33 minutes ago, LlamaLawyer said:

To my point above, if you look at BLS data, Columbus actually had basically zero job growth during the 2000s, even before the GFC. Columbus has since recovered in a way other Ohio cities haven't. But all of Ohio (even Columbus) had basically a lost decade from 2000-2010. This was probably a result of manufacturing offshoring, but we were hit harder than some other heavy manufacturing states like PA were.

 

EDIT: And just to more directly address your point, it's not like Ohio is the second circle of hell and we're all being tortured by demons or something. But that doesn't change the fact that the state has experienced no job growth since 2000. Let that sink in. None. I believe it's one of only three states to have such an honor, the other two being Michigan and West Virginia. Relative to other places, we're not doing well.

 

Columbus lost a lot of big employers in the 2000s such as Delphi, Lucent Technologies, CompuServe and Buckeye Steel.

50 minutes ago, GISguy said:

 

Being the state capital and having Ohio State isn't something the rest of Ohio has (there's your different problems). 

 

Nashville doesn't have a large university but is growing much faster than Columbus.  

 

 

 

 

14 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

Nashville doesn't have a large university but is growing much faster than Columbus.  

 

 

 

 

It may not have a large universities, but it does have a fair number of universities-- Vanderbilt, Belmont, Tennessee State, Fisk, Lipscomb... 

 

Nashville is also the capital of their state... 

 

And from having lived in Nashville for a time in 2016, talking to locals the city saw a lot more tourism interest after the show Nashville premiered in 2012.

Edited April 7, 20232 yr by Luke_S

1 hour ago, GISguy said:

Being the state capital and having Ohio State isn't something the rest of Ohio has (there's your different problems).

So, we agree?  It's not state politics that drive growth or loss.  There are other more important factors.

 

2 hours ago, Lazarus said:

 

Nashville's rise quite literally came out of nowhere and for no identifiable reason.  

 

 

The bars on Broadway in Nashville is, from what I can tell, ~90% of the reason why Nashville is booming. Nash-Vegas is certainly a thing, so many people go there for bachelor/bachelorette parties or just to party in general, and they stay long enough to like it and settle there, or long enough to at least find some reason to go back again.

 

Keep in mind the type of people that have the time and money to do this are generally well educated professionals with disposable income... just the type of people that make the decisions about where to locate companies, who to do business with, etc. and giving themselves more reasons to take business trips to Nashville to drink more at the bars there is a real motivator. That paired with the climate makes it pretty desirable.

There's one bar there that is the primary sponsor of a NASCAR team.

2 hours ago, Lazarus said:

 

Don't forget the invention of a "signature" food that nobody had heard of before 2010, Nashville Hot Chicken.  

 

They basically invented a whole fake backstory for Nashville and if you called them out on it you were a bad person.  You violated community standards.  

 

 

 

 

 

We've been through this a million times but, to be clear, hot chicken existed since at least the 1970s and probably fifty years before that in the Black community. Prince's opened in the 1980s I believe? And it was very popular through Nashville by the 2000s. You keep making up this idea that it has only existed for like ten or fifteen years but it just isn't true.

15 minutes ago, SWOH said:

That paired with the climate makes it pretty desirable.

 

People think Nashville has a "southern" climate like Atlanta because Tennessee is in the south, right?  Well it doesn't.  It's in the same growing zone as Ohio, per Martha Stewart:

 

The winter in Nashville is gray, damp, and windy, just like Louisville and Indianapolis.  It doesn't have kudzu.  Plus it's on the eastern edge of the Central Time Zone, meaning it's pitch black by 4:15pm in December.  

 

The hype machine tricked everyone into thinking Nashville has magnolia trees, unique food, etc.  It mostly looks like Dayton.  

 

7 minutes ago, DEPACincy said:

And it was very popular through Nashville by the 2000s. You keep making up this idea that it has only existed for like ten or fifteen years but it just isn't true.

