1. The Bus as Performance Art
I have a complicated relationship with the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority. I want to love it. I want to be the guy who says, “Just take the bus!”
But when the arrival time shifts like a horoscope and the transfer requires a minor pilgrimage, it stops being transit and starts being endurance theater.
We cannot be a serious city if getting across town feels like a side quest.
2. The Bridge That Raised Me
I have aged emotionally on the Brent Spence Bridge.
I have contemplated my career, my love life, and my cholesterol levels sitting in that traffic. I have seen conceptual renderings that were so beautiful they should’ve been in a gallery.
The only thing that has not changed is the traffic.
At this point, the bridge is less infrastructure and more a regional coping mechanism.
3. Potholes as Urban Texture
Every spring, the streets exfoliate.
I respect texture in design. I do not respect my suspension system filing a complaint.
If my Interaction Design students shipped something this unstable, we’d call it a beta. Cincinnati streets have been in beta for decades.
4. Housing: Pick Two
Affordable.
Available.
In Cincinnati.
Pick two.
I want development. I also want the artist who makes the murals and the nurse who works third shift to still live here. A city that prices out its weirdos loses its soul. And I say that as someone proudly weird.
5. Property Taxes as Jump Scare
Opening your reassessment shouldn’t feel like a haunted house experience.
We deserve clarity. We deserve predictability. We deserve to not find out our budget exploded because a spreadsheet somewhere decided we’re “thriving.”
6. Safety Without Tribalism
Here’s my radical position: I want people to feel safe walking home. I also want them treated with dignity.
Those are not opposing ideas. They are the bare minimum.
The fact that we treat this like a philosophical cage match exhausts me.
7. The Riverfront That Only Exists on Game Day
The Banks is electric when the jerseys are out.
But I don’t want our identity to depend on whether someone hit a home run. I want the riverfront to feel alive on a gray Wednesday when no one is performing for ESPN.
We are more than a highlight reel.
8. We Export Our Best Ideas
We recruit brilliant students to University of Cincinnati. We educate them. We inspire them.
Then they leave because opportunity density and housing math make more sense somewhere else.
That’s not a talent problem. That’s a systems design problem. And I’m allergic to bad systems.
9. The Balkanization of Greater Cincinnati
City. County. Townships. Kentucky.
We solve regional problems like roommates arguing over who bought the paper towels.
Traffic, housing, transit, workforce — these do not respect municipal boundaries. Our collaboration should reflect that.
10. “That’s How It’s Always Been”
If I hear this one more time, I will gently flip a table.
Cities are living organisms. If they stop evolving, they calcify.
I do not want to get into public life to maintain calcification. I want to get into it to redesign things that don’t work — thoughtfully, yes — but boldly enough that people actually feel the difference in their daily lives.