Why doesn't Cincinnati get much national recognition? (Columbus, Dublin: 2015, crime)

[AllTheWayToMemphis]

When I have free time, I often google street view places that I've never been, and Cincinnati looks like one of the coolest cities that I've never visited. Lots of dive bars, great housing stock, decent downtown/skyline, plenty of restaurants...how come you never really hear about it among cities its size around here and in the national spotlight?

[SWOH]

Great question!

Read through this for a good, brutally honest answer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cincinnati/...om_cincinnati/

[Ohiogirl81]

Over here -- in the part of the country where anything west of the Susquehanna River is "flyover country" -- Cincinnati gets as much attention as any other Midwestern city.

Originally Posted by SWOH

Read through this for a good, brutally honest answer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cincinnati/...om_cincinnati/

Meh. Every city is full of the following people:

Those who love it
Those who like it OK
Those who hate it, but have found a way to make the best of it
Those who hate it, tell everyone they hate it, but inertia keeps them there
Those who hate it and leave

And finally: Those who hate it, leave, and then realize they liked it after all and want to come back

[SWOH]

Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81

Meh. Every city is full of the following people:

Those who love it
Those who like it OK
Those who hate it, but have found a way to make the best of it
Those who hate it, tell everyone they hate it, but inertia keeps them there
Those who hate it and leave

And finally: Those who hate it, leave, and then realize they liked it after all and want to come back

True. Very true.

What gets me is the pervasiveness of the closed-mindedness of people here vs. other comparable cities.

I never hear this kind of hate for inner-city Columbus from Dublin people. Or downtown Indy among Greenwood people, etc.


That's why I blame it on the provincialism. People here don't change. More outside perspective influencing the city/region, from those who have experience with successful urban areas and an active interest in preservation and local culture would be a blessing.

[SalamanderSmile]

I think the development of suburban "office parks" has affected Cincinnati more than most cities.

Businesses moving out of the central core have allowed for the existence of at least two generations of workers who can live and work in "Cincinnati" without stepping foot into the city in their lives. When I lived in OTR in the early nineties my parents in KENWOOD had not been downtown for anything but Octoberfest in 20 years. And thats just from ten minutes away in Kenwood. It can only be worse now with the rise of Mason and Liberty twp. I don't know how other midsize cities work but in Boston all the suburbs mostly travel TO Boston to work.

( It may just be a function of being a certain size of a city, not small enough to keep contracted around the core but not really populous enough to fill out the sprawl we have created.)

[Briolat21]

Originally Posted by SalamanderSmile

I think the development of suburban "office parks" has affected Cincinnati more than most cities.

Businesses moving out of the central core have allowed for the existence of at least two generations of workers who can live and work in "Cincinnati" without stepping foot into the city in their lives. When I lived in OTR in the early nineties my parents in KENWOOD had not been downtown for anything but Octoberfest in 20 years. And thats just from ten minutes away in Kenwood. It can only be worse now with the rise of Mason and Liberty twp. I don't know how other midsize cities work but in Boston all the suburbs mostly travel TO Boston to work.

( It may just be a function of being a certain size of a city, not small enough to keep contracted around the core but not really populous enough to fill out the sprawl we have created.)

But Cincinnati isn't in the same population size as Boston. Boston has 640k+ within the City - which is at least 2x as big as Cincinnati, possibly slightly more than that.

Cincinnati is a perfectly respectable "small" big-city. There are a ton of them scattered throughout the US. Comparable within the midwest would be St. Louis; Grand Rapids, Fort Wayne (Indiana); Pittsburgh; louisville, lexington, etc..

For the most part, these are decent cities to live and work in, with reasonable housing located either in the city (or the nearby MSA), and being large enough to have fun cultural amenities (orchestras, museums, theatre, restaurants, etc..)

But they are not LARGE enough to set very much in the way of trends (NYC; LA; Chicago; Dallas; Atlanta; etc..) therefore the only people talking about them, are the people who already live there, or plan to move there.

In addition to that - issues such as SWOH has outlined, but are not unique just to Cincinnati .. a sort of provincialism that "WE'RE THE BEST!" which precludes looking at what other parts of the country (or world!) are doing or take seriously.

[cincydave8]

Well to be fair we have had our time in the spotlight a few times recently:


-2015 All Star Game
- World Choir Games
-Nat Geo article: http://travel.nationalgeographic.com...nati-traveler/
-NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/tr...hour.html?_r=0
-Lonely Planet: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/usa/trav...#ixzz1oupGpaOG


-We also got some not-so-good press this year on UC Police shooting.


....but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only dork that looks at random places on Google Maps when bored.

[Kevin1813]

I absolutely loved living in Cincinnati and while I'm never ready to anoint it as the greatest place ever, it's very, very underrated. I think there are several reasons for this.


1. As some had pointed out earlier, there is an extremely strong city vs. suburb divide in the area. People in the suburbs absolutely abhor the city generally and are usually pretty ignorant of the happenings in the city aside from the crime they see on the local news. Lots and lots of people I encountered had mentally not gotten over the riots 15 years ago. As some have mentioned above, change is not something people in the area embrace openly.


2. Another issue that contributes to #1 is that highways don't actually go into downtown, they are on the far sides of it. When people drive through, for the most part they see the poorer areas or industry and assume that's the city. Philadelphia has a similar problem.


3. Most importantly, the area doesn't see much migration. People from the area tend to live most if not all of their lives there and business has never picked up enough to bring large amounts of immigrants from other countries or other parts of the US. This causes less people from other areas to experience the city and be able to speak about it in other places. For all the glam that should come from a city that has an absolutely amazing amount of mid and late 19th century architecture, the city is pretty much unknown nationally.

[WILWRadio]

^^^Cincinnati is only unfamiliar to those that have not visited or lived there. I think most educated and well traveled people are familiar with Cincinnati and what it has to offer both to the business world and the culture and entertainment of the region. I've been familiar with it since my early 20's.

BTW. Briola21. Pittsburgh is a city in the Northeast since it is in PA, not the Midwest. Conneaut, OH is only about 40 minutes from the NY border! One could even argue the real Midwest does not begin until you hit Indiana as OH seems to be a transition state due to its proximity to the East, Midwest and South.

[Briolat21]

Originally Posted by WILWRadio

^^^Cincinnati is only unfamiliar to those that have not visited or lived there. I think most educated and well traveled people are familiar with Cincinnati and what it has to offer both to the business world and the culture and entertainment of the region. I've been familiar with it since my early 20's.

BTW. Briola21. Pittsburgh is a city in the Northeast since it is in PA, not the Midwest. Conneaut, OH is only about 40 minutes from the NY border! One could even argue the real Midwest does not begin until you hit Indiana as OH seems to be a transition state due to its proximity to the East, Midwest and South.

Meh.

You can define and redefine the midwest endlessly. I've heard people say (when I lived in New Mexico) that it doesn't start until the Mississippi and that everything East of the river is "Back East".

Many people define the midwest culturally, and Pittsburgh, being a long ago king of big steel, culturally has a lot more to do with the midwest and the large rust belt cities, than it does with Philly or NYC. (My relatives in Pittsburgh and it's surrounding MSA are very midwestern, in thought/deed)

Either way - the point was that smaller "large" cities are fine cities in their own right, but often are not particularly thought of by the wider populace in this country unless they have a specific reason to (i.e. live there themselves, have family/friends there, or have an upcoming trip for a specific purpose - like the All Star game..)