supposedly seemingly spontaneous event strikes me as odd. I couldn’t care less about the whole white privilege gentrification angle; my criticism is on the cliché yuppie dorkiness of the entire thing.

 

Yep. It's like OTR prom.

The fancy white clothes and their symbolic representation of wealth and white privilege of the vast majority of attendees.

 

To me, the assumption that you are making that only white people would have the means and desire to attend this event reeks of white privilege.  The underlying implied notion is that only white people have the money to attend expensive events.  Minority does not equate to poor, as many of the posters here seem to think.  Or is it that the Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks that attended DeB are flaunting their white privilege too? Of course the majority of attendees were white, but the same can be said for most large events in the region.  Our most diverse county (Hamilton) is still ~75% white!

 

This whole discussion makes me think of the column Kathy Wilson wrote in CityBeat about the whiteness of Buburry last year.  She was shot down viciously here on UO, accused of stirring the pot, creating artificial racial conflict, and just being flat out wrong.  Funny that when Kathy, a black woman, speaks about this topic, she is immediately discredited and shut down. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any outcry from the African American community about DeB, and yet some of the same people who vilified Wilson are now essentially making her same arguments.  Is it not white privilege to try to act as the mouthpiece for African American concerns? Assuming that you know how they feel, and that you are better able to voice their feelings for them? Hypocrisy.

White clothes have historically been a symbol of wealth because they required more labor-intensive cleaning (or were even only worn once) than did darker colored fabrics.  Who cleaned white clothes 100 years ago?  Servants. 

 

That's why this photograph by Walker Evans taken in Cuba around 1925 is significant:

http://www.artnexus.com/images/content/webimages/2005/u0005518big.jpg

 

 

>Minority does not equate to poor, as many of the posters here seem to think.

 

Of course not.  There is new money and there is old money, then there is white trash with money.  This Dinner en Blanc insinuates an old money event, like a polo match or some other country club event.  I know or know of many of the people who attended each of the past two years and know that many of them earn less than $50,000/yr.  This makes the whole situation even goofier -- people from outside the old money trying to trick their friends from Cornfield High School into thinking that they're making more money and keeping high class company with their innumerable instagram photos. 

 

To me, the assumption that you are making that only white people would have the means and desire to attend this event reeks of white privilege.  The underlying implied notion is that only white people have the money to attend expensive events.  Minority does not equate to poor, as many of the posters here seem to think.  Or is it that the Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks that attended DeB are flaunting their white privilege too? Of course the majority of attendees were white, but the same can be said for most large events in the region.  Our most diverse county (Hamilton) is still ~75% white!

 

This whole discussion makes me think of the column Kathy Wilson wrote in CityBeat about the whiteness of Buburry last year.  She was shot down viciously here on UO, accused of stirring the pot, creating artificial racial conflict, and just being flat out wrong.  Funny that when Kathy, a black woman, speaks about this topic, she is immediately discredited and shut down. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any outcry from the African American community about DeB, and yet some of the same people who vilified Wilson are now essentially making her same arguments.  Is it not white privilege to try to act as the mouthpiece for African American concerns? Assuming that you know how they feel, and that you are better able to voice their feelings for them? Hypocrisy.

 

Perfectly said.

