I'm definitely anti sprawl but when people flee the city for the far flung suburbs, they may mention "noise & traffic", but they are also fleeing failing schools, crime, declining home values and lousy city services.

 

At least two of the things (education and home values) on that list are perception-based issues that are worsened by the occurrence of sprawl.

 

Specifically in reference to education, I'll just use Cleveland Heights as an example. The schools in CH-UH offer the same high quality of education as it did 30-40 years ago. The only difference is that it serves a significantly more challenging enrollment base then it did in prior decades which results in lower test scores (which in turn is the basis for some to refer to the schools here as "failing"). I think a similar statement can be made regarding many other inner-ring suburbs, though perhaps not necessarily for a larger system like CMSD.

 

Probably for another thread, but CH/UH school districts also suffer from many non-resident students who register there on relatives addresses to escape the Cleveland and East Cleveland schools.

Figured this went here...

 

I have been working on determining how much land of each city is comprised of low-density population.  I used 2500 per square mile, as I have seen that referenced in other works as the base point at which low density sprawl begins. 

I looked at census blocks within each of the 3-Cs and divided their populations from their given density and got square miles.  I added up all the square miles within those blocks that had population densities below 2500.  Here were the results.  The data was from 2010.

 

Total Block Groups with a Density Below 2500 PPSM

Columbus: 67

Cincinnati: 58

Cleveland: 41

 

Total Square Miles with Density Below 2500 PPSM

Columbus: 62.460

Cincinnati: 41.722

Cleveland: 25.663

 

Total Square Miles, Less Water, for Each City

Columbus: 217.17

Cincinnati: 77.94

Cleveland: 77.70

 

% of Total City Area Composed of Density Below 2500 PPSM

Cincinnati: 53.53%

Cleveland: 33.03%

Columbus: 28.76%

 

Now, whether you consider low density to necessarily equal sprawl is another question, but it at least suggests low population areas, which could mean either rural or suburban.  Given I only looked within the city boundaries, rural seems less likely too me.

 

I'd bet a lot of Cincinnati's low density is hillsides, perhaps parkland, and even some brownfield industrial low density areas, with neighborhood residential decay to the point where not every house is occupied. A fully occupied Cincinnati would be very dense indeed. We just need to invest in transit and get rid of parking minumums for new development. (And clean up brownfields)

Exactly. Comparing overall density does not give you the full picture. Cincinnati has some incredibly dense, walkable neighborhoods, but also a lot of hillsides and parks that can't be developed. Additionally, the western portion of Hamilton County still has farms. So the numbers for Cincinnati and Hamilton County don't really give you a good picture.

I'm definitely anti sprawl but when people flee the city for the far flung suburbs, they may mention "noise & traffic", but they are also fleeing failing schools, crime, declining home values and lousy city services.

 

At least two of the things (education and home values) on that list are perception-based issues that are worsened by the occurrence of sprawl.

 

Specifically in reference to education, I'll just use Cleveland Heights as an example. The schools in CH-UH offer the same high quality of education as it did 30-40 years ago. The only difference is that it serves a significantly more challenging enrollment base then it did in prior decades which results in lower test scores (which in turn is the basis for some to refer to the schools here as "failing"). I think a similar statement can be made regarding many other inner-ring suburbs, though perhaps not necessarily for a larger system like CMSD.

 

Probably for another thread, but CH/UH school districts also suffer from many non-resident students who register there on relatives addresses to escape the Cleveland and East Cleveland schools.

 

I'm not sure it's any worse in the Heights schools than in any other inner-ring suburb, however I was only using CH-UH as an example of the real issue of "failing" systems: It's not that the quality of the schools themselves have changed, it's who they're now serving and the invalid system used to rate schools in Ohio and nationwide.

I'd bet a lot of Cincinnati's low density is hillsides, perhaps parkland, and even some brownfield industrial low density areas, with neighborhood residential decay to the point where not every house is occupied. A fully occupied Cincinnati would be very dense indeed. We just need to invest in transit and get rid of parking minumums for new development. (And clean up brownfields)

 

Not sure what you mean by fully occupied. Even at its peak, it probably wasn't fully occupied, but city density then reached 6,711 in 1950.  Regardless, it is impossible to account for every single geographic or manmade feature that might be reducing density (the city area sizes I used didn't include water), but that goes for all 3 cities.  I used block groups because they're one of the smallest area measurements the census uses, so it helps to reduce some of the contamination. 

Exactly. Comparing overall density does not give you the full picture. Cincinnati has some incredibly dense, walkable neighborhoods, but also a lot of hillsides and parks that can't be developed. Additionally, the western portion of Hamilton County still has farms. So the numbers for Cincinnati and Hamilton County don't really give you a good picture.

 

I think you guys are missing the point.  Every city suffers from geographic and other features that would counter density over any specific area.  People don't actually live on top of each other with no roads, yards, hills, lakes, farms, cemeteries, etc.  So Cincinnati, sorry, is just not a special case, and unless you could separate all that stuff out for each of them, it is really a moot point.  Even if you dropped off 20% of the total to try and account for hills and other things, it would still be above the other 2 in %.  And that would be unfair because you wouldn't apply the same metric to each of them.  So either way, Cincinnati has the most low density.  That doesn't mean it doesn't have some dense areas, but this is a measurement of the entire city based on very small parts.

