Real Ideas from Real People!—Submissions from My Business Card Prompt

“I’d love to have a more walkable city/suburbs with a robust subway/public transit system replacing most car routes.”

— Anonymous

“I don’t think people should get public assistance without being required to provide service to the communities.”

— Anonymous

“Politicians should be working on race relations. Marginalized people should have a way to earn income. And food banks should have satellite offices in strategic locations throughout the city to make it easier for all those in need to get food, possibly at Community Centers.”

— Anonymous

“The racial divide in Cincinnati and elsewhere is something we seem to get further and further away from solving. My views are of course coming from my general white privilege. I think we have a lot of empty, ineffective ideas about this. We need to have harder conversations.”

— Anonymous

“Small businesses are what give cities character. 48-hour business permit rule – streamline licensing so most small businesses can open in under 2 days. Low-cost micro-retail spaces in vacant storefronts ($300–$600/month starter leases). Food truck and pop-up freedom zones downtown and in neighborhoods. Tax incentives for locally owned businesses, not just large developers. Homeschool co-op resource centers in libraries and community centers. Public access labs/workshops (science labs, woodworking, robotics). Homeschool sports leagues that partner with city parks. Educational micro-grants for alternative education programs. Legalize backyard chickens, bees, and small livestock in more neighborhoods. Expand urban gardens and edible landscapes in parks. Allow small neighborhood farm stands without heavy permits. Support local dairy and raw milk access through state partnerships. Convert vacant lots into community farms or orchards. Expand mental health response teams alongside police. Crack down on repeat violent offenders while prioritizing prevention. Expand mountain bike and hiking trails. More river access for kayaking and paddleboarding. Create urban adventure parks (skateparks, climbing walls, pump tracks). Build scenic overlooks and park improvements.”

— Anonymous

“Cincinnati can improve by continuing to invest in safer and more reliable public transportation, making it easier for residents to commute without depending heavily on cars.”

— Anonymous

“I’m just a firm believer in investing in the youth and community programs. And more quality across neighborhoods. I’ve noticed that Cincinnati is growing, but I believe that growth needs to work for everyone... not just a few select neighborhoods.”

— Anonymous

Time for some ideas submitted by Cincinnatians!

Submit your ideas here!

Random Ideations

Business card idea (more iterations coming soon)

A New Visual Direction

Cincinnati Doesn't Have an Idea Problem. It Has a Permission Problem.

Who decided that improving a city was a job reserved for people with job titles?

Somewhere along the way, we started treating civic imagination like a restricted activity. Want to improve a park? Attend a meeting. Want to change a street? Submit a request. Want to rethink how your neighborhood works? Fill out a form, find the appropriate committee, wait six weeks, and hope your idea survives the agenda.

To be clear, processes exist for good reasons. But sometimes we've gotten so good at managing ideas that we've forgotten how to encourage them.

Here's a potentially unpopular opinion: Cincinnati needs more people who don't know how things are supposed to work.

Artists. Kids. Weirdos. Inventors. Retirees. People who ask annoying questions. People who have never attended a City Council meeting and couldn't tell you who their councilmember is.

Especially those people.

Because sometimes the most useful question isn't "How do we improve this system?"

It's "Why on Earth do we do it this way in the first place?"

Imagine if we treated Cincinnati like an unfinished prototype instead of a finished product.

What if residents could propose ridiculous ideas without being ridiculed? What if neighborhood improvements were something we experimented with, not just debated? What if participating in local government felt less like visiting the DMV and more like contributing to something you actually cared about?

What if a pothole could start a conversation about infrastructure funding?

What if a neighborhood could become a laboratory for better public spaces?

What if City Hall occasionally said, "That's a weird idea. Let's try it"?

We don't need to agree on every solution. We need to get better at imagining alternatives. That's why Rethink Cincy! exists.

Not to pretend that governing a city is easy. Not to suggest every wild idea deserves public funding. And certainly not to replace expertise with enthusiasm.

But to challenge the assumption that the way things are is the way things have to be.

Cincinnati belongs to the people who live here. And those people should be encouraged to do more than complain about it.

They should be invited to redesign it.

So here's my challenge: What's one thing Cincinnati does that makes absolutely no sense?

Not your biggest political grievance. Not your favorite politician to blame.

Just one everyday thing that makes you stop and wonder:

Who designed this, and why haven't we tried something better?

Let's start there.

Rethink Cincy! 👓

#RethinkCincy #Cincinnati

Eureka! 'Civic Mythology'

Every city has its legends.

Cincinnati has flying pigs, a questionable obsession with chili, and a bridge that seems to spend half its life under construction.

But what if we started inventing some new mythology? Not about the city's past. About its possible futures.

I've been imagining an entirely fictional municipal government operating somewhere in the margins of Cincinnati. A sprawling, slightly ridiculous bureaucracy devoted to making the city more imaginative:

A Department of What If, responsible for asking questions nobody else thinks to ask.

A Ministry of Play, tasked with making public life a little more delightful.

An Office of Unheard Voices, dedicated to listening to people who rarely get a seat at the table.

And naturally, an Office of the Unnecessarily Complicated, which would have an extraordinarily difficult application process.

