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 strip mall for an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s TV show, Columbus native Michael Ruhlman made a throwaway remark about it being surprising to find such a place in “Applebee’s country.” This provoked quite a firestorm of blowback in Columbus, leading Ruhlman to respond that he was only referring to the suburban setting, not Columbus as a whole, or so he claimed. Earlier this year the Columbus Dispatch, saying that “if there’s one activity Columbus loves, it’s cheerleading,” reported on a Reddit forum created as a safe place for unpopular opinions about Columbus.
When people who highlight good things about Columbus but aren’t 100% positive about it are attacked, that will hardly inspire anyone from out of town to want to cover the place. But beyond that it shows that Columbus is still laboring under insecurity about itself, for not much good reason if you ask me given that the city is very solid. It also shows this is a place unaccustomed to out of town press beyond the always positive travel piece genre.
I bring this up because today is my promised post about branding Columbus. Changing and elevating the brand position of a city or a company in the market is difficult in the best of times. It really challenges us to get out of our comfort zone. These experiences suggest – and I do mean suggest as I don’t want to read to much into limited data points – Columbus may not be ready to take that step. And it might explain why I hear leaders voice some of the same frustrations today that they did three and a half years ago.
If a city can’t accept any judgments from the marketplace that deviate from its self-perception, it’s going to be hard to move that market. Also, when you want to be known on a first name basis nationally, big a “world class city,” seen as a top tier urban player, etc. the scrutiny and the expectations are just going to be at a higher level. You can believe everything that happens in New York gets put under the microscope and poked at by people near and far. If you want to play at that level you have to accept that, flash in the pan hot cities of the moment excepted, there’s actually going to be more negativity about you than when the rest of the world didn’t care much about who you were. It comes with the territory.
As for my post, I corrected my misspelling of Franklinton and am happy to correct any other factual errors. It’s also clear that my perceptions are rooted in only a short visit. Nevertheless, I stand behind what I wrote.
What Is Your Ambition?
One of the Twitter responses to my post from someone named Craig Calcaterra brings up an interesting point, however:
Guy says Columbus has “yet to develop a compelling, unique brand positioning.” And acts like that’s a problem. http://t.co/PHbfZlwS62
– Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) May 29, 2014
The truth is that Columbus doesn’t have a powerful brand in the market outside of Ohio. Having said that, the city is growing rapidly in population and jobs, is extremely livable and improving day by day, and seems to make its residents very happy. Is there any reason the city has to be better nationally known in order to be complete or something?
I say No. As I said in my 2010 talk, there’s nothing really wrong with what the city is today. It’s a valid choice to simply stay with the status quo.
But while many citizens may indeed feel that way, the city’s leadership doesn’t. This was hammered home in a 2010 New York Times piece on the city’s rebranding efforts. That desire to be seen as a high caliber city at the national level clearly came through in my most recent trip, even from Mayor Coleman himself.
So I’ve been operating on the assumption that’s what the city wants. But it’s certainly not the only valid answer. I also tend to be personally biased towards high ambition, particularly in a place where it’s obvious that the ambition can be realized. Places like Detroit and Cleveland are really struggling to rebound from severe problems. And no matter how successful they are at it, they’ll never been as important and prominent places to the comparative level that they used to be.
By contrast, Columbus is both operating from a baseline of strength, and also at a point where it is still on the way up as a city. Whatever the deficiencies in its marketplace recognition, Columbus has never been a larger, more important, more prominent city in the world than it is right now – and it has the potential to reach still higher. For so many cities, their glory days will forever be behind them. But Columbus has the opportunity for its glory days to be ahead of it. Not every city and not every generation is granted the opportunity that Columbus has right now. So before taking a pass on going after it, think hard about it. Be sure you’re comfortable asking the “What if…?” questions years down the road.
Finding Columbus’ Mojo
But assuming the answer is go for it, then what needs to be done? I previously talked about the need to go beyond the checklist. Today I’ll more about the how to get there.
As I said, the first is to really be committed to change and going after the brass ring. Because I can tell you, this is not an easy journey to make. Some of the things you are going to have to do are really, really hard because they involve looking those civic insecurities right in the eyes, and also questioning perhaps your most fundamental and cherished truths, especially the truth about what you’re best at.
It’s very hard for cities to admit where they are weak, but it can actually be even harder for them to admit where they are strong.
One of the sayings of the Greek oracle was “Know Thyself.” Sage wisdom, indeed. Knowledge of yourself is often the most difficult to come by but valuable of commodities. Because as the saying goes, “Without awareness there is no choice.”
Where does a city get knowledge of itself that’s useful for branding? I argue it very often comes from the past. Cities didn’t just take their present form overnight. They are the process of a long process of growth and change. In particular, the founding ethos of a place profoundly stamps its character, usually in a permanent way. The Dutch trading culture and spirit of openness of New Amsterdam is still present in contemporary New York, for example.
When a new creative director comes in to revive a failing fashion house, what’s the first thing he does? He goes to the archives. He investigates the history of the house. What does this brand stand for? Who were the people who founded it? How did they become who they were? What happened along the journey of that house?
To use a hackneyed phrase, that new creative director wants to understanding the “Brand DNA,” and the key to the brand DNA is in the past.
I think that’s as true of Columbus as anyplace. Columbus certainly had good luck in getting where it is today, but I’d argue there’s more to it. One of their historical keys to success was a fateful decision in the 1950s to pursue an aggressive annexation strategy. You can say that was one mayor’s choice, but I believe the fact that it happened in Columbus and not elsewhere in Ohio was already signalling that there was something different about the city. What is it?
Midwestern cities always profoundly struggle with questions of identity. What is the identity of Ohio? It can be hard to articulate. Yet visit Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland and it’s clear they are three radically different cities. It hits you immediately. It’s like a cold bucket of water in the face. But we have trouble putting that uniqueness into words.
Why is Columbus an outlier in Ohio? How did it get that way? Why did Columbus choose to annex? How and why did Columbus become so gay-friendly ahead of many other cities?
There are tons of questions, but at the end of the day what you want to do is distill down the essence of the city’s mojo, Austin Powers style. And when you have that vial of mojo, that’s the secret sauce on which you build your future brand presence in the marketplace.
This is cultural spelunking. It’s an anthropological, archeological, historical deep dive into a city, its people and its culture. I’d suggest tapping into Ohio State’s cultural anthropology resources. There might even be a dissertation in it for someone.
Aspirational Narrative
One you have the mojo, you not only use it to build the future reality, you also sell it by telling the story of Columbus to the world. You need to create an aspirational narrative of the city that people can imagine themselves being a part of.
Think of the story of New York. TV shows like Friends, Sienfield, and Sex and the City have created a contemporary positive narrative of life in New York. People know what it’s about. If you can make it there, etc. (This wasn’t always the case. Escape from New York, Death Wish, and Fort Apache the Bronx told quite a different narrative in a previous era). Portlandia tells a story about the place where young people go to retire. Think about the Bay Area, LA, Miami, etc. and the stories come to our heads without much thinking.
What’s that story of life in Columbus? You create that story around the authentic mojo of the city.
Missing Genes
Beyond finding the mojo, there’s another key task that goes along with the investigation. That’s finding the missing or defective genes in the civic DNA that have been or will sabotage the city’s ambitions.
Everybody’s got a rap sheet. The only question is whether or not we know what’s on ours. When I was working in corporate America I’d tell people working for me that they should be expecting me to be giving them 3-5 substantive things that they need to improve on to make to the next level. My thought process is this: if I’m getting nothing but glowing feedback from my boss, if I’ve got nothing I need to get better at, why am I not the CEO of this company? Clearly, there’s a reason why I am where I am and not the President of the United States or something. If I’m not giving that same tough feedback to my own reports, I’m not doing them any favors.
It’s similar for cities. When a defect is external and easy to fix – say, building bike infrastructure – we tend to be pretty open to hearing it. But when things start getting into our character, our behaviors, things that are more personal in nature, it’s a lot harder. It gets uncomfortable. We’re probably blind to what others are seeing and thinking. We probably can’t see it ourselves. Change can be really, really hard. I dare say nearly every top level executive in America has turned to outside, professional coaching for at least some things they needed to get right. As my old boss once put it, even Tiger Woods has a coach. If elite athletes need coaches, how much more aspiring cities? That’s why I say the Ohio State history and anthropology departments might be good resources.
So Columbus needs to understand not just checklist items it is missing like a major transit investment, but also cultural items that are holding the city back and what they are rooted in. Then it can attack them with a change program that can hopefully work, like the civic equivalent of therapy.
On a related note though methodologically different, the city needs to be willing to take a hard look in the mirror and realistic assess its assets and accomplishments and how compelling they are in the market. The cold reality is that while Columbus is a great city in many ways and has lots of great stuff, what it has doesn’t add up to a nationally or globally compelling story. You need to take the marketing glasses off and ask how people who aren’t in or from the city are are going to see things.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you recategorize your assets as bad. But you have to understand that checklist items that lots of other cities are doing (e.g., bike infrastructure) are probably not going to set the city apart in the marketplace. If you don’t have it, you’re in trouble. But if you do, it doesn’t win the game. These things are just the new urban ante.
Illustrative Applied Examples
I want to give a quick examples – and let me stress this is provisional and speculative to some extent – illustrating these three points.
On the mojo front, the city’s previous branding effort that identified “smart” and “open” as two key civic attributes is right on in my view. It’s a good start. But why is Columbus open? That is, why is it easier for newcomers to acclimate, penetrate networks, accomplish things, etc. in Columbus than in many other places?
I speculate it’s rooted in being the state capital and is one legitimate advantage of that. I’ve seen a similar trait in other capitals. I speculate that because people from all over the state are coming to Columbus on political business, and because there’s always churn in elected office, civic networks don’t become closed and calcify in a sort of “Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown” effect.
For the missing gene example, I think it’s very possible that one reason Columbus didn’t create a compelling, unique product in the market is that it doesn’t have the civic mentality to do so. It’s just not in the civic DNA. One local leader I talked to speculated that the city’s values were shaped by those of Ohio State football and Woody Hayes. That is, the secret to success is to work relentlessly at the fundamentals and always be pounding the ball ahead with the running game – “three yards and a cloud of dust.” Not exactly the West Coast Offense. This may be too facile, but it is clear that Columbus excels at the fundamentals, at the blocking and tackling of city stuff, but hasn’t thrown the civic equivalent of the long bomb. This may be a DNA issue.
For the asset evaluation example, I think Columbus needs to be realistic about Ohio State’s stature. Ohio State is a great school, but it’s not Harvard or Stanford. I went to Indiana University and I’d say the same about them. Now, obviously you’d never come out in public and downplay Ohio State, which legitimately is a power house for the city. But you don’t want to mistakenly believe it’s doing to spawn the next Cambridge or Palo Alto without some major change either.
Forget It Jake, It’s Cow Town
I said earlier that it can be harder to acknowledge your strengths as a city than your weaknesses. My belief is that is doubly true for Columbus. To truly discover the secret of its mojo, Columbus needs to be willing to stare into the abyss of cow town.
Talk to people in Columbus and you’ll hear them claim that they are not a “cow town” anymore or how people used to refer to them as a “cow town.” I have seen this as an analogy to the case of Indianapolis and “naptown.” I’ve always doubted that hardly anyone outside of Indianapolis itself ever used the term Naptown historically as an insult. No one would ever have cared enough about the city to even bother insulting it.
Similarly, I’d never heard the term cow town until somebody from Columbus told me about it. I strongly doubt it’s ever really been a term of derision nationally, but it’s possible it was for some people in Ohio. I definitely know there’s a strain of Cincinnatian who loves heaping abuse on places like Columbus and Indy. As Columbus has grown while other cities in Ohio wandered in the wilderness, it’s easy for me to believe there’s been a lot of sniping. So while the market would never think of Columbus as cow town, there may be some legitimate in state reasons for them to be sensitive to the term.
The impression I get, again provisional based on my limited experience, is that in an attempt to rid itself of the stigma of being a cow town, Columbus has sheared off its past, in effect repudiating everything that happened before 1990 or 2000.
I observed to Mayor Coleman that Indianapolis in recent years has downplayed the 500 Mile Race. I asked him whether or not Columbus was similarly neglecting its greatest brand asset in the market by downplaying Ohio State football. He said, “No. There was a time in the 60s and 70s and the 80s, and even the 90s, where Columbus was nothing but Ohio State football. And I love the Buckeyes; I love the football team. It’s better than any professional team in the state of Ohio. And they’re still amateurs. That’s good. But having said that, Columbus is no longer just the Ohio State football team. We don’t view ourselves that way anymore [emphasis added].”
This is just one statement but it seems consistent with what I hear from other people. There’s an embedded idea here that there’s little to nothing of value in the city’s past and in fact that past is something to be embarrassed about or outgrown. I have never heard anyone from Columbus brag about their city and tout it for anything related to the past, apart from historic architecture. There may be historical things that are mentioned, but they are seen as valuable in reference to what is happening today. For example, the mayor went on to talk about the importance of Ohio State in terms of its contemporary research impact. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a city talk less about its heritage. I’m certain there is a proud heritage worth of celebrating, but I haven’t heard about it from people there. That lack of historic rooting may be one reason why the city can come across as somewhat generic.
As I’ve noted before, this is normal for us to go through. When we go off to college, Mom puts our high school letter jacket up in the attic. We try as hard as we can to fit in at the new level, and treat the stuff we left behind as little kids stuff.
But eventually we become comfortable in our own skin. We learn who we are and what we stand for, and we stop becoming so concerned about what other people think of us. Of course we are social creatures and will never stop caring about others’ perceptions of us. We keep growing and yes, follow fashions. But we find a healthier balance.
The same is true of cities. And as I noted at the top, from the insecurity I sense I’m not sure Columbus is far enough along in its growth path to really be comfortable being itself, and acknowledging and embracing its past.
This doesn’t mean Columbus should be or ever was a cow town. What it does mean is that things from its past that Columbus thinks are cow town are actually its strongest brand assets and things to be proud of and build its future on.
Let’s give some examples. The Midwest has a history of local, low grade lager brands. Virtually all of these were abandoned and ceased production. The hip, cool thing to do was to drink microbrews, not even Bud or Miller Lite, to say nothing of Sterling (my dad’s brand).
Then one day the hipsters on the coasts started drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, and all of a sudden back in the Midwest, we started drinking it too and now are relaunching or re-embracing all those old blue collar brands (including Sterling). The same thing happened with workwear clothing, which is now selling for quite a premium in some places and very popular among the Bearded Ones.
In effect, we had to re-import our own heritage after a bunch of other people elsewhere saw the value in it – the same heritage we rejected as “cow town.”
