CINCINNATI’S URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: A CRITIQUE BASED...

CINCINNATI’S URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: A CRITIQUE BASED ON URBAN THEORY

Daniel Boger*

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 236 I. THEORIES OF CITY DEATH AND REBIRTH ........................................ 239 II. CINCINNATI’S RISE AND DECLINE ................................................... 242 FIGURE 1. CINCINNATI CITY MAP ...................................................... 243 FIGURE 2. CITY OF CINCINNATI POPULATION DATA ............................ 245 FIGURE 3. CINCINNATI CITY AND SURROUNDINGS MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME, 2014.................................................................................... 246 FIGURE 4. OVERALL CRIME RATE, CINCINNATI VS. US (CITY-DATA.COM) ......................................................................................................... 246 FIGURE 5. CINCINNATI CITY BUDGET, 1999 – 2016 (OFFICIAL CINCINNATI BUDGET FIGURES) ........................................................... 246 ......................................................................................................... 247 FIGURE 6. POPULATION CHANGES, CINCINNATI AND ITS MSA ............ 247 FIGURE 7. MEDIAN HOME PRICES, 1984 – 2015.................................. 248

A. Over-the-Rhine’s Rise and Decline ............................................. 248 FIGURE 8. MAP OF OVER-THE-RHINE ................................................. 249 FIGURE 9. RACIAL MAKEUP OF OTR, 1960 -2000 (MILLER & TUCKER 161) .................................................................................................. 250

B. Cincinnati City Planning ............................................................ 250 III. THEORIES OF CINCINNATI’S RISE AND DECLINE ........................... 253

A. The Problem of Multiple Causes................................................. 254 B. The Problem of Timing ............................................................... 255 C. Explaining Cincinnati’s Rise and Decline through Economic

Geography ............................................................................... 257 IV. CINCINNATI’S ATTEMPTS AT URBAN RESURGENCE ........................ 258 V. THE REVITALIZATION OF OTR ....................................................... 263 VI. EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF CINCINNATI’S DOWNTOWN REDEVELOPMENT STRATEGY ............................................................. 264 FIGURE 10. RECENT POPULATION DEMOGRAPHICS FOR OTR (CINCINNATI ENQUIRER).................................................................... 265

A. Analysis of Redevelopment Through Traditional Economic Metrics ................................................................................................ 266

B. Hidden Costs and Secondary Effects of Cincinnati’s Redevelopment Program .................................................................................. 267

C. Final Thoughts on Cincinnati’s Urban Redevelopment ............... 271 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................... 272

* Author Information

236 Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law [Vol. 24:3

CINCINNATI’S URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: A CRITIQUE BASED ON URBAN THEORY

Daniel Boger

In the 1960s, many cities across the United States began to experience a series of social and economic crises. Painful desegregation, massive riots, white flight, and the near bankruptcy of New York City were indications that urban centers, pillars of the American industrial juggernaut, were in serious trouble. The realization of this instigated massive government response and vigorous academic debate: how it was possible that in a little over three generations, while the overall American economy had grown, the major urban centers of the East and Midwest had fallen into such debt and decay?

This paper critiques some of the theories of 20th century urban dynamics by analysis of one major urban center, the city of Cincinnati. In particular, it asks whether urban planning policy, in response to the needs of a city in crisis, has been an effective tool in revitalizing the city. The efficacy of city redevelopment strategy has long been a seminal question for academics.

The city of Cincinnati has entrusted its economic redevelopment future to entities such as the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), a private nonprofit organization, which has overseen almost $1 billion in investment in Cincinnati’s urban core. In the thirteen years since the creation of 3CDC, Cincinnati’s inner city has changed dramatically in terms of higher property values, lower crime rates, and significant restoration of its historic structures. However, it is far from clear that redevelopment, as a model for urban revival, works to the overall benefit of the city, as reflected by traditional statistical measurements like population growth, median income, poverty rates, crime rates, and tax revenues. Therefore, this paper questions whether city policies encouraging gentrification are worthwhile given the costs and benefits. Understanding the dynamics of Cincinnati’s decline from the point of view of urban theory helps provide a view of how much a city’s policies affect its economic condition, and which policies it should pursue.

INTRODUCTION

N the 1960s, many cities across the United States began to experience a series of social and economic crises. Painful desegregation, massive

riots, white flight, the near bankruptcy of New York City were indica-tions that urban centers, pillars of the American industrial juggernaut,

I

2017] Cincinnati’s Urban Redevelopment 237

were in serious trouble. The realization of this instigated massive gov-ernment response and vigorous academic debate: how it was possible that in a little over three generations, while the overall American econo-my had grown, the major urban centers of the East and Midwest had fallen into such debt and decay?

The purpose of this paper is to critique some of the theories of 20th century urban dyna-mics by analysis of one major urban center and my hometown, the city of Cincinnati. In particular, I ask whether urban planning policy, in response to the needs of my city in crisis, has been an effective tool in revitalizing the city. The efficacy of city redevelopment strategy has long been a seminal question for academics.

The theoretical issue at its heart relates to how much control cities have over their destiny. The notion of city as an organism hearkens back to medieval times and before, when walled cities could control the flow of people and material through their gates, as the cells in our bodies use receptors in the cell wall. This was relatively easy when the urban popu-lation was miniscule and social mobility nearly impossible. Cities then were politically powerful and their leadership exerted a high level of control over their social and economic function. In ancient Greece, os-trachismos, the punishment of banishment from a city, was considered almost a death sentence.

Fast forward to the 20th century, with its rapid and enormous social, demographic, and economic shifts. The long-term trend of urban decline had particularly negative consequences for poor, urban minority popula-tions, who became stuck in concentrated racialized poverty in inner cit-ies. Middle class exit resulted in the erosion of the city’s tax base and decreased provision of services to those who remained. Numerous feder-al attempts to improve the plight of urban centers failed, often doing more harm than good.

Since the outcomes were so similar across many cities, it would be fair to postulate that these morbidities were not the result of poor plan-ning, but rather of the inability of cities to cope with the tsunami of events that led to their decline. If blame for bad policy must be placed, it belongs more with state and federal policies of land use, subsidies for favored projects, and social policies like forced integration over which cities had no control.

Some Midwestern cities, including Cincinnati, have recently wit-nessed a resurgence, highlighted by a return of the middle class to the urban core and increased commercial and residential real estate devel-opment to areas once blighted and vacant. Many of these real estate de-velopment projects have been subsidized by local and federal govern-ments by way of tax credits, tax abatements, Tax Increment Financing (TIFs), and Business Investment Districts (BIDs)—to name a few. Many cite city development policies as spurring the urban resurgence. Others challenge this claim. In addition, scholars have questioned whether there is any link between city development policies and economic growth, and further, make the normative claim that city policies favoring economic


growth—including attraction and retention strategies—actually harm cities in the long run.

Separate from the question of whether growth policies benefit the city financially is how well these policies attack some of the underlying problems facing those living in the urban core, including poverty and racial segregation. I will address these questions and others by examin-ing the effect of federal and local redevelopment subsidies on Cincin-nati’s downtown Central Business district (CBD) and the adjacent histor-ic neighborhood of Over the Rhine (OTR). The city of Cincinnati has entrusted its economic redevelopment future to entities such as the Cin-cinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), a private non-profit organization, which has overseen almost $1 billion in investment in Cincinnati’s urban core.1

In the thirteen years since the creation of 3CDC, OTR has changed dramatically in terms of higher property values, lower crime rates, and significant restoration of its historic structures. However, it is far from clear that OTR redevelopment, as a model for urban revival, works to the overall benefit of the city, as reflected by traditional statistical measure-ments like population growth, median income, poverty rates, crime rates, and tax revenues. Therefore, this paper questions whether city policies encouraging gentrification are worthwhile given the costs and benefits. Understanding the dynamics of Cincinnati’s decline from the point of view of urban theory helps provide a view of how much a city’s policies affect its economic condition, and which policies it should pursue.

The paper begins in Part I with an introduction to a variety of theo-ries on urban growth and decline. Part II chronicles the city of Cincin-nati’s rise and decline and discusses the individual history of OTR. Part III then applies the theories discussed in Part I to Cincinnati and OTR’s history. Part IV examines Cincinnati’s attempts at urban revival over the past 100 years, while Part V does the same for OTR. Part VI concludes the paper by evaluating the success of Cincinnati’s downtown redevel-opment strategy, both for OTR, and for the city as a whole.

The paper concludes that the causes of Cincinnati’s rise, decline, and urban revival are obscure at best, and that it would be a mistake to at-tribute changes in the city’s economic trajectory to affirmative policy efforts by city government. On this basis, Cincinnati’s attempt to revive its urban core through its downtown redevelopment program is misguid-ed. Furthermore, Cincinnati’s redevelopment program has been ineffec-tive at alleviating poverty, and may create worse outcomes for the city down the road.

1 CINCINNATI CTR. CITY DEV. CORP., http://www.3cdc.org/ (last visited May

10, 2016).


I. THEORIES OF CITY DEATH AND REBIRTH

There are multiple views on the question of whether cities have any control over their own destinies through policymaking. At one extreme is the technological determinist theory advocated by Douglas Rae.2 In Rae’s view, city development and change stem from the external devel-opment of certain technologies and delays in the development of others. As an example, Rae cites four events and two nonevents as spurring the emergence of large industrial 19th century US cities. The four events were (1) steam-driven manufacturing; (2) the agricultural revolution that allowed for larger, more populous urban centers; (3) national network of railroads, which permitted city manufacturers to access larger markets; (4) a long period of greatly expanded immigration, which afforded man-ufacturers a large supply of cheap labor. Two events which did not oc-cur—(1) development of the automobile and (2) the electrical grid—prevented low-density development.3 According to this view, cities are powerless in shaping their economic futures. Rae uses New Haven, Con-necticut as an example of technological determinism. The advent of the electric grid and mass production of the automobiles led to the “end of urbanism”4 and subsequent flight to cheaper, open spaces.5 Thus, no pol-icy solution—federal, state, or local—could save New Haven from its fate as an also-ran.6

Although Rae’s theory emphasizes the primacy of technological forces in determining the course of cities, it also relies on the weakness of cities as political entities resulting from their subordination to states, their territorial limitations,7 and the limits put on them by the U.S. sys-tem of federalism.8 Gerald Frug provides the most well-known theory of the decline of city power. Frug ascribes the city’s inability to control its destiny to the development of the current legal regime, which puts the city subservient to the state and federal government.9 Frug also notes the city’s lack of power relative to private corporations that resulted from the

2 DOUGLAS RAE, CITY: URBANISM AND ITS END (2003). 3 Id. at 10. 4 Id. at 29. 5 Id. at 22. 6 Id. at 29. See also GUIAN A. MCKEE, THE PROBLEM OF JOBS: LIBERALISM,

RACE, AND DEINDUSTRIALIZATION IN PHILADELPHIA (2009) (describing how Philadelphia was largely powerless in halting its industrial decline).