None of these departments would technically exist. But their missions? Those would be very real.

I'm fascinated by the possibility of building an entire civic mythology around Rethink Cincy! Imaginary departments with official seals, commissioners, memos, annual reports, and occasional bureaucratic disagreements. A so-called ‘government’ that exists entirely in our collective imagination, yet occasionally manages to get something useful done. Because mythology isn't just about explaining where we came from. Sometimes it's about imagining who we might become.

(And perhaps there's something powerful about giving people permission to play pretend with the future of their city!)

After all, every institution, every public park, every bridge, and every neighborhood improvement began as something that didn't exist. Somebody had to imagine it first. So consider this an unofficial announcement:

Rethink Cincy! is establishing a government that doesn't exist.

Its departments will be imaginary. Its paperwork will be unnecessarily official-looking. Its ambitions will be entirely serious.

And everyone in Cincinnati is invited to participate. No election required.

— Rethink Cincy!

#RethinkCincy #Cincinnati #ILoveCincinnati

What If Cincinnati Is Just a Rough Draft?

I've been thinking about something lately.

What if a city isn't a finished product? What if Cincinnati, with all its history, traditions, quirks, potholes, and questionable intersections, is just one giant rough draft?

As a designer, I've learned that the first idea is rarely the best idea. Sometimes the tenth idea isn't either. You sketch, experiment, make mistakes, erase things, and try again. But somewhere along the way, we start treating cities differently.

We accept things because "that's how they've always been." We mistake familiarity for quality. We confuse tradition with inevitability. And perhaps most strangely, we leave creativity out of conversations about government, as though imagination becomes irresponsible the moment taxpayer dollars are involved.

I'm not suggesting we redesign Cincinnati overnight. (Although I do have some thoughts about those intersections...) I'm suggesting something smaller, and maybe more radical:

What if we treated our city as something we're still allowed to invent?

Not just maintain. Not just complain about. Invent.

Because Cincinnati isn't finished.

And neither are we.

— Rethink Cincy!

Let's Talk Ambition

I have big ambitions for Cincinnati. Not because I think our city is broken, but because I believe its potential is enormous, and largely untapped.

I envision a Cincinnati where starting a business is easier, public spaces invite creativity, mental health is treated as a civic priority, and neighborhoods have a greater voice in shaping their futures. I want a city that experiments. A city that embraces unconventional ideas, takes calculated risks, and isn't afraid to have a little fun along the way.

My ambitions extend beyond advocating for change. I want to help lead it.

I hope to serve on Cincinnati City Council someday, bringing my background in design, education, and creative problem-solving to public office. Rethink Cincy! is where that work begins.

I'm not interested in change for the sake of change. I'm interested in making Cincinnati a more accessible, imaginative, and opportunity-rich place to live.

And I think we can have a pretty good time doing it.

More Fun Ideation

What If There Was a Rethink Cincy Academy?

Food Imagery Ideations

Ice cream iteration (guess whose ice cream…)

What If We Designed Cincinnati Like We Actually Gave a Damn?

Cities are designed.

The streets we drive on. The bus stops we wait at. The parks we play in. The forms we fill out. The signs we ignore. Even the process for complaining about a pothole, was designed by somebody.

Which means all of it can be redesigned.

Design thinking gives Cincinnati a different way to solve problems. Instead of starting with bureaucracy, budgets, or “Well, that's how we've always done it,” we start with people.

Go stand at the bus stop. Walk the broken sidewalk. Try opening a small business. Attempt to navigate a city service without already knowing which department handles it. Ask a kid what would make their neighborhood more fun. Ask an older resident what makes getting around unnecessarily difficult. See Cincinnati through the eyes of the people actually using Cincinnati.

Then comes my favorite part: make something.

Don't spend three years debating whether an idea might work. Build the cheap version and find out.

Paint a temporary plaza. Turn an empty storefront into a pop-up shop. Prototype a ridiculous new bus shelter. Give residents $500 to improve something on their block. Test a tiny urban garden. Put a bench somewhere people actually want to sit.

Some ideas will work. Some will fail spectacularly.

And that is good! Now we know something we didn't know before.

That's the difference between treating Cincinnati like a finished product and treating it like a living prototype. We should be constantly asking:

• What isn't working?
• Who isn't being heard?
• What could we try?
• How can we make this easier, kinder, stranger, safer, faster, or more fun?

And perhaps most importantly: What happens if Cincinnati residents become designers of their city instead of simply customers of it?

A better Cincinnati doesn't necessarily require one gigantic billion-dollar idea. Maybe it requires thousands of little ones.

Try something. Learn something. Change something. Then do it again.

Cincinnati isn't finished.

Thank goodness it’s not.

Spin the Wheel!

Website Ideas

I sat down and studied Cincinnati’s yearly budget and used some insights to generate a few different aesthetic directions for the RC! website. Here are a few splash page ideas.

Some thoughts so far:
• This might be too much info on one page. These insights could be broken into multiple pages going forward.
• These could be pushed in more playful directions. Visually, text-wise, etc.
• These need to be more cognizant of ‘above-the-fold’ (web) design thinking.