http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,311.0.html

While the Gateway Quarter block in OTR is great and gives an example of how amazing the entire neighborhood could be, it just doesn’t look like much progress has been made further north even a block or two judging from the pics you took. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like residents in Cincy are just happy to rest on their laurels and just stick with what they’ve already got.

Columbus is certainly progressing more slowly than I’d like when it comes to moving beyond the Short North, but there are tangible improvements being made in numerous areas, particularly in the major west-side neighborhoods of Franklinton

http://columbusite.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2661&action=edit

and the Hilltop

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,23033.0.html

where new neighborhood events have attracted a good number of visitors and storefronts are now starting to be filled in their dense, but much too empty urban business districts on W Broad just a short drive from Downtown. Neither have the architecture of OTR or the buildings along the DeSales Corner, but momentum is building. I would like to go down south and be wowed by OTR and East Walnut Hills someday, but I just don’t get how people don’t see just how great these places would be with just a little bit of work. Still, it’s hard to complain about the ones that are in good condition.

My goal which isn’t exactly humming yet is to build a greater info and idea flow between Pittsburgh and the outside world. Cincinnati, is likely of not that much geographic interest in the way Youngstown, Cleveland, D.C. and Columbus might be but it’s just too similar and interesting to pass up.

My particular interest here is the intersection between, art, culture, urban design and regional economics so that’s sort of what I’m looking for. also, I guess I’m looking for practical ideas, actual examples of things that are and are not working etc…

My email is in the title page.

This insanity extends to taxation: If you happen to work in Cincinnati, and have a home in the Deer Park school district but technically live in Sycamore Township, payroll taxes for Cincinnati are taken and kept, while Deer Park takes the money and makes you fight to get it back (even though the school taxes are property-based, and the district has no connection to the crooked faux government of Deer Park!

Cincinnati is living proof of why the fondest dreams of Republicans don’t work. At some point, small governments become too responsive and deeply inefficient. Millions of dollars are blown across Hamilton County by tiny, useless government entities, responding to penny ante parochial concerns. There are probably more city council members, mayors, commissioners and elected local officials in this one county than there are members of the US Congress. They step all over each other’s initiatives, and water down resources to the point where nothing useful can be funded. Lots of micro-governments are inherently LESS responsive, because they’re resource starved. They can’t do big things because they lack the scale and credit of a larger community.

The end result is a terrible churn of people and resources. DHL closed a hub they’d invested millions to control in Wilmington (Warren County), and re-opened it at CVG across the river, after Wilmington’s tax breaks expired. Sara Lee moved from Cincinnati, to Blue Ash then to Northern Kentucky, again chasing tax breaks. The suburb of Sharonville built a deulling convention center to compete with facilities Downtown, which compete with facilities blocks away across the river. Robbing Peter to pay off Paul is the norm thanks to too many elected officials, responding to too many tiny, knee-jerking enclaves. Most of the programs and ideas coming out of these micro-governments are bad, none of them are vetted or correlate with broader urban plans.

Socially these enclaves aren’t especially positive or beneficial. They mostly exist to advance the interests of the well connected locals, not the broader community. Each community has it’s own little Hitler rich guys or homers who have lived there forever, calling all the shots for the benefit of themselves and their friends. If you’re in Montgomery and named Gregory, you get what you want. If you’re in Indian Hill and named Lindner, you set the speed limits. If you’re on the west side and named Luken, you get to be mayor or a seat in Congress after you get bored killing light rail and transport corriders that might bring opportunities to poor people, living in geographically inaccessible, disconnected neighborhoods you’ve zoned them into.

All of these ills stem from the same source: way too many little, useless government entities. We have to pay each of the literally HUNDREDS of city councilfolks at least $20,000/year to meet weekly to ruin our lives. We empower DOZENS of mayors to blow through tax dollars on whims. It adds up to stagnation. There’s nothing left over to actually get things done after you pay these clowns and fund their pet projects (usually benefitting their friends, family and others who need no charity).

Unigov would fix all this. But it can’t happen. The ethnic and social divisions are so deep that county residents would never stand for giving the majority city residents the opportunity to block their beloved local boondoggles. Barring major revolution in social attitudes, Cincinnati will always be a backwater.

Well, there you have it. This is a city like Pittsburgh who is so beautiful in so many ways, yet she sits in bed while her husband looks at photos of other women.

If people there, don’t appreciate the city, they need to market themselves to people who would.

This sort of thing happens a lot in Pittsburgh on The North Side where folks come into town to see a ball game or go to The Warhol, end up in The War Streets and start thinking about buying a house. Usually they are from somewhere like D.C. or San Francisco wher similar areas cost a fortune.

OTR just looks like that kind of place except on a much bigger scale. If folks in it’s suburbs don’t like the place they can just stay out.

My experience has been that Cincinnati has a long way to go before it’s actively fostering the city as the “Atlanta of the Midwest” as you seem to be suggesting. I mean they had major race riots in 2001. There was a LOT of racial tension.

I think that many in the metro area came to see OTR as the “black” neighborhood. It had an extremely high density of affordable housing for very low-income residents. Now every city has something like this area, but in Cincinnati, given the racial strife, it was magnified. While many other cities were revitalizing their best historic neighborhoods in the 90’s, Cincinnati did not seem to be making any sincere efforts until a few years ago. And I’m not just talking about the elected officials. The population at large it seems was stuck in the 60’s in terms of racial attitudes.

It appears that the riots in 2001 shook things up a bit. The City, through 3CDC, is working hard now to revitalize sections of OTR, and UC is working to revitalize Clifton. The Model Group, a local developer, is rehabbing some of the Section 8 housing into showcase affordable apartments. They have some of the nicest low-income housing I have ever seen (and that’s what I do). So things are starting to happen. I remember reading an article in 2002 that basically said if OTR was in a coastal city, it would have been revitalized years ago. But it was in Cincinnati, and the attitude was that we don’t waste money on that area.

If one was looking for a big historic urban type neighborhood with a nice street grid, nice structures, the potential for a great arts and shopping district and with a good black cultural scene and strong black middle class, how many choices would you have? How much would it cost to live or start a business there?

I’m not saying Cincinnati has all this in spades, but it sure looks like it has the bones and some structure to support the development of that kind of thing.

Even 15 years ago, the word black neighborhood painted a picture of a poor area and black inner city for sure meant that(even though that never was exactly true and that the people who painted these pictures were often racist). Now, one might think of Harlem or some parts of D.C. Atlanta or Brooklyn like Fort Greene or Bed Sty.

The next cutting edge is to see if one can create places like their used to be that were not so divided by class.

More importantly, blacks in Pittsburgh are being shoved or leaving the central areas of the city and there is no real successful place in the city for the black middle class.

I don’t mean to imply that some areas of the city like Shadyside, Friendship, Squirrel Hill or places like Manchester or The War Streets don’t have middle or upper income blacks or that they are actively discriminated against in those places. But, there just isn’t the kind of centered, thriving sense of community from what I can see. It’s a pocket here and a wonderful street there but the guts are just gone.

And, Pittsburgh is far from being alone. The fate of historically black communities in America is pretty grim. (Read the book Root Shock)

I just feel like this could be a real niche for Cincinnati as a wonderful centered urban place where black businesses and culture are welcome and at least not destroyed. Of course, if this drew other people too that also would be great.

OTR just looks like that could be a big part of that.