7 See Richard C. Schragger, Mobile Capital, Local Economic Regulation, and the Democratic City, 123 HARV. L. REV. 482, 485–86 (describing cities’ “spatial predicament”: “[C]ities cannot move, and their ability to adjust to new economic conditions is limited by existing infrastructure and the embedded na-ture of the built environment”) [hereinafter Mobile Capital].

8 RAE, supra note 2, at 25–26. 9 Gerald Frug, The City as a Legal Concept, 93 HARV. L. REV. 1057, 1062–

63 (1980).


bifurcation of the business and municipal corporation in the 19th Centu-ry.10

Charles Tiebout puts forth another explanation for why cities suc-ceed or fail. Tiebout theorizes that there is a competitive market for cities based on price (tax rate) and provision of services. In Tiebout’s view, citizens vote with their feet11 and settle in cities that provide the most attractive package of services for the lowest price.12 The upshot is that cities that can attract and retain mobile people and capital will improve their lot, while those that cannot will falter. Tiebout’s model can mesh with Rae’s, in that cities can become less desirable by way of changes in technology. However, as Professor Richard Schragger notes, Tiebout’s theory can also suggest a high degree of agency for cities.13 Cities can outcompete others though enactment of pro-market policies that attract and retain mobile capital.

A third conception of the city is that of a spatial economic process. Urban geographers such as Jane Jacobs and Richard Schragger espouse the view that cities are organisms with many subparts that rely on each other for economic and social support.14 At root, the urban geography theory holds that a city’s economic success relies on a complex series of events coalescing to form clusters of economic activity within a given space.15 Economic clusters build on themselves because the close prox-imity of labor, component parts, and knowledge bases help to support large industries. Examples of what Paul Krugman describes as “agglom-eration” could be seen in large industrial cities such as Detroit, where the automobile industry thrived because of (among other things) access to a large labor pool, copious supply of raw materials, and the presence of supporting industries. In Thomas Sugrue’s words, “[f]actories, shops,

10 Id. at 1099–1102. 11 Although Tiebout doesn’t use this phrase in particular, it has frequently

been used to describe his theory. See, e.g., Edward J. Huck, Tiebout or Samuel-son: The 21st Century Deserves More, 88 MARQ. L. REV. 185, 185, 186 (2004); Todd E. Pettys, The Mobility Paradox, 92 GEO. L. J. 481, 482 (2004) (noting that “[a]lthough it nicely captures the essence of Tiebout's argument, the phrase “vote with their feet” does not appear in Tiebout's article. The very familiarity of the concept, however, is evidence of just how influential Tiebout's article has been).

12 Charles Tiebout, A Pure Theory of Local Expenditure, 64 J. POL. ECON. 416, 418 (1956).

13 RICHARD C. SCHRAGGER, CITY POWER: URBAN GOVERNANCE IN A GLOBAL AGE 33–34 (2016).

14 JANE JACOBS, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES 243 (1992); SCHRAGGER, supra note 12, at 30.

15 SCHRAGGER, supra note 12, at 35–36.


and neighborhoods blurred together indistinguishably, enmeshed in a relentless grid of streets and a complex web of train lines.”16

The urban geographers’ view of city growth and decline “steers a middle path between predestination and agency.”17 On the one hand, cit-ies have limited control over whether agglomeration—and therefore economic growth—occurs, as the agglomeration effect is precarious and subject to forces such as contingency and path dependence.18 As Jane Jacobs explains, an economically healthy city can soon find itself in steep decline with only small, extremely localized imbalances.19 For ex-ample, Jacobs posits that a lack of economic diversity, even just on a particular street, has systematic negative effects that eventually lead to the decay of entire downtown urban centers.20

However, cities are not entirely powerless to establish the prerequi-sites for agglomeration or to stave off excessive duplication. Regarding the latter, Jacobs proposes several policy recommendations for preserv-ing economic diversity in cities, including “zoning for diversity” and tax adjustments.21 Jacobs clearly rejects Douglas Rae’s view that city growth and decline occurs entirely as a result of factors such as geographic loca-tion, proximity to resources, and exogenous events. Rather, “their exist-ence as cities and the sources of their growth lie within themselves, in the processes and growth systems that go on within them.”22 For Rae, the automobile as a technological innovation was paramount in charting the course for New Haven. By contrast, for Jacobs, the nature of urban de-sign plays the key role in determining the city’s fate, which leads Jacobs to label the destructive effects of the automobile as a symptom of, not a cause of, poor urban design.23

In yet another account, Thomas Sugrue analyzes the causes behind the urban crisis in Detroit. Sugrue embraces Rae’s deterministic theory in acknowledging the role technological change played in deindustrializ-ing Detroit and setting the “groundwork” for Detroit’s urban de-cline.24 However, Sugrue departs from Rae when he cites “the role of human agency and contingency in the city’s development.”25 Specifically, Sugrue blames federal and local policies for establishing virtually com-

16 THOMAS SUGRUE, THE ORIGINS OF THE URBAN CRISIS: RACE AND

INEQUALITY IN POSTWAR DETROIT 18 (1996) [hereinafter ORIGINS OF THE URBAN CRISIS].

17 SCHRAGGER, supra note 13, at 35. 18 Id. at 36–37. 19 See JACOBS, supra note 14, at 242. 20 Id. 21 Id. at 253. 22 JANE JACOBS, THE ECONOMY OF CITIES 140–41 (1969). 23 See JACOBS, supra note 14, at 7. 24 SUGRUE, supra note 16, at 11. 25 Id.


plete racial segregation in housing and employment.26 Race-based dis-crimination and segregation deeply exacerbated the structural changes that affected Detroit. Blacks disproportionately bore the brunt of the ine-quality that resulted from deindustrialization, and unresolved racial ten-sions prevented the city from adequately absorbing black migration from the south at a time of structural economic change.27 The result was racial strife and white flight.28

Finally, David Rusk posits that city success and failure is a function of its “elasticity.”29 “Elasticity” refers to the amount cities can expand their jurisdictional limits, which allow them to capture the benefits of suburban growth, retain the middle class, and maintain their tax bases. Rusk claims that elastic cities have fared better in terms of economic strength as well as racial equality.30

These different theories of why cities change provide a comprehen-sive framework for analyzing the complex and multi-faceted factors driving the dynamics of the city of Cincinnati. While it may seem easy at the outset to attribute a city’s struggles to phenomena such as “the de-cline of the manufacturing sector” or “white flight,” these explanations lack nuance and overlook extremely difficult questions of timing and causality as they relate to the multitude of factors affecting many cities throughout the 20th Century. Sugrue illustrated this point well in his analysis of Detroit’s downfall, stating,

[N]o one social program or policy, no single force, whether housing segregation, social welfare programs, or deindustrialization, could have driven Detroit and other cities like it from their position of economic and political dominance; there is no simple explanation for the inequality and marginality that beset the urban poor.31

II. CINCINNATI’S RISE AND DECLINE

Cincinnati (Figure 1), strategically located on the Ohio River on a flat basin surrounded by its “seven hills,” was settled in 1788 and be-came an incorporated city in 1819. Upon introduction of the steamboat in 1811, Cincinnati established economic ties with Pittsburg and New

26 Id at 11, 13 n.22 (attributing Detroit’s “complete segregation” to, among

others, “federal and local governments”). 27 Id. at 8 (“The complex and pervasive racial discrimination that greeted

black laborers in “the land of hope” ensured that they would suffer dispropor-tionately the effects of deindustrialization and urban decline.”).

28 Id. at 5–7. 29 DAVID RUSK, INSIDE GAME/OUTSIDE GAME: WINNING STRATEGIES FOR

SAVING URBAN AMERICA 3–6 (1999). 30 Id. 31 SUGRUE, supra note 16, at 5.


Orleans.32 The Miami and Erie Canal, begun in 1825, connected Cincin-nati to Lake Erie, providing access to the major cities of the East Coast as well as regional cities such as Middletown and Toledo.33 Cincinnati became a center for pork processing and export.34 From 1810 and 1830, the city’s population grew from 10,000 to 25,000 (Figure 2). By 1850, it was the sixth-largest city in the United States, with a population of 115,000, dwarfing Chicago’s population of 30,000 (Figure 2). Cincinnati continued to grow for another century, but it would be overtaken by St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland and other Midwestern cities due to the devel-opment of railroads and other factors.

