"Within a quarter mile of a CTA L or Metra [transit] station, jobs grew at a rate of 20 percent, which is more than twice the growth rate in the region as a whole"

"With the help of two lending programs and state and federal tax credits, 3CDC has helped to revive 131 historic buildings and to create 536 new or rehabbed residential units and 373,267 square feet of new or renovated commercial space. It also oversaw a sweeping redo of Washington Park, once a haven for drug dealers, now OTR's crown jewel."

"The Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. plans to build a 3,300 square foot deck with a bar, concessions and seating area at Washington Park to provide a space for private events and for people to sit, relax and watch the activity in the park."

“The vibrancy of downtown, the building has food options and it’s within walking distance to so many amenities downtown [...] It allows for us to be part of the downtown culture.”

“[Ford CEO] Mulally said that adding more cars in urban environments is ‘not going to work’ and that he was interested in developments in ‘personal mobility’ and ‘quality of life.’”

"Who needs New Urbanism or Smart Growth when so many amazing old neighborhoods are just sitting out there in under-appreciated and radically undervalued cities all across North America?"

"UrbanCincy kingpin Randy Simes wants to see the city lease its advertising assets but keep them limited to what has been fair game for years: bus benches, shelters, newsstands, bike share — all the familiar places you tend to see Nicolas Cage movie posters defamed. The idea, Simes argues, is to work together on one unified leasing strategy, which, he feels, 'will increase the value of public right-of-way advertising.'"

"A common misconception is that middle-class families don’t want to live in the urban core. But this is simply not the case. Remember: if you build it, they will come. And if you don’t think that the most (economically) sustainable way to build an urban core is to build it for the hard-working middle-class, you are crazy."

“'Our core asset is our people. It’s important to attract the best talent,' [Jim Price, president and CEO of Empower Group], said. 'Being in the core business district gives us a leg up.'”

“[Bezos] said the types of people Amazon employs and wants to attract in the future 'appreciate the energy and and dynamism of an urban environment,' which means the company is more likely to get the talent it wants with an urban campus.”

"Since Washington Park re-opened in Over-The-Rhine, it has been a resounding success. The park faces the Cincinnati Music Hall on one end, a K-12 school on another, and the neighborhood on the remaining two sides. On a recent day in mid-August, it teemed with a variety of users [...] In a city that can often feel segregated by race and class, the park encompassed all kinds."

"Much of that thanks is owed to baby boomers, says Lee Robinson, the lead real estate agent for nine developments on the List. Those aging empty-nesters are no longer interested in the maintenance load of home ownership, but still desire a sense of independence and community."

My article for UrbanCincy and the Cincinnati Business Courier on the 1,500 new apartments and condos coming to Downtown Cincinnati in the coming years.

"Four [Cincinnati] neighborhoods were included in the initial implementation schedule: Madisonville, College Hill, Westwood and Walnut Hills. Both Madisonville and College Hill have fully adopted the code with Walnut Hills being the latest. Westwood appears to be the next neighborhood poised to adopt the code after winning unanimous support from the city’s Planning Commission in December 2013."

"John D. Griffith, executive vice president for property development at Target, said that as more people, and especially young people, opted to live in cities rather than suburbs, Target wanted to remain convenient."

"In fact, Amazon reportedly asked Seattle for none of the traditional tax breaks that corporations routinely get from cities as a condition of locating there. Instead, it wanted a fashionable neighborhood that would allow it to attract top-notch talent."

The size of a city block has a big impact on the amount of usable land and how much is within walking distance.

"After decades of big businesses leaving the city for the suburbs, U.S. firms have begun a new era of corporate urbanism. [...] The bottom line: companies are under pressure to establish an urban presence that projects an image of dynamism and innovation."

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: “Ladies and gentlemen, the war on the car stops today... Transit City is over. We will not build any more rail tracks down the middle of our streets.”

"[Streetcar opponents] see the city as a holding place for poor, homeless drunks and a recreational facility for wealthy yuppies. They do not believe that normal people actually live here. They do not believe that people with their level of wealth or education would choose to live here."

"The region must continue to attract people and companies that can choose anywhere in the world to live and work. A low cost of living is no longer enough to spur growth; we must also offer modern infrastructure and amenities, especially to the millennials and baby boomers interested in urban living."