Columbus has those residential-only neighborhoods that go on and on for miles such as off of Olentangy River Rd., Victorian Village, parts of Bethel Rd., the South Side that have low vacancy and high density but no NBDs that make them less walkable since there are few businesses close by. Cincinnati on the other hand is bursting with NBDs but has more vacancy than the Columbus neighborhoods described above.

I'd bet a lot of Cincinnati's low density is hillsides, perhaps parkland, and even some brownfield industrial low density areas, with neighborhood residential decay to the point where not every house is occupied. A fully occupied Cincinnati would be very dense indeed. We just need to invest in transit and get rid of parking minumums for new development. (And clean up brownfields)

 

Not sure what you mean by fully occupied. Even at its peak, it probably wasn't fully occupied, but city density then reached 6,711 in 1950.  Regardless, it is impossible to account for every single geographic or manmade feature that might be reducing density (the city area sizes I used didn't include water), but that goes for all 3 cities.  I used block groups because they're one of the smallest area measurements the census uses, so it helps to reduce some of the contamination.

 

I've looked at some of the census data too, what jumped out at me was that urban neighborhoods that had suffered neglect (like for example Brighton) actually have smaller populations than suburbs in the city limits like Mt. Airy where the built environment is less dense but the housing is (almost) fully occupied. Which may be partly because of reporting issues for neglected neighborhoods, but partly speaks to the scale of abandonment.  In any case there's no large area of exurban style subdivisions within the city limits that would explain the data.

 

Interesting pdf's on the city website: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/reports-data/census-demographics/

 

I consider sprawl to be any expansion of a metro area's developed land area that causes already developed areas to decrease in density. One of the nice things about Canadian, European and some American regional governments is that they don't allow the addition of new growth areas until densities in existing developed areas exceed a desired level. It helps prevent the opening of doughnut holes of poverty, blight, depopulation and abandonment.

Columbus has those residential-only neighborhoods that go on and on for miles such as off of Olentangy River Rd., Victorian Village, parts of Bethel Rd., the South Side that have low vacancy and high density but no NBDs that make them less walkable since there are few businesses close by. Cincinnati on the other hand is bursting with NBDs but has more vacancy than the Columbus neighborhoods described above.

 

If they are single family home neighborhoods, they most likely are going to fall below the 2500 PPSM unless they are tiny lots and/or part of the old grid pattern built pre-war, and provided vacancy isn't that high there.  Also, this isn't about walkability, anyway, which is difficult to measure even when you have a specific definition. 

I'd bet a lot of Cincinnati's low density is hillsides, perhaps parkland, and even some brownfield industrial low density areas, with neighborhood residential decay to the point where not every house is occupied. A fully occupied Cincinnati would be very dense indeed. We just need to invest in transit and get rid of parking minumums for new development. (And clean up brownfields)

 

Not sure what you mean by fully occupied. Even at its peak, it probably wasn't fully occupied, but city density then reached 6,711 in 1950.  Regardless, it is impossible to account for every single geographic or manmade feature that might be reducing density (the city area sizes I used didn't include water), but that goes for all 3 cities.  I used block groups because they're one of the smallest area measurements the census uses, so it helps to reduce some of the contamination.

 

I've looked at some of the census data too, what jumped out at me was that urban neighborhoods that had suffered neglect (like for example Brighton) actually have smaller populations than suburbs in the city limits like Mt. Airy where the built environment is less dense but the housing is (almost) fully occupied. Which may be partly because of reporting issues for neglected neighborhoods, but partly speaks to the scale of abandonment.  In any case there's no large area of exurban style subdivisions within the city limits that would explain the data.

 

Interesting pdf's on the city website: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/reports-data/census-demographics/

 

So urban Cincy is abandoned enough to cause this kind of discrepancy?  That would be a huge problem if it caused a 20 point difference from Cleveland.

I'd bet a lot of Cincinnati's low density is hillsides, perhaps parkland, and even some brownfield industrial low density areas, with neighborhood residential decay to the point where not every house is occupied. A fully occupied Cincinnati would be very dense indeed. We just need to invest in transit and get rid of parking minumums for new development. (And clean up brownfields)

 

Not sure what you mean by fully occupied. Even at its peak, it probably wasn't fully occupied, but city density then reached 6,711 in 1950.  Regardless, it is impossible to account for every single geographic or manmade feature that might be reducing density (the city area sizes I used didn't include water), but that goes for all 3 cities.  I used block groups because they're one of the smallest area measurements the census uses, so it helps to reduce some of the contamination.

 

I've looked at some of the census data too, what jumped out at me was that urban neighborhoods that had suffered neglect (like for example Brighton) actually have smaller populations than suburbs in the city limits like Mt. Airy where the built environment is less dense but the housing is (almost) fully occupied. Which may be partly because of reporting issues for neglected neighborhoods, but partly speaks to the scale of abandonment.  In any case there's no large area of exurban style subdivisions within the city limits that would explain the data.

 

Interesting pdf's on the city website: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/reports-data/census-demographics/

 

So urban Cincy is abandoned enough to cause this kind of discrepancy?  That would be a huge problem if it caused a 20 point difference from Cleveland.

 

No, you're probably right, even neglected areas in the basin still have enough density to be over the 2500 ppsm mark. I guess the point that I was trying to make was, those were the areas that used to support a lot more density historically.

