Tag: ohio

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Cities won the 2012 election for President Obama

President Barack Obama (D) was reelected on Tuesday, November 6. President Obama won approximately 51% of the popular vote, but won in convincing fashion with the Electoral College, earning 332 out of 578 total electoral votes.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, cities appeared to deliver the victory of a second term for President Obama this election season. According to Edison Research, President Obama earned approximately 69.4% of the vote in cities with more than 500,000 people, and 58.4% of the vote in cities with 50,000 to 500,000 people.

Furthermore, with the exception of Jacksonville and Salt Lake City’s home counties, President Obama won the plurality of votes in every major American city. This includes Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, Akron and Youngstown in Ohio.


The President Obama won all but two counties with major cities, and swept the major demographics that are changing urban American. Map courtesy of The New York Times.

The browning of America
Cincinnati’s traditionally conservative Hamilton County has been trending more liberal over the past decade. Over that same time frame, American cities have seen a long foreseen demographic shift take root.

In 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau found that minority babies are now a majority of those born in the United States, and that 50,000 Hispanics reach voting age every month. Furthermore, 11% of all U.S. counties are now majority-minority, and half of the 40 largest metropolitan regions now have a while population below 60%.

The trends, when compared with the results of the 2012 election, are profound.

According to NEP Exit Poll conducted by Edison Research, President Obama earned the vote of 92.7% of black voters, 70.6% of Hispanic voters, 73.2% of Asian voters, and 57.7% of all other non-white voters. Mitt Romney, however, did earn the vote of approximately 58.7% of white voters.

Not only are these demographic groups growing in numbers, they are increasingly showing up to vote, with both black and Hispanic voters showing up in record numbers for the second consecutive presidential election.

The single, urban woman
Single women are another increasingly powerful force behind the resurgence of cities. There are an estimated 17 million women who live alone in America, and President Obama won that voting bloc by a whopping 39%.

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg attributes the foundation for this demographic shift to larger cultural changes in American society. In his book, Going Solo, he describes the rapid entry of women into the civilian workforce over the past 40 years, the delay of marriage for young people, and the “divorce revolution” that took place during the 1970s.

In short, young people, especially young women, are much different in contemporary America than those from 50 years ago.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of women in the workforce has grown from 14.8 million in 1967 to 43.2 million in 2009. And in 2009, it is estimated that approximately 30% of all women over the age of 25 have earned a bachelor’s degree or more.

Should these trends continue, the single urban woman may continue to become an even more powerful voting bloc.

With single women and minorities becoming an increasingly dominant portion of 21st century American cities, it may force the hands both major political parties to focus more of their energy on public policies that positively relate to urban voters.

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News Opinion Politics

Ohio early voting rules work against voters from heavily populated counties

Line for early voting on Saturday, November 3 outside of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. Photograph by David Pepper.

Early voting for this 2012 election season comes to an end today. Those registered to vote, in Hamilton County, will be able to do so by visiting the Board of Elections office at 824 Broadway Street from 8am to 2pm.

According to the Hamilton County Board of Elections, 564,429 people have been registered to vote in Hamilton County – a number slightly higher than that in 2008. The difference between 564,429 voters in 2012, however, is that their early voting days have been greatly reduced.

On top of the reduced number of days to vote early, voters across Ohio are only allowed to cast an early vote at one location per county. This means that voters in heavily populated counties with big cities are subjected to longer waits. So far, voters in Hamilton County have reported up to 4.5-hour-long waits downtown.

Polling numbers show an incredibly tight presidential race that may come down to how Ohio votes on Tuesday. Furthermore, with Hamilton County being the most populated swing county in Ohio, the race for the presidency may end up being decided in Cincinnati. It’s no wonder President Obama (D) held a rally before 13,500 people at the University of Cincinnati last night.

UrbanCincy would like to see all voters offered the opportunity to cast their ballot for every election. It is extremely unfortunate, however, that the cities are at the front line of having voting capacity restricted.

Not only do politicians in Washington D.C. rarely talk about cities, which include the vast majority of Americans, but the fact that a segment of those politicians are actively working to reduce the ability of urban voters to vote is truly disgusting.

While it is too late to change anything for this election, we would like to see the administration of Governor Kasich (R) move quickly to expand early voting for future elections, and expand the number of voting locations in each county based on population totals.

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Up To Speed

Midwestern cities struggling to improve public perceptions about them

Midwestern cities struggling to improve public perceptions about them.

New research shows that all of those studies constantly released about the best and worst cities for (fill in the blank) may actually have an impact on people’s perceptions of those places. The analysis finds that people throughout the United States have poor perceptions of the Midwest and cities like Cincinnati, St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee. More from The Atlantic:

What we found is that our initial perceptions about cities are in fact often grounded in statistical reality. The positive or negative opinions of our survey respondents were correlated, often quite strongly, with such metrics as change in population, housing prices, and cost of living, and inversely correlated with measures like crime and unemployment. On the other hand, measures such as sales tax and traffic congestion appear to have little influence on people’s perceptions of different cities.

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Business News Politics

Cincinnati aims to revise plumbing code to allow for rainwater harvesting by November

In early 2011, Cincinnati City Council signed a motion to develop a task force that would oversee the creation of new building code standards to allow for rainwater harvesting throughout the city. The work of the Rainwater Harvesting Task Force, however, may now be jeopardy due to a lack of clarity about who is responsible for maintaining such systems.