 

I lived in Tennessee for five years. I never heard a single person ever mention it, out of the thousands of people I was around in endless scenarios - different jobs, different classes, different cities.  People in the south talk about food all of the time.  It never occurred to anyone to mention "Nashville Hot Chicken" in the 90s because it didn't exist.  

 

The mayor started the hot chicken festival in 2005.  It was a 3-hour thing at a soccer field in East Nashville designed to get him on camera kissing the asses of the common folk.   I searched the original articles on Newspapers.com a few years ago and it received scant coverage, as you would expect of something that popped up for three hours to give a politician some TV time.  The TV coverage also used to be on youtube from the 2008 or 2009 festival.  It was still a one-day thing at a soccer field.  Like 200 people were there.  

 

 

 

 

White transplant to Nashville didn't find out about a black cultural thing until a festival about it exists, and then thinks it was invented that year. Classic

Ok.... getting off the hot chicken thing that overtakes the forum every few months... regardless of what the growth numbers say, I think many of you would agree that most urbanized areas in the state, including (especially?) smaller towns, look better than they ever have in most of our lifetimes. Much of the state might not be growing, but places like Troy, Marysville, Tiffin, etc. are genuinely nice places now that people seem invested in and have strong communities. I still think from that perspective, people have started to finally rediscover our urban assets and fix them up instead of throwing them away like previous generations did. 

37 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

People think Nashville has a "southern" climate like Atlanta because Tennessee is in the south, right?  Well it doesn't.  It's in the same growing zone as Ohio, per Martha Stewart:

 

The winter in Nashville is gray, damp, and windy, just like Louisville and Indianapolis.  It doesn't have kudzu.  Plus it's on the eastern edge of the Central Time Zone, meaning it's pitch black by 4:15pm in December.  

 

The hype machine tricked everyone into thinking Nashville has magnolia trees, unique food, etc.  It mostly looks like Dayton.  

 

 

Growing zones are not a great measure here. They have huge variations in temperature within a zone. The average January high in Cleveland is 34 degrees. In Nashville it is 47 degrees. April in Cleveland is 59, while Nashville is 71. Nashville has just over 50% more sunny days per year compared to Cleveland. That's a stark difference.

15 minutes ago, BigDipper 80 said:

Ok.... getting off the hot chicken thing that overtakes the forum every few months... regardless of what the growth numbers say, I think many of you would agree that most urbanized areas in the state, including (especially?) smaller towns, look better than they ever have in most of our lifetimes. Much of the state might not be growing, but places like Troy, Marysville, Tiffin, etc. are genuinely nice places now that people seem invested in and have strong communities. I still think from that perspective, people have started to finally rediscover our urban assets and fix them up instead of throwing them away like previous generations did. 

 

I think this is right. Despite the legislatures' best efforts, cities and towns in Ohio are actually thriving, from the 3C's on down to many villages. Ride a bike along the Ohio to Erie trail and you pass through a ton of vibrant little towns with redeveloped centers. There's still a lot of work to be down, and some towns have been left out. But we have made great strides.

Okay, so...I can't believe I'm going to be saying this but uhh...no more Nashville talk in a thread about State Gov't vs. Ohio Cities.  Nashville is lovely...but next.

 

38 minutes ago, BigDipper 80 said:

places like Troy, Marysville, Tiffin, etc. 

 

Hamilton!

2 hours ago, BigDipper 80 said:

Ok.... getting off the hot chicken thing that overtakes the forum every few months... regardless of what the growth numbers say, I think many of you would agree that most urbanized areas in the state, including (especially?) smaller towns, look better than they ever have in most of our lifetimes. Much of the state might not be growing, but places like Troy, Marysville, Tiffin, etc. are genuinely nice places now that people seem invested in and have strong communities. I still think from that perspective, people have started to finally rediscover our urban assets and fix them up instead of throwing them away like previous generations did. 

 

It's especially impressive considering what a tough time it is for B&M retail. 