FIGURE 1. CINCINNATI CITY MAP

Cincinnati went through several economic transitions. Early in the 19th century, the city flourished due to the export of pork and its prod-ucts.35 Later in that century Procter & Gamble, the city’s economic mainstay, switched from pork products to soap—most famously the Ivo-ry floating soap brand.36 Increased production spawned a machine tool industry which facilitated introduction of additional industries. At the turn of the century, Cincinnati became the largest U.S. producer of car-riages, churning out over 115,000 annually.37 Ancillary businesses sprang up, such as the Corcoran Company, which produced carriage

32 CARL W. CONDIT, THE RAILROAD AND THE CITY: A TECHNOLOGICAL AND

URBANISTIC HISTORY OF CINCINNATI 5 (1977). 33 Id. at 5–6. 34 Id. at 5. 35 Id. 36 HENRY A. FORD & KATE B. FORD, HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO 322

(1881). 37 Edward P. Duggan, Machines, Markets, and Labor: The Carriage and

Wagon Industry in Late-Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati, 51 Bus. Hist. Rev. 308, 310, 312 (1977).


lamps.38 In 1911, the ambitious entrepreneur Fred Geier greatly expand-ed his Cincinnati Milling Machine Company, modeled after the modern industrial complexes being built in Detroit and Flint.39 His company, which became Cincinnati Milacron, was the country’s largest machine tool manufacturer.40 By 1900, Cincinnati had a productive, diversified industrial economy highlighted by the ironworks, meatpacking, cloth, and woodworking industries.41 These industries employed over 100,000 individuals and created over $200 million in goods annually.42 The city was connected to other areas of the country by over 15 rail lines.43 Cin-cinnati was also an important cultural hub, home to over 130 newspapers and magazines, a thriving music and art scene, five hospitals, and a uni-versity.44

Like other Midwestern industrial cities, Cincinnati began to experi-ence noticeable decline in the latter half of the 20th Century. Cincinnati’s population peaked in 1950, and fell rapidly in the succeeding decades (Figure 2). Racial tension increased in the 1950s and 60s, culminating in the 1967 and 1968 race riots.45 Whites departed the city at rates above 30% each decade (Figure 2). As a result, median income fell precipitous-ly in comparison to Hamilton County and the Cincinnati MSA (Figure 3). Recently, however, Cincinnati’s population and its economy have stabilized and crime rates, while still high compared to the national aver-age, have dropped (Figure 4). The city’s economic health since 1999, as reflected in its annual budget, is shown in Figure 5. Note, the overall budget has grown considerably, due to the growth of its water business, which serves much of the growing metropolitan area (Figure 6), while the unrestricted budget, which covers city services, has grown much more slowly. This reflects the demographic trends which have continued into this century. Cincinnati’s relative economic health in comparison to its Midwestern peers, as reflected in median home prices, is shown in Figure 7. The normalized chart shows that Cincinnati home prices have lagged on a relative basis.

38 CINCINNATI: A GUIDE TO THE QUEEN CITY AND ITS NEIGHBORS 422

(1943) 39 Ed Zdrojewski, Cutting Tool Engineering Magazine (1993), Reprinted in

University of Cincinnati Internet Business and Economics Library, http://www.libraries.uc.edu/business/research/bios/frederick-geier.html.

40 Id. 41 Cincinnati, Ohio, OHIO HIST. CONNECTION,

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cincinnati,_Ohio?rec=681 (last visited May 10, 2016).

42 Id. 43 Id. 44 Id. 45 Sheri Hall, Area Working to Rise Above Crime, Riots, CINCINNATI

ENQUIRER (Mar. 1998), https://web.archive.org/web/20110708154051/http://homefinder.cincinnati.com/closetohome/cth_avondale_030298.html.


FIGURE 2. CITY OF CINCINNATI POPULATION DATA46

46 For population data from 1800-1990, see Campbell Gibson, Population

of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990, Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Division Working Paper No. 27 (June 1998), https://web.archive.org/web/20070314031958/http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027.html. For population statistics from the past two decades, see U.S. City Population Data Map: 1990-2012, GOVERNING, (LAST VIEWED JUN. 13, 2017), http://www.governing.com/gov-data/city-population-changes-map-census-estimates.html


FIGURE 3. CINCINNATI CITY AND SURROUNDINGS MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME, 2014

FIGURE 4. OVERALL CRIME RATE, CINCINNATI VS. US (CITY-DATA.COM)

FIGURE 5. CINCINNATI CITY BUDGET, 1999 – 2016 (OFFICIAL CINCINNATI BUDGET FIGURES)47

47 Finance and Budget, CITY OF CINCINNATI, (last visited Jun. 13, 2017),,

http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/finance/budget/.


FIGURE 6. POPULATION CHANGES, CINCINNATI AND ITS MSA


FIGURE 7. MEDIAN HOME PRICES, 1984 – 2015

A. Over-the-Rhine’s Rise and Decline

Over-the-Rhine (OTR) (so-called by its predominantly German pro-to-population because of its location just north of the Erie Canal from downtown) was for most of its history a working class community (Fig-ure 8).48 Settled by refugees from the revolutions of 1848, their customs, language, religion (primarily Catholic), occupations, and social mores characterized the OTR community for the rest of the century.49 German entrepreneurs built a profitable brewing industry, which became identi-fied with OTR and the city. By 1880 Cincinnati was recognized as the "Beer Capital of the World" and OTR became the city's premier enter-tainment district, sporting numerous saloons, dance and burlesque halls, arcades, gambling dens, and theatres.50

48 ZANE L. MILLER & BRUCE TUCKER, CHANGING PLANS FOR AMERICA’S

INNER CITIES: CINCINNATI’S OVER-THE-RHINE AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY URBANISM 1 (1998).

49 Id. 50 Id.


FIGURE 8. MAP OF OVER-THE-RHINE

Before Cincinnati's incline system was built in the 1870s, which al-lowed development of residential areas on the hills, the city's population density was 32,000 people per square mile, roughly 10 times what it is today.51 This, together with poor sanitation, led to outbreaks of cholera and smallpox.52 There were major race riots throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.53 By the turn of the century, OTR’s best days were behind it. Its population had peaked and the neighborhood was the first of many to be abandoned in favor of areas farther from the city cen-ter that were newer, cleaner, and less congested. Replacing the German immigrants in OTR were poor Appalachians who had left Kentucky, Eastern Ohio, and West Virginia because mechanization of the coalmines had left them jobless.54 Cincinnati’s governing elite understood that the city’s inner core was hollowing out and becoming poorer, and proposed a plan to prevent urban decay as early as 1907.55 Prohibition was an eco-nomic death sentence, as overnight OTR’s 30 breweries were shut down.56 Thus, the population of OTR gradually dropped from its peak of 45,000 in 1900 to its nadir of just under 5,000 in 2007. Since then, due to gentrification, it has stabilized (see figure 10).

Since 1960 the racial composition of OTR changed dramatically. As the white population declined, it was replaced by African-Americans,

51 KEVIN GRACE & TOM WHITE, CINCINNATI’S OVER-THE-RHINE 29 (2003). 52 CHARLES THEODORE GREVE, CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CINCINNATI AND

REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS 587, 951 (1904). 53 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 5. 54 KATHRYN M. BORMAN & PHILLIP J. OBERMILLER, FROM MOUNTAIN TO

METROPOLIS: APPALACHIAN MIGRANTS IN AMERICAN CITIES 121 (1994). 55 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 19. 56 Anne Michaud, Fast Companies, 72 CIN. MAG. (March 2000).

Commented [JB1]: This citation may be to the wrong page. Page 33 does not reference smallpox or cholera.


many displaced from the East End and West End neighborhoods demol-ished to make way for the I-71 and I-75 highways (Figure 9).57

FIGURE 9. RACIAL MAKEUP OF OTR, 1960 -2000 (MILLER & TUCKER 161)

B. Cincinnati City Planning

In the early 1920s, Cincinnati embraced the progressive ideal of technocratic government; the long-time Republican boss was thrown out and replaced with a city manager who oversaw a planning commission.58 The Cincinnati planning commission was viewed at the time as a pioneer in the urban planning movement.59 As described by Miller & Tucker, the planning commission was inspired by the so-called Chicago School and had a vision of the city as a cosmopolitan metropolis, where there would be “sharing of behavioral traits among diverse groups of people without the destruction of each group’s sense of its given and distinctive cultural identity.”60 In step with this view, Cincinnati city planners viewed dense collections of people in areas of mixed land uses and old, dilapidated buildings as “slums”61 that posed a grave risk to the health of the city as

57 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 12, 18. 58 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 37 59 See generally Gregory Korte, How Cincinnati got Segregated, CIN.

ENQUIRER (Jul. 16, 2008). 60 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 9. 61 This view of what constitutes a “slum” is similar to the standard view of

the North End in Boston as a “slum,” as recounted by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. According to Jacobs, the conventional view of the North End was badly mistaken, as urban planners were unable to recog-nize a successful neighborhood when they viewed it through the rigid lens of modern urban planning theory. See JACOBS, supra note 14, at 10.


a unit.62 “Slums” were fertile territory for boss-like political figures who could take advantage of the poor masses to carry out a corrupt political agenda.63 Consequently, the policy solution was to remove the “slum” altogether either by destroying and rebuilding or rezoning the area for nonresidential use and relocating those displaced.64 The city codified these views in the 1925 Official Plan of the City of Cincinnati, a com-prehensive blueprint for land use planning going forward.

The Cincinnati planning commission’s conception of urban design is known as the “decentrist view,”65 which Jane Jacobs criticizes as under-mining, rather than reforming, cities.66 The policymakers in the planning commission viewed the inner city as the source of all ills—crime, dis-ease, and social unrest. Their solution was to disperse the population from the inner city in the “basin” to the surrounding hilltop communi-ties, which became Cincinnati’s first inner suburbs. These communities would be less dense than the inner city, and would represent relatively self-sufficient territorial units.67 In addition, the planning commission desired rigid separation of residential areas from other types of land us-es.68

It is easy to imagine the impetus behind the cosmopolitan vision of cities as a product of the period in which it was adopted. The period around World War I was a tumultuous time for cities. Immigrants and southern blacks were coming en masse, and machine politics, with its corruption and patronage, drew power from ethnic factions. Thus, an urban planning policy that united the polity in a sense of civic duty and patriotism and which produced peace and tranquility among various dis-tinct cultures would have been seen as highly desirable. A positive by-product of this policy vision was the establishment of social welfare ini-tiatives and the creation of entities such as the Cincinnati Recreation Commission, which built facilities and put on events to increase com-munity cohesion.

Unfortunately, the planning commission’s policies had a dispropor-tionately negative impact on racial and ethnic minorities, especially blacks. While in theory the Chicago School endorsed the principle of

62 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 10. 63 Id. 64 Id. at 152. 65 See generally Michael Breheny, Centrists, Decentrists, and Compromis-

ers: Views on the Future of Urban Form, in THE COMPACT CITY: A SUSTAINABLE URBAN FORM? 13–35 (Jenks, Burton, and Williams, Eds., 1996).

