Tag: economic

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Up To Speed

What does the decline of the nuclear family mean for America’s cities?

What does the decline of the nuclear family mean for America’s cities?.

What has long been considered to be the traditional family household in America is changing. People are living longer, young individuals are putting off marriage, women are increasingly becoming dominant in the workforce, and same-sex couples are taking a more prominent role in our society. These changes mean a variety of things socially, but it also means that our types of housing are and need to continue to change. More from Urbanophile:

As affluent people who choose to remain childless remain in more urban areas, and those who choose to have kids live in suburban ones, we’ll have legitimate matters of interest driving them apart politically. In a piece called “Geographies in Conflict” I noted how different economic geographies in the same physical space is an inherent conflict. Red states and blue states don’t just have different political points of views. They increasingly do different things. If you are Texas and are in the business of energy, chemicals, logistics, and manufacturing, the things that you need to be successful are very different from a Silicon Valley or Manhattan, which specialize in ultra-high end, high value service industries. The conflicts are as much a product of legitimate self-interest as political philosophy.

I think we’ll see similar conflicts between the needs, wants, and desires of the childless urban population and those of the suburban families with kids. It’s kind of nice to do your shopping daily on foot or by bicycle at the local market and such when you don’t have three kids to buy for and haul around with you. Bloomberg’s proposed micro-apartments in New York are an example of a market designed to cater to singles, not families. It’s not a matter of one being good and another bad. It’s merely that singles (or childless married couples) and people with children have very different priorities and concerns in life.

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Up To Speed

What issues facing cities are you hoping to hear discussed at tonight’s presidential debate?

What issues facing cities are you hoping to hear discussed at tonight’s presidential debate?.

The second of three planned presidential debates for the 2012 Election is scheduled for this evening. This debate will have a “town hall” format and will take place from 9pm to 10:30pm. One item that was not mentioned once by either Governor Romney (R) or President Obama (D) in the first debate was cities. Cities are where abstract issues debated at the national level, meet reality. Things like health care, education, gun control, infrastructure, immigration, budgets, and voting rights all must be faced at the local level, with no one else to pass the issue along to.

So with that said, which issue facing cities would you like to hear the presidential candidates address this evening in New York? More from Forbes:

Here’s hoping tonight’s debate format will shake things up a bit. The “town hall” style brings in actual real people who offer us the best chance yet of introducing some new topics into the conversation. And there are a lot of them. Immigration, the drug war, privacy, drone strikes, sanctioned assignation, to name just a few. To get a jump start, we reached out to Forbes’ million-plus followers and asked them what they want the candidates to debate tonight. We’ve already got some great responses at #Prezquestions – delivered with the kind of no-BS bluntness we hope those lucky enough to get to ask questions tonight deliver, too.

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Business Opinion

Downtown Cincinnati’s retail future probably not the shopping mall

[This is a guest editorial written by Eric Douglas in response to Episode #9 of The UrbanCincy Podcast which focused on urban retail planning – Randy.]

Do people visiting downtown do so to shop at a mall?

That’s the question I ask myself regarding Tower Place and downtown Cincinnati shopping. Across the region, the standard indoor shopping malls along I-275 that we have come to know, Tri-County Mall, Northgate Mall, Cincinnati Mall/Cincinnati Mills/Forest Fair Mall, and Anderson Towne Center/Beechmont Mall, all have had their struggles (if the rebrandings alone aren’t enough to prove that).

When architect Victor Gruen invented what we now know as the indoor mall in a 1952 and subsequently opened his first prototype in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota, it was not a totally original concept. Shopping galleries had existed in European cities, Cleveland’s Arcade, and Chicago’s Merchandise Mart well prior to the 1950’s.

Do urban shopping malls like Cincinnati’s Tower Place Mall still make sense?. Macy’s Fountain Place photograph by Randy A. Simes.

Though the region’s suburban shopping malls modeled after Gruen’s are different from the European Galleries and Tower Place in that they have two or three department stores anchoring the smaller stores and are within large seas of parking – something even Circle Centre Mall in Indianapolis and Water Tower Place in Chicago have. But what is also a commonality between Tower Place and other regional malls is that the post-1950’s indoor shopping mall experience is no longer desirable to consumers.

Now Kenwood Towne Center is thriving, and this does not include the decaying Kenwood Towne Place, the indoor shopping mall is not a complete and total failure in most markets, especially those more affluent like Kenwood, West Palm Beach, Troy, MI, etc., and most developers have acknowledged this by making malls outdoor “lifestyle centers”, but who’s to say that’s a viable alternative that will last half as long (30 years) as the indoor mall lived.

All this background sets the stage for the original question: do people visiting downtown want to shop at a mall?