Agreed. Ohio has a good path to really succeed if there's more investment in the small urban towns. They can't, won't and shouldn't be the old ideal (anybody remember Mayberry? Of course you do) but a new ideal where places like, I don't know, Circleville celebrate their walkable main street lined with shops and bars, taco trucks in front of the suburban strip center built at the edge of town in the 1960s that's more in the middle now, and professionals setting up and renovating the old mansions for their offices are homes should be celebrated heavily and somehow popularized in mainstream culture.

 

That could help places that are causing a lot of the population loss in this state, places people do not want to be like Fostoria, New Carlisle, Portsmouth, and Steubenville (sorry to name names, and full disclosure one of those examples is ~3 miles from where I grew up to keep this fair). It goes into the argument of how to build good community leadership and stewardship at a young age in these small towns. I really wish somebody in Ohio had the foresight to put together a concentrated outreach effort where they would visit high schools and teach seniors not just how government works but also give specific guidance and support to help them become community leaders and even run for office. They could bring some new ideas and energy to their dying hometowns, and realize the path to success doesn't necessarily require going away to some other state. I can certainly understand wanting to escape and carve out a new life of your own that is not tied into your family, but who's to say that cannot be done without helping your hometown along the way?

Oh Circleville's got bars

7 hours ago, Lazarus said:

 

Nashville doesn't have a large university but is growing much faster than Columbus.  

 

 

 

 

 

No, it isn't. It added about 88K people 2010-2020, which would be almost 40,000 fewer than Columbus in the same period. The difference is even more stark when you consider that Nashville is consolidated with its county, which means that the actual city grew even less. The Nashville metro grew more than Columbus', but that's not exactly what I would call good growth. It's all suburbia/exurbia at the expense of the city.

6 hours ago, DEPACincy said:

 

I think this is right. Despite the legislatures' best efforts, cities and towns in Ohio are actually thriving, from the 3C's on down to many villages. Ride a bike along the Ohio to Erie trail and you pass through a ton of vibrant little towns with redeveloped centers. There's still a lot of work to be down, and some towns have been left out. But we have made great strides.

 

Larger towns in the state are doing much better than smaller ones, and it's much better to be in a metro area than not for all levels. But I think it's a pretty rosy statement to say that most Ohio cities and towns are doing well when 2/3rds of the state is in population decline. You can't mask that with a fresh coat of paint, and there are real reasons behind this. 

12 hours ago, Lazarus said:

The sudden explosion of tech in Nashville is the most mind-bending event in 21st century urban history.  The presence of the University of Texas main campus in Austin is repeatedly cited as the reason for tech coming to that city, but Tennessee's flagship campus is in Knoxville.  Weirdly, Knoxville has always been a science hub of note due to the Oak Ridge National Lab, but it has had seemingly zero spillover effect.  Nashville's rise quite literally came out of nowhere and for no identifiable reason.  

Vanderbilt and it's $11b endowment doesn't hurt the city.   It's a leader in the south in medicine and tech.  

11 hours ago, jonoh81 said:

 

Larger towns in the state are doing much better than smaller ones, and it's much better to be in a metro area than not for all levels. But I think it's a pretty rosy statement to say that most Ohio cities and towns are doing well when 2/3rds of the state is in population decline. You can't mask that with a fresh coat of paint, and there are real reasons behind this. 

 

I wrote about this right before COVID hit, using 2015-2020 data. Ohio's six largest metros, and especially the 3Cs, accounted for Ohio's job growth, despite the state passing anti-urban policies like cutting local government assistance, constantly attacking home rule, and its anti-transit/rail policies. Imagine how much better Ohio's big cities would perform with a state that supported them...

 

https://neo-trans.blog/2020/01/26/ohios-largest-metros-are-carrying-the-states-economy/

On 4/7/2023 at 8:40 PM, jonoh81 said:

 

Larger towns in the state are doing much better than smaller ones, and it's much better to be in a metro area than not for all levels. But I think it's a pretty rosy statement to say that most Ohio cities and towns are doing well when 2/3rds of the state is in population decline. You can't mask that with a fresh coat of paint, and there are real reasons behind this. 