66 JACOBS, supra note 14, at 338–40. 67 In the 1948 Master Plan, the city organized those displaced by urban re-

newal into districts of 20,000-40,000 people that were “self-contained in respect to the everyday life of their inhabitants except for such facilities and services . . . located in or supplied by Cincinnati as the central city, and by institutions serving the Metropolitan Area.” See MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 152..

68 Id. at 13.


equality of cultural groups in society, in practice, the underwriters of de-centrist policies viewed minority groups as problematic and as inherently inferior. In the words of one leading Chicago School scholar, Robert E. Park, slums are “areas of social junk.”69 Consequently, in order to main-tain order and stability, decentrism required segregation on racial and economic bases.

The planning commission utilized two tools to segregate the city: first, it established exclusionary zoning on the basis of land use, height, setback, court, and occupancy; second, it explicitly zoned certain areas of the basin as nonresidential and closed several of the food markets nearby existing residences even as it anticipated in-migrating blacks and immigrants to settle in the basin temporarily.70 Indeed, eighty percent of the city’s tenements existed in the basin and more people were arriving each year.71 Those who could afford to leave the basin would move out to the nearest outer suburb; those who couldn’t—the “social junk”—would remain cloistered in areas not meant for residential existence. Ar-eas of the basin that remained zoned “residential” would be razed and replaced with federally funded, public housing. At the time, federal poli-cy mandated that all federally funded public housing be segregated—separate but equal.72

In addition to official local policy creating segregated housing pat-terns, institutionalized racism in the private sector reinforced and exac-erbated segregation. Redlining was common in Cincinnati,73 as were ra-cially restrictive covenants, which were enforced by state courts until 1947, one year before the Supreme Court invalidated this practice in Shelley v. Kraemer.74 The Cincinnati Board of Realtors actively support-ed the homogeneity of city neighborhoods by refusing to assist blacks attempting to move into white areas.75 Discrimination—both legal and otherwise—produced segregated areas and a housing shortage in the city.76

An equally important consequence of the city’s planning policies was to create a decentralized model for city growth. The city’s planning policy encouraged the outward growth of the city in order to maintain the homogenous nature of its sub-communities and relieve congestion in the city center. In fact, from the beginning, local urban policy explicitly

69 Id. at 16. 70 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 21 71 Id. at 18. 72 BERYL SATTER, FAMILY PROPERTIES: RACE, REAL ESTATE, AND THE

EXPLOITATION OF BLACK URBAN AMERICA 52 (2009). 73 Alana Samuels, The Destruction of a Black Suburb, ATLANTIC (July 13,

2015), https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/lincoln-heights-black-suburb/398303/.

74 334 U.S. 1 (1948). 75 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 26. 76 Id. at 72–73.


foresaw the outward development of the city, as evidenced by the Master Plan of 1925, which declared it “obvious” that “older neighborhoods would gradually give place to more intensive development and the best type of housing will move further out.”77 Thus, city policy envisioned city development forming rings around the basin, continually expanding outward, with poorer, racial minorities occupying the inner rings, and wealthier whites occupying the outer ones.

Through a complex series of historical events, OTR was spared from slum eradication.78 Other inner-city neighborhoods were not, however, and blacks who were displaced as a result of federally-funded urban re-newal programs began resettling in OTR and other nearby neighbor-hoods.79 Simultaneously, the mass migration of blacks from the South increased OTR’s black population. The movement of blacks into OTR incited racial tension and exacerbated white flight.80

By the 1980s, OTR was majority black and continued to suffer eco-nomically.81 Despite its impoverished state, OTR had a strong local po-litical movement, led by “social workers, black racial separatists, urban Appalachian advocates, and white community organizers of the poor and homeless.”82 These local political groups were often at odds with each other, but united in successfully fighting city efforts to revitalize OTR. Buddy Gray, an influential and polarizing leader of OTR’s community council, was a fierce advocate for low-income individuals in OTR and was integral in stopping the city’s attempts to invest in OTR. Gray was deeply concerned about the impact of OTR redevelopment on the availa-bility of affordable housing.83

III. THEORIES OF CINCINNATI’S RISE AND DECLINE

It is clear that Cincinnati had an economic boom in the mid-nineteenth and underwent significant economic decline in the latter half of the twentieth century, as measured by median income, racial composi-tion, and crime rates. What caused this decline is less well understood. The following section will demonstrate that theories of determinism, governance, and contingency and path dependence could all plausibly explain Cincinnati’s economic history. It concludes that the theory of contingency and path dependence is best at explaining Cincinnati’s eco-nomic course: that the city’s control over its trajectory is questionable.

Section IV reviews Cincinnati’s present efforts to reverse its fortune keeping the above conclusion in mind. In particular, it will examine if those efforts have had collateral negative consequences on the poor. It

77 Id. at 18. 78 Id. at 37. 79 Id. at 47–48. 80 Id. at 75, 77. 81 Id. at 156. 82 Id. at 158. 83 Id.


will put Cincinnati’s recent downtown redevelopment plan in perspective and argue that it represents the latest in a series of urban policies that at their core view the city as a "product” to attract outside capital. Revitali-zation of the downtown area is central to this theory of growth, as a re-furbished downtown business district and the neighbor-hoods around it (such as OTR) are vital to the city’s image and identity. Unfortunately, Cincinnati’s capital attraction and retention policies since the 1960s did not achieve their aim of revitalizing the city and arguably had severe unintended consequences, which only sped up the city’s downward spi-ral. Consequently, it is far from certain that Cincinnati’s latest downtown redevelopment strategy will yield a different outcome.

A. The Problem of Multiple Causes

A myriad of possible factors could be cited to explain Cincinnati’s economic trajectory. Cincinnati’s rise in the early and mid-nineteenth century may be explained by factors outside control: its location at the confluence of the Licking and Ohio Rivers, the influx of hardworking German immigrants, and the access to major markets afforded by the Miami and Erie Canal during the steamboat’s heyday. Similarly, the tran-sition from steamboat to railroads and declining immigration at the end of the nineteenth century, lowering the supply of labor for industry, could have precipitated Cincinnati’s economic decline. Competition from Chicago, because of its better economic ties to the Northeast was another factor. Chicago’s development of railroad infrastructure ahead of Cincinnati and its subsequent access to the markets in the northeast and west was a major factor in its sudden rise. When the Civil War cut off the Mississippi River and its canals as a supply route to Cincinnati, Chica-go’s superior rail system began delivering pork to the union army. From this point on, Cincinnati lost its position as the nation’s largest pork pro-ducer to Chicago.84

Other deterministic factors include the massive inflow of poor Ap-palachians and southern blacks in the early twentieth century, causing social and economic instability. Finally, Cincinnati’s decline can be viewed in the context of the rise and fall of particular industries over time, precipitated by the eventual decline of the manufacturing sector as a whole throughout the country.

On the other hand, there are equally tenable theories that link Cin-cinnati’s growth to affirmative policy decisions at the state and local lev-els, such as the decision to invest over 8 million dollars (in 1827 dollars) to complete the Miami and Erie Canal. The city’s decline could be at-tributed to poor land use policies, including affirmative attempts to de-populate the inner city, exclusionary zoning, and racial segregation. Cin-

84 Liz Gray, Porkopolis: Cincinnati’s Pork-Producing Past, GREAT AM.

COUNTRY (May 9, 2016), http://www.greatamericancountry.com/places/local-life/porkopolis-cincinnatis-pork-producing-past.


cinnati’s decline could also be explained by the city’s inaction. As Rusk theorizes, a city’s decision not to annex outlying areas—becoming ine-lastic—will prevent it from benefitting from the city’s outward expan-sion. Columbus, just to the north of Cincinnati, annexed most its sur-rounding territory, increasing the city’s size to over 200 square miles. By contrast, Cincinnati encompasses a mere 77 square miles, with suburban development having occurred mostly outside of the city limits. Conse-quently, while Cincinnati suffered significant population losses, Colum-bus’ population has increased every decade of its existence. While elas-ticity did not immunize Columbus from the decay in its urban core, it has seen lower overall poverty levels.

However, the view that “good” governance led to Cincinnati’s eco-nomic boom and “bad” governance fueled its decline may be misplaced. Cincinnati’s economic boom occurred when Cincinnati was ruled by a political machine and corruption and patronage were the norm. Con-versely, Cincinnati’s worst economic period came after it established the city manager system in the 1920s, which purportedly made government more transparent, accountable, and efficient.85

The causes of Over-the-Rhine’s decline are also complex. Govern-ment policy to decentralize the city and isolate land uses may have con-tributed to a dearth of economic diversity in the downtown area. Accord-ing to Jacobs, lack of economic diversity is a precondition for economic decline.86 In addition, as Professor Schragger notes, economists have determined that a dense population cluster is a necessary condition for agglomeration, which is widely believed to be an important factor for achieving economic growth.87 Accordingly, decentralization and subur-banization before the advent of mass transit could have been instrumen-tal in bringing about OTR’s economic decline. Exogenous forces could also have been at work. For instance, the creation of Cincinnati’s incline system in 1870 allowed for easy access from the basin to the surrounding hills precipitating middle class flight. Fifty years later, OTR’s breweries and entertainment industries would be severely harmed by Prohibition. It is also possible that OTR’s decline has been a byproduct of Cincinnati’s overall economic struggles.

Thus, an analysis of Cincinnati’s history reveals many potential causes of the city’s rise and decline and does not point to one defining factor as dispositive.

B. The Problem of Timing

Explaining economic outcomes for Cincinnati is also difficult because of questions of timing. Defining when Cincinnati began to “de-cline” is inherently arbitrary and subject to interpretation because eco-

85 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 37 86 JACOBS, supra note 14, at 273 87 SCHRAGGER, supra note 13, at 36–37


nomic data tell a variety of stories. Although Cincinnati’s growth as measured by population increase continued until 1950, the rate of growth slowed significantly in the mid-nineteenth century, from a 149 percent increase per decade before 1850 to a 40 percent increase in the decade after. The mid-nineteenth century appears to be a turning point for Cin-cinnati relative to other cities such as Chicago, which began to see ex-plosive growth around this time. Thus, it is plausible to argue that Cin-cinnati’s decline began around 1850. Yet, by many accounts, Cincinnati was thriving well into the 20th Century.

