I wish I had the opportunity to flee into one of America's/Ohio's big cities.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

I wish I had the opportunity to flee into one of America's/Ohio's big cities.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

 

lol

Columbus may have a lot of sprawl, but it sure has a lot of nice brick urban neighborhoods as well. Most sunbelt cities lack that.

Columbus may have a lot of sprawl, but it sure has a lot of nice brick urban neighborhoods as well. Most sunbelt cities lack that.

um OK :|

 

Neil Ave... You would fall in love with the Victorians! German Village is cool too. I've never seen anything similar to it anywhere.

^German Village is definitely a great neighborhood, and that's coming from a Clevelander!

Apparently it's "let's get every thread off-topic" week here at UrbanOhio. Thanks folks - LOVE spending my time cleaning up your mess!  :roll:

 

So how do we get people to flee into our big cites, as Johio puts it? There has been a huge disconnect between cities and their suburbs to the extent that people living in the burbs of the 3Cs say that there's nothing to do downtown and/or it's crime-ridden etc, and then there are urban neighborhoods where they think that setting foot one step inside the neighborhood boundary will result in getting shot, robbed, and raped, all simultaneously. Some people who do this trash-talking haven't even visited their downtown for years and have never set foot in "that neighborhood". I know in Columbus you have downtown commuters who say there's nothing downtown, yet the only place they go is to work and then leave.

 

On the other side of the coin, the urban neighborhoods that have been going downhill do have more crime and residents that only perpetuate more problems, such as parents not caring about their kids' education or whether or not they're getting involved in thug/gang activity. These are obviously not people one would want as their neighbors and one of the positive aspects of unfettered gentrification is that this riff-raff gets pushed out, but that doesn't solve the problem since it just goes elsewhere and decent longtime residents who may have advocated for improvements get pushed out with them. If more urban pioneers move into some of these neighborhoods that show potential they can positively affect the local culture and serve as a role model where that may be lacking. There are also measures that can be taken to minimize negative effects of gentrification so that good residents that aren't high-income are able to stay put.

 

For many people here that do photography of various urban neighborhoods I think it's safe to say that more exposure to ones that aren't doing too well goes a long way in one's perception of these neighborhoods. The only hostility I received was on residential side streets where I was riding my bike in the road and it there was no way a car could fit by me. Photography-wise, I've only had people ask about me doing it and they were OK with it (The worst was up in a sub-neighborhood of Clintonville (white, upper-middle class) where I was berated for taking a picture of a woman's home without her permission and insinuated that I may have had something to do with some break-in's she had, all while I was on my Bianchi hybrid, wearing skinny Spanish jeans and a custom print T-shirt. The only thing she had to steal was bad taste in clothing, which I obviously wanted nothing of.).

 

I think the existence and emergence of more quality businesses in parts of C-bus  that people normally wouldn't set foot in ((King-Lincoln, Linden, Parsons Ave., etc) and the fact that people from other parts of the city are visiting them is a good sign, since that helps break down peoples' exaggerated fears. I know OTR is a great example of a concerted effort to do that in Cincy. What are some others and how successful are they/what could be done to improve them?

I watched Indianapolis downtown transform over the last 15 years. They gained 30-40,000 people downtown in the last 5 years alone and are still growing. The downtown neighborhoods are all restored and the poor got pushed out to the townships. In fact the reason I decided on Cincinnati is I know its headed the same way, just with better architecture and most people who live there have no clue whats coming over the next 5-10 years.

 

I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a few years, those foreclosed suburban McMansions are converted into Section 8 apartments. The burbs are horribly overbuilt and in my opinion unsustainable. People have a limit to how far they will drive. 

 

I watched Indianapolis downtown transform over the last 15 years. They gained 30-40,000 people downtown in the last 5 years alone and are still growing. The downtown neighborhoods are all restored and the poor got pushed out to the townships. In fact the reason I decided on Cincinnati is I know its headed the same way, just with better architecture and most people who live there have no clue whats coming over the next 5-10 years.

 

I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a few years, those foreclosed suburban McMansions are converted into Section 8 apartments. The burbs are horribly overbuilt and in my opinion unsustainable. People have a limit to how far they will drive. 

 

 

My reseach says there are approximately 19k people living in "downtown"/ "core" of indy.

We all know Cincy is way more urban and interesting than Indy will ever be. It's only a matter of time before people realize this to a greater degree than what is happening now. Indy is more like a subelt city except with a better downtown core than most. I was there twice within 2 weeks and just shook my head most of the time.

The flee from large cities has a lot to do with changes in modern capitalism and the recent recession. Ask all of the out of work white collar workers on Wall St. about what they want to do. They don't even want to go back. They want to do something else. Big cities provide highly competitive, stressful work environments. Work days are too long; people end up sacrificing too much of their family life, all while the higher ups are the ones truely getting wealthy off of it. People want to return to small towns where they can live a more balanced life and where their work can be less routinized with more focus on personal skill development. This will be a worldwide phenomenon. People in most of the world's largest cities will look for work in smaller, more intimate places.