I think that the urban gentrifiers like to convince themselves that there really is no displacement taking place in OTR (it's a sweet notion. I know that there are no numbers to prove it, but c'mon let's be real, there has to be some poorer residents being forced out). And with DeB you literally had a bunch of "white people" descending en masse on OTR. To some urbanists who like to think they do no  harm whatsoever, DeB was an alarming sight. "Look at those people", they tell themselves. We would never do that, never behave in such an in your face manner, while little by little, step by step, in palatable, bite-size increments they keep gentrifying, keep marginalizing the poorer residents. Coming to that realization is a hard pill to swallow. To make themselves feel better, they have to distance themselves from this event, which although fun and innocent, just "felt wrong" to  them. It had the appearance of racism, white privilege, elitism etc...  It "felt right" to level charges at the organizers and participants that they should have known better, or they shouldn't have held their event here, what were they thinking? As if the cost to this particular set of "suburbanites" (even though I think I read that more than half were residents of Cincinnati) coming into the city for one day is that they have to know the entire history of unrest, displacement, understand the rich/poor socio-economic divide and be prepared to address these grievances before doing their business here. I enjoyed some of the responses to the article  along the lines of,don't they realize that displacement is taking place,that the drop in center (or whatever social agency) is being forced to move/relocate. That was a real gem, I mean how long have they been advocating moving some of these services out of OTR? Now the Deb organizers have to be properly mournful that this is happening. If I could address something from UrbanCincy's original article, I especially liked the part where the author said something to the effect that word of mouth continues to reveal the dark side of Diner en Blanc. Really? WTF? Please enlighten us, what did your research uncover? Did the participants parade around in black face, perhaps? Was the "N word" heard to be uttered, maybe? No! None of these things? Is this simply more satire,or do these demons only exist in your closed minded hell?  I am just curious what the reaction will be next year if the organizers gather their group of 2,500 mostly white people in white, at the Smale Riverfront Park in the shadow of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Oh, those clueless suburbanites, someone please take them and lead them, preferably out of the city limits next time. Sadly it seems, Cincinnati is simply not big enough for them.

Geezus, exactly what are you trying to say here?  Your post (lacking paragraphs) goes every which way and somehow demonizes a decent social gathering.  No one group owns Washington Park nor controls its destiny--including blacks and Appalachians.  If Washington Park (via PC rationale) is now prescribed as a place usurped by "white suburbanites" for their own nefarious endeavors, so it must also be noted how poor blacks and Appalachians mutually infiltrated, nullified, and decimated  a white Germanic culture.

 

Yes, Washington Park (and OTR) are once again "in major transition," but so what?  Your views on who's coming back to claim what in both Washington Park and OTR say as much about YOU as they do anything else--and that may not be what the PC Police wanna hear.  Washington Park and environs may well be reverting to the place they once were (minus the drunks, bums, homeless, psychos, deviants, and criminals who infiltrated everything).  IE, what's there not to like about the transition back from darkness into light?  Tell me, please.

Rants are not required to be in proper paragraph formation.  I am not demonizing  DeB  I fully, 100% support it. If that wasn't clear from my post, then I'm truly sorry. I quess I was so po'ed by all the bs resulting from the event, that perhaps I didn't express my thoughts clearly. 

^ Your point of view was pretty clear to me. subocincy - i suggest you reread.

ITT: A forest of strawmen

>To some urbanists who like to think they do no  harm whatsoever

 

OTR was the victim of two primary phenomena since its pre-prohibition heyday.  The first was national...FHA "redlining".  This meant nobody, white or black, could get an FHA loan to improve their property.  Meanwhile, the FHA created a preposterously unjust reality in which white (yes, white -- not black, as a matter of policy up until the passage of civil rights legislation) families could *own* a new house in the suburbs for less than it cost to rent a house in the city.  This meant the German, then Appalachian middle class evacuated the city in a very short period of time. 

 

The second was the conscious decision by local big money to piggy-back that unbeatable situation and drive OTR to destructive depths in order to keep real estate values on Central Parkway low.  This kept the Parkway from attracting office towers, department stores, etc. away from the historic downtown centered around Fountain Square. 

 

The whole period of time from about 1970 onward to 2007, when the Sheriff's Patrols put an abrupt and seemingly painless end to decades of sidewalk drug dealing and prostitution, was itself an artifice.  Again, government at the federal and local level conspired to push OTR *way* down with the worst ghettos in the country.  Those people like Josh Spring who wish for a return to those halcyon days need to be called out. 

 

On the flip-side, the thought that OTR should become and remain the plaything of the wealthy is every bit as perverse. 

 

The point of the Drop In Center was to put poverty into the face of the well to do arts patrons at Music & Memorial Halls.

Folks envisioned a community of the destitute & mentally ill who would have some level of self governance & hence would live in peace & harmony. pretty wack.

From what I remember (I might be wrong) it was Buddy Gray who masterminded locating the drop-in-shelter in between City Hall and Music Hall, and on the edge of the park so that the Drop-Inn shelter became a home of dysfunction to the exclusion of everyone else. 