The clearest example of this is agriculture. The Midwest is all about ag. Ohio State is a huge ag power house. Columbus could have owned urban agriculture, farm to table, organics, etc. But it didn’t. And now it’s doing them, but it’s doing them as the follower, not the leader. It’s also listed “AgBioScience” as one of its economic clusters, but that’s an industry it could have gone after a long, long time ago.
Unfortunately, it was impossible for Columbus to ever have embraced agriculture until it had been reduced to a checklist item because to do so would have meant almost literally embracing “cow town.” It had to wait until the cognoscenti pronounced it safe. But then it was too late.
This is one of the tragedies of the Midwest. We turned away from our heritage and a bunch of guys in Brooklyn bought it from a thrift store for a song.
The South avoided this. Look at Nashville. Did they turn their back on country music as “cow town”? No, they embraced it as central to their identity past, present, and future. Of course they are more than country. But they kept it front and center. But they also updated it. It’s not the old AM radio country. It’s not Hee Haw. They respect those people and institutions and see them as in continuity with today, but they have evolved. Today’s it’s glitzier, more Hollywood. It’s “Nashvegas.” Think Carrie Underwood, not Minnie Pearl.
This is what it means to know thyself and build the future out of the authentic mojo of the past. Columbus surely has many things in its past and in its historic civic character that are of immense value. The question and the challenge to the city is being willing to find out what those are and own and embrace them and champion them as a key part of the mojo on which it will build its future reality and aspirational civic narrative.
I believe the potential is right there. The question is whether the city is ready and willing to step up and grab it.
In my four years living in Columbus, I never once heard a genuine expression of satisfaction with living in Columbus; not once. Columbus was a job or a degree, not a life. It sent people endlessly looking elsewhere for fulfillment; I survived countless descriptions of the wonders of other places while in Columbus. If people don’t share any enjoyable experiences of life, it makes for shallow and brittle social relations. That is Columbus’ issue – it doesn’t give people a way to connect to each other.
There is a transience to university towns, and sometimes a lack of energy in state capitals, so it would be interesting to note how Austin and Madison have dealt with this. Did the presence of Dell and other high tech firms in Austin give it the private sector employment to balance out all those public sector jobs? Does Columbus have enough small firms to overcome the institutional nature of some of its larger employers? Sorry to harp on the jobs side of things, but these do affect what kind of people a place attracts, how much independent civic leadership they bring, wealth levels, and a whole list of other factors that affect it socially. Atlanta has always had business zest, a Houston like swagger of money being made. Portland lacks that, which accounts for some of the “early retirement” vibe. Just how much do Columbus citizens want to make the place go? Is there a widespread sense of attachment to the place, that people have made it “home”?
Interesting article. Just a minor quibble which is I think cities in the Midwest that have turned away from their heritage are exceptions (and perhaps rare exceptions) rather than the rule. I can’t think of a single city in Wisconsin that I would characterize as turning away from their heritage. Same thing for Minnesota (with the Spam Museum in Austin being the most fearless embrace of a cultural icon that might not fully be respected by outsiders).
Also I stopped drinking PBR because it tasted bad. I have a Miller Lite by my side as I write this (not sure if it’s fashionable yet on the west coast). I have to admit, however, that the resuscitated Schlitz is actually pretty tasty and worth a purchase now and then (even if people on the west coast are drinking it because its cool).
Columbus does seem like an interesting place – I am there about twice a year for conferences. But it is:
(a) inconvenient to get to [aka a long drive]. That Amtrak doesn’t go to Columbus is just nuts. Why can’t I go from Detroit to Columbus…. that seems to be an obvious route. Ohio needs to get its game one with not just football but transportation. One can drive or fly; but given air-port transfers and security it is about the same amount of time to fly as to drive – for way more money.
(b) inconvenient to get around in. This reflects much the same problem as (a), except it is the city refusing to provide a solution rather than the state. I’m not going to journey recreationally somewhere where when I get there I’m stuck. I enjoy the time I am there, but the amount of exploring one can do is extremely limited – especially on weekends.
(c) Most of Columbus is nice looking, and there is some great architecture. But directly across the street from the campus is a trash heap; the liter is out of control. I’ve seen out-right slums with less trash everywhere. This is not appealing; for first-timers it really makes an impression – they may assume the rest of the city looks like that too. People I’ve talked to have been surprised I would walk from campus the almost two miles to my hotel, at night, as the place *looks* dangerous. Also, see point (b) about not being able to get around conveniently.
Aaron’s piece here is good, but it seems to boil down to a familiar (and accurate) theme — why are so many Midwest cities so insecure?
What’s said here about Columbus is often true of Indy. As cities that were far less reliant on manufacturing for their growth, I think both cities expose their insecurities relative to more established Midwest cities like Chicago, St. Louis or Cincinnati. Yet, those cities are insecure (even Chicago) relative to coastal cities.
Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland suffer from insecurities related to their economic loss. Milwaukee literally sits in Chicago’s shadow.
The insecurity of Midwest cities, and the related false arrogance that often surfaces to cover it, is a real problem. They’ll never realize their potential, whatever it is, if the locals always feel they have something to hide.
I will never forget the puffery embodied in the 80s Indy tourism slogan “Move over, New York, ‘Apple’ is our middle name.”
Frankly, I think the city has come a long way since then and doesn’t “suffer from insecurities” as much as other places might. After all, we had a Super Bowl and a Grand Prix before New York figured out how to get them.
Most of us are honest about the city’s faults and realistic about its growth prospects…which, with Columbus and Minneapolis, are the best in the region over a long period now.
And while most folks don’t think of Indy as “Rust Belt”, I assure you that when I came here in the early 80s, this was a manufacturing city with tens of thousands of manufacturing and service jobs: Ford, Chrysler (2 separate plants), RCA (3 separate plants making TV components, LPs, and videodiscs) and a division HQ, GM, Western Electric, PR Mallory, International Harvester, JennAir (the original indoor cooktop grill), Allison Engine, Allison Transmission, Link-Belt, Diamond Chain, Olin Brass, Indianapolis Rubber, Eli Lilly. Only Allison, Lilly, and Diamond Chain survive as major employers.
As the Federal government has devolved responsibilities onto the states, state capital cities have become centers of rent seeking; Indy is no exception, and growth in state government has complemented eds and meds to replace many of the jobs lost in manufacturing.
Columbus is doing very well, and it will continue to do so, in no small part because it is well placed. Pittsburgh is an old, decaying, dying city with impassable geography, a street system that is terrifying and dangerous, and a horrible Interstate system. As the last outpost of civilization heading East prior to the mountains, Columbus can expect the trend to continue of it being chosen over Pittsburgh for all cultural and economic activities, and it can expect to continue to bleed economic activity away from Pittsburgh.
Columbus has a very good street system, wonderful flat topography, great Interstate coverage, lovely parks, attractive neighborhoods and suburbs, and the density is not so high as to be a turn-off for the successful demographics.
Most cities wish they had such wonderful amenities as are found at Easton or Polaris.
Keep it up, Columbus. Continue to set the example for how a modern, livable city should be.
Having grown up in Columbus and then moved to Cincinnati for school, the thing that struck me the most about Cincinnati was how locally-minded the people were. They knew their city’s history inside and out and are very proud of their long-established neighborhood identities. I understand some of that may not be shared to the same degree or in the same way in all other Midwestern cities as it is in Cincinnati, but the reason it stood out to me was because so little of that exists in Columbus.
I was always fascinated by Columbus’ history and took the time to comb the archives at the Ohio Historical Society or read the headstones at Greenlawn Cemetery but very few others seemed to realize what the city had. Columbus seemed to be for most people a city to move to for school, stay for a job in government or finance, and watch your kids move away from when a city with cultural heritage was important to them. I wish that would change because Columbus has a really cool story!
Why is Columbus an outlier in Ohio? The answer is pretty simple: Ohio State. When you’ve got the state’s most important college in town, it makes a huge difference. That’s why Ann Arbor and Bloomington are outliers in the neighboring states of Michigan and Indiana. Throw in the fact that Columbus is the state capital of the country’s 7th largest state, and even the most incompetent leadership would be somewhat successful.
Imagine if Indianapolis had the University of Indiana! We’d be going about how the city leaders are geniuses right now. But alas.
Of course, one could reasonably ask why Lansing – both a state capital and home to Michigan State – isn’t as successful as Columbus. Well, I could make 3 arguments against Lansing:
1. Michigan State is based in the separate city of East Lansing, which prevents Lansing from fully realizing its benefits. 2. Michigan State is overshadowed by Michigan, and Lansing is somewhat overlooked because of it’s proximity to Detroit (it’s only a 40 minute drive to Lansing from the outer limits of Detroit sprawl). 3. Ohio is a bigger state and has continued to gain population, while Michigan has stagnated.
Bottom line, give the capital of one the largest states and its most important university, and you’ll turn me into a decent mayor.
Columbus, Amazing…you’re proving Aaron’s point.
@Aaron:
First, I think the claim of insecurity is misplaced. You can literally choose any city and you will get the same kind of reaction by some in any real or perceived negative comment. I don’t think it’s exactly fair to take a characteristic common of everywhere else and try to ascribe it to an underlying inferiority complex in Columbus. Sure, some people may feel that way, but there is an even more likely scenario: Those people like where they live and feel some things being said were/are incorrect. Or simply put, people may disagree with the conclusion. I don’t think disagreement alone, or even passionate disagreement, automatically equates to widespread insecurity.
Second, regarding the branding… I absolutely agree that Columbus doesn’t have one, or at least not a very strong one. When people think about Columbus, if they think about it at all, very few things come to mind. I also don’t think branding can be forced. It has to come organically, imo. You can’t just come up with a new catchphrase and hope it sticks. It has to be something real, something that makes sense and is something that is truly unique to the place in question. Given that Columbus is still in this nebulous phase of growth and change, perhaps one of the reasons that city leadership has been unable to come up with something is because that brand has simply not emerged yet into the public realm. As you have said, Columbus does a lot of things right, but no one thing spectacularly. To try and force a brand now doesn’t make sense to me, and so far, it hasn’t needed to anyway. It’s doing just fine without it.
You bring up transit, and I would definitely agree that that is probably one of Columbus’ greatest weaknesses. I once looked into the history of rail in the city and there have been multiple proposals put forth between 1977 when passenger rail service ended through 2007, when Mayor Coleman was pushing for streetcars. In general, the city seems to have suffered from an incredible string of bad luck and bad timing. There was never a proposal in which all the factors needed quite came together to make it happen. The last streetcar proposal, for example, died because of the Great Recession combined with the election of Kasich, who has been anti-rail for decades (and helped kill an earlier proposal in Columbus back in the 1980s). Recently, the city has again brought up rail and a first city line is in study (along with a Chicago-Columbus HSR line), so it may finally start happening.
The Cow Town thing seems to have murky origins, but probably came from the idea that a LONG time ago, it is said that livestock grazed the Statehouse lawn. Today, I don’t think most residents of the city actually know or use the term. It’s almost exclusively used by others outside of Columbus (in Ohio mostly) as an insult. Personally, it never bothered me as a native. If that’s the worst thing Columbus’ detractors can come up with, that’s pretty mild stuff.
I don’t agree with your assessment on OSU at all. At some point, the city started to grow beyond just that one thing. It’s obviously still important and people still love it, but I don’t think recognizing that your city is growing beyond the point of putting all the focus on a single entity is the same as trying to abandon or distance yourself from it. It’s just a reality of becoming larger. The more things you have, the more your interests begin to diverge into other things as well. It has nothing to do with being embarrassed about OSU or football.
@Matthew Hall
You are basically the kind of Cincinnati detractor that Aaron mentioned. I have no idea what your experience in Columbus actually was, but there is nothing about the city itself that should or would induce the kind of vitriol and bitterness you hold towards it.
However, I do agree with you on the Columbus, Amazing poster. There is no reason to tear down other cities to make your own look better (hint hint). All cities have their own challenges, positives, flaws, etc.
George V., it’s “Indiana University”. Significant numbers of students in its key graduate schools (biz, law, med/nursing/dental, art, and public/environmental affairs) are in Indy where IU programs dominate IUPUI. OSU has about 13,000 grad students in Cbus; IUPUI has about 8,000 in Indy (along with 22,000 undergraduates).
There is, in fact, a big state university in Indy just as there is a big one in Cincinnati (UC) and several big ones in Greater Cleveland/Northeast Ohio (Kent State, Cleveland State, Akron, Youngstown State). I think “big state/major university” is necessary but not sufficient to make for metro area growth. See Lansing.
One key difference between Ohio State and the Michigan and Indiana schools is that Michigan and Indiana established separate A&T campuses from their “general” state universities in the 19th century, while Ohio State deliberately became a combined university in the 1880s.
@Chris…
The history thing is interesting and I agree with you that Columbus residents, for the most part, aren’t really aware of what came before them. The city does have as rich a history as most others, but it’s just not very well known. Regarding the difference in that between Columbus and Cincinnati, the most obvious reason may just be their respective current states. Columbus is growing at a fairly decent rate, and attracts positive in-migration domestically and internationally. There are plenty of residents who are not native, much more so than in Cincinnati, Cleveland, etc. These newer residents are likely going to be less well-versed in the history of their chosen place of residents than perhaps the natives would be. Cincinnati has a reputation, fair or not, of being a bit provincial, and I think that’s because the population it has has pretty much always been there, just as their relatives were. That’s just not as much the case in Columbus.
@Chris Barnett: OK, sorry, Indiana University. I realized my mistake shortly after posting. And you’re right that IUPUI is huge for Indianapolis, and a significant component of the city’s success. However, to compare U of Akron or even U of Cincinnati to Ohio State is wrongheaded. Ohio State is, arguably, a top 50 American university. The others you mentioned aren’t even top 100.
Ohio State, I believe, also gets double the state funding of the next closest Ohio university in terms of funding, U of Cinci. You don’t think Columbus benefits from that extra $150 million in public funds?
“See Lansing.” I already explored the example of Lansing, and to throw it back at me as a way to support your own argument is, as they say, weak sauce. IF Michigan State and U of Michigan were switched in stature and state funds, and the university was within Lansing’s borders, then we’d have a fair comparison to Columbus. As it is, I think it’s easy to see why Michigan State does less for Lansing than Ohio State does for Columbus.
Also, I do want to make it clear that I still believe Lansing does benefit greatly from being the state capital and being attached to Michigan State. If you took away those two factors, Lansing would turn into Saginaw or Flint overnight.
I really don’t think Columbus boosterism can come close to Cleveland boosterism.
So apparently, the lack of general historical awareness about Columbus does have the benefit of making it much more inclusive and even welcoming to newcomers–e.g. one less social barrier to penetrate in order to fit in and be considered a true Columbusite.
