Sustainable Environment and Advanced Rebirth of Cincinnati Heart* (SEARCH)

by Dr. Vlasta Molak e-mail: DrMolak@email.com, tel. 513/521-9321, fax. 513/521-9321, web: cs.ru/cito/gaia

ABSTRACT

We will demonstrate a practical application of the sustainability concepts in the Cincinnati Heart*, a partially run-down area consisting of seven distinct neighborhoods adjacent to each other and forming the inner city of Cincinnati. This includes renovation of houses using maximal energy efficiency in design and in light fixtures and appliances, in addition to passive and active solar collectors. Also, we are designing a practical public transport system using a fleet of busses powered by fuel cells and gradually eliminating car traffic from the area. A long range plan includes community gardens for growing food and local work for area residents, such as non-polluting factories and other sustainability promoting businesses. We would preferentially employ the people living in the area in order to promote walking and biking to work and thus eliminating the need for car use, which will result in drastic decreases in CO2 emissions from transportation (biking is ~60 times more efficient than driving a car, and thus compared with fossil fuel-driven conventional cars creates 60 times less CO2 emissions). Additional long range plans include local electric power generation with use of generated heat, which doubles the efficiency. Our ideas differ from the unsuccessful trials in the past by its integrated systemic approach and seeking cooperation of all the current residents and organizations active in this area. We are listening to all the actors and shareholders in the communities where we want to implement our Sustainable Environment and Advanced Rebirth of Cincinnati Heart* (SEARCH), and are finding optimal solutions that will satisfy all the people who will live with the consequences of our work. We believe that only an approach where people living in a run-down areas are included into the renewal project, can enable a change to be lasting and sustainable.

* Cincinnati Heart includes neighborhoods of Over-The-Rhine, West End, Pendleton, Mt. Auburn, The Heights, Fairview, University Heights, Clifton Heights and Corryville. Together they resemble a human heart, which we believe is quite appropriate symbol for our project.

VISION

Imagine a beautiful town with old brick houses, stores and sidewalk cafes. Imagine enjoying a cup of tea or juice, while listening to sounds of music and life going on in the neighborhood. Imagine that no car noises and exhausts are disturbing your pleasure of savoring the moment. Imagine that everything you need to buy is within a walking distance where you live! Imagine that you are making a living without needing to commute, because you are employed where you live! Imagine that when you want to go to other parts of Cincinnati you hop on a fuel-cell powered minibus, which takes you to all important points of Downtown Cincinnati and the farther neighborhoods, and that comes every five minutes so that you never have to wait long in the cold or rain. Imagine that your apartment is insulated and that your heating and electric bill is minimal because all of your fixtures are the most energy efficient available on the market (and maybe even purchased and/or produced a few blocks away). Imagine that part of your electricity comes from a solar collector or panel on the roof of your building, and the other part from a small non-polluting electricity generator that works on 66% efficiency (double the conventional power plants) because the heat of the electricity generation is used for heating and cooling of the town area where you live. Imagine that you are attending community theater and movie house and afterwards stroll on the streets which are safe for everybody, because those people who were previously robbing you are gainfully employed and live in a decent housing as your good neighbors.

Many of the above qualities existed in Cincinnati over a hundred years ago. People lived in a community where people knew each other and helped each other up. The crime was almost unknown because the neighbors watched out for each other. With the invention of cars and suburbs, the centrifugal social changes dispersed community, with its associated problems of traffic jams, drug abuse and crime. Suburban sprawl, which is energy wasting and time wasting, has become a major destroyer of community life and sustainability in America. We can start changing this trend by using still existing buildings infrastructure (there are about 1000 houses that are currently empty and are either condemned or need repairs) in several areas of Cincinnati, adjacent to Downtown, and refurbishing it with new technologies, new ideas and additional people, without displacing the unfortunate poor, who currently reside in this area. Those poor and downtrodden and/or criminal elements could be helped to be integrated into a larger, highly functional community, which could become a model for other cities to follow. What is now an urban blight, gobbling both material and human resources without appreciable results (the riots last spring are the best indication that the piecemeal "solutions" used in last few decades are unproductive), could become a tourist Mecca and a prime mover of the regional economy.

Our ideas differ from the unsuccessful trials in the past by its integrated systemic approach and seeking cooperation of all the current residents and organizations active in this area. We are listening to all the actors and shareholders in the communities where we want to implement our Sustainable Environment and Advanced rebirth of Cincinnati Heart (SEARCH), and are finding optimal solutions that will satisfy all the people who will live with the consequences of our work.

IMPLEMENTATION

Phase I. We are currently in a process of purchasing several abandoned buildings around Findlay market that belong to the City of Cincinnati. Our architects, Dunn and Titus, have already renovated numerous dwelling units in the Over-the-Rhine and adjacent areas and they specialize in green (sustainable) architecture. We are planning to renovate those houses according to the principles of sustainable development and make it into multipurpose dwellings. The storefronts of those houses, adjacent to Findlay market, will be opened as stores and/or restaurants, depending what our market research shows is most economically viable. We will train and employ the people in the area who are currently either unemployed or marginally employed, using several job-training programs already in existence and with the proven track record in placing their clients.