The initial goal of Cincinnati’s Rainwater Harvesting Task Force was to develop a code to allow for the reuse of rainwater for non-potable uses such as flushing toilets. One of the concerns with such a system is the potential for backflow of non-potable water into potable water sources.

To that end, one of the biggest advances over the past year was the release of a new national standard in March 2012. And according to the Task Force, it is that national standard that is being used as a template for Cincinnati.


Dater Montessori 2009 renovation achieved LEED Gold standards, and also boasts the city’s first, and only, rainwater harvesting system. Photograph by Glaserworks.

“There is no community in Ohio that has a procedure in place to allow this [rainwater harvesting] to happen,” Bob Knight, Green Partnership for Greater Cincinnati and the Rainwater Harvesting Task Force, explained to Cincinnati’s Livable Communities Committee on September 25. “Significant hurdles have been resolved in Cincinnati, and we are working on eleven additional items now.”

Some of the eleven additional items that still need to be resolved include the finalization of water quality requirements, inspection processes, certified maintenance protocols, metering, and development of tailored language from the new national code that will work for Cincinnati. Knight, however, is optimistic that the task force will meet the goals of city council and have an amended plumbing code in place by late November.

To date, the only rainwater harvesting system in place in Cincinnati was installed in 2009 at Dater Montessori School on the city’s west side. The Dater system, however, has not yet been used due to lack of agreements between various agencies and institutions. Specifically, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) is concerned about being responsible for maintaining the system once it is operational.

“I’m afraid the direction the Task Force is taking is not taking us in the direction we want to be,” Terry Elfers, Chief Operating Officer of CPS, exclaimed. “CPS does not want to be responsible for treating water.”

CPS is not alone in their hesitation to move forward, as Greater Cincinnati Water Works has also expressed concern about where responsibility will lie in these systems that are envisioned to help reduce water consumption while also helping Cincinnati reduce water runoff as is required by a federal consent decree.

“The heart of the problem is allowing the agencies that are responsible for this decision, to be able to point to a standard that they can defend,” Knight explained. “With this model code, the agencies can now point to it and can say that they will follow this direction.”

The Rainwater Harvesting Task Force hopes to have the language in place for Cincinnati’s plumbing code within 60 days so that they can meet their deadline. Absent that direction and approval from City Council, the activation of Dater’s rainwater harvesting system may have to continue to wait, along with other potential systems around the city.

“It would be wonderful for the City and CPS if we could resolve this so that we could support moving forward with this project,” Eflers stated as he reminded the committee that CPS has served as a leader in the community when it comes to environmental sustainability issues over the past decade.

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Development News Politics Transportation

Funding questions loom while reconstruction of I-75 progresses

In the early 2000s the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) formulated plans to rebuild and widen Interstate 75 between the Ohio River and I-275. The overall plan was divided into three project areas: The Brent Spence Bridge, Millcreek Expressway (Downtown north to Paddock Road), and Thru the Valley (Paddock Road north to I-275).

Originally all fifteen miles of work were expected to be completed by 2020, but ODOT’s financial crisis has meant just three of the 17 phases comprising the Millcreek Expressway and Thru the Valley sections have commenced construction. The complex character of the planned reconstruction means some phases must be built before others but little benefit to safety and traffic capacity will be realized until nearly all sections are complete.


September 2012 I-75 reconstruction photographs by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

In short, work currently underway will build retaining walls and build new overpasses for an expanded highway, but the expressway itself cannot be widened in these areas until adjacent phases are completed.  So improvements currently under construction at Mitchell Ave. might be decades old before they are put to full use – or worse, these future phases might never be built.

Thus far, ODOT has only completed the $7.1 million second phase which rebuilt the Monmouth Street overpass in Camp Washington. Originally planned to be built as part of Phase 5 (Hopple Street to Mitchell Avenue), the Monmouth Street Overpass was deemed “shovel-ready” and funded through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The $53 million reconstruction of the Mitchell Avenue Interchange (Phase 1) began in 2011. Construction crews are presently demolishing the 57-year-old Mitchell Avenue and Clifton Avenue overpasses and preparing the right-of-way necessary to widen I-75 from six to eight lanes.

ODOT has scheduled a summer 2014 completion for the Mitchell Avenue work.

Modification of the Colerain/Beekman/I-74 Interchange (Phase 3) also commenced in 2012. This $13 million project is also currently taking place, and is also scheduled for completion in 2014.


An ODOT official explains what led to the financial troubles of ODOT at a Transportation Review Advisory Council meeting in 2011. Video by Jake Mecklenborg for UrbanCincy.

Yesterday ODOT Director Jerry Wray announced funding for the first phase of the $467 million Thru The Valley project.  Although funding is now programmed for reconstruction of I-75 between Shepard Lane and Glendale-Milford Rd. beginning in 2021, there is still no definite timetable for the Thru the Valley’s other 7 phases.

These delays in work on I-75 in Cincinnati illustrate the central problems with state and federal gasoline taxes: the taxes are not automatically adjusted with inflation, causing revenues to drift downward over time, and proceeds fall when high gas prices motivate people to drive less. Until either or both gasoline taxes are raised, or ODOT identifies new funding sources, reconstruction and widening of I-75 will proceed at a glacial rate, and drivers will realize little benefit from completed early phases.