 

I'm not trying to argue with you, just pointing out possible reasons for your 53% below 2500 ppsm figure. I would say some of them are:

 

- city limits do not contain (but do in fact completely surround) dense inner ring suburbs like Norwood and St. Bernard that really look and feel like city neighborhoods

-city limits do include large forested hillside areas like between Fairmont and Westwood or Northside and College Hill. On google maps it is obvious there is a "green ring" to the west and north of urban core

-lots of land in city limits devoted to I-75 and rail yards in the Mill Creek Valley

-large strip of land within city limits along Ohio River on the West Side that has rural feel in places

-Mt. Airy Forest alone is 2.2 sq miles

 

You may say that all cities have some of these features but taken in sum they may explain your numbers for Cincinnati.

 

And really that 53% number is fine, if we can increase density in the basin and traditional neighborhoods and connect it all with transit it will make for a beautiful city.

^Don't forget that Cincinnati also has several very large cemeteries and golf courses within city limits. 

So ParkScore gives an approximate % of the city area that is parkland (they count cemeteries, monuments, golf courses, etc. btw).  So after doing a bit of math for all 3 using those figures, here were the final totals for each city regarding city area below 2500 PPSM.

 

Total Area

Columbus: 45.090

Cincinnati: 29.302

Cleveland: 20.693

 

Total % Below 2500 PPSM

Cincinnati: 37.60%

Cleveland: 26.63%

Columbus: 20.76%

 

So Cincinnati remains 11 and 17 points higher than the other 2 even removing all water and all parkland.

 

 

 

^Don't forget that Cincinnati also has several very large cemeteries and golf courses within city limits.

 

Which matters for the way jbcmh81[/member] got the results, because you could have a one square mile census tract with 1,500 people, two thirds of it a cemetery (or golf course, or large institutional campus) and one third of it neighborhood streets, and the entire thing would be counted low density, even though the people living there would be at density higher than 2500 Ppsm. I don't think it's a stretch to say considering the way Cincinnati developed in the basin only slowly spreading out to the hillsides there's a lot of situations like that.

^Don't forget that Cincinnati also has several very large cemeteries and golf courses within city limits.

 

Which matters for the way jbcmh81[/member] got the results, because you could have a one square mile census tract with 1,500 people, two thirds of it a cemetery (or golf course, or large institutional campus) and one third of it neighborhood streets, and the entire thing would be counted low density, even though the people living there would be at density higher than 2500 Ppsm. I don't think it's a stretch to say considering the way Cincinnati developed in the basin only slowly spreading out to the hillsides there's a lot of situations like that.

 

I didn't use census tracts.  And I just gave figures that removed all that stuff. 

^Absolutely. Mt. Adams is one of the most structurally dense neighborhoods in the Midwest, but only has something like 1,500 residents, and is surrounded by Eden Park, hillsides that are very hard to develop, and freeways at the base of the hill. By the analysis above, it would probably be counted in the low density threshold, which is comical.

 

Cincinnati's settlement pattern, as a result of the hills and valleys, resulted in some very dense, contained communities surrounded by wooded hillsides and such. Look at Northside, also one of Cincy's densest neighborhoods, on Google Maps. It largely looks like an urban island surrounded by forests. I agree that all cities have brown fields, parks, cemetery's, etc. to take into account, but no other city in Ohio has the same topographical issues to navigate around. An interesting comparison would be Cincinnati to Pittsburgh.

^Absolutely. Mt. Adams is one of the most structurally dense neighborhoods in the Midwest, but only has something like 1,500 residents, and is surrounded by Eden Park, hillsides that are very hard to develop, and freeways at the base of the hill. By the analysis above, it would probably be counted in the low density threshold, which is comical.

 

Cincinnati's settlement pattern, as a result of the hills and valleys, resulted in some very dense, contained communities surrounded by wooded hillsides and such. Look at Northside, also one of Cincy's densest neighborhoods, on Google Maps. It largely looks like an urban island surrounded by forests. I agree that all cities have brown fields, parks, cemetery's, etc. to take into account, but no other city in Ohio has the same topographical issues to navigate around. An interesting comparison would be Cincinnati to Pittsburgh.

 

I am doing this comparison with all of Columbus' peer cities nationally as well as major Midwest cities.  Pittsburgh is a peer, so I will provide those numbers when I have them. 

Figured this went here...

 

I have been working on determining how much land of each city is comprised of low-density population.  I used 2500 per square mile, as I have seen that referenced in other works as the base point at which low density sprawl begins. 

I looked at census blocks within each of the 3-Cs and divided their populations from their given density and got square miles.  I added up all the square miles within those blocks that had population densities below 2500.  Here were the results.  The data was from 2010.

 

Total Block Groups with a Density Below 2500 PPSM

Columbus: 67

Cincinnati: 58

Cleveland: 41

 

Total Square Miles with Density Below 2500 PPSM

Columbus: 62.460

Cincinnati: 41.722

Cleveland: 25.663

 

Total Square Miles, Less Water, for Each City

Columbus: 217.17

Cincinnati: 77.94

Cleveland: 77.70

 

% of Total City Area Composed of Density Below 2500 PPSM

Cincinnati: 53.53%

Cleveland: 33.03%

Columbus: 28.76%

 

Now, whether you consider low density to necessarily equal sprawl is another question, but it at least suggests low population areas, which could mean either rural or suburban.  Given I only looked within the city boundaries, rural seems less likely too me.