Looking at the recent notable large-scale projects in and around downtown, all of them hearken back to traditional urban areas or city-led development: Fountain Square, obviously with its square or piazza, the Gateway Quarter’s shopping, and The Banks grid street layout. From these successful examples, the city should continue to not to try to reinvent or retrofit itself in order to compete in a form similar to the suburbs, it should in fact continue to try to be the exact opposite of the suburbs and their shopping experiences. It should strive to be what only cities and traditional neighborhoods can and have been for 200 years in America: true organic places that provide genuine experiences that shopping malls and strip malls cannot provide simply by their nature.

Strive to be New York’s Fifth Avenue or Chicago’s Michigan Avenue where shopping for Christmas presents is such an enjoyable experience, even in winter, it’s romanticized in movies and attracts people from other states just to shop. Don’t strive for another mall that any municipality with a highway interchange can attract. Be different.

If you have something on your mind, please send your thoughts to us at urbancincy@gmail.com. The UrbanCincy team will then review your submission and get back with you for further details about your guest editorial.

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Arts & Entertainment Business News

2012 World Choir Games attendance exceeded 200,000

The 2012 World Choir Games were long anticipated and oft-hyped, but now that the proverbial dust has settled, the event’s true impact is coming into focus.

According to a new report issued by the Cincinnati USA Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB), the 2012 World Choir Games attracted 15,000 participants from 64 different countries, and drew more than 208,000 spectators at some 200 different events.

Some of the biggest events included four sellout performances at the Aronoff Center for the Arts, two sellout performances at Music Hall, the opening and closing ceremonies at US Bank Arena, and the Celebration of Nations Parade on Fountain Square which attracted an estimated 30,000 attendees.


The 2012 World Choir Games was a resounding success, but the lack of coordination at the MarketGarden left many mobile food vendors with a bitter taste in their mouth. MarketGarden photograph by Thadd Fiala.

“This was a once in a lifetime event for the city, and we left nothing to chance,” said Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney. “The 2012 World Choir Games has changed us and readied us for better things.”

Thanks in part to all of the visitors for the international choir competition; Cincinnati’s year-to-date occupancy rate is up approximately two percent from 2011, while revenues are up nearly five percent, according to Star Travel Research numbers.

Out of the various sub-regions within the Cincinnati market, downtown Cincinnati remains the strongest hotel market with a 63 percent occupancy rate demanding an average of $76 per room.

While nearly all objective accounts point to a resounding success by city officials and community leaders in hosting the 2012 World Choir Games, some say the event had sore spots from which it can learn. One example, in particular, was the MarketGarden which was established to host local food trucks and carts in a centralized marketplace.

“People were really vying to become part of this, and we were thinking it would be a pretty substantial event with lots and lots of people,” explained Café de Wheels owner Thomas Acito. “Unfortunately it was really dead, and we discovered by the third day that there was food being given out for free at the Duke Energy Convention Center for participants.”

The lack of coordination left many of the vendors that signed up for the MarketGarden with a bitter taste in their mouth, wishing for better organization between the big event and the smaller food market.

The hope, Acito said, was that there would be a real density of potential customers as there is with events like Oktoberfest and Taste of Cincinnati. At this time, however, the city does little coordination between mobile food vendors with the larger events.

The struggles with MarketGarden notwithstanding, the Cincinnati USA CVB is touting the intangible effects of the games.

According to the report, the games garnered 1.4 billion impressions throughout the world, with approximately 900 million of those coming from throughout the United States. The combined publicity value of all of those impressions is estimated to weigh in at $32 million.

Without confirmation it is difficult to speculate about what might be the next major event Cincinnati will host, but all indications seem to be pointing at a Tall Stacks Music, Arts & Heritage Festival in 2013, or the 2015 MLB All-Star Game.

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Up To Speed

Cincinnati a changed city since Reds’ last playoff run

Cincinnati a changed city since Reds’ last playoff run.

Those who haven’t been living under a rock for the past five years know that a lot has happened in Cincinnati’s center city during that time frame. On Sunday TBS’ announcers spoke highly of the transformation that has occurred in downtown Cincinnati since the Reds last playoff appearance in 2010, and with the eyes of the baseball world focused squarely on the city this evening, it seems as though the nation will get a front row seat to that progress. More from the Associated Press:

Less than two years ago, little more than a giant parking lot occupied the half-mile between the stadiums of the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals along the Ohio River.

After more than $600 million in new development between the two stadiums, there are now six distinct bars and restaurants, a popular riverfront park and high-end apartments that are touted as being “Cincinnati’s premier live-work-play destination” and charge rent in the thousands…A few blocks over is a new $322 million, 41-story office tower that’s the tallest building in the city, and a 20-minute walk away is the trendy Over-the-Rhine historic district that used to be best known as a haven for crime and the site of the city’s 2001 race riots. Now dozens of bedraggled buildings in the district have been renovated into popular bars and restaurants and a once crime-prone park has undergone a $48 million makeover to become one of the city’s best venues for concerts, outdoor movie viewings and flea markets.