Aaron M. Renn

All Things Aaron

Suburbs and Sacred Space

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This post originally appeared in New Geography on June 7, 2013. Suburbs are often unfairly maligned as lacking the qualities that make cities great. But one place that criticism can be fair is in the area of sacred space. There most certainly is sacred space in the suburbs, but usually less of it than in the city both quantitatively and qualitatively. In fact, the comparative lack of sacred space is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the suburb that makes it “sub” urban, that is, in a sense lesser than the city. Lewis Mumford … [Read more...]

Why Does Louisville Have Better Restaurants Than Indianapolis?

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I was briefly back on the homefront earlier this month to check out the now fully opened Big Four Bridge pedestrian path across the Ohio River in Louisville. While there I spent some time in NuLu, a retail and restaurant district centered on Market St. just east of downtown, and had dinner at a French bistro type place called La Coop. This place focuses on what I'd call the basics - it's not trying to be a super high end kind of place. But I'm not going to lie, the undistinguished frites aside, the meal was spectacular front to back, and my … [Read more...]

The Uniqueness of Detroit’s Housing Stock

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[ I've posted a number of pieces by Pete Saunders here in the past. He's not just a great analyst generally, he's particularly great on Detroit. His post laying out nine reasons why Detroit failed has more page views than any other article in Urbanophile history. (The top four posts are all about Detroit, showing the powerful hold that city has on the public consciousness). In his blog, Corner Side Yard, he's bee revisiting that post to go in depth on each of his nine points. Today I'm pleased to be able to repost his analysis of Detroit's … [Read more...]

Columbus: Getting Fit For the Competition Ahead

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This is the last of my entries prompted by my recent trip to Columbus. I've noted before that Columbus and Indianapolis are twin cities in many ways, though with some important differences. One of those differences is that the civic discussion in Indianapolis today is heavily driven by the urgency of reversing the decline of Marion County as the city of Indianapolis increasingly loses out demographically and economically to its suburbs. In Columbus, by contrast, I didn't sense nearly the same concern about suburban competition. While again I … [Read more...]

Dallas: A City in Transition

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Dallas Skyline. Source: WikipediaI was in Dallas this past week for the New Cities Summit, so it's a good time to post an update on the city. I don't think many of us realize the scale to which Sunbelt mega-boomtowns like Dallas have grown. The Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area is now the fourth largest in the United States with 6.8 million people, and it continues to pile on people and jobs at a fiendish clip. Many urbanists are not fans of DFW, and it's easy to understand why. But I think it's unfair to judge the quality of a city without … [Read more...]

Los Angeles Union Station: Looks Great And Works Well, Too!

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This is part of the series North America's Train Stations: What Makes Them Sustainable or Not? Photo of welcome desk looking into the grand waiting room on the right and the former ticketing hall on the left; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Let me recap the theme of this series: to compete against the car and win over commuters, stations must ease connections between modes. How LA does this matters, nationwide, for it helps build a strategy that breaks transit out of today’s trap of red ink and taxpayer dissatisfaction. Transit’s case … [Read more...]

Columbus, Know Thyself

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After my "Checking In On Columbus" post last week I was surprised that quite a number of people in Columbus, though a minority, took great exception to it and posted a number of negative comments about the post and me. I had thought it was a mostly positive take and I'm long on record has being bullish about the city and its future. I asked someone I knew there about this and he suggested that Columbus had a history of insecurity, highlighting an incident a while back in which, upon visiting a fantastic Japanese restaurant in a suburban … [Read more...]

The Urbanophile Interview: Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman

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I was in Columbus last week, and while I was there I was able to sit down for an hour long conversation with Mayor Michael Coleman. We talked about Columbus' economic out-performance relative to the rest of Ohio, its secret sauce as a city, how it can gain better brand recognition in the market, Rust Belt self-disparagement, the city's bicentennial, the role of Ohio State, and whether the city needs to develop a signature claim to fame - plus more as well. If the audio player below doesn't display, click over to listen on Soundcloud. For … [Read more...]

Checking In On Columbus

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Fountain in a park, Victorian Village, Columbus, Ohio.I was in Columbus, Ohio for a couple days last week. I hadn't been there since my late 2010 Columbus Metropolitan Club presentation, and so it was good to get to check in and see how they were doing. I once called Columbus "the new Midwestern star," noting that they were one of those Midwest cities that's doing far better than the region's reputation would suggest. It's been growing at a reasonably rapid clip in both population and jobs, beating the US average significantly, though not … [Read more...]

Are States an Anachronism?

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This post originally appeared on July 11, 2011. Obviously states aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but a number of folks have suggested that state's aren't just obsolete, they are downright pernicious in their effects on local economies. One principal exponent of this point of view is Richard Longworth, who has written about it extensively in his book "Caught in the Middle" and elsewhere. Here's what he has to say on the topic: In the global era, states are simply too weak and too divided to provide for the welfare of their … [Read more...]