The tradeoff is the lack of extensive cultural and historical depth and richness about the city that we find in say, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. The upshot of this, however, is that these cities that are more heavily steeped in their own history and cultural tradition are generally more difficult for outsiders to break into, particularly when you didn’t grow up there and don’t have all of the childhood memories to share of the summertime and holiday traditions that the locals do, speak the same local dialect (e.g. Pittsburghese), understand the local cuisine, etc. It means that you go to Valvoline or Pennzoil for an oil change and get prompted with “which high school did you go to?”
Honestly, I think both types of cities have their rewards and benefits, though Columbus being in the former category is a real advantage in an age that requires greater flexibility and mobility, as well as fewer barriers for access. As Aaron pointed out, we do see this approach toward reduced access as an historical pattern, ironically enough, dating back to the city’s aggressive annexation policy instituted in the 1950s. Sure, the tradeoff has been tons of sprawl throughout Central Ohio and a wildly abstract (and still changing) map of the city proper, but the sprawl would have happened regardless of what Columbus did or didn’t do because of economic policies coming down from higher up the chain. For whatever reason, Columbus’ leaders chose to get out in front and ride the crest of that wave, rather than to be smashed by it the way Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh’s leaders allowed their cities to be.
Not sure where I’m going with all this, except maybe to suggest that a theme of “open access” may be central to Columbus’ identity dating back throughout its history? It could very well be something that the city should embrace as a quintessential image and marketing point.
Jon, Columbus, Amazing is the kind of thin-skinned defensive Columbuser that Aaron described. Having the ability to distinguish the message and the messenger is important.
@Jon & @EJ,
I agree. Cincinnati is provincial and harder for outsiders to break through than most Midwestern cities and that has serious drawbacks as well (which many Cincinnatians recognize). I think Columbus takes “open to all” almost to the opposite extreme, though, where once you’re in there’s no reason to stay. Both cities have work to do in finding some medium that both welcomes newcomers and gives them a story to belong to.
What city do people from Toledo put down in order to prop their city up? Mansfield? Ft. Wayne?
Anecdotal – I was working at RCA in South Jersey in the mid-80’s when one of my co-workers returned from a conference in Columbus, and described it as a “cow town”. For all I know, he was repeating something that a local (or perhaps someone visiting from Cincy) had said to him. I’ve never heard that before or since, and I remember that comment because I thought at the time “Columbus? Cow Town? Since when?”
I’ve always associated Columbus as a state capital and with OSU, as I’d guess most people do. Frankly, I’d go with that if I were Columbus. Not exactly horrible things to be associated with, and we’re not going to have 200 “high tech centers”, “medical clusters”, or “world-class cultural cities” in the country.
@EJ – Yes, I was thinking about this point as well. I’m a large believer that leaders and change agents within cities need to understand history to be effective, but a relative lack of awareness of city history “average” citizens may actually be the symptom of the positive trend of newcomers moving in. So, a city council member that has no historical awareness of the city’s history and starts throwing out radical proposals is probably not a good thing, but the fact that a lot of people on the street aren’t aware of city history because they’re newcomers isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.
On the flip side, I wonder if some of the older cities in the Midwest use historical superiority as a crutch at certain points. I’m not an Ohio native at all, so it’s interesting to see the various stereotypes that Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus people have of each others’ cities. To Aaron’s point, when your best days are behind you as a city, you’re going to look at things a lot differently than a city whose best days are ahead of it (like Columbus). So, do some of the older line Rust Belt cities get *too* focused on history to the point that they’re incapable of moving forward? From a high level overview, that seems to be a much more dangerous way of thinking for a city than it is for a place that’s in the position of Columbus with a lot of newcomers.
@Frank, interesting question. In community revitalization work, we try to do “asset based community development”, and often the assets are historical building stock or historical events that an area can capitalize on for “authenticity”.
Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati certainly seems like such a place, and it gets a lot of press generally and within the development/redevelopment field.
I am not sure where the line is between a focus on the history or “golden era” of a place (bad), and capitalizing on an authentic brand (good). Focusing entirely on the cultural assets of the last century (grand libraries and music halls and symphonies and museums) might fall into the “golden age” category.
I live in a place where every May, we walk that fine line as some old-timers bellyache about the changes to the Speedway and the modern Indy 500…our “authentic brand”. Yet attending the 500 is still a top-50 bucket list item for many folks because of its iconic status, and every year a couple hundred thousand people still come to the track. They aren’t all old and gray (as the crowd at a concert featuring the Eagles or Rolling Stones would be); it’s only an asset if people continue to value it and hand down an appreciation.
This is a long-winded way of saying yes, I think some places may focus too much on history and not enough in a forward-looking way on their “authentic” offerings today.
“On the flip side, I wonder if some of the older cities in the Midwest use historical superiority as a crutch at certain points.”
Oh, without a doubt. It makes me almost sick to stomach when Detroiters go on about how great cities can’t die. They’ll say ridiculous stuff about how Rome another world cities had ups and downs, as if that somehow applies to Detroit. Essentially, there’s a sense among Detroit boosters that because it was a top 5 city during America’s boom years, its importance and relevance is forever sealed.
From what I’ve seen, many older Ohio cities suffer similar delusions. Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, a graphic novel, does a great job illustrating the problem through the lens of Terminal Tower. For decades, Cleveland citizen’s pointed to the skyscraper as proof of the city’s importance. All that time, however, Cleveland was in fact losing ground, and the later construction of the Key Tower visually demonstrated the long-term insignificance of Cleveland’s past triumphs. America is a “what have done for me lately?” country.
One of Columbus’ strengths is that it’s not tied down as tightly to the Rust Belt legacy. Unlike Detroit or Cleveland, Columbus doesn’t harbor under the illusion that another magical economic boom is just around the corner. The city makes smart bets that either pay off or have minimal negative repercussions. For example, Columbus has a casino, but it’s on the relative outskirts. Detroit and Cleveland hedged significants chunks of downtown real estate gambling ventures.
That says it all.
The only thing Columbus, Amazing said about Pittsburgh that was even close to the bullseye was the lousy Interstate system. And even then, that’s not totally accurate either, considering I-376 is the only Interstate in the area that’s neither modern nor being modernized as we speak. I-79 and I-279 are both built to modern Interstate standards already, and so is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, though it’s being reconstructed and widened to six lanes anyway. I-70 isn’t built to modern standards right now, but it will be by the end of the decade as reconstruction continues between I-79 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
http://www.i-70projects.com/
This website highlights the improvements being made to I-70 between the West Virginia state line and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
http://www.paturnpike.com/improve/improve_map.aspx
Many parts of the Pennsylvania Turnpike have been widened to six lanes already; and the map shows which other parts will soon be.
So yeah, I-376 is a joke of a highway, but that’s all that Columbus, Amazing even got right.
@DBR96A, Pennsylvania has some of the worst infrastructure I’ve ever seen. Glad to see I-70 being upgraded as that road is horrible.
Pittsburgh’s freeways may have modern geometrics to some extent, but are very narrow and there aren’t many of them. I’ve argued before that this probably helped downtown Pittsburgh as suburb to suburb commuting is difficult there. But beyond the interstates, there are massive numbers of deteriorating bridges in Pittsburgh. Big infrastructure overhang.
As a grad of a B10 school not named OSU (MSU is more closely associated with Detroit and Grand Rapids), the bottom line is that there is nothing really that stands out as a reason to move to Columbus. Nothing particularly unique or interesting about downtown, topography, waterways, urbanism, parks or really much else. It’s truly a postmodern automobile city in the mold of Detroit urbanism. So they have a nice collection of Fortune 1000 companies and have annexed enough land to continue to grow, nothing to get worked up about or become a sprawl apologist for.
Aaron,
Columbus owes you a big thanks for taking the time to say what needed to be said. I have to wonder if any other outsiders have so thoughtfully considered the city. As someone who used to live there, I truly hope they take your analysis and advise to heart.
Chris, central neighborhoods of Cincinnati are seeing more new construction and major rehabbing than they’ve seen in a generation. Cincinnati was resting on its laurels in the 90s, not today.
@Frank the Tank, who said: “So, a city council member that has no historical awareness of the city’s history and starts throwing out radical proposals is probably not a good thing…”
On the contrary, I think some cities, such as Indianapolis, would benefit immensely from electing a few more outsiders who would inject some new ways of thinking. My opinion is that the locals far too often dismiss/don’t seek new ideas and languish in the “but we’ve always done it this way” philosophy. It makes me wonder how many of Indy’s 29 City County Councilors are transplants or have at least spent significant time outside of Indiana. I don’t know, but I’d guess very few.
You folks are funny. It’s an odd world where reality and fact are “defensive.” People love suburbs. Drive around 270, and look at what a fantastic place Columbus is.
It’s also a fact that between Indiana and Philadelphia, Columbus will continue to be chosen as the preferred home of corporations, retail and new housing.
“nothing to get worked up about or become a sprawl apologist for”
I don’t understand what this means. Sprawl is great. Who “apologizes” for sprawl? We thank leaders for sprawl. People love sprawl. People love cars. People love driving. The automobile has made America a great place to live. Room to stretch out. Not having to see your neighbors.
Do you want to return to this hell?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1HwP9iV9Bsk/THCkEt-mUNI/AAAAAAAAGwY/9QYgz-qIFFI/s1600/monday-washing.jpg
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/timeline_photos/1900_lrg_fullsize.jpg
No, thank you.
This is a much better way to live:
http://www.womansday.com/cm/womansday/images/eO/02-suburban-home-lgn.jpg
There are an unlimited number of “facts”. No one has a monopoly on them and they do not speak for themselves. Here are a few ‘facts’.
Total Number of Jobs for the Metropolitan Statistical Areas of Cincinnati and Columbus
Cincinnati, April 2011 — 991,00: April 2014 — 1,040,600.
Columbus, April 2011 — 920,500: April 2014 — 983,400.
Here’s the links for my “facts” in the previous post.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMU39171400000000001?data_tool=XGtable
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMU39181400000000001?data_tool=XGtable
Matt:
I’m not sure why you think being a Columbus fan makes me anti-Cincinnati. Big Cincy fan. Love Cincy.
@Aaron – One paragraph I wanted to focus on from your post:
“For the asset evaluation example, I think Columbus needs to be realistic about Ohio State’s stature. Ohio State is a great school, but it’s not Harvard or Stanford. I went to Indiana University and I’d say the same about them. Now, obviously you’d never come out in public and downplay Ohio State, which legitimately is a power house for the city. But you don’t want to mistakenly believe it’s doing to spawn the next Cambridge or Palo Alto without some major change either.”
I agree that Ohio State isn’t Harvard or Stanford, but we shouldn’t give it short shrift. It’s very much a graduate research peer of UW-Madison, UT-Austin and the University of Minnesota and is higher ranked in the US News undergrad rankings than the latter 2 schools. All 3 of those schools are the anchors of the state capital/flagship university combos that are powering their respective cities. Plus, even in comparison with its Big Ten peers, Ohio State is a *massive* school. It has over 57,000 students compared to 42,000 at UW-Madison. (That’s the equivalent of taking UW-Madison and then adding on the combined undergrad and grad student population of Northwestern.) Ohio State has the academic bona fides and sheer numbers of students as UT-Austin. Whether Columbus is fully maximizing OSU in the way that Austin is maximizing UT-Austin is another matter.
When you think about it, Columbus is really the only Midwestern city that can really be an Austin or Raleigh-Durham-type town based on the combo of education, state government and solid corporate business. (Minneapolis is too big with other items outside of its educational sector by comparison and Madison is too small.) That’s a combo that a lot of mayors would kill to have.
Columbus, Amazing, At least you aren’t completely delusional.
Columbus’ ability to adapt and change rapidly with the shifting sands of the economy and culture is laudable in many ways, but may also be part of what’s holding the city back from forming its own identity. It’s a chameleon city, one that mimics what other cities are doing well with surprising speed and efficiency (be it expansion and mall sprawl in the 1960’s-1990’s or urbanization and bike transit development today,) but it rarely seems to be the innovator nor does it quite seem to reach the point of being “the best” at anything. A case in point that’s mentioned upthread, tOSU is a very good school, in the top 10 among public schools in most fields, but that seems to be because it absorbs the best practices of the other schools in the top 10 without typically initiating these practices itself.
It’s no wonder then, that there’s a rivalry between citizens of Columbus and nearby Cincinnati, which has preserved a unique and insulated culture that’s really distinct from anywhere else in the US. Cincinnati is a lot slower to embrace the best practices of other cities, and it does not embrace what’s popular elsewhere very well (which is why it was like pulling teeth just to get a single PBL in the city) but at the same time the city is much better at embracing unique cultural oddities whether they’re old (like its May Festival or Mercantile Library) or new (like Waterfields’ urban hydroponic jobs initiative, or grilled cheese donuts) not really found anywhere else, and in this way seems more likely to spur innovation.
So I wonder how to push Columbus into the kind of experimentation that goes against the grain of the Midwest mindset, but still maintain its ability to absorb ideas and shift with the changing times. I think in some ways it actually has to stop looking at what the rest of the country is doing for a little while. In its pursuit to separate itself from the other two C’s as best in Ohio, it has taken so much of what it’s seen outside the Midwest but has lost its own identity in the process. It has opportunity now to gain it back by finding truly innovative and unique solutions to what I think are its two largest issues: transit and cultural vibrancy (these could actually go hand in hand, e.g. Montreal’s licensed subway musicians.)
@Frank,
US News ranks tOSU #52 among national institutions, behind 15 other big state universities. Northwestern, Michigan, Penn State, Illinois, and Wisconsin rank better overall, which puts tOSU in the middle five of the B1G with Maryland, Purdue, Rutgers, and Minnesota. When you drill down and look at most broad program areas, it’s not at the top of its conference (or better than neighboring B1G schools), so its out-of-state draw is limited. It isn’t even the best-rated “national university” in Ohio (Case Western ranks higher.)
I’d conclude tOSU has no clear advantage over its B1G neighbors except its sheer size, which makes it “pretty good” in most program areas. Its in-state discount will draw many top Ohio students who couldn’t afford better programs elsewhere, and its huge size assures a large and stable employment base of reasonably well-paid professionals with eclectic interests and tastes to be met in the local economy.
I’d agree that tOSU leads B1G institutions in size, marching band, and (usually) football.
Incidentally, Texas-Austin is the top-ranked Big 12 university, tied in the US News ranking with tOSU, and Austin passed Columbus at the 2010 Census and continues to grow 2-3x Columbus’ pace. But Austin’s average daily low temp in January is 41; Columbus’ is 23, and it is clear that climate (both in the physical and social senses) may be playing a bigger role than the respective universities’ size and quality. There’s that whole “weird” thing. 🙂
Kendall, are you referring to streetcars, wildly successful urban development corporations, or new corporate headquarters when you say “Cincinnati is a lot slower to embrace the best practices of other cities.”?
