Tag: planning

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Arts & Entertainment News

Street Food Festival to Highlight Progress and Potential of Walnut Hills

1391627_499302080165916_699884893_nOne year ago city officials and community leaders stood at the intersection of McMillian Street and Park Avenue in Walnut Hills to celebrate an effort that was decades in the making, the conversion of McMillan and William Howard Taft from one way streets to two way streets. That same day, Walnut Hills also celebrated its first Street Food Festival along Gilbert Avenue. One year later, the festival has now moved to McMillan Avenue, this time to celebrate past achievements and future possibilities.

“The two-way conversion of McMillan allows us to move the festival to this location. It’s a neighborhood street again,” Kevin Wright, Executive Director of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation (WHRF) told UrbanCincy.

Food trucks and street carts provide popular dining options all over the country. While regarded early on as a trend, it seems now that these tough but successful business models are working hard and are here to stay. Cincinnati’s growing food truck fleet has been offering high quality eats across many of the Greater Cincinnati Area’s neighborhoods, providing everything from pizza and burgers to gelato and cookies.

Cincinnati food trucks are a sought after addition to any local event and many Cincinnatians have come to appreciate when a few of the area’s food trucks come together to serve the City Flea, the downtown or OTR lunch rush, the late night bar crowd, area breweries and many local festivals. This Saturday, however, the food trucks themselves will take center stage at the second Cincinnati Street Food Festival in Walnut Hills.

The Cincinnati Street Food Festival will be the largest gathering of food trucks in the area, with 17 food trucks and street vendors lining McMillan Street between Hemlock and Chatham. Hosted by the WHRF, this free event will also have live music from local bands, beer from Mt. Carmel Brewing Company, and fun for the whole family.

The Street Food Festival is just one piece of the WHRF’s focused efforts on the McMillan Street corridor. These efforts include events like the Five Points Beirgarten, strategic property acquisition, demolition, and stabilization as well as transportation and development initiatives like form-based code and last years two-way conversions of McMillan and Taft. Additionally, there are greater plans in the works with the successful stabilization of the Firehouse and the adjoining building completed earlier this year.

“This is the beginning of Phase One of the redevelopment of Peeble’s Corner. Over the next 12-18 months you will begin to see a focus by the WHRF in the Copelen to Gilbert section of McMillan.” Wright told UrbanCincy, “This small stretch will be our first real place making opportunity.”

Construction is slated to begin this week with completion of the buildings by February. Wright stated he has heard rumors of interest from one of the many food truck vendors in opening a brick and mortar store in one of the rehabbed buildings but no final plans have been disclosed regarding which one it will be.

The festival will give people a chance to appreciate Cincinnati’s many diverse food trucks, meet-up with friends and neighbors, rediscover one of Cincinnati’s historic neighborhoods and check out some of the initial changes happening in the area.

For a full list of the available food, beer and entertainment offerings, visit www.cincystreetfoodfest.com.

Or, if you really can’t wait, visit the Cincinnati Food Truck Association to find where your favorite food trucks are located on a day to day basis.

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Up To Speed

Why hasn’t Cincinnati embraced bike share yet?

Why hasn’t Cincinnati embraced bike share yet?.

Small cities across the United States are finding success with bike sharing – the urban planning transportation fix du jour. Places like Madison, WI, Boulder, CO, Salt Lake City and even Chattanooga, TN are all reaping the benefits from their systems. While these smaller and less densely populated communities are able to make bike sharing work, why hasn’t Cincinnati been able to get a system of its own up and running in Ohio (Columbus has Ohio’s only bike share system)? More from Momentum Magazine:

But why have small cities taken to bike share? Well, largely because bike share is a low-cost solution for smaller cities to attract young talent and enhance their transportation network.

Being small certainly has its drawbacks when it comes to things like obtaining sponsorship and having a limited number of potential users, but it also has its advantages. Madison, Boulder, and Chattanooga were able to quickly harness community support, build strong ties with city officials and local institutions, and launch successful programs. Small is efficient; small is beautiful.

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Business Development News Politics

Vishaan Chakrabarti: ‘Hyper Dense’ Cities Should Be America’s Future

The great American story is one of free wills and free markets. We believe that the physical world we live in is the result of individual choices made by free people.

In the case of cities this has led many to believe, perhaps falsely, that what Americans really want is dispersed communities where people use cars to get to virtually all of their destinations. Transit, if an option at all, is left for the poor or those choosing to use it solely to get to and from work.