It is equally plausible to place the beginning of Cincinnati’s down-ward trend at the turn of the century, when its core began to show no-ticeable signs of distress. As Jane Jacobs describes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, slums form because of an absence of econom-ic diversity within a city.88 The pattern of “slumming” Jacobs describes is strikingly similar to what occurred in inner city Cincinnati at the be-ginning of the twentieth century: overcrowding because “people with the least choice, forced by poverty or discrimination to overcrowd . . . come into an unpopular area.”89 Overcrowding is followed by high rates of departure by those who can afford to leave, with high turnover rates among the poor.90 Improvements in transportation technology only ac-celerate this trend. Thus, under this view, the city’s decline predated the advent of distance-compressing technologies, not the other way around.

It is also perfectly reasonable to pinpoint the start of Cincinnati’s de-cline at the year 1950, when Cincinnati’s population peaked. The popula-tion peak would be contemporaneous with significant exogenous shocks to the city, including deindustrialization and mass migration of blacks from the South. Cleveland, which faced similar exogenous shocks during this period, saw its population peak at around the same time.

Finally, it is possible that Cincinnati’s economy never declined. As mentioned earlier, since the 1920s, Cincinnati pursued a decentralized urban growth strategy, which encouraged the more productive classes of society to move continuously away from the city’s core. As a result, the Cincinnati metropolitan area continued to grow, but that growth eventu-ally began to reach outside of the city’s jurisdiction. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that Cincinnati’s metropolitan statistical area (MSA) has continued to grow every census year. By contrast, Cleve-land’s MSA has decreased in population for the last thirty years, signal-ing the possibility that, unlike Cincinnati, its regional economy has in fact contracted.

The inability to pinpoint an approximate start date for Cincinnati’s downward trend is problematic for those who claim to identify the pre-cise cause or set of causes of its decline. If Cincinnati’s downward trend began in 1900, for example, it would make the end of the city’s domi-

88 JACOBS, supra note 14, at 273. 89 Id. at 276. 90 Id.


nance in the pork industry a less defining factor in the city’s downturn. Even so, it is possible that the loss of the pork industry may not have been visible statistically until later. As Professor Schragger notes, a city’s mobile capital, like prices in response to inflation, tends to be “sticky,” in that it often stays put even when it faces economic headwinds in a particular geographic area.91

C. Explaining Cincinnati’s Rise and Decline through Economic Geogra-phy

Economic geographers understand the formation, growth, and de-cline of cities as a process. Consequently, economic geographers do not place much weight on technological determinism and governmental pol-icy as driving forces behind cities’ economic outcomes. Instead, they ascribe economic growth and decline to the presence of agglomeration, which in turn is precipitated or undermined by contingency (chance) and path dependence (virtuous cycles).92 In Professor Schragger’s words,

Small differences in initial conditions or small perturbations in an otherwise stable equilibrium can lead to dramatically different outcomes; that once growth or decline starts, it does so explosively or catastrophi-cally; and … the spatial order that emerges may have little to do with individuals’ or firms’ preferences understood in isolation.93

Viewing Cincinnati’s growth and decline from the economic geogra-phy methodology is instructive. Cincinnati’s economic growth is a clas-sic tale of agglomeration, with contingency and path dependence appear-ing to play a large role. Cincinnati’s strategic location permitted the construction of a canal system, which opened up larger markets to Cin-cinnati businesses. The pork industry was a major beneficiary of the ca-nals, becoming Cincinnati’s staple industry in the early and mid-19th Century. Other ancillary companies sprang up in support and benefited from the meat processing industry, including soap and candle makers, who used leftover pork fat in their products.94 One of these companies was Procter & Gamble, which became one of Cincinnati’s largest em-ployers and one of the most successful consumer products companies of all time. The machine tool industry grew up in order to support the bur-geoning soap industry, which in turn supported a local steel industry. The presence of steel and machine tools made automobile production profit-able in Cincinnati as well.

Contingency and path dependence may also best explain why Cin-cinnati lost out to Chicago as the Midwest’s most successful city. As Pro-fessor Schragger has pointed out, the reason that Chicago outpaced other

91 Schragger, Mobile Capital, Local Economic Regulation, and the Demo-

cratic City, supra note 7, at 495 n.39. 92 SCHRAGGER, supra note 13, at 36–37. 93 Id. at 36. 94 Liz Gray, supra note 65.


Midwestern cities, including Cincinnati, is not altogether clear, as many Midwestern economies all had unique physical attributes that primed them to excel in the industrial age.95 Indeed, Cincinnati appeared far ahead of Chicago (and all other Midwestern cities) during the middle of the 19th Century, only to fall rapidly behind within a few decades. The economic geography model would suggest that “geographically uneven economic development is not an aberration but rather a salient feature of economic life.”96 And because economic growth and decline is a product of spatial phenomena, urban areas, like the economy, will also go through boom and bust cycles.97 Finally, as agglomeration results from a series of complex phenomena, “small perturbations,” “chance historical events,” and “self-reinforcing events” can have dramatic impacts on an urban economy.98 Viewed from this perspective, chance events, like the Civil War, which gave Chicago a temporary advantage in the pork pro-cessing industry, may have led to significant economic restructuring. Once this restructuring occurred, Chicago’s economic advantage became self-reinforcing, resulting in the increasing growth gap between Chicago and Cincinnati.99 This would also explain why Cincinnati did not catch up with Chicago once it had established significant railroad infrastruc-ture by the 1880s.

The inability to pinpoint the cause of Cincinnati’s growth and de-cline—whether it be deterministic events, government policy, or other-wise, suggests that the city’s economic out-come is a product of contin-gency and path dependence. In addition, the difficulty of determining when Cincinnati’s decline began makes analysis of cause and effect highly uncertain. Accordingly, there is significant doubt as to whether government policy can have any substantial impact on a city’s economic course. Thus, the efficacy of Cincinnati’s policies aimed at attracting and retaining outside capital in the hopes of igniting an economic resurgence should be viewed with a great deal of skepticism.

IV. CINCINNATI’S ATTEMPTS AT URBAN RESURGENCE

Like many postindustrial cities, Cincinnati has chosen to govern un-der what Professor Schragger calls the “city-as-product” model, under which it has pursued policies aimed at attracting and retaining mobile capital in its urban core. This “Tieboutian” model predicts that mobile capital—homeowners and business—will “vote with their feet,” and move to the juris-diction with the most favorable economic conditions. Therefore, pro-growth and pro-market policies will increase the city’s attractiveness to outside capital, while policies that are traditionally

95 SCHRAGGER, supra note 13, at 40. 96 Id. at 38. 97 Id. at 38–39. 98 Id. at 32–39. 99 Id. at 39–40.


viewed as making market conditions less favorable, such as those that raise taxes or increase costs of doing business, will turn away outside mobile capital and cause existing mobile capital to uproot and move.

In the Central Business District (CBD), which is adjacent to OTR, nearly $2 billion has been invested since 1996.100 The CBD project, known as the “Banks,” was done in partnership with private developers and included two new stadiums, infrastructure improvements, and other commercial and residential development.101 In addition to private money, The Banks project has received funding from the city, county, and state through mechanisms such as bond issuances102 and tax increment financ-ing.103

In addition to providing funding for redevelopment, Cincinnati has spent significant sums attracting and retaining private corporations in hopes of keeping or bringing more jobs to the city. In 2003, Cincinnati spent over $52 million in subsidies in response from a threat from Con-vergys Corporation that it would leave the city.104 More recently, Cincin-nati has given an historically lucrative deal to General Electric (GE) in exchange for GE agreeing to locate its $142 million U.S. global opera-tions center to the Banks in downtown.105 As part of the deal, GE will receive 85% of the income taxes paid by its employees in the next 15 years and discounted parking rates for 1500 employee parking spots.106 GE also gets an equivalent tax benefit from the state. In return, GE must stay in Cincinnati for at least the next 18 years.107 In addition, the devel-oper of the building that will house GE will receive a 100% tax abate-ment.108

As discussed above, a city’s economic trajectory is a product of a complex inter-connection of factors. Hence, it is not immediately ap-

100 Bowdeya Tweh, Another New Project Launching at the Banks, CIN.

ENQUIRER (Aug. 26, 2015) http://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2015/08/26/banks-project-groundbreaking/32263681/.

101 Id. 102 Id. 103 Executive Summary, The Banks Working Group Recommendations, De-

velopment of the Banks 1, 6, HAMILTON COUNTY http://www.hamilton-co.org/hc/hc_pdfs/Executive_Summary_for_Banks_Development.pdf.

104 Adrian Maties, Convergys Corp. Selling Downtown Cincinnati HQ, COMMERCIAL PROPERTY EXECUTIVE (May 2013), https://www.cpexecutive.com/post/convergys-corp-selling-downtown-cincinnati-hq-2/.

105 Chris Wetterich, GE Incentive Deal Among Richest in Cincinnati Histo-ry, CIN. BUS. COURIER, http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2014/06/22/ge-incentive-deal-among-richest-in-cincinnati.html.