Matthew, be careful not to show the same issue with Cincinnati that happens with Columbus when it comes to citizens unable to recognize their city’s flaws as well as its strengths. I would argue that the large # of corporate hq’s are a sign of the city’s ability to embrace the totally unique (a headquarters by definition can only be located in one place) rather than showing an ability to embrace the best of other cities. The streetcar, meanwhile, was within hours of being derailed altogether and has been scaled back in scope because of opposition, and 3CDC continues to be resistant to a truly integrated social milieu, instead concentrating poverty and homeless shelters by moving them all to Queensgate in a sort of “out of sight, out of mind” attempt at a solution while it focuses on redeveloping OTR. The city was one of only two in the US (along with San Antonio) to see an increase in its poverty levels after the Great Recession. There are truly good things going on in both these cities, but there’s also plenty of opportunity for both to do better, and actually working together on regional solutions rather than against each other should be a part of that.
Regarding Columbus’ history, I was truly shocked when I moved here that there is almost no acknowledgement that Columbus even has a history. Granted, I moved from New England, where everyone rests their civic laurels and egos on their deep history, at the expense of the present (much like some older Midwest metros do), but I was really shocked that Columbus, in its rush to be bigger and move forward(because of its inferiority complex to Cleveland and Cinci IMO) basically forgot where it came from.
I have learned some interesting nuggets over the years.
For example, Columbus was the first home to the headquarters of the National Football League. A local paper wrote that up a few years back, and I remember even local leaders being like, ‘Huh, I never knew that”.
Contrast that to New Haven, where I grew up. I remember the former Mayor once declaring the end of “Scharterburg Syndrome”, when they began to redevelop a lot where the old, beloved store once sat downtown. The message was that they needed to move beyond the past, in which they were stuck.
I have to agree, while Ohio State is not Stanford or Harvard, it’s Columbus’ calling card. It’s so big that Columbus can legitimately be called one of the largest college towns in America- after Boston, it has the highest density of students.
It also lends a lot to that openness and transience that Aaron noted. We definitely have a lot of new blood coming in here, even from other nations, and if they leave they are quickly replaced. A lot of cycling in and out.
Maybe re-branding us “college City USA” would work. To me it defines us as a progressive educational center without leaning too heavily on the “football factory” label that I think makes locals shy away from embracing it as our brand.
You know, come to think of it, we might have our own version of “what high school did you go to?”. When you mention college, people here will ask, “Did you go to Ohio State?”
I would say it’s more than a 50% chance that a person you meet will 1) not be from Columbus originally and/or 2) attended Ohio State. You stand out a bit if you’re from Columbus or did not attend OSU.
@George Mattei
I think College City may be a good start, it helps that some of Columbus’ best known businesses (such as L Brands, Abercrombie and Fitch, even Nationwide to some extent) are geared and market heavily toward that college aged or millenial demographic. It could also help own the city’s “cheerleader” culture rather than shying away from it. From the wind/marching bands, civic cheerleading, to yes, the jocks, the city does seem to have a lot of a collegiate identity already ingrained.
I’ve been visiting Columbus for well over 15 yrs for work and play, my lovely daughter was conceived there. Columbus is to be commended for slowly building up Short North, Germantown, the Brewery District, the botanical garden, Franklinton to name a few. Disparaging comments about Columbus, I’ve never heard them maybe that is a local phenomenon. It’s my understanding Columbus has the largest retention of college grads than any other college town.
Columbus Ohio is light yrs ahead of where it was 15 yrs ago when I first visited, it and Indy are sister cities. I’ve been to all major and second tier cities in this country, Columbus, Indy, Charlotte, Pittsburgh all fly under the radar as cities on the move.
Don’t listen to the haters, Columbus keep doing what your doing, you’ll be just fine.
After stewing on it for a few days I think the real brand image at the end of the day might be Columbus, OHIO. Ohio is a massive diverse state and Columbus, from the day it was founded to the present exists as the capitol, meeting point, and microcosm for the state.
Rather than attempting to get rid of the “,Ohio” as so many, including myself, would like to do, perhaps the city should embrace the fact that we are Ohio’s city. Not only do we function as the capitol of the state but we also have the ‘diaspora’ from every city and town around the state which has melted together to form a culture that embraces “Ohio” (including Ohio State) more than I see elsewhere around the State.
Kendall, You weren’t careful to show your bitter resentments of Cincinnati. Much of the your description is of the municipality of Cincinnati, not metro Cincinnati. Aaron is describing metro Columbus. He wasn’t limiting himself to the particular issues of the municipal government of the city of Columbus. He was describing metropolitan Columbus in its entirely. Columbus has no 3cdc, no streetcars, nor as many corporate headquarters as Cincinnati. These are ‘facts’. Use they as you wish.
Matthew, has it ever occurred to you that the reason Cincinnati as been in relative decline versus the rest of the country for 150 years now is because of the ridiculous arrogance about how great the city is held by all too many of its residents, of which you are Exhibit A? You are nothing but a propaganda machine for Cincinnati. And obviously an insecure one as well since you can’t let it drop at just boasting about your own city, you feel the need to tear down other places too. Cincinnati is never going to reach any of its legitimate potential if its residents all think like you. You’d be better off focusing on making Cincinnati better and addressing its actual problems instead of just posting your talking points about how Columbus sucks, Cincinnati rules.
I have to chuckle reading the pissing contests between some of these commentors. A rivalry can be a lot of fun but don’t take it too seriously. Living in Cincinnati I can just say that I am pleased that both the Columbus and Cincinnati metro areas are improving in most metrics. I love the uniqueness and ongoing improvement and revitalization of my city’s downtown and Over The Rhine Core. I also enjoy visiting friends in Columbus who closely resemble “Columbus Amazing” on this comment thread. I know I will always be treated to a visit to a new microbrewery or newly revitalized place when I visit them. It is the ongoing revitalization and re-emergence of American cities all over the country that I love. From visiting my sisters in Boston and Providence to my uncle in Denver and best friend in San Diego… what is occurring across the country (including Cincy and Columbus) is such a welcome change from more recent decades.
Aaron, there are almost 2,000 fewer structurally deficient bridges in Pennsylvania now than there were in 2007, when PennDOT made bridge rehabilitation its top priority. I expect the trend to accelerate now that Pennsylvania has passed a comprehensive transportation funding bill.
Speaking of that bill, it’s also enabled final design work to proceed for the following projects:
– Total reconstruction of I-78 west of Allentown
– Total reconstruction and six-lane widening of I-80 in and near Stroudsburg
– Total reconstruction and six-lane widening of I-83 in both Harrisburg and York
– Total reconstruction and six-lane widening of U.S. 22 in Allentown
– Total reconstruction and four-lane widening of U.S. 222 between Reading and Allentown
– Reconstruction of U.S. 422 near Reading
And I-70 is not the only highway currently being reconstructed. I-95 in the city of Philadelphia and U.S. 202 in the western Philadelphia suburbs are both being reconstructed, with the latter being widened to six lanes as well. (I-95 in Philadelphia is already eight lanes.)
Along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, total reconstruction and six-lane widening is underway for MP 10-14, 40-48, 99-102, 206-210, 250-252 and 356-360 (including completion of the I-95 missing link), and also MP 20-31 on the Northeast extension. Later this year, reconstruction and six-lane widening will begin for MP 220-227 and 320-326.
Design work is underway for the total reconstruction and six-lane widening of MP 28-31, 50-67 (presumably including a redesigned interchange with I-376), 102-109, 121-134 (including replacement of the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel), 149-162, 180-186, 202-206, 242-245, 298-319 and 351-356, and also MP 31-44 on the Northeast Extension.
Already reconstructed and widened to six lanes are MP 0-10, 31-38, 48-50 (including new bridges over the Allegheny River), 67-75, 199-202, 210-220, 245-247 (including new bridges over the Susquehanna River) and 326-351. Segments of the highway that were reconstructed before the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission chose to widen the entire highway to six lanes are MP 38-40, 75-99, 109-121 and 186-199. The roadbeds on those segments are all relatively new, so adding an extra lane in each direction would require only partial reconstruction alongside the existing right of way.
The only portions of the Turnpike that have not already been accounted for in either design or reconstruction are MP 14-28, 134-149, 162-180, 227-242 and 250-298.
MP 70 before
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v437/DBR96/Pittsburgh%20PA/MM704before.jpg
MP 70 after
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v437/DBR96/Pittsburgh%20PA/MM704after.jpg
MP 74 before
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v437/DBR96/Pittsburgh%20PA/MM743before.jpg
MP 74 after
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v437/DBR96/Pittsburgh%20PA/MM743after.jpg
Just two examples of what’s in store for the Turnpike.
How many of those projects are justified by the traffic volumes? 6 lanes of highway in Stroudsburg, a town of 5,000 people?
@George V…
Clevelanders are still pointing to the Terminal Tower as evidence for their city’s greatness. No doubt, it’s a very nice historic building, but every city has them. Columbus has LeVeque.
@Eric…
I think that is part of the overall point. Even if Columbus doesn’t exactly have the wow factor that one would expect, it does indeed make up for it in enough categories to keep growing healthily and to have one of the best economies anywhere in the country. Even now, it has the 3rd lowest metro unemployment rate. It may not be enough for you, but it’s certainly enough for many.
@ Columbus Amazing…
You’re exactly the kind of booster no city needs.
For the record, sprawl is a terrible drain on financial resources, and has long been a focus for continuing racial and economic segregation.
And you would also do well to take a look at recent urban trends. Columbus itself has been growing faster than its suburbs for awhile now.
@Aaron Post #49
Wow… you basically said what I’ve been thinking for a long time. Not just about Matt, but being a native of Columbus myself, I have learned that he is FAR from alone. There is an active discussion in another forum right now, started by and kept going by posters in Cleveland/Cincinnati who literally hold Columbus as the main culprit for their respective cities’ declines. So much so, in fact, that they promote the idea of secession from Ohio altogether.
I am a native of Columbus, but I also consider myself to be an Ohioan. I love my home state, and hence, I want all of it to do well, not just Columbus. That sentiment is simply not shared the other way around in far too many cases. I can’t help but feel that it’s borne out of envy and massive insecurity. It’s too bad, because Cleveland and Cincinnati have incredible potential, but too many of its residents can’t focus on those positives rather than spending so much time and energy tearing down the state’s one current success story.
Aaron, I speak for myself and for no one else. I am responding to the descriptions of others that I find inaccurate. These are my views. I don’t speak for Cincinnati. If I find descriptions of Columbus or Cincinnati inadequate in some way, I feel perfectly justified in saying so. You seem incapable of describing Cincinnati accurately, in my view. Your statement that Cincinnati has declined relative to the rest of the country could be said of many many other places. It’s true of Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago as well as Cincinnati. It’s not uniquely true of Cincinnati, yet it is what you choose to use in discussing Cincinnati. I’m suggesting that there are other ways of describing Cincinnati that are truer and more useful. You don’t seem able to directly challenge any of the specifics I use to describe Cincinnati, so you transparently attempt to reassert the narrative of these metros that you want. You may find my unwillingness to go along with your narrative annoying because it calls on you to actually defend your narrative with evidence. Providing more actual evidence instead of vague assertions that your view simply must be true would help the discussion here enormously.
@Jon
I was reading a post about Rail in Columbus on All Aboard Ohio’s Facebook page (a statewide rail advocacy group. I decided to look at the comments, and in light of this discussion I had to share. I got a chuckle out of it.
Comment 1:
Columbus has been the prime beneficiary of far too many tax dollars at the expense of the rest of Ohio for too long. Regardless, despite how much it grows, Columbus will always be a second class city to the greater Cleveland and greater Cincinnati areas. Perhaps the best thing the latter two cities can do to prevent further tax monies from being drained to Central City is to construct to large brick walls on I-71: one just south of Mansfield and the other just north of Wilmington. High speed rail failed in Ohio because it was dominated by Columbus interests and bureaucrats who assigned priority to a 5 hour 3-C dead end route when the initial phase should have been an east west route linking the Toledo, Lorain/Elyria, Cleveland and Youngstown areas with Chicago and points west and via Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to existing connections along the eastern Seaboard. That portion of the state north of US 30 needs to wise up and unite or growth and development will continue to be “sucked” south at its expense. I’m sure this will be view as controversial by a city that perhaps has more native West Virginians and Kentuckians than native Ohioans but so be it.
Comment 2:
Ohio has two great cities – one on Lake Erie and the other on the Ohio River. Rail transit won’t change that!
@Matt..
The topic wasn’t really about Cincinnati, though. You just seemed to use it as a platform to get in your typical Columbus punches and Cincinnati praises. I don’t see how this makes you any different than the Columbus Amazing guy. You may use more words and post them more often, but that’s about it.
Look, it’s obvious you care about Cincinnati. So what are you really doing for it? Bashing Columbus is not going to cut it. Cincinnati needs passionate people. Why not be passionate in a much more productive and positive way?
“Ohio”, as a concept, seems to have broken down, at least by the comments here. Where is the pride in statehood, of the common identity of Columbia, Cleveland and Cinncinati. There seems to be no new “story” of what holds this region together. Are these places really so different that people put down one to raise up another? Insecurity seems to be the underlying theme. There must be some inherent qualities to this place, besides the number of Fortune 1000 companies, or whether one city’s new park is better than another, that can give rise to pride and confidence. This focus on brick and mortar, or, the opposite, on slogans and punchlines, keeps people from identifying what is truly distinctive about these places, what makes living in each truly enjoyable. Or, other than pretty streets and new urban development, is there nothing about the daily life in these places that is enjoyable? (I write that in jest.) Seriously, what would a great Columbus or Cinncinati or Cleveland moment be?
@Josh…
Yep, you go to any Ohio forum of any kind, mention Columbus and the Cleveland/Cincinnati posters come out of the woodwork to claim it’s far inferior in every possible way. It never fails. Being successful in a state that has not had very many success stories in recent decades is a lightning rod for this kind of bitter defensiveness.
@Matthew Hall
Please stop projecting. While I’m not originally from here, I have no “bitter resentment” toward the city I currently choose to live in and started my business in, nor do I have any toward Columbus. I acknowledge Cincy’s flaws as well as its strengths (again, wouldn’t be living here, wouldn’t start a business if I didn’t like it) and do what I can to help fix those areas where it needs the community to help with the fixing. I take almost as active an interest in Columbus’ development because through my partner’s work it’s as important to our household’s livelihood as Cincinnati is, and I think having a strong economic region (not just one city, but a functional and balanced trade network) is important to everyone who lives in it.
My entire point is that descriptions of Columbus’ economic performance as fundamentally different than that of Cincinnati are incorrect. What individual people prefer is of no interest to me. My issue is the ‘facts’, not personal preferences. There has been little difference in real estate and overall job markets between the two metros in the last four years. If we can agree on that, my work here is done.
I didn’t introduce Cincinnati. My initial comments were solely about Columbus. Others introduced Cincinnati. I’m merely responding to them.