 

 

Just want to say I love your site and the amazing way you can compile data.

 

I do want to point out that much of the problem people have with Columbus and density seems to be not the density, but the 'kind' of density. There is the walkable density with shops, restaurants, etc. nearby, and then there is the suburban style density where apartment complexes may be jammed in and you get the density, but you still have a suburban style layout, non-grid, Wide suburban arterials with no sidewalks, dangerous for any pedestrians, shops and businesses isolated due to zoning and setback from the unwalkable arterials with huge parking lots between the stores and the streets.

 

I bet portions of the South Hilliard area around Hilliard-Rome road(the vast majority south of Roberts Road actually within Cbus city limits)would qualify as high density, but the area is a damn mess navigable only be car( and that is a hellish experience in and of itself much of the day in that area). Hell I avoid Hilliard-Rome if at all possible. It may be density, but it is definitely not desirable density.

 

I think others commented about how some California coastal suburban areas are very dense(10,000 + per square mile), yet are basically just like other suburan car oriented areas, just with much smaller lots and homes jammed together.

 

Of course it would be very difficult to define, and then measure, 'desirable density'. I can't even imagine how it could be defined and then measured with city to city comparisons.

 

I would think that this 'desirable density' would be much more likely to be found in Cincy and Cleveland, since they were mostly built out before the suburban freeway era, but I think other problems factor in such as quality and age of housing stock, etc. that may offset much of the benefits of an area being walkable. There are areas of cities that are walkable, but are deteriorated and practically warzones-they may be walkable, but who would want to walk there? And is there the desire, the need(demand), the money, or the will to turn these areas around?

 

Would a better way to compare densities be comparing the 1950 boundaries of the cities rather than the current areas within city limits?

I'm definitely anti sprawl but when people flee the city for the far flung suburbs, they may mention "noise & traffic", but they are also fleeing failing schools, crime, declining home values and lousy city services.

 

At least two of the things (education and home values) on that list are perception-based issues that are worsened by the occurrence of sprawl.

 

Specifically in reference to education, I'll just use Cleveland Heights as an example. The schools in CH-UH offer the same high quality of education as it did 30-40 years ago. The only difference is that it serves a significantly more challenging enrollment base then it did in prior decades which results in lower test scores (which in turn is the basis for some to refer to the schools here as "failing"). I think a similar statement can be made regarding many other inner-ring suburbs, though perhaps not necessarily for a larger system like CMSD.

 

Probably for another thread, but CH/UH school districts also suffer from many non-resident students who register there on relatives addresses to escape the Cleveland and East Cleveland schools.

 

I'm not sure it's any worse in the Heights schools than in any other inner-ring suburb, however I was only using CH-UH as an example of the real issue of "failing" systems: It's not that the quality of the schools themselves have changed, it's who they're now serving and the invalid system used to rate schools in Ohio and nationwide.

 

Yeah, that's commonplace.  Maple Heights used to have heavy foot traffic across the Cleveland limits before and after school, and a lot of kids getting picked up by cars at school bus stops.  The latter could have been after care arrangements, but certainly wasn't always.

Figured this went here...

 

I have been working on determining how much land of each city is comprised of low-density population.  I used 2500 per square mile, as I have seen that referenced in other works as the base point at which low density sprawl begins. 

I looked at census blocks within each of the 3-Cs and divided their populations from their given density and got square miles.  I added up all the square miles within those blocks that had population densities below 2500.  Here were the results.  The data was from 2010.

 

Total Block Groups with a Density Below 2500 PPSM

Columbus: 67

Cincinnati: 58

Cleveland: 41

 

Total Square Miles with Density Below 2500 PPSM

Columbus: 62.460

Cincinnati: 41.722

Cleveland: 25.663

 

Total Square Miles, Less Water, for Each City

Columbus: 217.17

Cincinnati: 77.94

Cleveland: 77.70

 

% of Total City Area Composed of Density Below 2500 PPSM

Cincinnati: 53.53%

Cleveland: 33.03%

Columbus: 28.76%

 

Now, whether you consider low density to necessarily equal sprawl is another question, but it at least suggests low population areas, which could mean either rural or suburban.  Given I only looked within the city boundaries, rural seems less likely too me.

 

 

Just want to say I love your site and the amazing way you can compile data.

 

I do want to point out that much of the problem people have with Columbus and density seems to be not the density, but the 'kind' of density. There is the walkable density with shops, restaurants, etc. nearby, and then there is the suburban style density where apartment complexes may be jammed in and you get the density, but you still have a suburban style layout, non-grid, Wide suburban arterials with no sidewalks, dangerous for any pedestrians, shops and businesses isolated due to zoning and setback from the unwalkable arterials with huge parking lots between the stores and the streets.

 

I bet portions of the South Hilliard area around Hilliard-Rome road(the vast majority south of Roberts Road actually within Cbus city limits)would qualify as high density, but the area is a damn mess navigable only be car( and that is a hellish experience in and of itself much of the day in that area). Hell I avoid Hilliard-Rome if at all possible. It may be density, but it is definitely not desirable density.

