Is Cincinnati stuck in a rut, or is it really turning around? (Dayton: lofts, high crime)

[Ohiogirl81]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Part of the reason why European cities are so nice to visit is because the poor are at least 5 miles from the center of town.

Not so nice for the poor, though, is it?

[unusualfire]

^ I think we have been so nice to the poor for decades, they are taking advantage now.

[Dayton Sux]

I see a lot of activity north of Liberty, just not on the same scale as what 3CDC is generating. There is investment and construction north of Liberty. I see the results every day.

It's not at the critical mass to be as noticeable as what 3CDC is doing. There might be building here and there but the place still has the look and feel of an inner city ghetto (thinking of my walks on Vine and Mickmicken)

@@@

I'm not sure what, specifically, 3CDC's original mission statement was, but it formed in 2003 or 2004, after the riot. The first thing it did was manage the reconstruction of Fountain Square and the Gateway Condos

Thanks for the clarification...I thought they had something to do with the some of that 4th street residential stuff like the McAlpin lofts....but I stand corrected if not.

[progmac]

Originally Posted by unusualfire

^ I think we have been so nice to the poor for decades, they are taking advantage now.

F that. The whole 'poor with an agenda' concept is total BS. Like the poor have a weekly meeting in an alley and figure out how they are going to continue their campaign against the middle class.

You know who is more pissed off by urban crime than anyone else? Poor people! Do you know who it affects more than anyone else? Poor people! Don't come in here with that BS and nonsense conjecture.

And people acting like 3 CDC are doing god's work. Give me a break. They just have found a decent method involving multiple layers of assistance and public subsidy to make a buck. Nothing wrong with that, but it is just real estate development.

[Dayton Sux]

I see what 3CDC is doing this way. And this is just my speculation, but I think it's a plausible story.

The riots was a wake-up call. The business community downtown had to address the issue, solve the issue of having a crime-ridden inner city ghetto right next to downtown. So the solution was to create a cordon sanitaire', via the Gateway Quarter (Liberty forming a convenient dividing line), and 3CDC as the execution vehicle, pushing the ghetto north of Liberty.

And if things really took off and stuff started to happen north of Liberty, well that was icing on the cake. But even if things didnt take off north of Liberty the idea seems that the Gateway Quarter would be the buffer zone for downtown and Liberty the dividing line.

In the past the solution would have been an urban renewal clearance effort. But the "Gateway Quarter" approach is a bit more state-of-the-art as it involves a mix of restoring and infilling urban fabric and filling it with upper-middle-class young professionals and 'creative class' things like the two art schools. But also done in a delicate way by not removing all the social service stuff in one fell swoop and not moving out all the residents just yet (such as who live on Walnut, for example).

Essentiall what 3CDC is doing is what Chicago did in the early 1960s with Carl Sandburg Village on the near north side. The idea was to clear a block wide and a few blocks long swath seperating the Gold Coast high rent district along the lake from the ghetto areas to the west (the heart of which was Cabrini Greene). Then this was filled with a townhouse & highrise mix and populated with 1960s versions of yuppies, who also were gentrifying Old Town.

The difference of course is there is no mass removal of buildings in Cincys case, and the area being buffered is downtown, not a high-rent neighborhood.

[Dayton Sux]

Population loss in the city has mostly to do with demographic trends, especially lower birthrate and singles tending to move into areas once populated by families with children. For example a fully gentrified OTR in 2020 might only have half the population it did in 1920.

I'd be willing to bet that OTR was pretty much off it's 1920s population by 1990. It would be interesting to know if the place was becoming so abandoned by the start of 3CDC action that the population on certain blocks and streets is actually increasing?

Citywide, I think there are two things operating...demograph shifting like you said (about family size), and depopulation via vacancy and abandonment. One would have to open up the census and ACS numbers by tract and block group to really see what areas are suffering what decline.

One way of measuring this is by household. If you start seeing household decline that would indicate increased vacancy, since you could have the same number of households but fewer people in those housholds. If you start seeing the drop in households that would indicated more vacant housing units (or conversions from multi-unit to single).

[motorman]

Originally Posted by unusualfire

^ I think we have been so nice to the poor for decades, they are taking advantage now.

Originally Posted by progmac

F that. The whole 'poor with an agenda' concept is total BS. Like the poor have a weekly meeting in an alley and figure out how they are going to continue their campaign against the middle class.

You know who is more pissed off by urban crime than anyone else? Poor people! Do you know who it affects more than anyone else? Poor people! Don't come in here with that BS and nonsense conjecture...

Not one of your better posts, progmac. What both Ohiogirl81 and you overlook is that society doesn't owe the poor a living nor the wholesale occupation of an entire neighborhood so vitally connected to Cincinnati's CBD. The virulent ghost of Buddy Gray might applaud such concerns for the downtrodden, but many others of us look at their dilemma with mixed feelings and 3CDC's reclamation of OTR with renewed optimism.

[progmac]

Originally Posted by motorman

Not one of your better posts, progmac. What both Ohiogirl81 and you overlook is that society doesn't owe the poor a living nor the wholesale occupation of an entire neighborhood so vitally connected to Cincinnati's CBD. The virulent ghost of Buddy Gray might applaud such concerns for the downtrodden, but many others of us look at their dilemma with mixed feelings and 3CDC's reclamation of OTR with renewed optimism.

The statement was that poor people have been "taking advantage of [us?]" because "we" have been "so nice to them"

It's a ridiculous, mean-spirited, and ignorant statement in any context.

[TomJones123]

Originally Posted by progmac

It's a ridiculous, mean-spirited, and ignorant statement in any context.

Not really. There are those among the poor, just like any other section of society, that are guilty of taking advantage. It's naive to think otherwise.

[WILWRadio]

^^^

I think what Progmac is saying it is not an accurate statement to paint everyone in a lower economic class as a problem. Generalizations such as this only serve to create division along class lines in this country. We don't need that.