In 2002, the Enquirer called John Cranley "an enthusiastic supporter" of this plan to build big box stores and strip malls in a prime urban location. Cranley also stated "beggars can't be choosers" regarding the quality of the design.

"Taking highway standards and applying them to urban and suburban streets, and even county roads, costs us thousands of lives every year. There is no earthly reason why an engineer would ever design a fourteen foot lane for a city block, yet we do it continuously."

Aaron Renn writes about COAST's attempt to silence urbanist blogger Randy Simes.

"Chicago business owner Jeff Judge won’t consider a move to another city unless its bike amenities can match what his employees have become accustomed to [in Chicago]."

“'The millennials and the boomers are looking for the same thing,' said Amy Levner, manager of AARP’s Livable Communities.”

"There are certainly a vocal few who tend to get quoted often in the paper, but I’d say you’d be hard-pressed to find long-term residents of the neighborhood who are law-abiding citizens who are unhappy about the changes. I don’t care how poor you are, you don’t want to live amongst crime and neglect and deterioration."

"But guns — whether used accidentally or with intent — are much less likely to be the cause of death than another tool: cars. And people drive more, drive longer, drive faster and drive drunker in rural areas than in urban ones, where they can walk or take public transit."

Another under-utilized building in Downtown Cincinnati is getting a renovation.

"People aged 55-64 had the highest rate of new-vehicle purchases in 2011, according to the study, and they've become the age group most likely to buy a new car. Just four years ago, the population aged 35-44 was most likely to buy a new car [...]"

One person's account of their life in the city compared to their former suburban lifestyle.

John Cranley's vision for redevelopment in Over-the-Rhine was massive chains like Hard Rock Café and ESPN Zone.

The hotel's new owner "was attracted by the 'phenomenal job Cincinnati has done turning the city around.'"

"Last week, Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory and a bevy of festive accomplices re-opened beautiful, 150-year-old Washington Park, in the heart of the city’s revitalizing Over-the-Rhine district. It had been closed for 20 months’ worth of renovations and, judging by the spectacular photos, it has been worth the wait."

Some excerpts explaining how Millennials' views on politics, media, technology, retail, real estate, and transportation differ from previous generations.

Perhaps the best article I've read explaining how the U.S. will change as Millennials gain and Baby Boomers lose influence.

"One of the reasons that New York has succeeded, Hargreaves told Mashable, is that its density and public transport systems make it easy for entrepreneurs to get from meeting to meeting."

"But Cincinnati has a tremendous opportunity. In these urban neighborhoods they already have what other cities want and are trying to build: A variety of urban housing types, including some of the best collection of Missing Middle Housing in the country; a network of neighborhood main streets ready to be revitalized; a rich, diverse, and well-built collection of historic architecture; and, easily accessible open space networks created by the topography weaving throughout these neighborhoods."

I wrote this piece for UrbanCincy in August 2012, responding to many of the often-repeated negative stereotypes about Cincinnati's urban core.

"Imagine your city passes a law requiring that all hotels in town, from the fleabag on Mediterranean Avenue to the Four Seasons on Boardwalk, charge $100 a night. You don’t have to be an economist to know what will happen: the best hotels will be booked to capacity every night, and no one will ever stay at the CheapSleep. [...] No city price-fixes its hotels, but plenty make the same mistake with curbside parking spaces."

“What really happens when you move to a big city is you get to know a lot of different people, although they are not necessarily your friends. These are the people who bring different ideas, bring different opportunities and meetings with other great people that may help you.”

"What’s going on in Cleveland is happening across the country. Trendy small businesses like breweries and younger residents have been returning to downtown neighborhoods in many cities across the U.S. The biggest cities are growing faster than the suburbs around them, according to Census data."

"Cities also are redesigning transportation systems to meet the needs of older adults who have hung up their car keys or want to. In a 2010 AARP survey, about half of adults age 45 or older said living in a place where it’s easy to walk or living near church or social organisations was important to them."

"What we have found is that the underlying financing mechanisms of the suburban era — our post-World War II pattern of development — operates like a classic Ponzi scheme, with ever-increasing rates of growth necessary to sustain long-term liabilities."

"At a former butcher's shop, stickers applied to the windows show a packed meat counter and give the impression that business is booming."