 

I think others commented about how some California coastal suburban areas are very dense(10,000 + per square mile), yet are basically just like other suburan car oriented areas, just with much smaller lots and homes jammed together.

 

Of course it would be very difficult to define, and then measure, 'desirable density'. I can't even imagine how it could be defined and then measured with city to city comparisons.

 

I would think that this 'desirable density' would be much more likely to be found in Cincy and Cleveland, since they were mostly built out before the suburban freeway era, but I think other problems factor in such as quality and age of housing stock, etc. that may offset much of the benefits of an area being walkable. There are areas of cities that are walkable, but are deteriorated and practically warzones-they may be walkable, but who would want to walk there? And is there the desire, the need(demand), the money, or the will to turn these areas around?

 

Would a better way to compare densities be comparing the 1950 boundaries of the cities rather than the current areas within city limits?

 

Actually, I think if Columbus was the same area size, you would not see any real difference in terms of walkable, "desirable" density (the urban core of Columbus- 1950 boundaries- is roughly equivalent to the current sizes of the other 2), and vice versa, if Cincinnati and Cleveland were 220 square miles, they would have as much of the same that you're referencing with Columbus.  I don't think Columbus was built much differently than the other two, but its boundaries include a lot of post-war development that the others do not, and people see that and the perception is that it doesn't have much quality urbanity. 

 

The Hilliard-Rome Road corridor is not dense.  The road itself bisects 2 census tracts- 7953 and 7954, with had 2010 densities of 3312 and 2480, respectively.  These are lower than the average for all the city's tracts.  This versus tracts in the actual core with densities regularly over 5,000, 10,000 and up to 30,000 around Campus, which is the greatest density in the state.

 

I will have to look for the 1950 densities.  I did them at one time.

It sounds like the key distinction is whether or not neighborhoods include commerce.  Single-use residential areas are not walkable or "desirably urban" simply because there is nowhere for anyone to walk to, and no hope of performing common errands without driving-- regardless of density and regardless of road width.  Functional urban neighborhoods need to include walkable street-level commerce.  This may be the single most crucial issue in urban planning.  Other factors can vary without notable effect, but take away storefronts and the difference is like night vs day.     

The worst kind of "density" is the faux density represented by midrise apartment buildings surrounded by oceans of not just asphalt, but useless greenspace (the kind that often generally just separates roads from parking lots).  That is the density that is justifiably the boogeyman of conservative critics of urbanism.  Density without walkability and mixes uses (i.e., so people also have somewhere to walk to) is the worst of both worlds.

^Those guys are so afraid that 1984 is going to break out that they haven't realized that it already did on September 12, 2001 and that it was Republicans that did it. All that "stacked on top of each other" rhetoric is straight out of 1984.

Plus, in Cincinnati, a lot of West Siders are convinced that adding density or mixed-use development is code for "adding more poor people".

 

A few weeks ago, UrbanCincy hosted some Streetsblog writers for a meeting in Cincinnati and we were talking about that. One of the guys mentioned that in some places, people oppose form-based codes because they believe it's gentrification. Meanwhile in Westwood, people are convinced it will do the exact opposite.

^Those guys are so afraid that 1984 is going to break out that they haven't realized that it already did on September 12, 2001 and that it was Republicans that did it. All that "stacked on top of each other" rhetoric is straight out of 1984.

 

??? I've never made any such connection nor seen it being made before now.  That's not generally what people think of when they think of 1984.  In fact, this comes from my real-world experience apartment-hunting and simply seeing what it would be like to try to walk around in the area of some of these faux-dense suburban complexes.

So ParkScore gives an approximate % of the city area that is parkland (they count cemeteries, monuments, golf courses, etc. btw).  So after doing a bit of math for all 3 using those figures, here were the final totals for each city regarding city area below 2500 PPSM.

 

Total Area

Columbus: 45.090

Cincinnati: 29.302

Cleveland: 20.693

 

Total % Below 2500 PPSM

Cincinnati: 37.60%

Cleveland: 26.63%

Columbus: 20.76%

 

So Cincinnati remains 11 and 17 points higher than the other 2 even removing all water and all parkland.

 

 

 

 

This is no surprise that Cincy has a higher percentage of under 2500/sqmi density. This number from ParkScore still does not include all of the area in Cincinnati that has hilly unstable soil that is unable to be, or is costly to develop. Spend any time driving around, and you'll see there is a lot of it, especially in the western portions, and along the arms of the city that stretch along the river. Your numbers only serve to reinforce that the city is a series of pockets where development can occur, as opossed to a city that develops on what was essentially an open field.

Plus, in Cincinnati, a lot of West Siders are convinced that adding density or mixed-use development is code for "adding more poor people".

 

A few weeks ago, UrbanCincy hosted some Streetsblog writers for a meeting in Cincinnati and we were talking about that. One of the guys mentioned that in some places, people oppose form-based codes because they believe it's gentrification. Meanwhile in Westwood, people are convinced it will do the exact opposite.

 

Its funny that some Westwood residents claim FBC=Section 8.  It's like they have this mentality Westwood should return to its roots as a area of country estates. Of course, this same person typically resides in a post-war ranch that sits lesss then 12 feet from the neighboring house.

