Witte Doesn't Get It

Pete Witte is a Westsider and supports the Westside strongly. In a letter to the editor Pete takes the typical Republican stance on public works by wanting to know when his streetcar will drive by Price Hill Chile. Pete goes on to show his lack of foresight by not see the potential of people living in OTR and Downtown. Pete, you will get yours when the city is able to build up new residents and therefore a bigger tax base. 20 and 30 somethings are not going to move to Price Hill in droves. Sure, OTR doesn't have the massive population it could have. Guess what, put in a street car and it will have a massive increase in residents.

The city is not going to grow its economy by focusing on neighborhoods that do not have the practical purpose of building a large economic base. Downtown, OTR, and Uptown are the core of City's Economy. OTR is lumped in because it is in the middle. Is that fair? Fair in governance doesn't mean that everything the government does has to be divided by an accountant to make sure that each person living in a Price Hill ally has a streetcar stop outside his humble abode. Instead government picks projects that IN THE LONG RUN will help the entire city. OTR has the potential that no other neighborhood in the city has to become a large and vibrant residential base.

Pete also I think suffers from suburbanitis. He, like John Cranley, appear to be focusing on preventing the Urban core of city and the region from become more urban. I don't know if Pete adheres to Cranley's philosophy of what I think is a miniature form of suburan Terra-forming. We live in a city. We do have suburbs. Suburbs exist because there is an urban core. No urban core, then the suburbs will fail. We will not be a Metro area that has anything to offer if we wipe away the urban core and replace it with a sprawling wasteland of conformity.