 

A big point that needs to be made is that the migration of blacks from the rural south to Northern (and California) cities coincided with the demographic group's 50+ year loyalty to the Democratic Party.  The FHA insidiously, through its loan selection process, created the pattern seen all over the United States: a city with half or more of the region's black citizens surrounded by 85%+ white suburbs.  This is why Republicans at all level of government have made it a matter of policy since Reagan (Nixon was the last time period when a Republican president gave cities a lot of federal help) to undermine the cities. 

 

Many speculate that Reagan let people out of the institutions knowing that they would congregate in cities and make them even more unpleasant places to be.  All of that was a way to make Democrats look bad. 

Gray and Tarbell fought over their visions of OTR. Gray won. He got murdered.

I do remember the closing of the mental institutions as a Reagan thing. I find it interesting that Republicans nowadays claim it was an act of liberal Democrats. Of course a lot of those Republicans were little kids or not even born back then...

^Kind of like how talk radio has everyone convinced that Reagan deregulated the airlines. 

 

Nope:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act

 

About a year ago the head of sales at my company, who probably makes 5X+ more money than I do, was putting a machine or display or something together and I helped him out for a few minutes.  I was acting dumb like usual and somehow the conversation drifted to how cheap airline flights got in the 90s.  He gets a twinkle in his eye and asks "...and you know who made that happen?".  I knew what was coming but gave him a blank look.  He smugly asserted that "It was Reagan".  I acted like I was just bestowed some grand, secrete knowledge that the Liberal Media doesn't want America to know about because it Hates America.

 

So I understand fully the concept of redlining but did it really effect otr?  Perhaps in the sense that it didn't allow folks to move out but the built environment of otr doesn't really lend itself to single family homeownership. 

^The West End and the hillside streets like Mulberry, Renner, etc. which were comprised of single family homes were red lined which meant they quite simply could not get the heavily subsidized loans that new suburbs got.  These were the now-familiar 30-year fully amortized mortgages that no private bank let before the FHA came into existence.  But the draw to the suburbs was magnified by similarly favorable loans to home builders, meaning someone could buy a brand new home in the suburbs for cheaper than they could buy or rent an old home in the city.  It was a make-work Depression-era scheme that hung around after the War and got completely out-of-control by the 1960s.  If the program had been yanked sometime in the 1950s we would have never have had all of the sprawl + urban decay we experienced.  We would have never had the early 2000s housing bubble.   

 

The FHA insured not just mortgages but home improvement loans as well.  The problem with the FHA that affected OTR directly was that it discriminated against multi-family dwellings.  Chapter 13 of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Crabgrass-Frontier-Suburbanization-United-States/dp/0195049837 uses St. Louis as a case study.  I can't remember the numbers exactly but it shows that St. Louis County got something like 6X as much federal aid as St. Louis City from around 1937 to 1970.  The numbers might be even more extreme for Cincinnati.  The reason is that multi-family dwellings usually were not eligible for the low interest rate home improvement loans. 

 

The problem now is that banks don't like to lend money to multi-use buildings, like a building with 4 apartments above a commercial storefront.  Such a building still in 2013 does not qualify for a FHA loan.  Usually a mortgage for such a building requires a 30% down payment and probably a shorter repayment period.  This is why 3CDC was essential -- to provide those bridge loans.  But they went a step further by managing properties as well. 

 

^There was an Ohio boy involved in that

http://www.ridgewoodhistory.org/history.html

Interesting connection of dots there, Jake.  Thanks for sharing. 

 

To consider the transportation issue and the added effect it had on all of what you covered makes it seem like such a huge conspiracy...of circumstances, people or something else.  I'm working my way through "Downtown: It's Rise and Fall" right now and the whole progression of cities from the industrial age to now is bewildering in its complexity and interest.

Yes, Robert Fogelson's book is fantastic.  He connects so many of the dots.  His is more from the perspective of what big money did to control downtown real estate values nationwide whereas Kenneth Jackson's book focuses more on the activities of the Federal Government. 

 

The whole issue of housing is an ongoing thing in the United States where people think that social ills will be cured with better living conditions.  There have been three or four phases where the next step -- progressively larger houses on larger lots -- have been held up as markers of class and solutions to communicable diseases, various social problems, etc.