Just speculating, perhaps the root of these superiority complexes has to do with Ohio having so many cities of comparable standing. What other state has this much competition from within?
@Rod Stevens,
I have to agree with your observation. “Ohio” as a place doesn’t seem to be as strong as it once was in terms of shared culture and identity, that is if these things even existed very much to begin with. I say this as a native. I mean, I do suspect that they did on some level, once upon a time, although nowhere near on the scale as they do in say, Texas, or perhaps California, Kentucky, Tennessee, New York, or even regionally as in New England. Those state identities to me always have seemed to trump and transcend place, while the Ohio identity and culture seems to be more in the background and doesn’t tend to leak out of its state boundaries much at all. But then maybe this is true of most Midwestern states? (Michigan? Indiana? etc.) In contrast, I’ve heard many jokes about how Kentucky and West Virgina are bleeding northward into Ohio.
I don’t think the animosity in Cleveland and Cincinnati toward Columbus can or should be completely discounted as a major factor in the decay of a common Ohio identity and culture. The state is unique for the presence of so many urbanized metros, including Akron, Toledo, Dayton, Youngstown and Canton as well with the “Three Cs” and in addition to smaller micropolitan areas like Mansfield, Springfield and Lima.
Despite this, Ohio’s state government has done almost everything conceivable to ignore if not outright undermine its core urban areas since the early 1990s in the midst of the industrial collapse/initiation of NAFTA that devastated the broader industrial Midwest and many parts of the Northeast.
It’s during this same time frame that Columbus has literally exploded in size and economic development. Columbus actually surpassed Cleveland to become the #1 city in population within Ohio during the 1990 Census. This is why we really can’t compare Ohio with say, Texas, where its major cities continue to grow unchecked and unsurpassed by Austin.
Having lived in all three major Ohio regions–Cleveland/Akron, Cincinnati, and Columbus, the animosity toward the latter is palpable in the former two, save for an enduring and almost exculpating love for OSU football in Cleveland. People in NE and SW Ohio perhaps rightfully feel that their interests and concerns have taken a back seat to those of the prosperous capital, and worse, that they are being measured and judged against it.
None of this does anything to support or strengthen a cohesive state identity. Just like in a partnership or relationship, when one party perceives for too long that the other is benefiting at their expense, they’ll eventually seek adoration elsewhere, with a divorce not long to follow.
Ohio might be savable in the long run, but Columbus and its identity will have a great deal to say in its fate, one way or another. As a capital, it could try and find ways to extend its economic prosperity throughout the state, to Cincinnati and Cleveland, and perhaps even beyond state boundaries as well, to Detroit, Pittsburgh, etc., through partnerships. Or perhaps it will look inward instead and see itself only as a star among others. One way or another, this is a key part of the conversation that Columbus needs to have with itself regarding its identity and future.
Put another way, Columbus, more than any other major city in Ohio, owes its identity to the state for which it serves as a capital and was created for that specific purpose. Cincinnati and Cleveland both existed prior to Ohio’s statehood.
Ohio’s fate is Columbus’ fate. Perhaps within this fact is another key to Columbus’ identity.
Here’s a contrasting view: Indianapolis suffers some of the same issues within its state, when it is clearly the single dominant metro. (This discounts the fact that three other sizeable metros have some or many suburbs/exurbs in Indiana. Cincinnati less than Louisville or Chicago, but still…)
But Indy is unlike MSP, in that it doesn’t have a majority of the state’s population within its MSA or CMSA. In that, it is more like Columbus…right in the middle, created for the purpose of being the capital city, and a frequent target of outstate ranting/complaints. The state’s next biggest metros are all at the edges: Gary/the Region, Fort Wayne, Evansville, South Bend/Mishawaka/Elkhart, and many of the Canton-sized cities are within an hour of Indy and have a state university (Muncie, Terre Haute, Bloomington, Lafayette/West Lafayette).
I don’t know if anyone has figured out whether Cbus is a net contributor to the state. (We know Indy is, but no one trumpets it.) It seems to me that’s an important part of squelching the outstate bitching about the capital city: prove that it is a net contributor of taxes that are then redistributed to the small cities and rural areas. This would help small town and rural legislators see that the success of the capital city is important to the state as a whole…and to their districts.
At least they didn’t name Columbus after the state. Ohiopolis anyone? 🙂
@ EJ:
I think you’re right about the divide in Ohio. But in fact it may go deeper than just three regions. Ohio is one of the few states that is a crossroads of several geographic regions with differing cultural backgrounds. Maybe “Ohio” as a place never WAS that strong.
Take a look at this summary of a book by Colin Woodward. It’s not new-it’s been discussed here in the past-but it does give a pretty good summary, in my opinion, of cultural differences. Notice how Ohio is split by three separate “cultures”-Yankeedom, The Midlands and Greater Appalachia. Now I would argue this map is a big fungible, I would move the Midlands down to just about I-70, and maybe farther south towards Cincinnati in the southwest, but you get the picture.
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244527860/forget-the-50-states-u-s-is-really-11-nations-says-author
Here’s a better, but smaller map, and explanations of all the cultures.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/
Columbus’ location very near three of these cultural borders probably partly explains several things:
-First the fact that we are a fairly open city. We have migrants from each of the three regions, so we don’t have a dominant culture
-This may be why we don’t have a dominant brand-how do you have a dominant culture when you are a melting pot?
-This may also help our economy-crossroads are good things to be located near, be it physical or cultural. I think this may be the main difference between Columbus and Madison or Lansing, all of which have big universities and are State Capitols.
I am happy to report that at least for Cbus and Cincy, there is some cross pollination going on. Restaurants from Cincy are opening in Cbus, a clothing store from Cbus is opening in OTR. I see lots of ppl down here in beOhioProud t-shirts (Google it). I have one myself says “HOME” with the O in the shape of Ohio. I like to think the the tide is changing…yet, our tourism mantra Cincinnati,USA *eyeroll* Then I see Mayor Coleman saying Cbus is not part of the Rust Belt, as if Cbus is sep from rest of Ohio. I would like to see all parts of Ohio succeed.
Each place has their jackhole booster, we have ours, Cbus and CLE have theirs. Nobody likes to see their city trashed. Many of us have invested part of our identity to our city. So trashing our city is trashing us personally. Legit, constructive criticism is difficult to make palatable. So unthoughtful criticism like when a pro-OSU person derides the Univ of Cincinnati as a low-grade ‘commuter school’, I shake my head. UC is a CITY university that has some world class, and world ranked programs. Meanwhile, OSU has gone from everyone’s backup school, to a world class, flagship university…it’s all to the good, it is not a zero sum game.
So when Aaron or others have thought out criticism, I think it best to take it under consideration.
I am not an Ohio-an, but I’ll bet part of the resentment of Cincy/Clevelanders for Columbus is due to Columbus sucking tax money out of them (for bureaucrats and professors). To top that off with Columbus partisans then saying that Columbus is somehow better than the other cities has to be galling.
Cincy and Cleveland have their challenges, and they’re not made easier by having their tax money siphoned to Columbus and many of the brightest and most ambitious kids going there as well, often not to return. Having the Columbus mayor publicly disassociate his city from the source of their subsidies is practically an incitement.
Maybe OH should curtail investment in tOSU, invest heavily in expanding the public universities in the rest of the state, and relocate some major bureaucracies to struggling smaller cities (Youngstown, anyone)? That would even the field a little and ensure a more equitable distribution of tax resources, not to mention undermine the source of some Cincy/Clevelander resentment of Columbus.
@Derek, do you have any objective evidence that taxes are siphoned out of other places for the benefit of Columbus? Studies I’ve seen in other states suggest the opposite. In Indiana, for example, the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute did a study demonstrating the Indy is a net donor to the state to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. I believe similar results have held up in Georgia and elsewhere it has been analyzed.
@Aaron… I’ve been asking for the same thing, but can’t really find it.
On another forum, a Cincy poster did once post about job-creation dollars. Columbus did lead in that, but the funny thing was that if you broke down the total dollars by the # of jobs created per dollar, it took much more money to create jobs in Cincinnati/Cleveland than it did in Columbus. I have no idea why that is, but there may be some fundamental structural/cultural issues at play that made it more difficult, or it may have just been one year’s worth of data and not a trend. But it didn’t really answer the question of whether or not Columbus was a net contributor to Ohio or a net user. Creating more jobs with less money would indicate a contributor, at least in that case.
@Jon – My impression as someone that isn’t from Ohio is that Columbus has the reputation as being more “business friendly” compared to Cincinnati and Cleveland. I don’t know if there are objective numbers to back that up, but that’s just the rep that it has. As a result, you’re correct that it would be quite unfair to pin the relative strength of Columbus on supposed subsidies from the rest of the state to OSU and the state government. Private employers seem to be preferring Columbus, as well. Now, granted, those private employers may prefer Columbus because OSU and the state government provide a greater pool of the more highly-educated workers that they’re seeking compared to the rest of Ohio, so that’s an innate advantage that Columbus has. Still, I don’t see anyone criticizing Austin, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Raleigh-Durham or Denver-Boulder for their respective successes with the same state capital/flagship university combos (and you can add in high growth Atlanta, Phoenix and Sacramento/Davis as locales with state capitals and large public schools that aren’t technically flagships but would likely be flagships virtually anywhere else).
Further to my last point, I see animosity toward Columbus from Cleveland and Cincinnati natives intimating that Columbus is taking something away from those cities, where the reality is that Cleveland and Cincinnati were much more impacted by the broader economic hammering of the Rust Belt. Cleveland’s downturn is much more related to the global forces that led to downturns in Detroit and Buffalo than anything with respect to dollars invested in Columbus (and Cincinnati’s story has more in common with a fellow Midwestern river town like St. Louis). Places like Tennessee and North Carolina are drawing in Ohio and other Midwestern transplants like crazy, yet Columbus seems to draw the animosity where the success is more directly visible.
One other related point: I’ve seen several criticisms of the Columbus mayor for saying that they aren’t part of the Rust Belt, but I don’t understand how the mayor could possibly say anything else to a national audience. I’ll be honest: the only place that I’ve ever seen the term “Rust Belt” spun into a positive or romanticized connotation has been speaking with people on this forum (disproportionately made up of urbanites with Midwestern connections). Outside of the narrow niche of the types of people that read this blog, being called a “Rust Belt” city conjures up an extremely negative image for the average American. In city image terms, Rust Belt branding is an automatic turnoff. Now, that doesn’t mean that what the Rust Belt produced in urban areas can’t be turned into a positive as people move back to cities, but we’d be naive to think that being associated with the specific term “Rust Belt” can be considered a positive at a national level.
@Aaron,Jon,Frank – I also struggle to find good “all-in” fiscal transfer information at the state level. I did find a good report on New York state from the Rockefeller Institute:
http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/nys_government/2011-12-Giving_and_Getting.pdf
It finds that the “capitol region” (extended Albany metro) has 4.2% of the population and 7.0% of total state disbursements, a much better ratio than any other part of the state and which is driven entirely by the “departmental operations” line item (see page 16). And this is without Albany having any institution to rival tOSU, which brags about a $967m/yr R&D budget, let alone the staffing expenses and the impact of 60k+ students. Columbus may very well have a higher ratio of (disbursement:population) in Ohio that Albany has in NY, especially if indirect factors are included (such as student spending).
Obviously, that is New York and not Ohio, but I am confident that a similar effect is true is every state capitol.
@Frank, I don’t mean this as a criticism of Columbus (after all, the govt and tOSU have to be somewhere, and they might as well be near the geographic center of the state), but I think we need to be realistic as to how applicable Columbus’ experience is to Cincy and Cleveland. Columbus’ real peers are Austin, Madison and Raleigh, not Cleveland and Cincy. As an adopted Texan, I can guarantee you that Austin’s relative out-performance vs DFW and Houston is entirely due to the same reasons that Columbus is out-performing Cincy/Cleveland; the difference is that DFW and Houston are growing nicely in their own right, so Austin’s smugness feels less insufferable to the rest of the state.
And, as a friendly outsider, I would encourage Ohio-ans to consider de-centralizing some of the state bureaucracies and university investments. Locating a 500-person administrative department in Dayton, and doubling state investments in Youngstown State, would make a real difference to some struggling locales, and is one of the few ways the state gov can actually make a difference in the less healthy parts of the state. Columbus can afford this.
@Jon- I suspect the difference between the $investment/job ratios across the metros has to do with their specialties. In Cleveland, many/most jobs are industrial and typically come with a substantial investment in tooling and machinery; in Columbus, jobs are much more likely to be service-oriented (gov/university, for example) and require much less investment behind them.
@Derek…
You’re simply making assumptions. If you can’t prove the claim, stop making the claim until you can. Otherwise, it just looks like you’re intentionally creating a platform from which to find fault with Columbus.
@Derek…
That may be, but the point is that a dollar spent one place does not equal a dollar spent in another. There was also the matter from that link of the actual return on investment. Meaning that not only were more jobs created for less cost, but that the jobs had an average pay return greater than the other two cities. So the jobs created in Columbus were not only more numerous, but they paid better as well. All for a lower average cost.
“So the jobs created in Columbus were not only more numerous, but they paid better as well”
Any evidence to support this statement?
Columbus is not a peer to Austin or Raleigh. It doesn’t have the same levels of highly-educated workers or similar levels of job growth.
JON, Your assertions didn’t come with any evidence, either. Why are you writing what you are? What evidence do you have?
@Derek Rutherford – “And, as a friendly outsider, I would encourage Ohio-ans to consider de-centralizing some of the state bureaucracies and university investments. Locating a 500-person administrative department in Dayton, and doubling state investments in Youngstown State, would make a real difference to some struggling locales, and is one of the few ways the state gov can actually make a difference in the less healthy parts of the state. Columbus can afford this.”
That’s an interesting proposal, but on the flip side, would it actually be wiser for Ohio (which, like the rest of the Midwest, has to work much harder to get economic and population growth compared to the Sun Belt and West Coast) to be actually consolidating even more resources into its “winner” of Columbus instead? If you’re a private company in one of the “creative class” sectors from outside of Ohio, a strong and world-class Ohio State University can be a legitimate draw. In contrast, there’s absolutely no investment in Youngstown State that would make that area attractive for a creative class company. Ohio State is an asset that can be leveraged into spurring private investment that don’t require government dollars that Youngstown State, Kent State or the other non-flagship schools in Ohio realistically never can achieve. As a result, there’s a broader economic investment argument that favors more money being poured into Ohio State, whereas putting money into the other schools would likely end up being pure government subsidies that don’t spur much (if any) ancillary private investment.