106 Id. 107 Id. 108 Id.

Commented [JB2]: We were unable to find the website listed in the citation for nn. 71 and 72. Is there an alternative source for this material?


parent that Cincinnati’s pro-growth policies that attempt to attract and retain mobile capital by way of private-public redevelopment, tax incre-ment financing, tax abatements, and federal and state assistance will have their intended effect on Cincinnati’s economy going forward. In hindsight, government intervention may end up doing more harm than good. Urban renewal and downtown redevelopment projects in the 1950s and 60s across the nation, termed by many as “Negro removal,” used “slum clearance” and “blight removal” to destroy poor, mostly minority communities and replace them with new amenities to attract wealthier suburbanites.109 Despite the expense and hardship that resulted from these projects, most were patently unsuccessful at halting white flight.110 The programs implemented in Cincinnati in the 1950s were no excep-tion.111

One such slum clearance and redevelopment project bulldozed the West End neighborhood near downtown to make way for the extension of Interstate 75.112 Although state and federal law required relocation for those displaced, relocation to white communities was politically untena-ble.113 Consequently, 50,000 displaced blacks114 were forced into already poor communities, one of which was OTR. The result was heightened racial tension with the then-majority white Appalachians in OTR, further destabilizing an already economically stressed neighborhood. Federal urban renewal subsidies were also used to clear and redevelop commer-cial real estate in Cincinnati’s downtown central business district,115 with the goal of the plan being to bring in upper income residents.116 In short, urban renewal marked an early attempt by the city to achieve an urban resurgence through the “city as product” model. In Professor Carl Ab-bott’s words, “urban renewal advocates assumed that downtown could be made more competitive by underwriting the real estate market and add-ing in public projects as attractors.”117 Like in other cities where it was implemented, urban renewal in Cincinnati was equally unsuccessful at reducing urban flight (see Figure 2 above).

109 Richard C. Schragger, Is a Progressive City Possible? Reviving Urban

Liberalism for the Twenty-First Century, 7 HARV. L. & POL’Y REV. 231, 235 (2013).

110 Id. at 236. 111 Alfred Bettman, the Chairman of the Cincinnati Planning Commission,

played a substantial role in drafting federal redevelopment laws that would sub-sidize city urban renewal projects. See MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 37.

112 Id. at 39. 113 Id. at 38. 114 JOHN EMMEUS DAVIS, CONTESTED GROUND: COLLECTIVE ACTION AND

THE URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD 131 (1991). 115 The plan was first formulated in Cincinnati’s Central Business District

Plan (1958). See MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 39. 116 Id. at 40. 117 Carl Abbott, Five Downtown Strategies, Policy Discourse and Down-

town Planning Since 1945, 5 J. POL’Y HIST. 12 (1993).


After urban renewal, the city planners pivoted from “clearance and redevelopment” to “conservation and rehabilitation” in order to coax whites back from the suburbs and combat the spread of urban blight.118 The city marketed the central business district as a fun, exciting alter-native to the homogenous suburbs and advertised the residential areas in and around the basin as chic neighborhoods with storied histories and distinctive architectural characteristics.119 The city’s newfound focus on historic preservation spared OTR from the ravages of urban renewal. The new preservationist-focused strategy was incorporated into the Ur-ban Design Plan of 1964, which had as its goal to make Cincinnati’s downtown “the management center of the Ohio Val-ley,” which “re-quired the capturing of corporate headquarters and high-technology in-dustries … by providing tangible advantages such as superior transporta-tion facilities”120 and development of commercial, office, and hotel space.121 As part of this effort, the city of Cincinnati footed the bill for a new $44 million football stadium for the Cincinnati Bengals in down-town after the owner threatened to move the team to Baltimore.122

In the thirty years since the advent of the preservationist era in city planning, the city has continued to have an active role in its downtown development and redevelopment.123 From the 1970s until its most recent redevelopment plan in 2000, the city funded the football stadium, a large public plaza, Fountain Square, and a new convention center.124 The 2000 plan continued the city’s long line of pro-growth redevelopment policies, albeit with renewed attention to preservation goals. The plan calls for additional office development, increased retail activity, new upscale housing, and an educational and cultural district.125

Despite these efforts, historic preservation policies were anemic in the face of the large-scale economic, social, and demographic forces that worked to destabilize the city. For example, city officials tried and failed to use historic preservation to maintain Avondale, one of Cincinnati’s earliest hill neighborhoods, as a successful middle class neighborhood.126 Avondale, like the Chicago neighborhood of Lawndale chronicled by Beryl Satter,127 was originally an upper middle class suburb. As the city decentralized, Avondale transitioned to a predominantly Jewish neigh-

118 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 52. 119 Id. at 51–53. 120 Id. at 56–57. 121 RICHARD C. COLLINS, AMERICA’S DOWNTOWNS: GROWTH, POLITICS

AND PRESERVATION 56 (1991). 122 Lucy May, Echoes from 30 Years Ago, CIN, ENQUIRER (Feb. 9, 1998),

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1998/02/09/loc_stadium.html. 123 COLLINS, supra note 97, at 55. 124 Id. at 56. 125 Id. at 57. 126 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 48–49. 127 See SATTER, supra note 53.


borhood and many of the large houses were converted to apartments.128 By the time the city set out to preserve Avondale, it was rapidly trans-forming into a black ghetto. Blacks migrating from the South as well as blacks who were displaced because of urban renewal created an enor-mous demand for housing. At the same time, racism in the private hous-ing market and segregated federal housing policy had severely limited the supply of available housing to blacks in Cincinnati. Even in 1943, before displacement from urban renewal had occurred and before the end of black migration from the South, the vacancy rate in black housing areas was a mere 0.3%, much lower than the 2 - 3% seen in white com-munities.129

The result was that opportunistic homeowners in Avondale took ad-vantage of desperate black homebuyers, who were often denied access to credit because of “redlining,” to sell them homes in substandard condi-tions, often on contract. White homeowners were also eager to sell be-cause of practices such as blockbusting, which created a fear of white flight from the neighborhood, especially after highways enabled easy access to the suburbs.130 Many blacks in Avondale who had bought their homes on contract were forced to forego home maintenance and subdi-vide their homes in order to meet the extraordinarily burdensome month-ly payments, leading to rapid development of slum conditions.131 The failure of the city’s historic preservation policy to prevent white flight is plainly evident when examining the results in Avondale and adjacent neighborhoods such as Bond Hill, Evanston, Corryville, and Walnut Hills. The racial composition of Avondale went from 14% black in 1950 to 69% in 1960.132 By 1970, blacks accounted for 91% of the population. Avondale became the scene of two riots in 1967 and 1968, both largely stemming from the substandard living conditions in the community.133

Thus, over sixty years of active policy intervention by the city seem to have had, at most, limited success in preventing Cincinnati’s urban decline. On the other hand, neighborhood-level politics and community activism gained significant strength and had comparative success in the latter half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, the interracial North Avon-dale Neighborhood Association (NANA) managed to maintain a racially integrated community and high quality housing in North Avondale, which, along with nearby Paddock Hills were the first racially integrated neighborhoods in the city.134 Community councils have also been credit-

128 Charles F. Casey-Leininger, Going Home: The Struggle for Fair Hous-

ing in Cincinnati, 1900-2007, DEPT. OF HIST., U. CIN., 8-9 (2008). 129 Id. at 4. 130 Id. at 8–9. 131 Id. at 9. 132 Id. at 5. 133 Id. at 11. 134 Id. at 9.


ed with maintaining racial integration and harmony in the Kennedy Heights and Madisonville neighborhoods for the past several decades.

V. THE REVITALIZATION OF OTR

The redevelopment of OTR can be seen as a subplot in the larger context of Cincinnati’s continuing attempts to restore growth. Worsening economic conditions in OTR (median household income had plummeted to approximately $14,000 by year 2000 – less than half the city average) culminated in the 2001 riots, which motivated city leaders to spur rede-velopment in OTR. Much of the redevelopment activity has been led by the nonprofit 501(c)(3) Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), which was established with the help of City Council and Mayor Charlie Luken in 2003.135 3CDC’s 30-member board of directors is com-prised of local major corporate leaders.136 It has overseen massive rede-velopment in OTR, mostly by refurbishment of old, historic structures, with resulting increases in property values and influx of affluent resi-dents. Unfortunately, OTR’s redevelopment and subsequent gentrifica-tion has displaced many low-income residents, which has enflamed ra-cial conflict and generated feelings of powerlessness and injustice among Cincinnati’s most vulnerable citizens.137

From the 1970s until the advent of 3CDC, it was primarily local grassroots politics that would chart OTR’s destiny. “Social workers, black racial separatists, urban Appalachian advocates, and white com-munity organizers of the poor and homeless” in OTR fought with city leaders and private business developers who attempted to redevelop OTR.138 These activists equated redevelopment with large-scale removal of the poor, either immediately, as had occurred with urban renewal in the West End, or gradually, as had occurred through gentrification in places such as Mount Adams (a nearby “hill” community).139 Communi-ty organizers in OTR, some of whom identified with the black communi-ty and some with the Appalachian community, opposed redevelopment because they saw OTR as an ethnic/racial enclave for historically under-privileged individuals.140

One of the most influential activists was Buddy Gray, who ran the Drop Inn Center, a homeless shelter and local hub for various social ser-vices in OTR. Gray was passionately com-mitted to retaining OTR’s character as a refuge for blacks who could not afford to live else-where.

135 RJ Smith, 3CDC in Over-the-Rhine: Between Two Words, CIN. MAG.,

(Oct. 5, 2015), http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/citywiseblog/3cdc-in-over-the-rhine-between-two-worlds/.

136 Board of Directors, 3CDC, (Oct. 29, 2016), http://www.3cdc.org/who-we-are/board-of-directors/.

137 Smith, supra note 111. 138 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 158. 139 Id. 140 Id.


He frequently sparred with City Council, developers, and preservation-ists over the future direction of OTR. During the 1980s, Gray’s most fre-quent opponent was Jim Tarbell,141 who would go on to become a City Councilman and Vice Mayor. Tarbell viewed comprehensive redevelop-ment as the only way to reverse the cycle of poverty in OTR and saw Gray as a stub-born impediment to change that most people wanted, in-cluding the impoverished residents of OTR.142 Despite the powerful in-terests who opposed him, Gray wielded surprising power. In the mid-1980s, he pushed a plan through City Council that would allow upper-income development, but only if there were 5,000 guaranteed, permanent low-income housing units.143

VI. EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF CINCINNATI’S DOWNTOWN REDEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

Buddy Gray’s death in 1996 and the riots that occurred shortly after were pivotal in helping pro-growth forces prevail in the battle to rede-velop OTR.144 Since 2001, the city, along with 3CDC, has spent almost $1 billion to revitalize OTR.145 Together with development in the adja-cent downtown central business district, the city has overseen around $3.5 billion in total investment in these areas. In the period from 2000 to the present, downtown and OTR have seen an influx of middle and up-per-income residents, rising property values, and significant rehabilita-tion of historic structures. Rapid gentrification has meant a large demo-graphic change (Figure 10) and decreased availability of affordable housing. According to a recent study by the OTR Community Council, the number of affordable housing units in OTR dropped from 3235 in 2002 to 869 in 2015.146

141 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 138. 142 Mark Peterson, How Cincinnati Salvaged the Nation’s Most Dangerous

Neighborhood, POLITICO (June 16, 2016), http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/what-works-cincinnati-ohio-over-the-rhine-crime-neighborhood-turnaround-city-urban-revitalization-213969.

