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I was struck by a recent news report detailing an exchange Mayor Mallory had with a woman at a Colerain Township car wash in which she confessed, in all seriousness, that she would visit downtown if there weren’t “so many bodies piled up in the streets.”  As the mystified (mortified?) Mayor listened further, the woman confessed that she had not been downtown in seventeen years.” Seventeen. Continuing in a similar vein, I sometimes read with bewilderment articles on such phenomena as the “Streets of West Chester,” and fawning local media coverage that makes exclamations like "it's just like a real downtown!” (as if this is some newfangled utopian discovery or Disney theme park).  Such hyperbole often leaves me scratching my head, primarily because…um…we already have a downtown, and it's definitely not in West Chester.  The residents of this region need to realize that the tired and outdated clichés of the past no longer serve anyone’s interest. But one parallel I can draw from my former stomping grounds in Detroit and here is that the region, both city and suburbs, all need to realize that we are in this thing together… every place has inherent assets and attributes (based on the Mayor’s lead, Colerain must be a great place to get your car washed), but everyone needs to recognize that a doughnut is not the ideal model for a thriving and successful metropolitan region. Downtown is not replicated in the suburbs. Each has a place, but one does not replace the other, and everyone needs to recognize where the heart of the region is located (if you need a hint, look for the tallest building).

There is a kind of “ripple in a pond” effect that can be taken right down to the tiniest microcosm, to a single block in the city, to Fountain Square.  To quickly paraphrase, one theory behind investing in the reconstruction of Fountain Square is that, in so doing, the success there will ripple outward, to adjoining blocks, leading to more development, more investment, more buzz.  Based on what I have seen, it has been an unparalleled success.  Take the same theory and apply it to the Gateway Quarter in OTR and see the effects ripple outward, to the new residents, the retail stores and restaurants on Vine.  Do the same thing on the Banks and on Washington Park.  Now extrapolate that same theory to the concept of a city and its suburbs, as the success of the city will inherently ripple out and equate to healthier suburbs.  While “synergy” is an odious and oft-overused buzzword, it does have a place in the dialogue, and at its most base level, it involves working together and cooperating, not the city-suburb trench warfare that I witnessed in Detroit, and not the 52-card-pickup neighborhood Balkanization (some might call it “Banksanization”) that sometimes rears its ugly head here (for recent examples, see east v. west debates on streetcars in OTR; section 8 housing on the Banks, etc.).

In short, to paraphrase the cloying, yet catchy, Ben Lee song currently being co-opted for a Kohl’s TV commercial, “we’re all in this together.”  Although the natural cynic in me would dismiss such hollow sloganeering as trite, superficial pabulum, it actually works at a base level.  Whether you are at the carwash in Colerain, the “Streets of West Chester,” Hyde Park Square or OTR…we’re all in this together.  Spread the word, and if you haven’t been downtown in 17 years, I dare say you might be surprised by what you see.  Just the changes that I have seen in my short five year tenure have been considerable, and the momentum is certainly heading in the right direction, something which is not the case for every city these days.  In any event, it appears that I have reached the end of my rambling scattershot of anecdotal platitudes and homespun homilies.  I will now step down and relinquish this Soapbox to allow the next blogger to climb on up.  Viva Cincinistas.