We’ve seen that top talent is consolidating into fewer and fewer locales, so, as politically harsh as it might be, it may actually be a much better use of government dollars to concentrate on fewer places as opposed to spreading it around. We already see this argument in how much urban areas should be funded versus rural areas in many states (such as Illinois). In Ohio, it seems to be more of an argument about the disparity between the larger urban areas and the smaller/medium-sized urban areas because of the nature of how the population is distributed there.
Meanwhile, OSU has gone from everyone’s backup school, to a world class, flagship university
Except it hasn’t. See my comment well up the chain. tOSU is: not a B1G-class flagship, solidly in the middle of the conference; ranked behind 15 other big state schools; outside the top 50 in the US; not even the best-ranked “national university” in Ohio.
Frank’s suggestion of even more investment (in improving quality in some significant flagship area, like meds/nursing, ag, engineering, business, or law) is probably a good one.
Ohio does a pretty good job of spreading big highway dollars to smaller cities…there are lots of non-interstate US and state highways in Ohio built to interstate grade, often as beltway/bypasses in places like Springfield, Xenia, Jackson, Marysville, Athens, Newark, Lancaster, Ashland, Wooster, Massillon, Canton, Warren, Upper Sandusky. But does all this infrastructure pay off in jobs (outside of Marysville)? Or does it just suck the retail life out to Walmart or SuperKroger at the edge of town?
And Derek, note that for any major research institution, their bazillion dollars of research is typically funded from outside. Ohio’s taxpayers aren’t funding much, if any of it, and the reason any state school touts the statistic is that it is net dollars into the state.
It’s not columbus that draws animosity, it’s the misrepresentations of Columbus that draw animosity. This is about perception, not reality.
@Matthew…
You’re right. Misrepresentations of Columbus draw animosity. Yet here you are, as always, trying very hard to create a negative misrepresentation… and it’s drawn animosity.
I’m not the one misrepresenting Columbus. If people had a realistic picture of Columbus, they’d realize there is nothing in Columbus toward which they need feel any animosity, or envy, for that matter. That is my point. It is assertions that Columbus is more successful than it actually is that are the problem, not Columbus’ moderate and unexceptional growth.
Where’s that guy that says, “can’t we all just get along” when you need him? Seriously, every time I thought I got something good out of this discussion, it got drowned out by the bickering. Such is free speech I guess.
I don’t really get the instate rivalry thing, but I’m from Minnesota where there’s a dominant region that is unchallenged. (There is the Minneapolis vs. St. Paul rivalry but it’s mostly friendly, with each side applauding the successes of the other.) Living now in Indianapolis, I’d be happy to see Fort Wayne and Evansville thrive as well.
Maybe Ohio’s three Cs all being in different nations, as the story in George Mattei’s post from 06/04 at 12:54 describes them, has a lot to do with it, but there doesn’t seem to be much disdain between Cincy & Cleveland. Or maybe the Cleveland/Cincy rivalry has been overshadowed by both cities’ animosity toward the youngest sibling.
Ohioans should be proud to have three major league cities, each with a distinct style, but I guess some gamesmanship and bickering is to be expected.
We ARE getting along. There are no threats, no libel, no slander. This is what a robust debate looks like. Aaron deserves great credit for supporting such a forum. We all benefit from it.
I always have viewed Cleveland and Cincinnati in Ohio much as I look at Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania: more like mostly friendly “distant cousins” than true arch rivals. In Ohio’s case at least, Cleveland and Cincinnati seem to be united in agreement about their mutual disdain for Columbus. This has led to something of a respect for each other that transcends significant regional differences in culture and politics.
Personally, again speaking as an Ohio native, I would love to see the entire state and its cities all have the chance to thrive and be great places to live, work, play and visit. At the same time, I do wonder if some redrawing of state lines and administrative boundaries would better help to this end, consistent with George Mattei’s mentioning of Colin Woodward’s settlement analysis? Perhaps the state as presently constituted with its capital set in Columbus isn’t the best agency for helping to revitalize the deindustrialized and struggling northern half, in a world very different from the one in which our states were initially drawn up (one before the Industrial Age truly took hold in the US even). When Ohio was established, Cincinnati had already emerged as the largest and most important city in the state, while Cleveland was just getting started as a village. Columbus didn’t come into being for another 9 years.
Much later, the one of the most important economic networks in the country spanning three states emerged between Pittsburgh and Detroit, with Ohio’s northern cities, Cleveland, Youngstown, Akron, Canton and Toledo at its heart. I imagine that if the states had been founded at that point, there may have been fewer of them, with a greater focus on supporting and investing in organic economic relationships like this one rather than the administration of frontier lands and settlements. In short, our world has changed, but our model of governance is vastly outmoded, being based in a frame set in an increasingly distant and quaint period of the past.
EJ: Your last comments get to the heart of much of this matter: the world has changed, especially in manufacturing. What’s interesting here is that in speaking of the industrial history of this region, there’s been little discussion of the larger industrial metropolises, and how the various Ohio cities related to them. I’m assuming that much of the manufacturing in Ohio was part of the steel/auto/ appliances supply chain that grew up between 1910 and 1980, and that some of the rivalry between cities came from competing with one another to get divisional plants or, alternatively, which larger city called the shots for a given industry. (Steel vs. oil vs. chemicals vs. package goods.) Now that the old, vertically-integrated manufacturing is gone, Ohio as a state is less of an industrial archipelago, and cities are having to go it alone, neither feeding into one another or into a larger center like Chicago. There was rivalry before on who got the plants and the manufacturing jobs; at least there was a shared base of manufacturing. With that gone, the importance of research centers, of advanced manufacturing skills, of trade connections, of urban leadership all become much more important. This modern economic competition favors education, research, financial and trade connections, and management expertise. Cincinnati and Cleveland may think they are losing a competition, when in fact Columbus simply had different assets to pull with. The interesting question is what manufacturing skills or health care or other skills Cleveland has that the administrative and educational center of Columbus does not have. And are there modern synergies between these differences?
@Rod Stevens – “Cincinnati and Columbus may think thy are losing a competition, when in fact Columbus simply had different assets to pull with.”
That’s an interesting statement and somewhat true, although the reality is that you can’t separate your assets from your ability to compete. They’re inherently intertwined. For instance, I could practice basketball 24/7/365, but that still won’t mean that I’ll make it to the NBA because I’m 5’11” without the insane athleticism of the 2001 version of Allen Iverson. Likewise, a city can’t just build a world-class university with 50,000 overnight (or even over the course of decades) or create a high tech sector by government fiat. There are lots different roles, specializations and ranges of sizes in the NBA, but you’re fundamentally at a massive disadvantage in ever competing in the NBA if you’re too short (which is entirely out of your control). How many cities are simply “too short” to ever realistically compete in a global economy where you need to be really tall on order to compete? Are many Rust Belt cities fitting into that category? Maybe most importantly, is there an entirely different category that such cities can compete in? I didn’t make it to the NBA like I had dreamed, but I did end up graduating from law school and live a comfortable life. Is the “global city” (which Aaron talks about in his newest post) the only way you can compete in this environment or can cities choose a different path of going to law school like I did? Or does every city *have* to compete in the global city version of the NBA where, even if you’re not a superstar like LeBron (i.e. NYC and London), you need to find a niche within it to survive (i.e. 3-point sharpshooter, defensive specialist off the bench, etc.) or you’re not going to have any function in the global economy at all?
I pose all of these as questions because I don’t have any good answers. You want to believe that cities can turn themselves around with good leadership and policies, but the question is whether that’s realistically possible when they’re 5’11” in a world where you need to be 6’6″ just to play the game.
Frank,
Somewhat intertwined with the subject matter – would you say that Trey Burke (Columbus native, UM, now Utah Jazz) is a “bougie” or “Cosby Show” version of Allen Iverson?
@urbanleftbehind – That’s not a bad comparison since Trey Burke is such a super-athletic “small” (6’0″) guy. Iverson was definitely a complete other-worldly superfreak as an athlete, though. Remember that he was the AP national high school player of the year in *both* basketball and football (winning state titles in both sports and being arguably the best quarterback in Virginia state history in his *secondary* sport). That’s just absolutely insane.
The only reason that some Cincinnati’s think they are losing the competition to Columbus is because they believe the booster hype of Columbusers. It’s like the imagined missile gap during the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union. The U.S. military said the Soviets had far more missiles than they actually had. The U.S. response was one of panic and escalation of cold war hostilities. If the truth had been more widely known, the U.S. response would have been quite different. Cincinnatians are hostile to what they THINK is going on in Columbus, not what is actually going on in Columbus. There is little to distinguish Columbus’ and Cincinnati’s overall housing and job markets since the great collapse.
@Matthew Hall – To be fair (and once I again, I’m not an Ohio native, so I have no personal dog in this fight), the data that we’ve been seeing here generally shows Columbus both (a) not having had as large of a downturn compared to Cincinnati (and definitely Cleveland) during the recession and (b) also started recovering faster than those other 2 larger Ohio metros. So, you may be correct that Cincinnati over the past year or two has performed as well or better than Columbus, but that belies the full picture since Columbus wasn’t affected as negatively by the recession in the first place.
And that just makes sense based on the attributes of Columbus. The assets that Columbus has (i.e. flagship university, state government, large insurance company HQ, etc.) are the types that are “last in, first out” in an economic downturn (it’s the last to suffer and the first to start growing again, so the downturn period is mitigated), whereas Cincinnati seems to track more with the broader US economy as a whole and Cleveland’s data indicates that it lags the broader US economy (essentially, they’re “first in, last out” in a recession like many other Rust Belt cities). Being a year or two behind in suffering the consequences of a recession compared to the rest of the state and then being a year or two ahead in recovering from a recession, which is essentially what occurred with Columbus, is actually a pretty big deal when you compound that over time with multiple economic cycles and speaks to the *resiliency* of that local economy. That’s probably the best word to describe the Columbus economy – even if Cincinnati and/or Cleveland may end up having similar growth rates when the rest of the country is an economic upswing, Columbus seems to be set up to be more *resilient* to economic downturns. That’s likely what people are seeing in terms of perception (and is rooted in reality) – the economic bad times are very fresh in people’s minds, so when they see one town withstand a downturn much better, that creates a greater impression than when everyone seems to be doing better in the middle of a broader economic upswing.
@Frank the Tank
I’m really thinking different assets, different abilities to compete. Columbus obviously has insurance and retailing, as well as government administration. Cincinnati has consumer packaged goods. Cleveland has had hard core manufacturing. Much of the demand for old line manufacturing has gone away, the jobs emptied out to Mexico and China. This leaves the high-value-added industries, health care with the Cleveland clinic, product design and marketing with Proctor and Gamble. My point is that the different kinds of assets in different cities may call for a different “game” in each. Columbus, as a university city, is obviously poised for research-related industries, like food and nutrition. My real question is whether a city like Cleveland needs to quit comparing itself to Columbus and figure out what it needs to do to update its manufacturing industries. Last week the federal government announced the designation of 12 “advanced manufacturing regions”, each with an industry cluster. There was one named for Ohio. It would be interesting to know how the key industries in that cluster tie in to each of Ohio’s cities.
Again, Here are the total number of jobs from the BLS website by MSA.
Cincinnati, April 2011 — 991,00: April 2014 — 1,040,600.
Columbus, April 2011 — 920,500: April 2014 — 983,400.
These numbers include ALL of the smaller employment dynamics described in this forum. It includes any and all job gains and loses. ALL. Where is the profound different here? I don’t see it.
@Rod Stevens – Yes, I saw that about the advanced manufacturing regions, although Southwest Ohio (Cincinnati and Dayton) was specifically named as a region with a focus on aerospace. So, to your point, aerospace is a specific manufacturing area that Cincinnati and its environs are working on. I’m curious as to what would be the best value added area for Cleveland.
Frank the Tank:
Last year I did an industrial revitalization for the City of San Leandro, next to Oakland and Berkeley, and that city was suffering under a mentality of loss, having gone from 20,000 manufacturing jobs in the 1970s to 6000 today. That’s still a lot, though, and when I started looking to see who was actually out there, I found some really cool companies, including a firm that makes titanium/ aluminum castings for jet turbines and medical prosthethics. There was ‘advanced manufacturing’ there, it just wasn’t the big old companies that had employed so many people at lower skill jobs. The fact that they had these companies perked up this client, and there were solid things the community could do to help these companies that had never left. I think the answer is identifying who’s still there, who’s growing, and then find out what they need. Sometimes this comes down to very simple things like apprenticeship programs or better parking out on the street.
Rod
@Matthew Hall – From the numbers that you posted, it means that Cincinnati had 5% growth in jobs during that period, while Columbus had 6.8% growth. Now, you can argue whether that difference is significant or not, but Columbus did have more growth during the period using the statistics you cited (including adding more jobs outright despite being a smaller metro area). What would be even more instructive would be the figures between 2009 and 2011 (the heart of the recession) and how they performed in addressing my economic resiliency point. (Unfortunately, the BLS website seems to only have more recent data.)
Here are job number for Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus over the last ten years:
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMU39174600000000001?data_tool=XGtable
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMU39181400000000001?data_tool=XGtable
My guess is Columbus is just sucking from the rest of the state.
Sorry, here is Cincinnati
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMU39171400000000001?data_tool=XGtable
@Frank the Tank
This actually gets to I think part of the reason for the bickering from Cincinnati in that there’s often an implied human capital advantage ascribed to Columbus that’s built on incomplete and sometimes false assumptions. This may be a bit less true with Cleveland, which has more of an aging population and saw more of an exodus of young workers in the last twenty years. However, Cincinnati does a relatively good job of keeping its young (domestic out migration from the city is largely retirees) and the city actually has a higher percentage of the working aged population with graduate degrees than Columbus. In terms of the financial trades, and advanced manufacturing, particularly in the aerospace sector, it’s highly competitive.
Of course, it also had a low skill manufacturing base which saw heavy job losses during the recession, work that’s been slowly shifting toward low skill and lower paying health care service jobs during the recovery, but the frustration its more vocal advocates seem to display may be stemming from mischaracterizations of the differences in human capital like those in several above comments rather than a sense of losing out in the new economy to a better suited opponent.
It’s sort of silly for people from Cincy to worry about what others think about it, though, as the picture can and is changing rapidly. In Q1 2014 nearly 40% of all venture capital funding in Ohio (according to PWCooper) went to the Cincinnati MSA, dwarfing Columbus and Cleveland, mostly toward biotech start-ups like Biofirmix and Assurex. Cincinnati also has more liquid banking assets than the Columbus and Pittsburgh MSA’s combined right now (according to the Cleveland Fed) another sign that investment money is pouring into the region. So you’re absolutely correct that Columbus weathered the recession better, but there’s not much reason to suspect that it therefore has the brighter short term or middle term prospects given the totality of what’s known right now.
And I don’t mean to sound like Columbus doesn’t have as bright prospects, there really isn’t reason to see it slowing down where it’s situated, just that there’s no reason to see Cincinnati’s cheerleaders as masking some feelings of inferiority. Both cities should be well situated going forward.