143 MILLER & TUCKER, supra note 33, at 151, 169. 144 See Peterson, supra note 118. 145 John London, 3CDC Puts New Plan on Table to Renovate Over-the-

Rhine, WLWT NEWS (Mar. 3, 2015), http://www.wlwt.com/article/3cdc-puts-new-plan-on-table-to-renovate-over-the-rhine/3552019.

146 Mark Curnutte, Here’s How OTR Housing Has Changed, CIN. ENQUIRER (Jan. 29, 2016), http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2016/01/28/otr-housing-study-reveals-diversity/79471898/.


FIGURE 10. RECENT POPULATION DEMOGRAPHICS FOR OTR (CINCINNATI ENQUIRER)

Many in Cincinnati credit the increased investment in redevelopment as directly correlated to better physical conditions in OTR and the down-town central business district.147 For example, those who ascribe to so-called “urbanism” support the redevelopment because it invests in the city’s cultural assets, which they claim will attract outside residents, par-ticularly what one of the leading urbanists, Richard Florida, calls the “creative class.”148 Therefore, revitalizing OTR and the CBD will in turn increase the tax base and benefit the city as a whole.

The question remains, however, whether Cincinnati’s downtown re-development strategy has positively impacted the rest of the city eco-nomically and, if so, whether its benefits outweigh the harm to those displaced and other potential hidden costs associated with large-scale redevelopment. As discussed above, whether cities such as Cincinnati

147 Interview with Dan Driehaus, Member, Hamilton County Planning

Commission (Apr. 12, 2016). 148 See generally RICHARD FLORIDA, THE RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS

(2003).


have any control over their economic future is highly dubious. Neverthe-less, this final section will include a cost/benefit analysis of Cincinnati’s redevelopment policies since the year 2000, with the caveat that attrib-uting the full costs or benefits of redevelopment may not be realized un-til decades into the future. It will first examine some traditional metrics for economic prosperity, including population, crime, median income, property values, poverty rates, and city social welfare spending. The re-development, although effective in transforming the physical landscape where it occurred, has largely failed to bring about meaningful economic improvement in Cincinnati, particularly for the city’s poorest residents. The paper will then conclude by highlighting some secondary effects of Cincinnati’s redevelopment program.

A. Analysis of Redevelopment Through Traditional Economic Metrics

Traditional economic indicators are mixed as to the success of the redevelopment. Cincinnati’s population grew slightly over the last five years, reversing a downward trend that had begun since 1950 (see Figure 6). Median household income rose from around $29,500 in 2000 to around $34,000 in 2014 and per capita income went from around $20,000 in 2000 to around $26,000 in 2014.149 However, these income gains are all smaller than the gains in the ten-year period from 1990-2000.150 Crime rates have noticeably decreased since 2006 (see figure 4), while property values have climbed since the bottom of the housing cri-sis, but still remain below 2005 levels. The “dissimilarity index,” which measures the extent of racial segregation in the city, had been decreasing steadily since 1970, but that decrease slowed in the period between 2000 and 2010.151

More striking are the poverty figures for Cincinnati. Since 2000, the poverty rate in Cincinnati increased from 20.9% to 30.9%.152 Signifi-cantly, increasing poverty was not a long-term trend before 2000, as the poverty rate decreased 3% from 1990 to 2000.153 In fact, these statistics may underestimate the extent of poverty in Cincinnati, as the two coun-

149 Cincinnati, OH Income and Careers, USA.COM,

http://www.usa.com/cincinnati-oh-income-and-careers.htm#Per-Capita-Income. 150 Median household income increased from $21,006 in 1990 to $29,493 in

2000; per capita income rose from $12,547 in 1990 to $19,962 in 2000. See id. (data from year 2000); 1990 Census: Income Summary Measures for Places with a Population of 50,000 or More, Ranked within the United States: 1989, U. S. CENSUS BUREAU, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/cph-series/cph-l/cph-l-129.html.

151 Charles F. Casey-Leininger, Hamilton County Stable Integrated Com-munities 2010 Update 4, U. CIN. (Oct. 2011), https://scholar.uc.edu/works/articles/j9602118s.

152 Don Larrick, The Ohio Poverty Report, OHIO DEVELOPMENT SERVICES AGENCY 59 (Feb. 2016).

153 Id.


ties adjacent to downtown Cincinnati saw their poverty rates increase significantly.154 This suggests that some of those displaced from gentrifi-cation in Cincinnati moved outside the city limits. Meanwhile, city so-cial welfare spending has actually gone down since 2000 (see figure 5).

These data would seem to undermine the “rising tides lift all boats” theory: that an in-creased tax base will enrich the city, allowing it to in-crease its provision of social services and thus redistribute to the less well-off portions of the population. It also throws into question the other strand of this theory, which holds that a clustering of high-skilled work-ers will have a trickle-down effect on the wages of lower-income work-ers.155 Research by Florida and Mellander found that any wage gains to low-income workers in areas with clusters of high-`-skilled workers were eaten up by higher housing costs.156 In short, the OTR and CBD redevelopment has not yet seemed to directly or indirectly benefit the economically most vulnerable in the city.

B. Hidden Costs and Secondary Effects of Cincinnati’s Redevel-opment Program

The direct costs to displaced OTR residents from the redevelopment program are readily apparent, including relocation costs, longer com-mutes to work, and higher rents in adjacent neighborhoods from in-creased demand. Based on the theories of urban growth and decline, however, there may be less obvious present and future costs associated with Cincinnati’s urban redevelopment. If one ascribes to Douglas Rae’s view of determinism as the driving force behind city change, then any government money spent on urban redevelopment—including the $3.5 billion spent on OTR and CBD—is wasted money. Stated differently, the opportunity cost of Cincinnati’s massive investment in private sector redevelopment is subsidization of the public sector, which may have had a more direct impact on alleviation of poverty.

A common counterargument to the deterministic rationale for the up-tick in inner city migration is put forth by “urbanists.” The urbanism theory supports downtown redevelopment because it invests in the city’s cultural assets, which attracts what one of the leading urbanists, Richard

154 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU (Apr.

21, 2017, 4:34 PM), http://www.census.gov/did/www/saipe/data/interactive/saipe.html?s_appName=sai-pe&map_yearSelector=2014&map_geoSelector=aa_c&s_USStOnly=n&menu=trends&s_county=39061,21117&s_state=21,39&s_inclUsTot=n&s_inclStTot=n&s_measures=mhi_snc.

155 See generally ENRICO MORETTI, THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF JOBS (2012). 156 Richard Florida, More Losers than Winners in America’s New Economic

Geography, ATLANTIC (Jan. 30, 2015), http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/01/more-losers-winners-americas-new-economic-geography/4465/.


Florida, calls the “creative class.” Terry Grundy, an outspoken proponent of “urbanism” in Cincinnati credits OTR’s redevelopment for creating a “neighborhood of choice,” attracting young professionals and the “crea-tive class” by providing amenities such as “the new School for the Crea-tive and Performing Arts, the Art Academy, the renovation of Washing-ton Park, the revitalization of Findlay Market, and the appearance of smaller, edgy arts organizations.”157 According to Grundy, the key to economic revitalization across an entire city is the development of a sort of “critical number” of “neighborhoods of choice.”158 Therefore, revital-izing Cincinnati’s historic neighborhoods such as OTR and the CBD is necessary, but not sufficient for citywide revitalization.

However, as Richard Schragger notes, the “amenities” argument runs into issues of causation.159 Did amenities draw in young profession-als and the artistic class, or was it the other way around?160 Similar ques-tions of causation arise with other positive and negative city features, such as crime rates and quality of schools.161 The recent widespread trend of upper middle class migration back to inner cities all over the country would seem to support the deterministic argument, that larger-scale factors are behind Cincinnati’s inner city population trends. A re-cent census report notes that between 2000 and 2010, the largest metro areas in the country “experienced double-digit percentage growth within 2 miles of their largest city’s city hall.”162 In addition, the demographic populations migrating back to the cities is similar. In a study done by the Fordham Institute, inner city populations in cities both big and small saw sharp increases in their percentage of whites.163

There is some indication that OTR was inevitably going to be rede-veloped even without city and state subsidies. OTR had already wit-nessed the beginnings of a small revival in the 1990s, where it saw an influx of members of the creative class.164 Coffee shops, galleries, and

157 Terry Grundy, Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine, TERRY GRUNDY (May 9,

2016), http://www.terrygrundy.info/cincinnatis-over-the-rhine.html. 158 Id. 159 Richard C. Schragger, Decentralization and Development, 96 VA. L.

REV. 1837, 1884 (2010). 160 Id. 161 Id. at 1882–83. 162 STEVEN G. WILSON ET AL., United States Census Bureau Report No.

C2010SR-01, PATTERNS OF METROPOLITAN AND MICROPOLITAN POPULATION CHANGES: 2000 TO 2010, 25 (Sept. 2012), https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2012/dec/c2010sr-01.html.

163 Michael J. Petrilli, The 50 Zip Codes with the Largest Growth in White Population Share: 2000-2010, THOMAS B. FORDHAM INST., (June 14, 2012), https://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2012/the-50-zip-codes-with-the-largest-growth-in-white-population-share.html.

164 Kathy Y. Wilson, Down on Main Street: The rise, fall, and lingering limbo of OTR’s dream street (Sep. 1, 2009), CIN. MAG. (Sept. 1, 2009), http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/citywiseblog/down-on-main-street1/.