Phase II. After successful completion of Phase I, and renting out the stores and apartments in an innovative exchange system, we will expand our renovation to other abandoned buildings and also industrial buildings in order to bring more jobs and better quality of life into the area. We are currently negotiating with Hart Reality, which had recently filed bankruptcy, to take over all of their 170 buildings and refurbish them according to our vision above. Additionally, since there are almost 1000 empty houses in the City of Cincinnati area, we will attempt to purchase those houses and renovate them to fit best into our original vision. Also, we are negotiating with a company that produces fuel-cell engine powered small buses, which will serve to establish efficient transportation network in the area that links to the existing Metro system and parking areas Downtown or adjacent areas, and Kentucky shuttle. In the future those busses may also feed into and from the trolley system that has been proposed to alleviate the I-75 and I-71 corridors.

Phase III. Continue developing and transforming the area and negotiate with producers of modern energy technologies to use our Show-town (Over-the-Rhine and vicinity) to demonstrate effectiveness of their technologies and thus set a trend for inner cities in other urban areas. This would be combined with other efforts, such as public transport development and Empowerment zones. We do not want to compete or replace the existing organizations but want maximal cooperation of all interested parties. Rather than gentrifying the area, by moving poor people out of the area into public housing projects or elsewhere, we want to keep those people where they are and provide them for an opportunity of becoming apartment and houses owners and gainfully employed citizens without forcing them to commute long distances in order to get minimum wage jobs. We will make the new "gentry" out of those people who have fallen through the cracks of our society and in a way we will "gentrify" the area by transforming both houses and people. Additionally, since many currently abandoned buildings will be made available to anyone who wants to live in this area, we will have an influx of people and businesses, which will stimulate the economy of the City of Cincinnati and the entire Tri-state region.

ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS SUPPORTING OUR PROJECT

1. Findlay Market merchants are excited about a possibility of our opening soon Gaia Cafe, a small healthy foods and drinks restaurant that would help increase the traffic at the Findlay market since the shoppers will finally have a place to eat sitting down (currently there are no suitable restaurants within several blocks of Findlay market and merchants are constantly asked about it by the shoppers). Also, since restaurant will purchase its food from those merchants, their sales are anticipated to increase. In addition, they are very supportive of transforming the cubicle house in the middle of the south side of the market into a fruit juice-tofuti (ice-cream) bar with the garden to sit in the back at the place where currently is broken parking lot with abandoned cars. That juice bar would provide a nice spot for relaxation for the shoppers and improve the look of the entire area (we plan to bring neighborhood kids to paint the walls of adjacent to the proposed garden spot (sitting with tables surrounded with plants).

2. Jobs+, a non-profit training and employment agency for the people who live in the area and who have difficulties finding and retaining jobs because of their history (some criminal records and/or substance abuse) is very interested in finding jobs for their graduates of the program. We intend to give priority in employment to local people and thus improve their chances of stable employment, both during the reconstruction phase of the project and later when we introduce other employment opportunities (various stores and some light manufacturing). We are also seeking support from all existing daily labor pool centers and hope to get their full cooperation. In addition, we will be working with all the social services agencies that are providing counseling for people who are inflicted with mental disorders, and/or substance abuse and who maybe be rehabilitated and included into the world of productive citizens by part-time work that does not exceed their ability to cope. The mechanisms have to be developed in the structure of payments to make it worth-while for those people to work rather than stay in a dysfunctional situation on public welfare.

3. University of Cincinnati is interested in having their coop students work with us and gain unique learning experience. Those could include architectural and engineering students as well and social studies and psychology students, since the range of problems in the heart of Cincinnati exceeds any one discipline and interdisciplinary approach to their solution may provide an excellent practice for those future professionals. Students will be encouraged to live in this areas (which are adjacent to University) by getting very comfortable living spaces for a very low rent, which in some cases maybe bartered for their work with us. Thus we could introduce some intellectual and racial diversity into the area and perhaps provide some role models for the young troubled teenagers. We believe that once more functional people move into the area, it will cause a chain reaction of moves into those neighborhoods by other highly educated professionals who are tired of commuting and living in suburbs.

4. We are currently seeking cooperation and offering support to Restock, Drop-Inn-Center, Over-The-Rhine, Inc., Franciscans, and other low-income housing organizations and we anticipate their full cooperation. In addition we are seeking support of the African American organizations that are in the area and also outside the area in the suburbs. We believe that the middle-class blacks will be interested in changing the lot of their brothers in the blighted areas and help them transform into contributors of society.

5. Police and court could help us design a program where the non-violent offenders can serve their sentences by attending our program, working and taking training classes. In such a way they could gradually learn working skills and have a place to go after their sentence is served. We believe that this approach would contribute greatly to improvement in racial relations, which have been a problem in that part of town for many years. We believe that getting young offenders into a structured working environment would be preferable to jailing them for small offenses and preventing their development into hard core criminals, which often happens in prisons.