A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America from Architectural League of New York on Vimeo.

What makes this narrative odd, however, is that America is quite unique in this position. Virtually every other country on Earth, both developed and not, organizes its communities differently. In fact, even the America we know did things quite differently up until the mid-19th century.

Vishaan Chakrabarti (@VishaanNYC), a professional architect and Columbia University professor, believes that dense cities with lots of transit options are the recipe for success.

Chakrabarti has written extensively about this subject matter, and recently published a book on the topic entitled A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America. In it, he also outlines how infrastructure is approached too narrowly and should instead look at opportunities that include public health, safety, education and amenities. He calls this “infrastructure of opportunity.”

He discusses how government policy has specifically influenced the low-density, sprawl that often defines contemporary Americana. Chakrabarti goes on to detail how these policies have been a failure and outlines which strategies should be pursued in order to right the proverbial ship.

“The suburbs are largely a creation of “big government,” an explicitly, policy-driven, subsidized scheme that has guided how we live, work, and play,” Chakrabarti explains. “One of the fundamental premises of the book is not whether people should live in the suburbs or not; I believe in free choice. The question is whether they should be paid to do it.”

The self-proclaimed urbanist gave a lecture, hosted by the Architectural League of New York, on this matter back in June. The 15-minute video of this lecture provides a high-level synopsis of what is discussed in his book and other works.

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Up To Speed

Why the fascination with bus rapid transit?

Why the fascination with bus rapid transit?.

Between form-based codes and bus rapid transit, it is hard to decide which concept is trendier in America at this given moment. On one hand planners have begun to realize that Euclidean zoning codes are, perhaps, wildly out-of-touch. While at the same time, engineers and policy makers can’t find the funds to properly build rapid transit systems. More from NextCity:

In the developing world, labor is cheap and capital is expensive. Buses are more labor-intensive than trains, so it makes sense that they would be cheaper. Indeed, the most advanced BRT systems were built in developing countries in South America and East Asia. But in the developed world, where labor is also expensive, the calculus shifts toward rail.

While European countries that excel at building transit, for example, have started building BRT systems, they generally continue to stick with rail, and the wealthiest East Asian countries are heavily dependent on rail…But the U.S. is no ordinary developed country when it comes to transit costs. While labor costs here are high, as with every other developed country, capital costs — the cost of building transit systems — are much higher than average.

Categories
Development News Politics Transportation

Mayor Mallory, Agenda 360 Hosting Transit Oriented Development Workshops This Week

Cincinnati has moved forward with modifications to its city regulations to allow greater flexibility with regard to the provision of parking, incentivized dense development near streetcar stops, and has pursued an agenda under Mayor Mark Mallory (D) that has been focused on making the city more livable and attractive.

“Transit Oriented Development is a powerful strategy that can help communities throughout the Cincinnati region encourage new development projects,” Mayor Mallory stated in a prepared release. “It has become clear that there is increasing demand to live near community assets. By making smart transportation decisions, communities provide an incentive to private investment.”

U Square at the Loop
Calhoun Street in Clifton Heights has been transformed from drive-thru fast food restaurants to a dense collection of shops, residences and offices. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

One of the principle elements of this agenda has been to make the city more attractive to those who do not own personal automobiles, and by making the city’s neighborhoods more walkable and better connected to one another through transit.

Encouraging real estate development that works with these goals, however, is one that is still in its infancy stages and is still in need of work with local developers.

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is a catch phrase that has been embraced by Smart Growth America, a national organization advocating for smart growth strategies, and is part of a series of meetings to be held in Cincinnati on September 26 and 27.

Cincinnati is one of 22 communities nation-wide selected to participate in the free technical assistance program funded by a Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities.

Organizers say that the workshops will be led by experts from Smart Growth America and aim to inform residents and community leaders about the benefits of transit and development surrounding transit.

“This workshop will provide the community with an opportunity to learn more about transit options and transit-oriented development in the context of Cincinnati,” said Roger Millar, Smart Growth America Vice President. “Since the city recently passed its comprehensive plan, now is a great time to assess how Cincinnati can most effectively align its development with transit investments.”

The meetings are being jointly hosted by Mayor Mallory and Agenda 360, a regional action plan for Cincinnati, and are free and open to the public.

An introductory presentation will occur at 6pm on September 26 at the Cincinnati Area Chapter of the American Red Cross in Evanston (map). The presentation, organizers say, will focus on a collection of strategies for implementing TOD in Cincinnati neighborhoods and surrounding communities.