The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the Obama administration has earmarked $400 million for Ohio’s plan to link Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Cleveland via high-speed rail.
From The Dispatch:
Ohio officials are banking on federal stimulus money for most or all of the estimated $517.6 million they say they need to improve existing freight rail to passenger standards and to buy trains.

“This is some of the best news we have had in a long time,” Senator Sherrod Brown said. “If I put my ear down to the rail I think I hear …

Ohio voters recently passed a constitutional amendment that will allow for the construction of four casinos in the state for the first time.

One will be located in each Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.
Ohio voters have turned down ballot initiatives like this one before. But it seems this time the need for jobs and the pervasiveness of casino gambling in neighbor states helped sway the electorate.
Anyway, there’s been a lot of debate over whether this will ultimately be good or bad. I thought it would be interesting to hear from other …

Angie and Kate have posted about the Great Lakes Urban Exchange’s “I Will Stay If …” campaign a few times here; and as I was leafing through some of their photos recently, I noticed a number of references to bicycle unfriendliness of some of the Rust Belt cities.

With the Census Bureau’s 2008 American Community Survey data now available, I took a look at what the numbers look like throughout the Rust Belt. I should note that I used only core-city geography data, so the comparisons are not completely fair, given the arbitrary nature of political boundaries, but I think they are reasonable enough for this sake of this comparison.

The state of Ohio lost population overall for the first time in nearly a decade, according to a study by Community Research Partners.

90.3 WCPN in Cleveland reports that the state lost 35,000 residents. In-migration and birth rates were not able to offset the decline.
Experts believe the out-migration can be traced to job loss. Ohio has a tendency to lose residents during a recession, experts report.
Franklin County, home to Columbus, managed to avoid the decline and gained residents. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County and Cincinnati’s Hamilton County both lost residents overall.

Block Watch organizations across the county are latching on to a new powerful tool: social media.

The Associated Press reports block watch organizations are increasing utilizing tools like Twitter and blogs.

The article follows a Columbus lawyer who tweets about suspicious vehicles and break-ins to protect his crime-ridden Old Oaks neighborhood.

The strategy has payed off for Mr. Vickers. Neighbors report criminal activity has dwindled and the streets are safer.

The Wall Street Journal is carrying a story about growth in many big cities since the last census.
The paper reports the recession is having a chilling effect on suburban sprawl. Researchers also predict migration to the Sun Belt is cooling.
Philadelphia, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio are among the big winners.

Detroit and Cleveland, not so much.
“Cities are showing a continued vitality as hubs of activity even as some suburban and exurban areas go through tough times,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It emphasizes the …

Columbus’s downtown condo market is (of course) suffering under the current housing bust, Columbus’ alt-weekly, The Other Paper, reports.
This is worrisome because the city had vested its hopes for revitalizing downtown on a influx of residential young professionals.
Condo sales account for 2 percent less of overall sales than they did before the bust and many new downtown condo developments are half empty, the paper reports.
This must be happening elsewhere. What will the timing of the economic downturn mean for this relatively new, and once-hot real estate market?

The Ohio House of representatives has passed a moratorium on foreclosures, The Columbus Dispatch reports.
House Bill 3 will place a six-month moratorium on foreclosures, under certain conditions.

It’s kinda nice to read a story about the housing crisis that isn’t set in my backyard (Cleveland) for once.
This time, my hometown of Columbus is front and center in the sad story of houses without owners. A neighborhood in west Columbus was found to have the highest vacancy rate in the country, according to an Associated Press analysis, based on Housing and Urban Development and Postal Service data.
This is kinda unusual because Columbus is generally regarded to be the golden child of Ohio in these parts.
I know the Columbus …

The Urbanophile blog has aggregated and analyzed the results of the 2008 census, showing modest gains for regional winners Indianapolis and Columbus while reflecting continuing decline in Detroit and Cleveland.
The national story is that migration has slowed, the Urbanophile reports, but that is likely due to the strained economy offering fewer attractive distant positions and bringing home sales to a standstill.
Sun Belt cities, of course, lead the pack, with Austin and Charlotte topping the list. Meanwhile, Detroit and Cleveland he refers to as “basket-cases.” He notes however, that while Detroit’s …