Enquirer finds that Downtown Cincinnati is safer than many of the surrounding suburbs.

"We don’t have a Subway on the corner, we have a Fork Heart Knife. We don’t have an Applebees, we have Neon’s. Those are the kinds of places, I think, that local people want."

"People will ask us, where do you typically go when you go to a city. And these days, what we’ll do is we’ll pull up the old streetcar maps. Because most U.S. cities had streetcars. If you go to those old streetcar neighborhoods, there’s oftentimes a cluster of commercial buildings nestled into the neighborhoods. Those are ready-made to be the neighborhood destinations. Those are where your grandparents shopped. You’d go to the butcher or the baker, get their groceries. They’re really built for walkability because of their proximity as well to the neighborhood."

"When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots."

"A vast majority of today’s households with children still want [large, single-family] houses, Nelson says. But about a quarter of them want something else, like condos and urban townhouses."

"Stations with frequent service that are part of a well-connected transit network gave the biggest boost to home values."

Glenn Beck warns of the dangers of "livable communities" and "smart growth"!

"Germany is a world-leader in the design of expensive luxury cars, and has a network of freeways with no speed limits where you can push these cars to their ecstatic edge. But most urban travel in Germany happens on bikes, feet, or civilized and useful public transit systems in pleasant and sustainable cities."

Visitors said parks were one of their top reasons for coming downtown, thanks to the brand new Smale Riverfront Park and revamped Washington Park. That’s in addition to the other top reasons, which include restaurants and bars, Fountain Square, and Findlay Market.

Determining neighborhood boundaries is an inexact science.

Alan Ehrenhalt: "The [millennial] generation is simply so large [...] that even a respectable minority of this cohort seeking an urban life is bound to change American metropolitan areas dramatically."

The largest construction project so far in the revitalization of Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood is now underway.

Aaron Renn: "New York City is like a giant refinery for human capital. […] Taking in people, adding value, then exporting them is one of New York’s core competencies."

The owner of the building housing Everybody's Records is "just not interested" in selling, but Anchor Properties' offer keeps increasing.

Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog: “There are not a lot of folks from the 18-to-34 demographic in position to have a big impact on transportation policy. There are hardly any downsides to reforms that have to do with land use, cycling and walking, but we are still seeing a lot of resistance at the federal level.”

Americans of all political persuasions agree: an "ideal community" has locally-owned small businesses, walkability, and transit access.

New "PG Mobile" trucks bring grocery items right to the people.

I appreciate the goal of cleaning up neighborhoods and adding park space, but we need to stop looking at demolitions as the only answer.

The New York Times is latest on the list of publications highlighting Downtown Cincinnati's many recent successes.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer writes about the great things happening in Cincinnati's downtown, on the riverfront, and in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood.

Greater Cincinnati is experience population growth, including net in-migration from larger cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Conservative talk radio personality Bill Cunningham joins the growing list of mainstream media outlets finally recognizing the positive changes in downtown Cincinnati.

Aaron Renn gives a mention to Cincinnati, the positive changes the city has seen over the past few years, and our local media's "gee whiz" attitude when reporting on it.

Cincinnati's urban core continues to grow as a result of a strong community, strong city leadership, and efforts from groups like 3CDC.

A new website shows you exactly where you can go in under 30 minutes using mass transit.

A rare positive look at the positive changes in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine urban neighborhood from our anti-city newspaper.

In the 1920's, "AAA and other auto clubs [...] funded safety patrols that taught kids they had to stop for traffic, not the other way around."

Turning suburban malls into "the downtowns that the suburbs never had"

Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation confirms urban residents subsidize rural transportation infrastructure.

The neighborhood that's home to Seattle's first modern streetcar line is growing fast, and investor Paul Allen wants the ability to build taller buildings.

The editors of the Cincinnati Enquirer are either clueless and out-of-touch with reality or actually attempting to start a modern day Red Scare by publishing this mindless letter-to-the-editor.

Columbus, Ohio's I-670 cap is cited as a model for hiding urban expressways.

"Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift — a reversal of what took place in the 1950s, when drivable suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities emptied and withered."

Four incumbents ousted. Three newcomers voted in. Overall, great news for Cincinnati.