^Those guys are so afraid that 1984 is going to break out that they haven't realized that it already did on September 12, 2001 and that it was Republicans that did it. All that "stacked on top of each other" rhetoric is straight out of 1984.

 

Ummm, it was bipartisan.  Biden's staff wrote big chunks of the "Patriot Act" and it was Dick Armey that shut down "Operation TIPS" even though it already had its own Pavel Morozov in Eunice Stone.

So ParkScore gives an approximate % of the city area that is parkland (they count cemeteries, monuments, golf courses, etc. btw).  So after doing a bit of math for all 3 using those figures, here were the final totals for each city regarding city area below 2500 PPSM.

 

Total Area

Columbus: 45.090

Cincinnati: 29.302

Cleveland: 20.693

 

Total % Below 2500 PPSM

Cincinnati: 37.60%

Cleveland: 26.63%

Columbus: 20.76%

 

So Cincinnati remains 11 and 17 points higher than the other 2 even removing all water and all parkland.

 

 

 

 

This is no surprise that Cincy has a higher percentage of under 2500/sqmi density. This number from ParkScore still does not include all of the area in Cincinnati that has hilly unstable soil that is unable to be, or is costly to develop. Spend any time driving around, and you'll see there is a lot of it, especially in the western portions, and along the arms of the city that stretch along the river. Your numbers only serve to reinforce that the city is a series of pockets where development can occur, as opossed to a city that develops on what was essentially an open field.

 

Yeah, Cincinnati has pockets of dense, walkable neighborhoods but also has huge swaths of land that are virtually undevelopable given current real estate prices. This area around Delhi Avenue is a prime example. The neighborhoods all around are pretty dense by typical suburban standards, but the hillsides aren't developable as many of the foundations needed would cost more than the buildings set atop them.

^Those guys are so afraid that 1984 is going to break out that they haven't realized that it already did on September 12, 2001 and that it was Republicans that did it. All that "stacked on top of each other" rhetoric is straight out of 1984.

 

??? I've never made any such connection nor seen it being made before now.  That's not generally what people think of when they think of 1984.  In fact, this comes from my real-world experience apartment-hunting and simply seeing what it would be like to try to walk around in the area of some of these faux-dense suburban complexes.

 

Maybe you haven't seen very much from the Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists. There are a lot of people who truly believe that any effort to encourage growth in urban areas, add transit options, add bike lanes, or improve walkability are part of a United Nations plot to force people into high-rises in cities and take away personal property right.

 

Yes, that's totally insane, but there are people that buy it. I was reading through the results of some survey OKI did a few years ago, and I was shocked by the number of people who commented "I do not support Agenda 21."

 

Glenn Beck even published a list of warning words telling people to be wary of any effort that mentions "Parking Policy", "Redevelopment", "Safe Routes to Schools", "Responsible Development", "Traffic Calming", "Livable Communities", "Vibrant Neighborhoods, and, of course, "Mixed Use Development". It's absolutely nutty.

There are those people, and then there are people who oppose these policies without any prompting or conspiracy angle. 

 

What gets me is that there are so many non-urban places for them to live, so why do they have to oppose efforts to make actual cities urban?  You don't want to live there anyway!  So just don't!  Sprawl is everywhere, it's been expanding for decades, so go enjoy it peacefully.  What's the point of opposing urban policies for urban areas?

There are those people, and then there are people who oppose these policies without any prompting or conspiracy angle. 

 

What gets me is that there are so many non-urban places for them to live, so why do they have to oppose efforts to make actual cities urban?  You don't want to live there anyway!  So just don't!  Sprawl is everywhere, it's been expanding for decades, so go enjoy it peacefully.  What's the point of opposing urban policies for urban areas?

 

These guys flip out because they perceive that cities are always a money pit (first it was the poor in the cities getting free housing and food stamps -- now it's the rich kids getting their trains) and the suburbs are the product of unmitigated capitalism.  The fact is that the suburbs as they existing the United States are a fiction enabled by Depression-era make-work lending policy in which the federal government assumes the risk that banks never would.  They complain endlessly about New Deal and Great Society programs that mostly concern the poor, but turn a blind eye to the FHA. 

There are those people, and then there are people who oppose these policies without any prompting or conspiracy angle. 

 

What gets me is that there are so many non-urban places for them to live, so why do they have to oppose efforts to make actual cities urban?  You don't want to live there anyway!  So just don't!  Sprawl is everywhere, it's been expanding for decades, so go enjoy it peacefully.  What's the point of opposing urban policies for urban areas?

 

These guys flip out because they perceive that cities are always a money pit (first it was the poor in the cities getting free housing and food stamps -- now it's the rich kids getting their trains) and the suburbs are the product of unmitigated capitalism.  The fact is that the suburbs as they existing the United States are a fiction enabled by Depression-era make-work lending policy in which the federal government assumes the risk that banks never would.  They complain endlessly about New Deal and Great Society programs that mostly concern the poor, but turn a blind eye to the FHA. 

 

They haven't been a "fiction" since World War II, when rural people moved towards the cities due to the war effort, and didn't have any great desire to go back.

Good grief.  Read a book on the subject.  The suburbs as we know them are explicitly the result of FHA lending.  It was government-backed lending to (white) developers as much as to those (white) people who bought the homes.  Black people could not get a mortgage for a house in new postwar suburbs until passage of the Civil Rights Act, which ended bank redlining.  Big subdivisions didn't exist before the FHA because nobody could assemble the necessary financing. 

