Thursday, July 07, 2005
Purple People Eater
If the bridge is the purple people bridge, I can only describe Cincinnati's 'gateway' as the Purple People Eater. There has been an 'I-Team' report on the project which apparently cost $400,000 (I'd have to say that I think Give Back Cincinnati could have done this project for about $2,000.).
And today there was an Enquirer report on the the bridge project. Amazing that those bamboo plants cost $11,000, the yellow lines on the ground $6k.
I typically try to be positive about Cincinnati, but anyone who knows me knows that the catastrophe on the Cincinnati side of the bridge is something I've been complaining about since it went up. The best way I can describe it if you haven't seen it is the powers that be planted a Used Car lot on the Cincinnati side of the bridge.
Both the I-team, Mark Mallory's Blog and the Enquirer spend time figuring out whose fault it was. I guess I'm not too interested in that. But it is an example of how hard it is to get things done in Cincinnati. It really is a shame.
Comments:
<< Home
I sent the following to the Enquirer but I doubt that it will be published so I'll will now push it of on you all.
Once again the City of Cincinnati's administration shows its arrogance and contempt for the citizens in the designing of the Cincinnati end of the purple bridge. It is consistent with the administration's apparent belief that the only reason that the city of Cincinnati exists is because of the administration's existence rather than the other way around. In the case of the bridge, Cincinnati's administration has told us what we should want.
The architect and administration point out to the citizen class that it is obvious that the "traffic-yellow" stripes complement the purple color of the bridge. The citizens are then supposed to accept the architect's title and realize that a mere citizen cannot know real beauty if it had hit him in the face and then shrink ashamedly into the background and just keep quiet like a good little citizen. And that is how Cincinnati's city hall works. Despite all the occasional hype of news reports portraying local citizens as part of a grass root civic effort, like that of the volunteers that did significant initial work on the end of the bridge for a comparative $20,000 pittance, there is actually less and less significant citizen involvement today. This is because it is too tortuous a climb up the city-hall mountain to meet the exalted ones at City Hall. The bureaucrats are showing us that don't need citizen help, after all, see what a great job they are doing without the people being involved?
There are many designs that could have been but the one feature that would have made any of them more acceptable is anyone preferred by the people that had already shown the strongest interest . That is the group that had raised the $20,000 and did the initial work themselves. We didn't need city hall's involvement and maybe that is what city hall is afraid of. Even the worst design, if chosen freely by our fellow citizens that showed their interest earlier, could have been acceptable because it would have reflected an honest and sincere effort of our fellow citizens and maybe the reflection of the real tastes of most of us. In any case it would have been chosen by us and not them.
Dieter Schmied
Walnut Hills
Once again the City of Cincinnati's administration shows its arrogance and contempt for the citizens in the designing of the Cincinnati end of the purple bridge. It is consistent with the administration's apparent belief that the only reason that the city of Cincinnati exists is because of the administration's existence rather than the other way around. In the case of the bridge, Cincinnati's administration has told us what we should want.
The architect and administration point out to the citizen class that it is obvious that the "traffic-yellow" stripes complement the purple color of the bridge. The citizens are then supposed to accept the architect's title and realize that a mere citizen cannot know real beauty if it had hit him in the face and then shrink ashamedly into the background and just keep quiet like a good little citizen. And that is how Cincinnati's city hall works. Despite all the occasional hype of news reports portraying local citizens as part of a grass root civic effort, like that of the volunteers that did significant initial work on the end of the bridge for a comparative $20,000 pittance, there is actually less and less significant citizen involvement today. This is because it is too tortuous a climb up the city-hall mountain to meet the exalted ones at City Hall. The bureaucrats are showing us that don't need citizen help, after all, see what a great job they are doing without the people being involved?
There are many designs that could have been but the one feature that would have made any of them more acceptable is anyone preferred by the people that had already shown the strongest interest . That is the group that had raised the $20,000 and did the initial work themselves. We didn't need city hall's involvement and maybe that is what city hall is afraid of. Even the worst design, if chosen freely by our fellow citizens that showed their interest earlier, could have been acceptable because it would have reflected an honest and sincere effort of our fellow citizens and maybe the reflection of the real tastes of most of us. In any case it would have been chosen by us and not them.
Dieter Schmied
Walnut Hills
The Cincinnati side of the Purple People Bridge is the most uninviting, uncomfortable mess I have ever seen. I am embarassed that I live on this side of the river.
Post a Comment
# posted by 
: 2:53 PM
: 2:53 PM << Home
