Over-the-Rhine in the Times

Today's New York Times has the headline In Cincinnati, Life Breathes Anew in Riot-Scarred Area - and the article that follows describes the effort underway to restore the city's most crime-ridden and historic neighborhood. There are some good things happening:

"To hear the jackhammers and the booms and the nail guns," Mr. Baum said, "it's music to me."

Vine Street runs through the heart of Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood of narrow streets and ornate brick buildings built by German immigrants from 1865 to the 1880s. After decades of decay in the area, gentrification is spreading north from downtown and south down the steep hillside of Mount Auburn. New condominiums, art galleries, theaters and cafes are bringing people and investment.

And there are familiar problems:

But poverty remains, as do drugs, violent crime and the stigma of the three days of riots in 2001. The riots effectively killed an earlier Over-the-Rhine renaissance, in the late 1990s.

In the national mindset, of course - the last thing in the mental file about Cincinnati was the riots that took place five years ago. And for many years before that it was the provincial overreaction - in the esteem to coastal sophisticates - to the Mapplethorpe exhibit several years before. The narrative has been written, and every few years the national media check back around to see where things stand in the Ohio backwater.

So this is good news. Positive attention in national media outlets may help replace the old narrative. But renovated lofts and new art galleries do not a city make. They are one external gauge of the health of an urban area. Jobs, infrastructure, a skilled workforce and companies willing to invest - these are the backbone of long-term growth. These things are happening slowly, behind the scenes.

I firmly believe we are seeing the tide beginning to turn.