Don't bother trying to explain the suburbs to E Rocc. He's posted many times (with no evidence) that Americans were the people who were inherently most averse to density (despite settling some massive cities in the US) and therefore we are genetically coded to prefer wide open, sprawling places. By his argument suburbs are merely a physical manifestation of our inherent genetic desires, nothing more.

As someone who is from an actual rural area, suburbs don't offer any more "privacy" or "elbow room" than cities do.  Having a house 15 feet from your own house is not "privacy."  Having the nearest neighbor 1/2 mile away?  That's elbow room. 

^It's funny you mention that. This was a conversation I had with my parents. I grew up in suburban Cleveland and they mentioned privacy when I was buying my condo. That stopped when they saw it. Nobody can see into my windows because I'm on the fourth floor and the closest other four story buildings are far enough away or out of view that it's not an issue. I have tons of privacy despite living in OTR.

 

The house I grew up in, despite having 250' between it and the houses on the next street, puts you on display because the developer tore out all plantlife and everyone's backyard faces one another. And because there are so few people, suburban nosiness kicks in and everyone pays WAY too much attention to everyone else. It's uncomfortable. I feel way more capable of living privately if I so choose in an urban location that I ever did in suburbia.

There are those people, and then there are people who oppose these policies without any prompting or conspiracy angle. 

 

What gets me is that there are so many non-urban places for them to live, so why do they have to oppose efforts to make actual cities urban?  You don't want to live there anyway!  So just don't!  Sprawl is everywhere, it's been expanding for decades, so go enjoy it peacefully.  What's the point of opposing urban policies for urban areas?

 

Zero-sum thinking.

Don't bother trying to explain the suburbs to E Rocc. He's posted many times (with no evidence) that Americans were the people who were inherently most averse to density (despite settling some massive cities in the US) and therefore we are genetically coded to prefer wide open, sprawling places. By his argument suburbs are merely a physical manifestation of our inherent genetic desires, nothing more.

 

People all around the world are the same. It's governments and religion that make them different.

Of course it would be very difficult to define, and then measure, 'desirable density'. I can't even imagine how it could be defined and then measured with city to city comparisons.

 

I would think that this 'desirable density' would be much more likely to be found in Cincy and Cleveland, since they were mostly built out before the suburban freeway era, but I think other problems factor in such as quality and age of housing stock, etc. that may offset much of the benefits of an area being walkable. There are areas of cities that are walkable, but are deteriorated and practically warzones-they may be walkable, but who would want to walk there? And is there the desire, the need(demand), the money, or the will to turn these areas around?

 

Would a better way to compare densities be comparing the 1950 boundaries of the cities rather than the current areas within city limits?

 

These are very good questions. Here is something I put together a few years ago for Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (http://www.morpc.org/pdf/morpc_density_brochure_CS3.pdf) trying to make the case that "desirable density" may vary from community to community, but is always based on good design, amenities, options, mix of uses, etc., and uses photographs in an attempt to explain and demystify density.

Polls of Americans, and especially retirement-age people, show that many (possibly even a plurality) want to live in a small town, more so than a suburb.  The problem is that small towns by definition have virtually no economy, as they service farms which have become consolidated and mechanized to the point that most small towns have no raison d'être anymore.  That said, suburbs COULD be built in a small town format.  Railroad suburbs of the late 19th and early 20th century are the closest examples (think Glendale, Wyoming, Terrace Park, and even Mariemont, though it's a bit late to the game and atypical in some regards. 

 

Suburbs aren't built like that anymore, and they haven't been for 80-90 years.  Even older railroad suburbs have metastasized to an extent that their walkable transit-oriented cores are a blip in a huge sea of post-war sprawl that chokes off any possibility of growth or maturing.  All this is in spite of the preference for more place-based and human-scaled development. 

The country is not private and not quiet.  It takes 2-3 minutes for the quiet to come back after a single pickup truck approaches on a gravel road, lumbers by, and finally fades out of sight.  But then the peace is disturbed by a chain saw, rifle blast, etc.  When you live in the country people feel free to drive or even walk onto your property and into the garage or wherever you're working.  Also, if you're working on something close to the road, everyone in a passing vehicle wants to stop and chat.  You can't get anything done. 

 

Also, whatever little project you're doing on your land gets observed and scrutinized by everyone in the area.  Repairing the fence?  Tilling the garden?  Putting up a new run for the dog?  Getting your septic tank emptied?  They see and take note of it all.  And stay away from the road -- again, they're going to stop and want to talk all about whatever it is that is going on.  Then they'll lay out a bunch of unsolicited advice. 

 

 

Also, whatever little project you're doing on your land gets observed and scrutinized by everyone in the area.  Repairing the fence?  Tilling the garden?  Putting up a new run for the dog?  Getting your septic tank emptied?  They see and take note of it all.  And stay away from the road -- again, they're going to stop and want to talk all about whatever it is that is going on.  Then they'll lay out a bunch of unsolicited advice. 

 

 

My buddies and I do that when we're in Ashville. My one friend took down a fence between his house and the neighbors and all kinds of people turned up to see him do it. He says he could have run for mayor of Ashville that day.