Commented [JB3]: The author of this source does not use the term "creative class." Consider replacing this with a term the author uses or omitting the quotation marks.


breweries began popping up across a six-block stretch.165 By the late 1990s, there was a small but thriving art scene and nineteen bars and clubs on Main Street.166 As noted above, developers had continually clamored to redevelop historic OTR, and had clashed with local activ-ists.167 Back in 1993, Arthur Frommer, the famous travel guide author had this to say about Over the Rhine:

In all of America, there is no more promising an urban area for revitalization than your own Over-the-Rhine. When I look at that remarkably untouched, expansive section of architecturally uniform structures, unmarred by clashing modern structures, I see in my mind the pos-sibility for a revived district that literally could rival similar prosperous and heavily visited areas.168

The riots in 2001 led to a massive exodus from OTR.169 The larg-est Section-8 landlord declared bankruptcy, and auctioned off 900 low-income apartment units.170 These units were quickly scooped up by large developers for pennies on the dollar.171 3CDC bought the most of any bidder.172

Targeted interventions in cities may also have the secondary effect of reversing the trend of white flight from the suburbs back to the city, with a simultaneous exodus of blacks to the suburbs. Professor Richey Pil-parinen has termed this phenomenon “white infill,” and raises the nor-mative question of whether we even want inner city migration of whites—or at least whether we want to be subsidizing it. At the heart of Pilparinen’s criticism is that inner city gentrification does not attack the root causes of poverty and racial segregation. In fact, it maintains the status quo by “simply taking [wealth] from one geography to the next; that is, from the suburban development to the urban enclave.”173 Rather

165 Id. 166 Id. 167 See Part V, supra. 168 Over-the-Rhine Green-Historic Study: Exploring the Intersection Be-

tween Environmental Sustainability and Historic Preservation, OHIO HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFF. 14, http://www.otrfoundation.org/Docs/OTR_GREEN_HISTORIC_STUDY.pdf.

169 Christopher Maag, In Cincinnati, Life Breathes Anew in Riot-Scarred Area, N.Y. TIMES (Nov. 25, 2006), http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/us/25cincy.html?_r=2&.

170 Peterson, supra note 118. 171 Amy Higgins, Great Expectations Ride on the Over-the-Rhine Auction

Bids, CIN. ENQUIRER (May 11, 2003), http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/05/11/loc_auction11.html.

172 Maag, supra note 145. 173 Richey Pilparinen, The Persistence of Failed History: “White Infill” as

the New “White Flight”?, NEW GEOGRAPHY (Jul. 10, 2013),


than encourage integration, urban revival simply encourages blacks to establish segregated communities in the suburbs. As Cashin notes, black migration to the suburbs has been taking place for some time. She has found that segregated black communities in the suburbs have the same pathologies that afflict segregated urban populations.174

There is some evidence that so-called “white infill” has occurred in Cincinnati. During the decade of 2000-2010, the rate at which whites left the city slowed dramatically, while the black population actually de-clined.175 Meanwhile, black migration to the inner suburbs increased by 17,000 (from 11 – 14%), the most since 1940, and white migration out of the inner suburbs increased to 35,000, representing a 5% population de-crease, the largest since 1940.176 Black migration to the outer suburbs has been even more pronounced. The black population in suburban But-ler County, situated north of Cincinnati, saw its black population in-crease by a staggering 80% (14,000) from 2000 – 2015.177 During that same period, Butler County’s poverty rate increased from 8.7% to 14.4%.178

While time will tell if this trend continues, displacement from gentri-fication in urban Cincinnati, like the displacement from urban renewal in the West End during Urban Renewal, could have ripple effects that pre-cipitate dramatic neighborhood change across the city. Elsewhere in the country, blacks leaving the urban core and moving into inner suburbs is causing the same rapid ghettoization that occurred during white flight. For example, in once middle class Ferguson, Missouri, the site of recent racial unrest, the black population went from 25% in 1990 to 67% in 2010 and poverty and unemployment rates doubled in the first decade of the 2000s.179

In sum, there is no dispute that OTR has undergone rapid and sub-stantial changes in its physical landscape, including increased property values, and higher population and income levels. What remains to be

http://www.newgeography.com/content/003812-the-persistence-failed-history-white-infill-new-white-flight.

174 Sheryll Cashin, Middle Class Black Suburbs and the State of Integra-tion: A Post-Integrationist Vision for Metropolitan America, 86 CORNELL L. REV. 729, 755 (2001).

175 CASEY-LEININGER, supra note 127, at 4. 176 Id. at 5. 177 Compare Quick Facts: Butler County, Ohio, UNITED STATES CENSUS

BUREAU, http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/39017 (last visit-ed May 14,, 2017), with Community Facts, Census 2000 Summary File, UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF, (last visited May 14, 2017).

178 Larrick, supra note 118, at 58. 179 Denver Nicks, How Ferguson went from Middle Class to Poor in a Gen-

eration, TIME (Aug. 18, 2014), http://time.com/3138176/ferguson-demographic-change/.

Commented [JB4]: The source cited doesn't appear to have any statistics for 2000 and doesn't appear to include statistics for changes betwee 2000 and 2014. Is there another source being used to support the 2000 statistic?


seen is if these changes in OTR’s physical landscape turn into positive gains for residents city- and region-wide. If urban redevelopment simply moves concentrated, racialized poverty to other parts of the city or to adjacent jurisdictions, the city may be faced with the same problems of decay in its outer suburban ring, precipitating the need for yet another round of redevelopment later on. Thus, the long-term consequences of urban redevelopment raise the question whether city resources are better put elsewhere.

C. Final Thoughts on Cincinnati’s Urban Redevelopment

Before concluding, the paper briefly discusses several other observa-tions regarding the city’s downtown redevelopment. First, from the per-spective of a city as a process rather than product, it becomes apparent that massive inflow of investment all at once can have deleterious effects on city building. As Jane Jacobs notes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, “unslumming” “is a process of steady but gradual change,”180 where the requisite elements of productivity—namely diver-sity of economic uses—are developed and maintained. Cataclysmic in-flows of money into a com-munity necessarily price out those who lived there and do not permit them to become part of the solution.

Second, Cincinnati’s downtown redevelopment and the “city as product” view that it conceives serves to perpetuate city powerlessness in relation to the private sector. By viewing the survival of the city as dependent upon attraction of outside capital, city leaders are forced to bow to the demands of corporate money, as seen in the recent generous tax giveaway to General Electric.181 More broadly, however, this power dynamic is at play in the context of control of land use decisions. 3CDC, a private land development corporation, has managed to play a major role in local land use decisions. That being said, some city leaders main-tain that corporations such as 3CDC, which were formed by, and consult heavily with, local government leaders, allows for greater public input in the decision-making process than otherwise would occur with purely private developers.182

Whether or not Buddy Gray and others in OTR had the correct vi-sion for their neighborhood, there is no doubt that their power over city hall represented the idea that decision-making power was in the hands of the local community. When compared to the current political power 3CDC wields today, this conception of public input has been significant-ly truncated. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that 3CDC is not being held politically accountable. For example, it has not kept its prom-

180 JACOBS, supra note 14, at 294. 181 Wetterich, supra note 73. 182 Interview with Dan Driehaus, Member of the Cincinnati Planning

Commission (Apr. 12, 2016).


ises made in the 2003 Master Plan in terms of numbers of affordable housing units made available in OTR.

Gerald Frug would cite cities’ reliance on the private sector for eco-nomic growth as symptomatic of the myriad legal constraints put on cit-ies in terms of their ability to raise capital, allocate resources, and control property rights. Harvey Molotch would characterize Cincinnati city gov-ernment’s reliance on, and subsidization of, private sector development interests as a result of what he calls the “city as growth machine,” where “[c]oalitions of land-based elites … drive urban politics in their quest to expand the local economy and accumulate wealth.”183 Ac-cording to Molotch, such a model of local governance (or lack thereof), is not only un-democratic, but has also proven unsuccessful at improving the city’s economic wellbeing.184

Finally, the elaborate mix of city, state, federal, and private money used by 3CDC and other developers blurs lines of political accountabil-ity such that local citizens affected by land-use decisions will not know who to credit or blame for those decisions.185

Inability to hold public officials accountable and lack of local con-trol over land-use decisions can create feelings of powerlessness and frustration, especially among those displaced by urban redevelopment. It can also inflame race and class-based conflict in rapidly changing neigh-borhoods. These sorts of political costs are hard to measure, but should play a role in the calculus as to whether gentrification is worthwhile overall.

CONCLUSION

A multitude of factors come into play in predicting the trajectory of a city’s economic growth, including industrialization, government policy, demographic change, and race. The case study of Cincinnati, a major city in America’s industrial heartland, indicates that city planning has been largely ineffective or even harmful in the face of the strong deter-ministic and chance factors at play. While Cincinnati’s latest urban rede-velopment policies are larger in scale and have had greater impact on the physical landscape in OTR and the CBD than have prior revitalization attempts, the data so far demonstrate that the city’s poor have not yet realized any gains, and in fact have fared considerably worse since 2000. Moreover, there is reason to believe that such policies will set off trends going forward that will not favor Cincinnati’s worst-off residents. Why then should we believe that the current redevelopment policies, grounded in the same theories of capital attraction and retention that underlay Cin-

183 Schragger supra, note 7, at 492. 184 Id. 185 Cf. Printz v. U.S., 521 U.S. 898 (1997) (Scalia, J., discussing the blur-

ring of lines of political accountability in the federalism context).


cinnati’s past efforts at urban revitalization, are any more wise, effective, or beneficial than their predecessors?

The fact that cities across the country continue to pursue urban growth policies that focus on attraction and retention goes to demon-strate the strong intuitive appeal of the “city-as-product” model, the per-vasive political influence of local business elites, and perceptions on the part of city leaders that there is no other way forward. The conclusion from this study is that cities largely lack agency to control their own des-tinies, and that affirmative city policies aimed at restoring economic growth can be ineffective at best and harmful at worst. Given the prem-ise that a city’s control over its future is limited, cities should refocus their attention on improving what they can control—the welfare of their present constituents. Only after cities accept that their current occupants are part of the solution, not the problem, will cities and their metropoli-tan areas be able to make the incremental, sustainable gains that benefit the overall welfare of their populations.

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