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Business News Politics

UVA Demographer’s Map Illustrates Cincinnati’s Racial Segregation

Dustin Cable, a demographic researcher at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, recently published a map of the United States that shows an individual dot for each of the nation’s 308,745,538 people.

On their map each dot was assigned one of five colors based on the racial and ethnic affiliation. Whites are blue; African-Americans, green; Asians, red; Hispanics, orange; and all other racial categories are coded as brown. Cable used publicly available 2010 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

When viewed in its entirety from afar, the map makes cities look like integrated places with a merging of all the colors to create a purple shade. This, however, is not the most accurate portrait of the racial segregation found throughout American cities.

When viewing Cincinnati at a more detailed level, for example, one can see the clear separation of White, Black, Hispanic and Asian populations.

The dots are evenly distributed throughout their assigned Census Block, so some dots (or people) appear to be living in areas where they cannot (i.e. parks, water, streets).

The specific areas of interest inside Cincinnati city limits are several Uptown neighborhoods where a dense cluster of Asian individuals live, and the Lower Price Hill and East Price Hill area where a small concentration of Hispanic individuals call home.

When looking elsewhere around the region it is also interesting to observe the Hispanic population cluster in Butler County near in and around the City of Hamilton.

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Up To Speed

Ohio’s 3Cs boast a larger economy than all of Denmark

Ohio’s 3Cs boast a larger economy than all of Denmark.

It turns out that while China has been gaining ground, it still has a long way to go to catch up with America’s economic prowess. In fact, recent numbers show that the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, alone, have a higher GDP than China. When looking at Ohio, Cincinnati, Columbus Cleveland ($320 billion) tally a combined GDP just higher than Denmark ($314 billion) and just lower than the United Arab Emirates ($359 billion). More from Business Journals:

A recent Pew Research Center survey of 38,000 people in 39 nations found widespread expectations that China will soon surpass the United States. Respondents in just six of those 39 countries are still placing their bets on the U.S. The current numbers, however, suggest something different.

China’s total output of goods and services, better known as its gross domestic product (GDP), climbed to an impressive $8.23 trillion last year, according to the latest estimates from the International Monetary Fund. But the United States is still far in the lead with GDP of $15.68 trillion, roughly 90 percent higher than China’s total.

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Business Development News

Cincinnati Breaks Ground on $16M Net Zero Energy, LEED Platinum Police HQ

City officials and neighborhood leaders celebrated the ground breaking for Cincinnati’s new $16 million Police District 3 Headquarters on Monday.

Located in Westwood, the 39,000 square-foot facility will replace what city and police officials consider an antiquated 105-year-old facility in East Price Hill.

While the City of Cincinnati has built or begun construction on several new fire stations, including one nearby in Westwood, this is the first new police station built in the city since in more than four decades.

“It used to be that when cities built civic buildings like this, they were places the community could come together,” Mayor Mark Mallory (D) said. “With District 3, we’re doing that again. We want people to come here and feel comfortable coming here with their neighbors.”

According to city officials, the new police headquarters will serve 14 neighborhoods from a central location on the west side. A site that was specifically chosen due to the input provided during Plan Cincinnati.

To help further strengthen the concept of the police headquarters also serving as a community gathering place, city officials have ensured that the new facility will include community gathering space and public art. It is an approach to community building similar to what was done, with rave reviews, by Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) when rebuilding its entire building portfolio.

The location is just a block away from Dater High School and Western Hills High School and sits in what was a vacant outlot of a suburban-style strip mall. Site plans show that the new facility will be built at the street and oriented toward the sidewalk.

While Cincinnati has been seen as a leader in green building when it comes to the rebuilding of CPS, its tax abatements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rehabilitation and new construction, and public building in general, this will be one of the Queen City’s greenest buildings.

The development team of Messer Construction, Triversity Construction and Emersion Design are aiming to achieve a LEED Platinum certification – the highest possible rating under the LEED system.

The development team also says that it has designed the structure to achieve Net Zero Energy Consumption through its geothermal mechanical systems, high performance building envelope and solar panels. The new Police District 3 Headquarters will also reduce potable water consumption by 30% thanks to on-site bio-retention cells and strategic use of site design materials.

City leadership also expects the project will reach 36.2% Small Business Enterprise (SBE) inclusion. If such a number is achieved, it would make it the highest percentage of SBE participation on any city project to-date.

According to project officials, construction is expected to take about a year-and-a-half and could start welcoming members of the community as early as July 2015.

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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.