 

A big part of the concern is children, who once swarmed the streets and parks of American cities. The return to cities by the middle and upper classes isn't bringing a ton of kids with them, and those kids who are being raised in the city will have much more space than did those 100 years ago. 

 

A big problem 100 years ago is that poor and middle class families often took on boarders to help pay the rent.  This set the stage for children being exposed to all kind of stuff from alcoholism to a boarder bringing a woman back from the bar to sexual abuse of the children themselves.  There was also the whole matter of hearing domestic arguments and neighbors having sex.  So a child in the late 1800s would be exposed to all sorts of things that the parents of those children, who most likely grew up farming somewhere in Europe, were not.

 

Our farm had two boarding units. One over the old separate kitchen building and one over the 1920s wooden kitchen addition to the main house that was removed in the '70s and replaced with an uber-'70s brick addition. Presumably, initially they were for the help, but as having help for anybody but the very rich fell out of favor in the '50s (or before) that kind of boarding activity took place. There were also more single-family houses on the property that were demolished as farming became less labor intensive. Even washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigeration, microwaves and oil/gas/electric furnaces created unemployment for the unskilled.

Cincinnati is a city on the  rise

Visiting Cincinnati (Music Hall) Sunday evening, this long-time suburban resident cannot help but be struck by the dichotomy of downtown. Recently remodeled, now fully occupied residential buildings, a revitalized Washington Park, the still bright looking SCPA, new hotels, The Banks, construction of the dunnhumblyUSA complex, sparkling retail store fronts and laying of track for a trolley system a casino already, attest to endless efforts by many individuals and organizations committed to what was once a declining inter-city.

 

more

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/letters/2013/10/29/cincinnati-is-a-city-on-the-rise/

I am not certain where to put this but thought this would be a good spot, but just a funny story.  So I moved from Iowa a little more than a year ago, my now ex-gf was from here (IH) and long story short, we went to college together and I was graduated for two years and when she graduated she moved to the west coast.  Anyways, a couple of funny stories about IH area and not sure if this very typical.

 

When I was living in Mt. Adams, my ex was amazed at how pretty it was, saying she had never really spent any time at all up there before.  Her friend once dropped her off at my place (also from IH) and when I saw her friend later that weekend, said something along the lines of "Isn't Mt. Adams extremely dangerous?  Have you ever ran into any issues?".  I was blown away. Her friend went on to say how she always thought Cincinnati just as a big ghetto and dangerous and would never live there and didn't enjoy coming back.  Of course this girl in particular had just spent 12 months hiking and traveling the world after graduating from a private school in Colorado, and her and her parents didn't mind bashing the city at all, saying it is no place to waste time when you can travel, etc.  The only place they seemed to know about the city was downtown, the Reds and Bengals and the nice restaurants on Ftn. Square.

 

Anyways, another time, after I moved to OTR, I was at dinner with the girl from I believe Montgomery area, and was telling her yeah this and that, living in OTR now, really like it.  Well she went on this outrageous tirade in the middle of the restaurant, "OMG OTR is so dangerous, this one time a year ago I went down there accidentally and was so scared and got lost and I called my dad to help me find my way out.  I was so scared but luckily I found my way out and nothing happened."

 

Haha the perception to me is crazy, for people who are that close to the city and have NO idea what it is like.  Does anyone have similar experiences?

^ Oh and for the moderators, I know this seemed off topic, but what got me thinking about it was when I mentioned or starting talking about the streetcar to the older adults. That conversation got no where really fast, and this was the typical comment: "That is a total waste of money!  It isn't going anywhere!  No one will use it!".  I am so happy it is going in now, I think perceptions are going to start to change real soon.

^Hm, that's kind of strange behavior in my opinion. Especially the comments about Mt. Adams.  I have a lot of friends who grew up in Indian Hill/Montgomery/Mariemont, and I've never really noticed those types of comments.  The people I HAVE heard say those type of remarks are usually from pretty far out, like West Chester or Mason or the far west or east burbs.  Indian Hill and Montgomery are pretty connected to Cincinnati, as many people live there and work in the city.  Also, those people generally have the means to eat at the restaurants, go to the theatre, go to Reds/Bengals games, cultural events, etc.  Other than the ATP, all of those things are downtown.

Moved a couple of comments from the streetcar thread here.