@Tone – Great info. It basically reflects my assessment of the data that I’ve seen previously: Columbus didn’t suffer as much from the recession and bounced back more quickly. Cincinnati is sort of in the middle (essentially a proxy for the overall US economy), while Cleveland got clobbered and still isn’t anywhere near fully recovered. Columbus and Cincinnati had relatively small drops in jobs numbers from 2007 to 2008 and then a material drop from 2008 to 2009. Cincinnati followed that up with another material drop from 2009 to 2010, whereas Columbus had a very small drop during that same period. Cleveland had its small drop start earlier from 2006 to 2007 (meaning that it was one of the very first cities in the country to go into the recession), had a much larger drop from 2007 to 2008 and it continued with big drops until 2010. Even though all 3 Cs are back on the upswing currently, the overall trajectories are much different when looked at over time. The Columbus jobs number is at the highest that it has ever been and it got back to its 2007 pre-recession level of employment by the spring of 2012. Cincinnati still isn’t back at that 2007 level and Cleveland is even farther behind its 2006 level. Essentially, Columbus is already over 2 years ahead of the other 2 Cs in getting back to pre-recession employment levels and counting.
Further looking at Tone’s numbers from the BLA, Cincinnati just got back to its April 2004 level of employment in March of this year. Unfortunately, that’s downright frothy compared to Cleveland. In using the BLA website that Tone linked to, Cleveland has essentially been in uninterrupted decline since 2000. Its economy didn’t improve at all during the rise in the overall US economy in the early-2000s, which exacerbates the impact of this latest recession (as it wasn’t even a matter of Cleveland shedding new jobs that had been recently added).
This is one of the tragedies of the Midwest. We turned away from our heritage and a bunch of guys in Brooklyn bought it from a thrift store for a song.
I think this is about as apt a description of most Midwest metros as I’ve seen. The guy in Brooklyn embraces who he is so he doesn’t feel uncomfortable setting up bee hives on his roof or raising chickens in his backyard. The average, urban Midwest guy wouldn’t be caught dead raising chickens until he read they were raising them in Brooklyn. And its not just Brooklyn.
Seattleites know they have a rep for nerd-like behavior so one of the long running commercials here was some guy running around in the rain, wearing shorts and socks with his sandals; another had two Mariner teammates discussing what bleach they used to get their uniforms so white. Yeah, not everyone is a geek in Seattle but no one is afraid of laughing at the image. It defines the city and makes if fun to live here.
I am from the Midwest originally, and have always felt that Midwesterners are just too self conscious; to concerned with what people will think about them on the Coasts. You all need to let go. Stop worrying about if Cincy has more restaurants than Cbus, or does Cleveland have a better orchestra than Cincy, or does Cbus have a NY vibe to it. Maybe if people in Cbus learn to relax and have some fun and worry less about who they are, a marketing image may develop naturally instead of being forced.
One last comment………Columbus Commons? Really…..that’s all you’ve got? The Midwest is noted for its amazing parks. So what happened with CC? Its about as bland as they come……hardly a tree or park feature [other than grass]……to be seen. Sorry but it needs an upgrade IMO.
I’d underscore Frank’s analysis. Economists typically look at peak-to-peak or trough-to-peak numbers. Picking a random 3 year stretch just because that’s what is available isn’t useful. The national economy hit bottom and started recovery in early 2009. The recession started in late 2007 or early 2008. So measure from one of those points to present when comparing different cities using a series.
Then you see what Frank pointed out: Cleveland doesn’t even belong in a discussion with Columbus and Cincinnati regarding job growth. Its economy is not well. And you also see that Cincinnati’s reliance on manufacturing (its location quotient for manufacturing share of jobs is much higher than 1.0, the baseline national level) did in fact send it into a deeper recession and a later recovery than a balanced economy like Columbus.
This isn’t personal, or boosterism coming from a Columbus native. It’s just elementary analysis of the facts. It also doesn’t suggest the future, except that it’s clear a balanced economy like Columbus weathers recessions demonstrably better, and a cyclical manufacturing economy like Cincinnati is a lot more like South Bend-Mishawaka or Kokomo in Indiana: prone to big swings through economic cycles.
alki, here’s an alternate read on urban agriculture in the Midwest:
Midwesterners typically are not many generations removed from small farms; it’s in my DNA. We actually have a lot of institutional knowledge that “city people” (okay, hipsters in Brooklyn) who’ve never actually set foot on a small farm in the Midwest lack.
Keeping chickens was part of the subsistence ethic on those farms, and not a nice part if you’ve ever cleaned out a big chicken coop. To people like me, it was what grandma did for “egg money”. Farmers also had big gardens. If you’ve ever tilled, or planted, or weeded a big garden with hot sun and biting bugs when it’s 90 and humid, you’ll know why my produce comes from the local food coop. I am only too happy to pay subsistence (er, “sustainable”) farmers to do the nasty work for me. I apply my “maker” skills elsewhere for psychic return.
Here’s some more evidence from http://proximityone.com/metrogdp.htm.
The Change in Metropolitan Statistical Areas Gross Domestic product from 2009 to 2012
Cincinnati – 6.91%
Columbus – 7.82%
Cleveland – 6.63%
In these unequal times not all people are equally productive. These numbers suggest that Columbus’ workers are less so on average than the other two metros.
Where is this vast difference of the ‘Columbus narrative’?
From the same site, here are the metro GDP growth rates for other metros from 2009 to 2012.
Austin – 18.61%
Dallas – 12.4%
Nashville – 13.78%
Pittsburgh -9.68%
Portland – 18.05%
Where IS economic growth really happening in America?
@Chris Barnett…….you’re missing my point. It doesn’t have to be about raising chickens. It could be about doing needle point or making catsup or collecting bottle caps. A trend typically starts on one of the Coasts before a midwestern picks it up. And maybe that’s the way it is…….people who are trend setters migrate to the Coasts. I don’t know. But what I do know is that all this worrying about check lists or who has the most restaurants or who has the best stats isn’t going to lead to innovation, creavity and interest.
The truth is the Midwest is a fine place to be. Many of its cities have great bones that simply need some attention. Cincy is a very cool city. Cbus is too. Cleveland needs work but can be greater than what it is now. Believe in yourselves. You all know what needs to be done to make your respective cities better……..just do it. If you build it, they will come. Trust.
@Matthew Hall……those are the cities that are growing today. They may not be the cities that will grow tomorrow.
alki, I see your point, but I hope you see mine: your example shows that sometimes “cool” indicators in one place are indicators of something else somewhere else. In the case of chickens and gardens, that’s just a little too much of a reminder of Appalachian poverty in places like Columbus and Indy to be cool for some of us. Like cars/trucks up on blocks.
By the same token, we are pretty confident in motor racing in Indy. Coastal elites do not favor this form of sport or leisure, but it is Indy’s international brand.
Matthew, perhaps the dashes are minus signs in your post #10, but if not, your data suggest that Columbus had more GDP growth with a smaller workforce than the other two metros.
That would indicate the Columbus economy is more efficient than Cincinnati, and growing faster, wouldn’t it?
Chris, the dashes aren’t minus signs. This means that Austin and Portland have had rates of growth two and a half times (250%) that of Columbus. Columbus isn’t remotely in their league. Columbus is NOT ‘Ohio’s Austin’ as some have suggested.
Columbus’ has had higher rates of population growth than Cincinnati that haven’t led to similarly higher rates of economic growth than Cincinnati. That would suggest that GDP growth per capita in Columbus has been less than in Cincinnati, wouldn’t it?
Chris, I see your point completely. However, what’s interesting is how you’ve taken the issue a step further; that some midwestern hipsters might be willing to do something that might have shamed them previously because now its cool. For an example, I bet that no matter the reminder of Appalachia or a farm upbringing, if smoking a corn cob pipe becomes popular in Brooklyn, it would very likely become popular in OH or IL or MN. That goes back to my original point……..it would be ideal if the Midwest could stop looking to the coasts for trends. Maybe its not possible but I think its something for which the Midwest should strive. Let your own instincts guide you.
As for branding, yes, Indianapolis has the Indy 500. But I am talking about something more than branding. For an example, Buffalo is noted [positively] for chicken wings and [negatively]for lots of snow. Both might be considered branding but in my mind, they are something more. Chicken wings and snow create an image of every day life in Buffalo that the Indy 500 does not for Indianapolis. Now Buffalo is trying to expand its image and capitalize on its parks, waterfront and historic bldgs. The Indy 500 is an event……a big one….that happens once per year. However, chicken wings, snow, parks, waterfront and historic bldgs are about every day life in Buffalo. Its like the rain in Seattle and people running around in socks with sandals.
Those things help to create a more complete picture of a city and its people. And so if you like rain and geeks, you go visit Seattle. If you like chicken wings and snow, you go visit Buffalo. They are pretty much year round aspects of life in those cities and will be there most any time you decide to visit.
All the more popular tourist cities are like that. SF’s branding is tech but what makes people want to visit are its beauty, its hills, its trolleycars, its food. NY’s branding is as a financial center. But what makes people love it and want to visit is its food, its neighborhoods, its plays, its tourist attractions.
Those are things that come organically…..more naturally. No one decided that Seattle would become a city of nerds……..it just developed that way and now the city capitalizes on it. That’s what I like to see the three major OH cities do. Cincy has its hills, OTR, and its hillside architecture. Cland has the waterfront, OH city and Playhouse Square. Cbus has Short North and Germantown. Start with them and expand upon them. When cities develop attributes that people like, their reputations spread naturally and people want to come visit and even live there….at least that’s how I see it.
A new 60 second Columbus promo is circulating around right now: http://vimeo.com/96801282
One of the better city promo spots I’ve seen. Seems to be playing to the ‘open’ theme of Columbus of late. Also touching on the ‘College Town’ idea that was discussed by some previous posters. Also, as a resident, I think this promo best captures my feelings about the city than any other I’ve ever seen.
“Open” to what? ‘Open’ if often just another word for ’empty,’ ‘unoccupied,’ or ‘unclaimed.’ Successful cities aren’t “open,” they have an established society and institutions that people want to be a part of. That’s actually the opposite of being a black slate yet to be filled with anything that people value.
@Matt
I believe the thought behind open would be that the city has taken on many ‘college town’ characteristics which are described on Wikipedia as:
“Besides a highly educated and largely transient population, a stereotypical college town often features a high number of people living non-traditional lifestyles and subcultures and high tolerance for unconventionality in general, an unusually active musical or cultural scene… Many have become centers of technological research and innovative startups.”
Someone in a previous comment discussed that perhaps going after “Collegetown USA” type of brand could be good place to go since the university is for many people the public face of Columbus. Whether or not OSU lives up to its perception doesn’t matter much for this purpose because the image already exists in many people minds.
In my personal experience, and I think many other urban Columbusites would agree with what was said in the video. The city is they type of place where you can establish yourself, and that is open to new ideas, products, restaurants ect. I don’t think that necessarily applies to all of Columbus but it is certainly true for Urban Columbus.
Clearly you had a bad experience in Columbus but it seems like you are letting your personal experience discount everyone else’s experience. A strong established longstanding culture is great (obviously you are eluding you your love of Cincy in the previous post to contrast your feelings on Columbus) but not everyone wants to live in a place that is so completely established. That is the draw of Columbus… You can be the brand, you can create the brand, and you can have a part in taking the city to the next level.
I think one thing that is missing in all of this debate is that Cinci and Cleveland have probably created as many high tech jobs as Columbus (yes, even Cleveland). I don’t know for sure, but Cleveland has the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western, which aren’t as big as OSU, but are frankly higher-powered institutions. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital is ranked #2 nationally and P&G has huge research centers throughout the area.
One of the differences is that Columbus is staring from a smaller base, so these added jobs are actually leading to growth instead of just replacement of older manufacturing jobs. That is one thing that worries my about Columbus-that when we get a little bigger, the growth will be enough to keep us stable but not to continue to grow (a la Cincinnati).
So I agree with Matt’s post in a sense that Columbus isn’t exactly in Austin’s league(although I think most agree he’s overly hostile towards Columbus). I think there needs to be an honest assessment that Columbus isn’t to that level yet. We need to look at how to get to that level.
Josh:
Hi, interesting marketing video. I do think it’s a decent attempt to brand the city as open and friendly-I do think this is one of the City’s strengths. However, I do still see lots of pictures of young 20-somethings to the exclusion of most others. There was two kids, a couple of older guys-who coincidentally looked very artesian- and the rest were all basically 20-somethings. Some were higher or lower on the hipster scale, but to really be open you need to show all sides.
In my time in Columbus, one of the most amazingly mundane things I have encountered is that no matter where I have lived-and I have lived in central, southwest, northwest and now southeast areas of the metro- I have lived within a block of a gay couple and a conservative Christian couple.
Now that may not seem amazing, and maybe it happens everywhere, but it doesn’t seem so to me-or at least one of those groups feels like they have to hide their proclivities. I know that truly conservative Christians were pretty rare in New England, since I lived there. Even the conservative Catholics aren’t really that conservative compared to the Bible Belt. Many people saw truly hard-core religious people as kind of like a cult in that part of the country.
On the flip side, in my travels to visit my wife’s family in Tennessee, I can’ imagine that a gay couple would not encounter some difficulties. Not that they couldn’t live there, but it just would not be as accepting.
I think this video should have shown more types of people. It did have numerous ethnic varieties-unfortunately most all young, wealthy and having fun. It did show a couple of clips of gay couples as a nod to the city’s gay-friendly community. And like I said a few older people. I saw a couple of people that MIGHT have been immigrants. No one over 60. It was a-religious. Mostly urban scenes, when much of Columbus is suburban. Lots of good looking young men and women. I think they need to kick it up a notch. For an ad that says “where standing out doesn’t mean standing alone”, there was an amazing conformity of lifestyle represented here, despite the various skin colors displayed. It was somewhat jarring and made me feel old and a bit out of place in my own city!!!
Nice video. I think it captured the basic “vibe” of Columbus, or at least the emerging “Young Columbus” image that the city wants to project out into the world. Many of the scenes and groupings of people seem pretty dead-on–genuine diverse groupings of work colleagues/friends across race/ethnicity and sexuality lines do happen regularly and exist in Columbus–although the people themselves in the ad still look a little too “Portlandish-perfect.” In that sense at least, it was contrived. People in Columbus are on average 20 pounds heavier than the ones pictured. I spotted one guy near the end who looked like more of the norm. But not a single woman of “shape” to be found. You can’t be all that skinny as a city with Jeni’s ice cream and all the other great local restaurants around.
Re: @George Mattei, I suspect your critique highlights a marketing choice made to primarily pursue and grow the young urban professional demographic. Every city in the Midwest is fighting to hold onto and attract more youth to secure its future. Also, since Ohio already has a very prominent senior, aging-in-place demographic, they probably didn’t see the need or benefit to market towards and seek to draw in additional seniors.