 

Yea I think maybe my statement was a bit rosey. But look at places like Chillicothe, which saw growth this past decade for the first time in like 60 years. That's meaningful and you can see it in their business districts. But yes, overall the large cities are doing better. 

On 4/7/2023 at 10:41 PM, Cleburger said:

Vanderbilt and it's $11b endowment doesn't hurt the city.   It's a leader in the south in medicine and tech.  

 

Vanderbilt is on the same level as Carnegie-Mellon or Case or Wash U or any number of top schools in stagnant cities that have been usurped by the profoundly un-urban and un-interesting Nashville.  No Ohio city has a fabricated back story.  Nashville does.  The average chump doesn't trust his own observations, meaning the at-best mediocrity that is the tactile, factual thing called Nashville doesn't matter, only "Nashville".  Here come the chumps!

 

Rice is the highest-ranked university in Texas, and Houston is gigantic, but few people have heard of Rice or attribute Houston's giganticocity to it.  Johns Hopkins, another Tier 1 school, has a subway station, has fantastic Amtrak service, you can walk around real neighborhood and probably get mugged during daylight hours, all that.  But Baltimore still sucks. 

 

Ohio's problem is primarily a perception problem.  If the jokey-dokey bat-building Nashville of the late 90s can be transformed in just 10 years to a bootleg Bauhaus kash-kreator and king koronator and umlaut ambassador, where reality doesn't matter only the juvenile emotions of trust funders, then Ohio is just one or two reality shows and a tech gong show away from fame and fortune.  Why did the Nashville hot chicken cross the road?  For likes.

6 hours ago, Lazarus said:

 

Vanderbilt is on the same level as Carnegie-Mellon or Case or Wash U or any number of top schools in stagnant cities that have been usurped by the profoundly un-urban and un-interesting Nashville.  No Ohio city has a fabricated back story.  Nashville does.  The average chump doesn't trust his own observations, meaning the at-best mediocrity that is the tactile, factual thing called Nashville doesn't matter, only "Nashville".  Here come the chumps!

 

Rice is the highest-ranked university in Texas, and Houston is gigantic, but few people have heard of Rice or attribute Houston's giganticocity to it.  Johns Hopkins, another Tier 1 school, has a subway station, has fantastic Amtrak service, you can walk around real neighborhood and probably get mugged during daylight hours, all that.  But Baltimore still sucks. 

 

Ohio's problem is primarily a perception problem.  If the jokey-dokey bat-building Nashville of the late 90s can be transformed in just 10 years to a bootleg Bauhaus kash-kreator and king koronator and umlaut ambassador, where reality doesn't matter only the juvenile emotions of trust funders, then Ohio is just one or two reality shows and a tech gong show away from fame and fortune.  Why did the Nashville hot chicken cross the road?  For likes.

I mean, there’s a lot there to unpack. But I can’t not give a respectful slow clap 👏

On 4/9/2023 at 3:11 AM, Lazarus said:

 

Vanderbilt is on the same level as Carnegie-Mellon or Case or Wash U or any number of top schools in stagnant cities that have been usurped by the profoundly un-urban and un-interesting Nashville.  No Ohio city has a fabricated back story.  Nashville does.  The average chump doesn't trust his own observations, meaning the at-best mediocrity that is the tactile, factual thing called Nashville doesn't matter, only "Nashville".  Here come the chumps!

 

Rice is the highest-ranked university in Texas, and Houston is gigantic, but few people have heard of Rice or attribute Houston's giganticocity to it.  Johns Hopkins, another Tier 1 school, has a subway station, has fantastic Amtrak service, you can walk around real neighborhood and probably get mugged during daylight hours, all that.  But Baltimore still sucks. 

 

Ohio's problem is primarily a perception problem.  If the jokey-dokey bat-building Nashville of the late 90s can be transformed in just 10 years to a bootleg Bauhaus kash-kreator and king koronator and umlaut ambassador, where reality doesn't matter only the juvenile emotions of trust funders, then Ohio is just one or two reality shows and a tech gong show away from fame and fortune.  Why did the Nashville hot chicken cross the road?  For likes.

