I published an op-ed in the Cincinnati Business Courier this week. It’s about the thing that sits underneath every project we work on at Trilobite Design: the physical connections between Cincinnati’s neighborhoods, and what happens when those connections fail.
Read the full op-ed in the Cincinnati Business Courier →
The argument is simple. We have surrendered our streets to traffic throughput. We measure success by how fast a car can leave a street, and in doing so, we have designed for abandonment. Our 52 neighborhoods are left to independently fight for basic safety improvements, one speed bump and one crosswalk at a time, without a cohesive master plan connecting us together.
I wrote the piece because I see this problem from every angle I occupy. As an architect designing sustainable buildings, I know that a net-zero home on a street that requires a car for every errand is still a failure of planning. As a co-founder of Urban Artifact, I know that fast traffic kills Main Street economies. And as president of Mt. Airy CURE, I watch Colerain Avenue carry the scars of decades of prioritizing suburban commuter flow over the neighborhood it cuts through. The heart of Mt. Airy was eroded by this exact pattern, slowly and then quickly.
What I’m calling for in the piece is a return to ambitious, comprehensive planning. Cincinnati has had the vision before. The MetroMoves plan and the bike network proposals from 25 years ago were real, funded ideas that were never implemented. We need that level of ambition again: a modern master plan that integrates transit, cycling, and street design into a single connected system, so that residents in Northside or Mt. Airy or any of the city’s neighborhoods can access opportunity without depending entirely on a car.
This connects directly to the work we do at Trilobite Design and through HabitThat. Every development project we take on is an urban infill project. We build in existing neighborhoods, on vacant lots and underused parcels, in places where walkability and street life matter. The Northside EcoVillage is designed around density and proximity to transit. Our infill concepts on Langland Street and elsewhere prioritize sites within walking distance of business districts and bus lines. We don’t build on greenfield sites at the edge of town. We build in the fabric of the city, and we need that fabric to work.
Sustainable buildings and sustainable streets are the same project. You can’t solve one without the other. That’s the argument, and I’ll keep making it.