George, Cincinnati IS growing, almost as much as Columbus. It’s not a question of Columbus becoming like Cincinnati in the future, the numbers I’ve posted show that Columbus is little different from Cincinnati as a metro economy ALREADY. That is my entire purpose in posting here; to undermine the narrative that Columbus is somehow a shining beacon of hope in a sea of despair. It’s in the same game with the rest of us.
@Matt Quote:
“Open” to what? ‘Open’ if often just another word for ‘empty,’ ‘unoccupied,’ or ‘unclaimed.’ Successful cities aren’t “open,” they have an established society and institutions that people want to be a part of. That’s actually the opposite of being a black slate yet to be filled with anything that people value.
Clearly the ‘facts’ are not your only reason for posting here.
@George… Hi Back! Hope you are well!
I kind of see where you are coming from in terms of the representation of the video. From what I understand this is a new campaign to target Millennials called #LifeinCbus (www.lifeincbus.com)(More Here: http://www.columbusunderground.com/new-lifeincbus-campaign-aims-to-lure-millennials-to-columbus)
After rewatching I think the image portrayed in the video does pretty well represent urban Columbus. Seems to be a way of shifting from “Everything, USA” to a more post college, build your life, figure out what you want to do type of thing. IMO that is one of the best things about Columbus and the reality is, a city is rarely going to attract new residents older than 30 for anything other than a job offer.
There are an unlimited number of “facts.” We all have our own set of motives. Whatever those motives, the facts I’ve presented challenges the narrative of a fundamentally more successful Columbus. THAT is the issue, not my motives.
Jon, you can cry all you want, but you’ll have to face the facts. Cities mean suburbs, sprawl, cars, driving, wide roads, good interstates, redundant coverage of roads and highways, expansive parking lots, and everything else a car-based culture needs.
Cities that build all these amenities do well, and cities that don’t or can’t will fall behind. Read: Pittsburgh.
You can whine about this from your disaffected corner, but the world wants exactly what I describe.
And, Jon, sprawl is not a “drain” on financial resources, any more than clean water is a “drain” on financial resources. You need a moderate level of density and clean water to make a place livable. Sprawl is the goal, just as clean water is the goal. Both are essential for a nice quality of life. If a place becomes too congested, quality of life plummets, for obvious reasons. It’s not fun to drive, you sit in traffic too long, etc.
A scalable road and highway network implemented with caps on density keep things expanding properly. Never develop ahead of road expansion. See Houston as an example of how things are supposed to look.
Sprawl is most certainly a drain on resources because in order to keep ‘sustainable’ (aka: making money for the developers) it must constantly gobble up new land whilst hollowing out and depressing old neighborhoods. Such is the case in almost every mid-sized city in the country.
When the bottom falls out from the pyramid sprawl scheme, paying to upkeep all of that expensive infrastructure proves impossible. Hence Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown, Buffalo ect. Those regions have not lost a dramatic amount of population, they just sprawled out so excessively that when the economy went south the cities turned to ruin.
So blow up those old city areas and remake them so they look and feel like suburbs. And get rid of the wacky liberal politicians that run the inner city areas, because they have nutty ideas that make it impossible to have a functioning city. So many metro areas have their greatest developments, nicest office buildings and best shopping out in the ‘burbs where more conservative folks run the show.
Anyway, if nice suburbs didn’t have depressed inner cities nearby with less expensive housing, people from the inner cities might be forced to move to the suburbs.
And Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Scranton, etc. only existed because there was a manufacturing need to be there. Those metros have horrible weather, and in the case of Pittsburgh, really horrible geography that makes it very difficult and expensive to build anything there.
I’m not sure why those cities even need to be there, anymore. They served their purpose. Close them, and move somewhere else. Cleveland has a pretty lakeshore and some very nice parks, so I can see why Cleveland would continue to exist, but Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Scranton (and all of Appalachian Pennsylvania)? Buffalo is under the yoke of those New York laws, and they’ve turned crossing the Canadian border into a horrible experience, so I can’t ever see Buffalo doing much.
Rage on Columbus Amazing, you’re doing wonderfully!
@Columbus, Amazing.
The statistics on property values shows property values in urban locations have rebounded from the Great Recession far more quickly than in less central locations. Part of this is the fact that workers want to maximize their access to job opportunities, especially if they want to change companies, and that they are trying to reduce the time and distance between their professional and personal lives. Everyone has their preferences of where they want to live, but the property values tend to be a pretty good summary of how society as a whole values different locations.
Rod,
That’s simply not true. I recently saw an interactive map that tracked the growth of Chicago areas in economic decline. The growth of poverty inside the city limits was astounding. Property at Madison and Western is not more expensive than Barrington or Deerfield or Lake Forest.
Suburban property values were notoriously inflated prior to the crash, but as a component of inflation is money in motion, the suburbs were going to see far more price fluctuation than the inner city, as suburban properties were more desired and were purchased with greater frequency.
If inner city areas appear to have more stability in sale prices, it’s because these areas were undesirable before the crash and remain undesirable, now. Prices will appear to be more steady with low volume and absence of demand.
The BLS job numbers for each month of the last decade are here: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMU39171400000000001?data_tool=XGtable, and
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMU39171400000000001?data_tool=XGtable
Click on the tiny dinosaur (who says statisticians don’t have a sense of humor).
They show that since the bottom in January 2010, Columbus had added 99,100 jobs and Cincinnati has added 81,500 jobs. The popular narrative would lead the casual reader of headlines to think the difference would be many times more than this. That’s my point. I’m sure that a scientific survey of 10,000 Ohioans would show that they believe that Columbus has produced many times the jobs of Cincinnati. It’s this popular narrative I’m criticizing. Along with the metro GDP and the housing numbers, the differences between Cincinnati and Columbus are tiny in comparison to the differences between Columbus and Charlotte, Austin, Portland, Denver, Raleigh, Nashville, or any of the other boom towns which Columbusers falsely place Columbus in the same league as. Columbus isn’t operating at a fundamentally different level than Cincinnati and Cincinnati has little to learn from it other than they should have a favored state research university, a state capital, and flat cornfields that are easy to build on, too. Cincinnati and Cleveland may need to learn some new tricks, but they won’t learn them from Columbus.
Matthew, in no statistical analysis does more than 20% equal a “tiny” difference. Note also that Columbus produced those gains while adding more population and more GDP; all three key economic measures are running in Columbus’ favor. In a game of one-on-one, Cincinnati is well behind Columbus. There is no way to spin that otherwise and you should really stop trying. Resorting to the “cornfields and OSU” argument is weak.
The key issue is, Columbus is achieving those gains in exactly the same state tax and regulatory regime as the other two Cs. Cincinnati metro has the added benefit of having two fairly lax low-tax states included in the metro area, including the one where its airport is.
(If we were to believe the Indiana cut-taxes crowd–I don’t but will pretend to–business would be flocking to Lawrenceburg and West Harrison from Ohio. Last time I went through there, it didn’t look as if that was happening.)
The difference in job growth isn’t 20%. It’s 1.8%. Cincinnati experienced a 9.2% increase in total jobs and Columbus an 11% increase in jobs from January 2010 to April 2014. Again, I’m not quarreling with the numbers, but the misinterpretation of the numbers, intentional or otherwise. Cincinnati’s growth in total jobs from 959,100 to 1,040,600 is a 9.2% increase and Columbus’ growth in total jobs from 884,300 to 983,400 is an 11% increase. Therefore, the difference in Cincinnati’s and Columbus’ job growth since January 2010 is approximately 1.8%. Yet, the narrative of fundamentally different economic performance for Columbus continues. Why? My best guess is the the ‘Columbus Narrative’ is just too important to Columbusers, and some others, to give up. Nonetheless, Columbus did NOT have fundamentally superior economic performance to Cincinnati in the last four years.
The difference between 99,100 and 81,500 is 17,600. 17,600 is 21.5% of 81,500. Columbus added 21.5% more jobs than Cincinnati since the trough of the recession. That’s where my “more than 20%” number came from. I think it’s valid to compare two metros in that way, and I think it’s fair to call that a significant difference in performance.
Chris, I don’t think it’s useful and I do think that it is self-serving to compare metros in that way and don’t think it is a significant difference. I think your analysis is misleading, intentionally or not, and is an obstacle to understanding what is going on in Columbus, Cincinnati, or elsewhere. It’s the kind of superficial cheerleading that causes people to misunderstand their position and interests and leads to superficial and misguided political agendas based on false understandings. You are missing the forest for the trees.
Chris, your analysis considers only new jobs and not all jobs. The fact that close to a million people have continued to work in Cincinnati, for example, is FAR more important than the fact that an additional 81,000 people are working now than four years ago in understanding Cincinnati’s metro job market and economy. All jobs count and an analysis of jobs should count all jobs.
Cincinnati is somewhat disadvantaged in that Louisville, Columbus, Indianapolis and, to a lesser extent, Lexington have all ascended in full competition with Cincinnati.
This competition does not mean Cincinnati has done anything wrong, merely that the midwestern pie will be cut into more slices than it was 100 years ago. Ironically, one of the draws for Indy, Columbus, Lexington and Louisville is that it’s a short drive to Cincy to enjoy the Aquarium, Jungle Jim’s, Ikea, Findlay Market, etc. Having Cincy nearby makes other cities nice places to live.
Louisville is a wonderful place that looks like the city of promise for the next several decades.
As the most southern city in the Midwest, Louisville still feels like “home,” but has fairly decent weather.
Matthew Hall, when an analysis works for your Columbus Sucks mantra, you are all for it. When someone else offers a valid, yet different approach, its self-serving, misguided, not useful and superficial… your words, and words with which you are very familiar indeed.
Matt, you’re going to have to lose that chip on your shoulder. When someone says that Columbus is a pretty nice place and a growth location, that observation does not implicitly say that “Cincinnati sucks.”
More than one city is allowed to be nice.
Columbus Amazing, your never going to lose that chip on your shoulder. Living in Columbus doesn’t leave you with anything else.
Criticize my logic and evidence, not my “words.” I’m not a a PR person with the visitors bureau or chamber of commerce. I don’t care what you actually think or do. I just want the record to show that the “Columbus Narrative” is not unchallenged and may well be wrong.
Matthew, try working on Cincinnati’s plethora of woes: Some of the worst urban poverty and segregation anywhere. Failing schools. A stunning urban-suburban divide. Abysmal population losses. Budget deficits and unfunded pensions. Riots. Civic landmarks that are falling apart and may go begging for taxpayer bailouts. An old embarrassment of a downtown arena. Regional governments that can’t or won’t work together. A Downtown riverfront that showcases concrete, bad architecture and second-rate sports palaces paid for by fleecing taxpayers.
Tom, you’re proving my point about the “Columbus Narrative.” It isn’t about Columbus being nice, its about Columbus being better. If Columbus doesn’t have that what does it have, parking, flatness, OSU? My evidence and arguments strike at the heart of the one thing Columbus has…a narrative of superiority.
Don’t hold it in any longer. Let out your hate; your contempt for places that aren’t Columbus. Don’t hide it any more. Let it surge through you and reveal what is really behind the “Columbus Narrative!”
Matt, flatness aids the growth of a city. Cincinnati’s founders would have preferred Cincy be flat. Flatness allows development with the lowest site prep cost. Cincy does have enough flat areas to have good development, and many of Cincy’s grades aren’t too forbidding, but it also has some steep hillsides in the inner city that may wait a while for redevelopment.
San Francisco, while hilly, is blessed with the best weather in North America and an ocean coast. Pittsburgh is not granted good weather or a coast, and it looks like a hellhole dump. Cincy has enough flat land and much better weather to withstand slipping into Pittsburgh status.
Matt, even if Columbus is better than Cincy, that fact doesn’t make Cincy a dump. People don’t dislike Cincy by noting Columbus is doing well.
What if Columbus ISN’T better than Cincinnati? What does that make Columbus?
Matt, nobody cares if you think Cincy is better than Columbus or if someone else thinks Columbus is better than Cincy. It doesn’t matter. Let it go, and move on. This was an article about Columbus. Every time Columbus is mentioned is not an opportunity for a Cincy grudge match.
People need to be able to talk about Columbus’ progress without insecure Cincy people sniping from the sidelines.
Columbus amazing, You care very much that people perceive Columbus as economically superior to other metros in the region. Let it out and admit your true motives. Honesty is good for the soul.
Matt, anyone that has followed this site for an amount of time has seen your rants in the past. They shift towards whatever argument you think will give Cincy a good image or will give Columbus a bad one. No matter what the statement is you look to turn it into a negative for other cities (especially Columbus) and a positive for Cincy.
If you were just arguing on the job or population data I would find that to be acceptable, but that is not the case. You move far beyond that. In just one case, on this thread and others there have been discussions about the cultural differences between the cities. I’ve personally argued that Cincy is traditional and established, Columbus is diverse and open, and it is an asset to the state to have a number of very different metro. You take that as an opportunity to attack Columbus for its culture rather than having an actual discussion. Any possible positive for Columbus must be turned into a negative by you.
Its very odd to me that you have such a personal attachment to attacking a city. I enjoy Cincinnati and visit friends their regularly. I enjoy Cleveland, Pittsburgh and other cities all around the Midwest, the Nation, the World. They all have positives and negatives.
My inner physiologist says you had a bad personal experience during your time in Columbus and transferred those feelings onto the city. Or perhaps you have to make yourself feel better about moving back to Cincinnati? What ever the case, could you please engage in actual civil discussion on the topics at hand rather than writing posts that seem like election season attack ads?
Anyone who has followed this site for an amount of time has seen my many reasoned posts as well as my responses to the personally-motivated rants of others. Others’ responses are the problem. Shameless self-serving city boosterism is a tradition as old as America. the power of this tradition is evident in the responses to my initial reasoned posts. THAT is the issue, not me. I’M the one trying to have an actual discussion that some others clearly don’t want to have, whatever their motives. Let’s speculate about their motives. Columbus Amazing’s rants are absurdly personal and petty. If you want to play the ‘voice of reason’, play it with him/her.
Beside’s his screen name, where is the shameless booster-ism?
“Matt, even if Columbus is better than Cincy, that fact doesn’t make Cincy a dump. People don’t dislike Cincy by noting Columbus is doing well.”
“This competition does not mean Cincinnati has done anything wrong, merely that the midwestern pie will be cut into more slices than it was 100 years ago. Ironically, one of the draws for Indy, Columbus, Lexington and Louisville is that it’s a short drive to Cincy to enjoy the Aquarium, Jungle Jim’s, Ikea, Findlay Market, etc. Having Cincy nearby makes other cities nice places to live.”
Re-read your own posts.
I think everyone has had their say by now. I’m closing this post to new comments.