Urban development guru Richard Florida burst on our local scene in summer 2002 when he presented his “creative class” concept at a University of Cincinnati lecture. His basic idea was that mobile young professionals (about 38 million Americans at the time) were choosing to live in cities that offered lively and active downtown streets, thriving music and arts scenes, good public transportation and a general openness to new people and new ideas — not cities that offered new sports stadiums, solid property values and low taxes, which had always been cited as key magnets for population growth.
As those YPs moved to the cool cities, Florida opined, the local economies boomed and in turn attracted more YPs looking for interesting work, hip people and fun times. The cool places creatives gravitated to included the usual suspects: Portland, Austin, San Francisco, Seattle. The places being left behind included, unfortunately, Cincinnati.
Editor John Fox told the story of the “creative class” migration through the eyes of six graduates of UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning who — independent of each other — moved to Portland after school. Some had interned at Portland companies during college, and some moved sight unseen just because they’d heard Portland was “happening.” Only one had moved back to Cincinnati; the others doubted they’d ever come back.
One DAAP grad compared the two cities: “Cincinnati is like when you were in high school and the teachers put on a party for you but you knew it was cheesy. Portland is like planning the party yourself.”
Excerpt:
“They like the mix they find in Portland’s urban neighborhoods — a mix of income levels, races, ethnic groups, architecture — and the positive attitude toward diversity, tolerance and open-mindedness that’s evident everywhere.
“Toby Hasselgren is particularly enthusiastic about the Pearl District, an old warehouse area near downtown that’s now a hotbed for housing among young professionals. He says the area was ‘very scary’ when he arrived in Portland but now has coffee shops, art galleries and loft apartments mixed in with autobody shops and other original businesses.
“ ‘It’s our Over-the-Rhine,’ he says. ‘Imagine what the $500 million you spent on Paul Brown Stadium would do for Over-the-Rhine. Not chain retail stores, not stadiums, but downtown housing and businesses that integrate high-end and low-end, a mixture of all incomes.’ ”
Today:
Funny thing, but Cincinnati eventually did spend hundreds of millions of dollars on housing and businesses in Over-the-Rhine — 3CDC alone has invested $350 million in the neighborhood (see “1994” on page 6). OTR was very scary back in 2002, about a year after the race riots, but now has coffee shops, art galleries and loft apartments mixed in with original businesses. And Cincinnati certainly seems to have a positive attitude these days toward diversity, tolerance and open-mindedness that’s evident everywhere.
Did we become Portland after all? Perhaps, judging by the influx of YPs and others into downtown and Over-the-Rhine, the exploding restaurant scene, the under-construction streetcar line, the new bike-sharing system and the fawning national media coverage — all the requisite amenities for a “cool” city.
You have to wonder how many in DAAP’s 2015 graduating class will be looking for their first jobs in Cincinnati instead of bolting. Sounds like a great subject for a future CityBeat cover story.
So if we’re now Portland, what is Portland? Just a parody of itself on Portlandia.
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2014.