 

I'm supposed to be switching to mod voice here and reminding people that @ColDayMan told people to move on from Nashville in this thread.

 

But there is something sublimely expressionistic about this.  I'm leaving it.

 

The rest of y'all, move on.

Surprisingly, the first proposed change actually helps Ohio's largest urbanized areas. The second does not. This is from Greater Ohio.....

 

Senate Budget Bill Could Have Adverse Impact on Brownfields Program, Residential Tax Abatement: Contact Your State Senator Today

Dear friends and supporters of Greater Ohio Policy Center,

Earlier this week, the Ohio Senate introduced its substitute budget bill. It makes changes to the Ohio Brownfield Remediation and Building Demolition & Site Revitalization Programs, and how communities may use residential tax abatement in the future. 

These changes will make it more difficult to undertake redevelopment projects in Ohio.
 
Changes to Brownfield Remediation + Building Demolition and Site Revitalization Programs

 

The Senate changed the brownfields grant program so that only county commissioners can submit project applications.  Under the program that has operated since 2021, anyone could apply to the program, as long as they had a county cooperative agreement.  This shift to designating counties as the only eligible applicants will create burdens on county staff and disadvantage rural and smaller counties with limited staff. 

 

The other significant change to the program is that private sector entities are not named in a newly established list of eligible sub-recipients. GOPC interprets this omission as meaning private sector-led projects will need to create an agreement with a eligible sub-recipient first, before the application then goes to the commissioners. 

 

These changes create inefficiencies and introduce unnecessary risk. The net result will likely be fewer brownfield redevelopment projects.

 

Here are talking points you can use when you call your Senator to express your concerns. 

Changes to Residential Tax Abatement 

 

The Senate has specified that *newly created* Community Reinvestment Areas, Urban Renewal Areas, and TIF districts, cannot offer “tax incentives” (e.g. abatements) to residential rental projects for the next five years. Nor can rental projects in Opportunity Zones apply for the state Opportunity Zone tax credit until 2028. 

 

New rental housing in converted buildings or new builds on vacant lots has led the successful revitalization of most downtowns and neighborhoods in Ohio.  Tax abatement has been the only way these projects “pencil out” in untested or modest markets.  

 

The Senate’s changes will significantly slow efforts to reinvent Ohio’s communities and put further pressure on already tight local housing markets by reducing the production of new housing. 

We encourage you to tell your Senator how these changes will negatively impact needed and desired development in your community. 

 

The Time to Call your Senator is NOW

 

Please call your senator and senators you have relationships on Thursday or Friday (6/8-6/9/23). The next version of the budget, the Senate’s omnibus bill, will come out early next week and be voted on by the end of the week.  

 

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about these proposed changes. Please consider using the above talking points as part of any messages you share with your elected officials in Columbus when contacting them about these changes.

Serious political differences between urbanites and rustics exist throughout the world 

 

 

Revenge of the rubes.

Since cities are by far the dominant economic force in any country, intentionally harming them is a massively stupid idea. 

"Serious political differences between urbanites and rustics exist throughout the world "

Well, yes.    Dense areas have much more of a need for planning and political control of resources than more spread out areas.   People understand this instinctively.   So people in the former will favor an assertive activist government, people in the latter will resent it.

1 hour ago, E Rocc said:

Well, yes.    Dense areas have much more of a need for planning and political control of resources than more spread out areas.

 

They didn't before bad suburban ideas came along in the 1920s then started getting applied to the city. Everything was natural and instinctive before and zoning wasn't required. The only zoning needed was to keep industrial pollution away from residential.

1 hour ago, GCrites said:

 

They didn't before bad suburban ideas came along in the 1920s then started getting applied to the city. Everything was natural and instinctive before and zoning wasn't required. The only zoning needed was to keep industrial pollution away from residential.

 

Density was a necessity during the industrial era before private transportation became practical.

2 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

Density was a necessity during the industrial era before private transportation became practical.

