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! 👓
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