Cincinnati's first "suburb" sprung up when downtown and Over-the-Rhine dwellers began to crawl out of the once sooty basin seeking the fresh country air of the surrounding hillsides. At Mt. Auburn's base, homes in the eclectic Prospect Hill Historic District cling to the swift rising slope (stop in at Milton's Prospect Hill Tavern if the climb up Sycamore Street proves too much) providing gorgeous, panoramic views of downtown, Mt. Adams and Northern Kentucky. At the top of the hill, the Flatiron Café anchors the southern edge of the business district, once a Mt. Auburn millionaire's row, now home to medical offices and organizations along modern day Auburn Avenue (including the birth home of bathtub-bursting U.S. President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft). Home to Christ Hospital, one of the oldest medical facilities in Cincinnati and a perennial national contender for top heart hospital, and three city parks and tennis courts, you're sure to keep your ticker in tip top shape here. This diverse community offers multiple, affordable living options including single family historic homes, student apartment housing and gorgeous Italianate mansions.
In an effort to make more data sets available to the public and to put them in the hands of organizations that can make use of them, OpenDataCincy is engaging community members in the Nonprofit Data Challenge.
As we continue to reprise our four-part Demand Better series, we take a look at innovations and ideas that empower and support neighbors here and around the country—and offer some key demands for Cincinnati's future as election day approaches.
Ron Esposito, a local musician and life coach at the Conscious Living Center in Mt. Auburn, recently released his third solo CD.
On July 24, the City of Cincinnati adopted Nextdoor, a free, private social network for you, your neighbors and your community. The goal is to improve community engagement between the City and its residents, and foster neighbor-to-neighbor communications. Each of Cincinnati’s 52 neighborhoods will have its own private Nextdoor neighborhood website, which is accessible only to residents of that neighborhood. City administrations and several city departments will also use Nextdoor to share important news, services, programs, free events and emergency notifications to residents, but they won’t be able to see who is registered to use the site or the conversations among residents. Founded in 2010 in San Francisco, Nextdoor’s mission is to bring back a sense of community to the neighborhood. The site was tested in 175 neighborhoods across the country, and results showed that neighborhoods had some of the same issues, plus a variety of different issues. “We all remember what our neighborhood experience was like as kids, when everyone knew each other, looked out for one another and stayed in the community longer," says Sarah Leary, co-founder of Nextdoor. “We want to invoke that nostalgia for neighborhoods.” To date, Nextdoor is being used by about 17,000 neighborhoods across the country. In June, Nextdoor partnered with New York City and Mayor Bloomberg to communicate with the city’s 8.3 million residents. The site plans to roll out in other major cities like Cincinnati over the course of the next several months. Nextdoor also recently released its iPhone app. “We’re really putting the lifeline of the neighborhood into the palm of the residents’ hands,” says Leary. “The common thread is an interest in using technology to make connections with neighbors. But it doesn’t stop there—once people have an easy way to communicate, they’re more likely to get together in the real world.” You can sign up for Nextdoor on its website, or download the app in the App Store. By Caitlin Koenig Follow Caitlin on Twitter
This week marks the launch of a new Soapbox series: Demand Better Cincinnati. We'll explore a new issue each week and sift through what's been done, what's being done and how we can push our current and future leaders to, well, demand better.
As election day approaches, we'll be re-running our four-part Demand Better series in an effort to spark conversations and provoke thought about how we can demand more from our city's leaders. This week, we take a look at the topic of architecture.
Many city-dwellers are continuously faced with the arduous task of budgeting their quarters between two priorities: bus fare and laundromats.
The project is titled “MUST LOVE CATS,” and it will be an album of five compositions.
Graduating high school students of the class of 2014 will be the first group in Ohio that is required to learn financial literacy. “So many teens were graduating high school without basic knowledge of financial literacy, like avoiding high-interest credit cards—scams that are so present on college campuses,” says Jennifer Korn, TeenSpot manager at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. “And there have been a number of studies that say students who don’t have the basic knowledge are likely to end up in serious debt as very young adults and are unable to get ahead and unable to save money as they go into adulthood.” To fill that void and to encourage more teens to be conscious of their finances, the library is offering a series of workshops for teens between the ages of 12 and 18. The workshops will teach the students how to create a budget and open a savings account. Thanks to a grant from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation, PLCHC is one of just 14 public libraries nationwide to offer the workshop. “I think a majority of teens across the board don’t have a very good understanding of the importance of saving or of budgeting your money, so maybe they get an allowance or have a job or babysit, but it’s mostly for entertainment purposes,” Korn says. “But there’s not a lot of consideration for the future and the long term—that if you start saving your money now and that money starts to build, then in 15 or 20 years, you can be in a much better position than if you would not have started saving.” Korn says all the activities in the series are teen-focused and engaging, so students might be given a sample scenario where they have a set amount of money and want to go to the movies, but also need to consider the fact that their best friend’s birthday is coming up. “Anything that reinforces what they’re doing in an interactive or a social way,” Korn says. “The hope is that once they graduate high school and enter their postsecondary education or the real world, they feel confident, can handle their money and are savvy consumers and savvy savers.” Do Good: • Learn about the financial literacy workshops, and sign up to attend. • Keep up with teen programs at the library, and attend an upcoming event. • Like the PLCHC on Facebook. By Brittany York Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.
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