Monday, June 28, 2010

Cincinnati, OH- A beautiful downtown and a Liebeskind

Cincinnati  is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. The municipality is located north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border. The population within city limits was estimated to be 333,336 in 2000, making it the state's third largest city. According to a 2008 Census Bureau estimate, the Cincinnati Metropolitan Area had a population of 2,155,137 making it the largest MSA in Ohio (surpassing Cleveland which ranks 26th and whose MSA has nearly fallen below 2,000,000) and the 24th most populous in the United States.   Residents of Cincinnati are called Cincinnatians.

For more, click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati

To see all of my photos, click here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=61778&l=28bb04b360&id=1510516273

Cincinnati has a beautiful downtown core, full of nicely maintained classical-style buildings and several notable modern structures.  It is walkable and compact.  Its streets are somewhat narrow, giving the tall buildings ample opportunity to shade the streets.  There are some very nice green spaces in the city core. An example of a failed revitalization attempt is the Tower Center, which has a nearly vacant shopping mall in it.  These once thought to be miracle- cure-for-downtown-ills malls seem to fail in many cities. I suppose this is because their goal is to draw people inward rather than to assist their flow through the excitement of the downtown streets.  One drawback is the limited interaction between the city and the Ohio River which divides Ohio from Kentucky.  There are plans to address this issue, but presently, the river shoreline remains rough and cut off from the city by a freeway.  Like other cities, Cincinnati has invested enormously in riverfront baseball and football stadia.   There are several department stores in the downtown area, as well as theaters and museums.  the Contemporary Art Museum was most impressive.

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