Polls of Americans, and especially retirement-age people, show that many (possibly even a plurality) want to live in a small town, more so than a suburb.  The problem is that small towns by definition have virtually no economy, as they service farms which have become consolidated and mechanized to the point that most small towns have no raison d'être anymore.  That said, suburbs COULD be built in a small town format.  Railroad suburbs of the late 19th and early 20th century are the closest examples (think Glendale, Wyoming, Terrace Park, and even Mariemont, though it's a bit late to the game and atypical in some regards. 

 

Suburbs aren't built like that anymore, and they haven't been for 80-90 years.  Even older railroad suburbs have metastasized to an extent that their walkable transit-oriented cores are a blip in a huge sea of post-war sprawl that chokes off any possibility of growth or maturing.  All this is in spite of the preference for more place-based and human-scaled development. 

 

That's the central challenge of urban planning outside of older urban cores and close-in neighborhoods built on older grid models.  Absent measures that are politically, logistically, and financially impossible--widespread deconstruction and reconstruction of entire suburbs--American suburbia simply cannot be made transit-friendly in the vast majority of cases.  In Columbus, for example, you could potentially make streetcar suburbs out of Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, Whitehall, Bexley, and that's probably about it.  (In some respects, it's simply a manifestation of geometry: the surface area of a circle increases much more, in absolute terms, when its radius increases from 5 to 6 than from 1 to 2, so the farther out any given ring of development is, the more challenging it will be to make commuter rail workable in that ring.)  Thinking about what it would take to make Dublin or Westerville or Pickerington a viable commuter rail community is an exercise in futility.

 

This is why I tend to favor small-scale streetcar projects, e.g., the proposed line from OSU to downtown Columbus, rather than heavier commuter rail projects that would link to places like Polaris (or connect Cleveland to Akron, or even Cleveland to its Cuyahoga County suburbs).  The sprawl is too firmly entrenched beyond that for any proposed commuter rail line to have a critical mass of riders.

Good grief.  Read a book on the subject.  The suburbs as we know them are explicitly the result of FHA lending.  It was government-backed lending to (white) developers as much as to those (white) people who bought the homes.  Black people could not get a mortgage for a house in new postwar suburbs until passage of the Civil Rights Act, which ended bank redlining.  Big subdivisions didn't exist before the FHA because nobody could assemble the necessary financing. 

 

"Result of" maybe.  But they didn't explode until after WW II.

Polls of Americans, and especially retirement-age people, show that many (possibly even a plurality) want to live in a small town, more so than a suburb.  The problem is that small towns by definition have virtually no economy, as they service farms which have become consolidated and mechanized to the point that most small towns have no raison d'être anymore.  That said, suburbs COULD be built in a small town format.  Railroad suburbs of the late 19th and early 20th century are the closest examples (think Glendale, Wyoming, Terrace Park, and even Mariemont, though it's a bit late to the game and atypical in some regards. 

 

Suburbs aren't built like that anymore, and they haven't been for 80-90 years.  Even older railroad suburbs have metastasized to an extent that their walkable transit-oriented cores are a blip in a huge sea of post-war sprawl that chokes off any possibility of growth or maturing.  All this is in spite of the preference for more place-based and human-scaled development. 

 

That's the central challenge of urban planning outside of older urban cores and close-in neighborhoods built on older grid models.  Absent measures that are politically, logistically, and financially impossible--widespread deconstruction and reconstruction of entire suburbs--American suburbia simply cannot be made transit-friendly in the vast majority of cases.  In Columbus, for example, you could potentially make streetcar suburbs out of Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, Whitehall, Bexley, and that's probably about it.  (In some respects, it's simply a manifestation of geometry: the surface area of a circle increases much more, in absolute terms, when its radius increases from 5 to 6 than from 1 to 2, so the farther out any given ring of development is, the more challenging it will be to make commuter rail workable in that ring.)  Thinking about what it would take to make Dublin or Westerville or Pickerington a viable commuter rail community is an exercise in futility.

 

This is why I tend to favor small-scale streetcar projects, e.g., the proposed line from OSU to downtown Columbus, rather than heavier commuter rail projects that would link to places like Polaris (or connect Cleveland to Akron, or even Cleveland to its Cuyahoga County suburbs).  The sprawl is too firmly entrenched beyond that for any proposed commuter rail line to have a critical mass of riders.

 

Maple Heights was rather transit friendly when it ran it's own bus system during the pre-RTA days.

Don't bother trying to explain the suburbs to E Rocc. He's posted many times (with no evidence) that Americans were the people who were inherently most averse to density (despite settling some massive cities in the US) and therefore we are genetically coded to prefer wide open, sprawling places. By his argument suburbs are merely a physical manifestation of our inherent genetic desires, nothing more.

 

Where did "merely" come from?

 

Are you saying that there's no genetic component to an aversion to crowding and tight spaces whatsoever?

Cities in the 1940-50s were not good places to live. Crowded apartments, oftentimes a lack of electricity and running water. Poor fire codes made buildings dangerous to live in. Of course people wanted to escape the cities in the 1950s. It doesn't mean they wanted houses 30 feet apart only accessible by car and with no businesses within walking distance. Suburbia was not the proper way to do it. Growth outside of city propers that was still built dense and walkable with transportation alternatives would have been a best of both worlds scenario.