Each fall, Myron Levine, Professor of Urban Affairs and Geography, takes his URS 3210 (Metropolitan Politics) students to Cincinnati to meet with redevelopment officials and explore the transformation of the city’s Over-the-Rhine district. The site of substantial poverty and widespread property abandonment, “OTR” gained national notoriety in 2001 as the site of the nation’s last big-city riots.
OTR is presently in the midst of a reinvention and is now the center of loft living, upscale restaurants, and street cafes. The 110-square blocks are undergoing development guided by 3CDC, the private-led Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation. The students debate gentrification and discuss how city planners and private actors have contributed to the transformation of a strategic urban neighborhood, located just outside of Cincinnati’s downtown.
For more photographs, visit Dr. Levine’s field trip from 2012 (photos by Stephen Carl).
