Cincinnati’s Department of Public Services (DPS) recently released their Snow Removal Plan for this year, and I am disappointed yet unsurprised to see the measly half-page describing the City’s snow removal plan for sidewalks: In short, there is no plan. City officials tout the fact that nearly 30% of Cincinnati households do not have a ..read more

Julie Carpenter of Soapbox Cincinnati has a great article outlining all the ways increased density helps cities build and maintain themselves sustainably. You can read this as a both a complement to the city’s proposed Connected Communities plan — and a way to help address some of the issues identified by the Futures Commission. Deliberating the D Word (Density) A student project that reimagines the Findlay Market district as a cultural hub (Students: Caroline VanBuskirk and Lanie Tarowsky. Advisor: Hyesung Jeong ..read more

Barbara Didrichsen, January 3, 2024 It’s the same nightmare every city neighborhood fears: a young child ends up in intensive care after being hit by a car. The media shows up to cover the community’s anguish, advocacy groups and city officials hold meetings, and – sometimes – announce long-term fixes. That’s what happened in Lower Price Hill, a Cincinnati neighborhood sandwiched between three urban highways. Click on this link and you’ll see that State Street is a major connector between three urban highways that surround the community. The child was hit by a car turning off busy State Stre ..read more

Ovation, the 25-acre mixed-use development planned by Corporex to transform the northwestern corner of Newport, has completed its first phase of construction with the addition of PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation—a music venue that promises big things for the river’s edge. The $40 million concert venue aims to attract hundreds of thousands of fans every year with over 180 acts, both big and small. PromoWest Productions, which operates six music venues as well as the Bunbury Music Festival, considers the Newport venue to be their third crown jewel, alongside Express Live! in Columbus and Stage AE ..read more

The following is a guest post by Indianapolis based planner Jeffrey Tomkins with a forward from Micha Paldino, Clifton Heights resident, and founder of creative storytelling agency, Fallon Thatcher. It has been edited lightly. “With the area in and around Findlay Market expanding with new restaurants, bars, and lifestyle concepts, the neighborhood is primed and ready for a conversation around how we provide a safer and more beautiful experience. This is timed nicely with ongoing construction of FC’s stadium set to open in March 2021 that will bring even more focus on how pedestrians utilize t ..read more

Check, one, two. Hey is this thing on? Well hello there! It’s been a year, what did we miss? All kidding aside much has happened over the past year. While our team was alive and well, doing what we do, the site crashed. We can discuss how much effort we had to put into restoring the site from the archive but the long and short of it is that the back end server and hosting needed to be rebuilt almost entirely. Thank you, Travis, for all your hard work! In lieu of a broader update, we have decided to focus on catching up on some of the major developments in Cincinnati over the past year. Here’s ..read more

Since 2013, the number of pedestrians killed or injured in car crashes in Cincinnati has been on the rise.  In 2018 alone, 428 pedestrians were struck by vehicles in the city, including 13 Cincinnati Public Schools students. One of those students, 15-year-old Gabriella Christine Rodriguez, was tragically killed while crossing Harrison Avenue on her way to school. On January 18, Mayor John Cranley proposed $900,000 worth of pedestrian safety improvements across the city, including the addition of new crosswalks, improved signage, sidewalk bump-outs, and the conversion of some off-peak parki ..read more

The underlying assumption of the Brent Spence Bridge project is that the level of congestion warrants relief with a new bridge and freeway expansion. The problem of congestion will be solved with new freeway capacity. However, that simple formula does not account for all the costs of the freeway expansion or the benefits not running a freeway through the urban core. Two important pieces missing from the Brent Spence Bridge project cost/benefit analysis are the value of urban land and induced demand. As noted in a prior article, urban land is valuable. The sustained growth in Over the Rhine is ..read more

CNU’s 2018 Transportation Summit was September 16-17 in New Orleans. The purpose of the summit was to bring together people focused on the revitalization of urban neighborhoods disrupted by freeways. In attendance were people from Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin, Washington DC, and two members from CNU Midwest, Chris Meyer and Brian Boland. There were many takeaways from the summit but three lessons seem applicable to Greater Cincinnati. The first is that freeways and urban fabric are incompatible. Urban fabric in Greater Cincinnati typically consists of fine-grained parc ..read more

Tucked away on the charming and growing business district in East Walnut Hills is a new coffee shop that is only a few months old. Urbana Café, the Pendleton coffeeshop that began by operating out of a Vespa at Findlay Market, opened it’s second brick and mortar location in East Walnut Hills this summer. However, this new location has an unexpected twist when you compare it to other coffee shops in the city: it’s decision to remain “unplugged.” Why? I spoke with owner Daniel Noguera to find out: For Daniel, it’s all about taking a second to unplug and reconnect. His aim is to “Build community ..read more