While there is no doubt that the densities and living conditions in the early years of the industrial revolution were undesirable, many would argue that the turn to private transportation and the public roadway expansion are impoverishing us today.  Many more miles of roads, wires, pipes to maintain for a stable to shrinking population is a recipe for fiscal instability.  It's no wonder there are no potholes in the City of Cleveland.

2 hours ago, Foraker said:

While there is no doubt that the densities and living conditions in the early years of the industrial revolution were undesirable, many would argue that the turn to private transportation and the public roadway expansion are impoverishing us today.  Many more miles of roads, wires, pipes to maintain for a stable to shrinking population is a recipe for fiscal instability.  It's no wonder there are no potholes in the City of Cleveland.

 

Building infrastructure is one area where I'm not a purist libertarian.   We absolutely need to maintain a large base of skilled construction workers (defined in a broad sense to include electrical and sewer/plumbing workers) in case of natural disaster, terrorism, or other damage.

 

I think you'll find that private transportation is not negotiable for a vast majority of Americans, despite the likely desires of those who seek strict social control.

 

Edited September 8, 20231 yr by E Rocc

8 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

Building infrastructure is one area where I'm not a purist libertarian.   We absolutely need to maintain a large base of skilled construction workers (defined in a broad sense to include electrical and sewer/plumbing workers) in case of natural disaster, terrorism, or other damage.

 

I think you'll find that private transportation is not negotiable for a vast majority of Americans, despite the likely desires of those who seek strict social control.

 

 

It's not "negotiable" because there is no realistic alternative in 99% of the country. Arguably only a handful of major cities have truly comprehensive- and practically useful- public transportation systems. Contrary to the rest of the world, the US has divested from public transportation in all forms for more than a century, and not necessarily because that's what everyone wanted. Americans today have no choice and haven't for generations. Most have never experienced or lived in a city that wasn't built exclusively for the private car. 

11 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

Building infrastructure is one area where I'm not a purist libertarian.   We absolutely need to maintain a large base of skilled construction workers (defined in a broad sense to include electrical and sewer/plumbing workers) in case of natural disaster, terrorism, or other damage.

 

I think you'll find that private transportation is not negotiable for a vast majority of Americans, despite the likely desires of those who seek strict social control.

 

 

It's not negotiable because the users don't pay for it and its societal costs. If they did, it would be unaffordable to all but the wealthy. Then the urban-rural divide would become a classist struggle, which is what the apologists (in addition to the direct beneficiaries -- carmakers, oil companies, suburban developers, etc) of car dependency want to avoid. They can live with the urban-rural divide, for now.

"Freedom" people love making us have to drive rather than choose from among multiple modes.

11 hours ago, E Rocc said:

I think you'll find that private transportation is not negotiable for a vast majority of Americans, despite the likely desires of those who seek strict social control.

 

I don't know what "societal control" you see in maintaining or not maintaining infrastructure but "societal control" sounds more like book banning or banning medical procedures for women than saying we are in danger of building, or have already built, more infrastructure than we can maintain.  

 

The call for better use of our resources is simple math -- there's only so much money to spend on infrastructure. Train all the road workers and electricians you want -- who's going to pay them and pay for the materials?   I believe we've already built out our infrastructure beyond our financial capacity to maintain it.  If we can't afford maintenance, the infrastructure will fail -- every road will have potholes.  That's not negotiable. 

41 minutes ago, GCrites said:

"Freedom" people love making us have to drive rather than choose from among multiple modes.

 

Well, you know what they say, "Freedom" is just another word for having to find a parking spot!

29 minutes ago, Foraker said:

 

 

 

The call for better use of our resources is simple math -- there's only so much money to spend on infrastructure. Train all the road workers and electricians you want -- who's going to pay them and pay for the materials?   I believe we've already built out our infrastructure beyond our financial capacity to maintain it.  If we can't afford maintenance, the infrastructure will fail -- every road will have potholes.  That's not negotiable. 

 

What he's describing sounds like the Army Corps of Engineers.