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Arts & Entertainment News

University of Cincinnati Hosting Film Series on Urban Social Issues at Esquire Theatre

Do The Right ThingThe University of Cincinnati’s School of Planning is co-hosting a film series this month with the Center for Film & Media Studies at the Esquire Theatre in Clifton.

According to Dr. Conrad Kickert; an Assistant Professor of Urban Design at the College of Design, Architect, Art & Planning; the series is intended to foster discussion about complex urban issues highlighted by each of the three films.

The first, to take place this Wednesday at 7:30pm, is Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, which explores the topics of race and gentrification. While focused on Brooklyn, the film provides a good foundation for discussion for many American cities currently struggling with both issues; and how they are often closely related with one another.

“The three films will focus on current social issues that our cities are facing, such as gentrification, social justice and racial exclusion,” Dr. Kickert explained. “The film series is a great way to for Cincinnatians to experience and discuss the social issues that cities are facing, and the role that cinema and urban planning has in these debates.”

The second film, Metropolis by German filmmaker Fritz Lang, will be shown on March 9, also at 7:30pm. Filmed in 1927, Metropolis depicts a dystopian future from the 1920s that reflects on social equity in the industrial city.

The final showing will take place on March 16, and will feature La Haine by French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz. In this film, Kassovitz looks at the life of young people in a notorious French suburb.

Each one of the screenings will be introduced by a professor from UC’s nationally acclaimed School of Planning, and will include a discussion afterward that will be led by a faculty member from the Center for Film & Media Studies.

Tickets for each of the film showings can be purchased on the Esquire Theatre’s website. They start at $7 for children and senior citizens, and $9.75 for adults. The Esquire Theatre is accessible by several Metro bus routes, and is within a block of a Red Bike station. Bike parking is free and located in the immediate blocks.

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Up To Speed

With Central Parkway cycle track complete, are raised bike lanes next for Cincinnati?

With Central Parkway cycle track complete, are raised bike lanes next for Cincinnati?.

While Cincinnati is the first city in Ohio to build a protected bike lane, it has a ways to go in order to catch up with the amount of bike infrastructure cities all across the nation are building. This, perhaps, says more about how far behind Ohio’s big cities are than how progressive Cincinnati is, but that’s a topic of discussion for another day.

As the U.S. DOT moves forward with new standards for protected bike lanes, some North American cities are now looking at raised bike lanes as the next bit of evolution for the infrastructure. More from Urbanful:

Raised bike lanes, popular in Europe and present in a smattering of streets in several U.S. cities, provide extra protection for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians thanks to a slight change in perspective—or in this case, elevation.

But more U.S. cities are trying out the idea: San Francisco is getting its first raised bike lane–higher than vehicular traffic, but lower than the sidewalk–on one block of Valencia Street as part of the Mission Valencia Green Gateway project, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition reports. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2015.

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Up To Speed

How the prevalence of independent coffee shops is a reflection of where we live

How the prevalence of independent coffee shops are a reflection of where we live.

I love coffee and I especially love coffee shops. I find them to be a productive and relaxing third place in my life where I can also benefit from chance social encounters that are otherwise impossible from the comforts of your couch. Not to mention, good coffee (black) is absolutely delicious.

But so many people around the world get their coffee from big chain retailers. What does that mean for our neighborhood business districts, and what does it say about our communities if they are filled with only national chains, local chains or some sort of mixture? More from the Washington Post along with some great maps produced by MIT:

Coffee shops are unlike other community assets in that they enable us to mingle with strangers in ways that we might not in restaurants, to meet a wider range of people than we would in a bar, to linger in ways that we don’t at the grocery store, or to people-watch with an ease that would be awkward almost anywhere else. That’s not to say that coffee shops are the only places that potentially create such community (nor that they serve this function in all communities). But if high-end restaurants and organic groceries are signs of areas with a lot of literal capital, independent coffee shops are one plausible indicator of social capital.

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Up To Speed

Streetcars Linked Boroughs of New York

Streetcars Linked Boroughs of New York

Modern day residents of New York City often wonder why it is difficult for residents of Queens or Brooklyn to reach one another via subway. Older residents recalled the city’s now dismantled streetcar system as the connection between the two boroughs which was severed by the dismantling of the system by automobile interests in the 1940’s. In Cincinnati, the city’s streetcar projects seeks to connect core neighborhoods and eventually two of the regions largest employment centers. Read more at The Atlantic Cities:

The demise of the trolleys in the late 1930s and ’40s seems to be largely responsible for disconnecting the two sister boroughs. Yes, they were replaced by buses, but buses have never — for a number of reasons — been able to cement the connection the way trolleys seemed to.