Tag: urban design

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Development News Transportation

Construction Work Picking Up Steam on Streetcar’s $133M First Phase

Cobblestone Removal Along Elm Street

There has been a flurry of construction activity for the $133 million first phase of the Cincinnati Streetcar project including groundbreaking for the $11.9 million Maintenance & Operations Facility and the removal of cobblestones along Elm Street in preparation for the laying of new track in October.

It is important to note, however, that the existing cobblestones are being shipped off for storage and cleaning, and will be put back on Elm Street in a way to compliment the new streetcar track.

UrbanCincy technologist and contributing photographer, Travis Estell, has been out and about lately and has captured some of the recent work through his lens. The following 12 photos were taken over the past two weeks in Over-the-Rhine.

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News Transportation

Roxanne Qualls and School Officials Call for Pedestrian Improvements Near Schools

Walking does not seem like a difficult task for city residents where sidewalks are plentiful and signals control traffic allowing people to walk safely across the street. However; this is not always the case in neighborhoods around the city.

Some intersections lack basic improvements such as crosswalks, signals, good sidewalks or no sidewalks at all. These problems are likely a minor nuisance for experienced walkers but from the viewpoint of children who walk to school it could mean the difference between a safe walk to school and imminent danger.

One such problem intersection is the Five Points Intersection in Evanston. The intersection of Montgomery, Woodburn and St. Leger is already seeing redevelopment, as mentioned previously on UrbanCincy, however crosswalk enhancements aimed at making intersections like this easier to cross for school children have yet to be implemented.

Safe Routes
City leaders and school officials call for improvements to pedestrian networks around schools on August 26. Image provided.

According to Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) Safe Routes to School Coordinator, Carmen Burks, about 85% of Evanston school children walk to school.

Last year the city received $1 million in grant funding from the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) through the Safe Routes to Schools Program, which is aimed at encouraging students to walk to school through the development of walking school bus programs and by installing pedestrian improvements to make walking routes to school safer. The improvements must be within a mile of a school.

At the beginning of this school year, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C) and CPS Superintendent Mary Ronan called for the city to finish implementing the pedestrian improvements listed from the grant.

The Five Points Intersection is among the 15 priority intersections on the list for improvement.

“If we had to give the implementation team a grade right now, it would be an ‘incomplete,’” Qualls said in a prepared statement.

Qualls says that she plans to introduce a motion directing the city administration to come back with a schedule for completing the remaining improvements before the beginning of the 2014 school year.

Ronan noted that the five-points intersection affects students from three schools – Evanston Academy, the Academy of World Languages, and Walnut Hills High School – with a combined enrollment of approximately 3,000 students.

“Many of these are relatively low-cost steps we can take to make big improvements in safety for our kids,” Qualls stated.

If all goes according to plan, work on the five-points intersection would likely begin next year and include new pedestrian signals. There is no time frame set for upgrades to the other 14 intersections identified for improvement.

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News

Where UrbanCincy Stands and Where We’re Going

When I first moved to Seoul at the end of 2010 I was quickly overwhelmed. The city is huge and the region boasts some 24.5 million people. That’s endlessly big…something to which only one or two other places on Earth can compare. But after being there for nearly three months that year, and then returning to Seoul for another nine months in 2011, I easily fell in love with the place.

Seoul is interesting not just because it is big, but because it is unique.

It is a special time in Korean culture. The younger generations are the first to have grown up in a completely modern, free and democratic society. Korea’s rapid industrialization, the fastest the world has ever seen, is now in its rear-view mirror and the people are now looking to improve their standards of living as opposed to simply throwing up housing as quickly as possible.

Seoul
Looking south over Seoul’s Jongno district. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

The obvious result has been a public policy response centered in the nation’s political and economic capital. Seoul’s mayors, if well-performing, often go on to run for president. One of the more notable cases is Lee, Myoung Bak, or otherwise known casually as MB.

MB made the very controversial decision to tear down a 5.2-mile stretch of elevated highway through the heart of Seoul and replace it with a linear park following a day-lighted stream. Many were skeptical of the unproven idea, and had it not worked it would have spelled the end of MB’s political career. As we know, the Cheonggyecheon has been a massive success by almost all measurable accounts and MB went on to serve as the president of the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2013

While in office, MB pursued sustainability. Korea’s 2009 stimulus, following the global recession, was the world’s most sustainable, investing more than 80% of its funds on sustainable energies, transportation or technology. Songdo, one of the world’s early pilot LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot projects also began construction in 2008.

On top of all this, the younger generations have shifted their focus squarely on design. You can see it reflected in food preparation and café design. You can see it in the creative street art and gallery culture. And you most certainly see it in the new public spaces and buildings being built in Seoul and elsewhere throughout the 50.2-million person country.

It is from this cultural shift that earned Seoul the title of World Design Capital in 2010, and why formerly drab spaces all throughout Seoul are being transformed into works of inspired design.

I suspect these trends will only continue, and will continue to fuel Seoul’s international rise. And this is why I am so excited to return.

On September 10 I flew back to Seoul to work on new sustainable planning and design projects with my company Parsons Brinckerhoff.

The move comes with some trepidation, but much excitement and I will be sure to share my journey with those of you who are interested in following me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Perhaps more importantly for you, the reader, is that UrbanCincy will continue in its current form. I will still contribute to the site from time-to-time, but John Yung will take on a greater leadership role for the site.

John will be joined by long-time contributors such as technologist Travis Estell and writer/photographer Jake Mecklenborg, as well as three new contributors that you may have seen publishing content over the past few months: Eric Fazzini, Paige Malott and Jacob Fessler. Get to know them at one of our monthly URBANexchange events.

This is a more than capable group and they have largely been running the site for the past several months.

UrbanCincy never has and never will be about one person, one project or one idea. It is about supporting urbanism in Cincinnati and pushing for things that will improve this great city we all love. We hope you will continue to read our stories and listen to our podcasts as we shift into the next exciting chapter for UrbanCincy.

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Up To Speed

When will Cincinnati enter the ‘Anti-Mall’ Age?

When will Cincinnati enter the ‘Anti-Mall’ Age?

With the news today that Forest Fair Mall/Cincinnati Mills Mall/Cincinnati Mall or more recently Forest Fair Village is back on the selling block, we have to wonder if the Cincinnati region will begin to accept the idea of suburban mall retrofit. In metro Washington DC several malls have already been converted into walkable town centers with significantly beneficial results. Read more at the Atlantic Cities:

Bethesda, a once-sleepy if upscale inner suburb in nearby Maryland, was almost totally automobile-dependent in 1994 when the mixed-use, multi-block development was conceived for a decaying commercial/industrial strip; now, in no small part because of developments like Bethesda Row, Bethesda feels both urban and urbane, yet still human-scaled. It’s a great place to be.

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Up To Speed

The Fragility of the Sprawl Economy

The Fragility of the Sprawl Economy

Auto-dependent development surely helped create economic fragility argues guest blogger Sam Bunting at Strong Towns. This was seen in Detroit where suburban growth helped destroy the central city. While Cincinnati is in a far different position than the Motor City, this is a teachable moment to cities and suburbs who continue to rely on automobile oriented development as a measure of success.  Read more at Strong Towns:

One measure of Princeton’s fragility is our limited ability to react to changing economic demands. We know that there is growing demand for compact, walkable homes. But we struggle to add those homes, because people have got used to the idea that Princeton is a low-density ‘burb, instead of the compact, walkable town that it was throughout most of its history. Worse, residents in more suburban neighborhoods are so dependent on cars  that they tend to oppose walkable development based on the slightest possibility that it will reduce the availability of parking in the downtown.