I was able to sit down this month with new Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley to spend an hour on such topics as Cincinnati's incredible historic assets, its history of social conservatism, streetcars and bike lanes, the repopulation of the urban core, and more. If the audio player below doesn't display, click over to listen on Soundcloud. Mayor John Cranely. Image via City of Cincinnati. Here are some edited highlights of our discussion. For those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is available. By far the most … [Read more...]
On the Riverfront
Thursday I took a look at my "Cincinnati conundrum," namely how it's possible for a city that has the greatest collection of civic assets of any city its size in America to underperform demographically and economically. In that piece I called out the sprawl angle. But today I want to take a different look at it by panning back the lens to see Cincinnati as simply one example of the river city. There are four major cities laid out on an east-west corridor along the Ohio River: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis (which is not on … [Read more...]
In-State vs. Out-of-State Migration
My recent repost of an article on Columbus, Ohio's brand blew away the all time comment record for this blog, with 271 as of this writing. One the discussions was around the extent to which Columbus and other Ohio cities draw mostly from the state or from a broader area. Obviously with Ohio State University, Columbus has a massive in-state draw. But what about people from out of state? To try quantify this, I used the IRS migration data in my Telestrian system to sort out net migration into that which is with the state of Ohio, and that … [Read more...]
In Case You’ve Forgotten How Badly Freeways Damaged Our Cities, Cincinnati Edition
A couple weeks ago I posted a series of photos demonstrating the damage freeway construction did to Indianapolis. Since I've been covering Cincinnati this week, I thought I'd show the damage freeways did there too. Over the Rhine is one of America's most stunning historic districts. When I visited the city last year, one of the locals explained that there had been "miles" of neighborhoods just like it obliterated by freeway construction. I found this difficult to credit until I came across the photographic proof. Here's a picture of one … [Read more...]
The Importance of Social Structures to Urban Success
There seems to be a popular belief that what it takes to create an industry cluster in bioscience or whatever is to pair research with commerce. That is, to find an academic institution doing cutting edge research, and connect it with venture capital and entrepreneurs to start companies to commercialize it. Soon enough, you have a "cluster" of businesses that takes off like a rocket. This is the perceived Silicon Valley model, and no company epitomizes it more than Google, which was started by two Stanford students to commercialize their … [Read more...]
The Neighborhoods of Cincinnati
Cincinnati can be incredibly surprising to people who don't know much about it. Cincinnati was the Queen City of the Midwest when Chicago was a small village. And it has an incredible legacy from that day. Cincinnati simply has the greatest collection of assets of any city its size in America. It's an embarrassment of riches. Yet Cincinnati has not been a strong economic performer in some time. It's not doing poorly, but it isn't great either. I examined Cincinnati in one of my signature overview posts a couple years ago called "A Midwest … [Read more...]
Mega-Skepticism
[ This post inaugurates a three part series on "megaregions" and the applicability of this concept to the Midwest. It is a repeat of something I wrote on the subject a bit over a year ago. That should lay the ground work. Part two of the series will be a review of the book "Megaregions", edited by Catherine L. Ross. The third part will be some thinking on ways the Midwest might be able to apply megaregional thinking to its problems. As you will see, I come to this subject as a skeptic. This post originally ran on July 11, 2008] There … [Read more...]
Cincinnati: A Midwest Conundrum
I recently had the privilege of spending a couple of days in Cincinnati. As always, I was completely blown away by all the great things this city has. There is simply not a city in the Midwest apart from Chicago that has anything near the great assets of Cincy. It is an embarrassment of riches. Yet, I'm always befuddled as well as I puzzle a great conundrum: if Cincinnati is so great, how come it isn't the San Francisco of the Midwest instead of a typical, modestly stagnated Midwestern city? I don't profess to have the answers, but it just … [Read more...]