so who's in the dark ages, really?

University Circle Blog - Friends of the University Neighborhood--I just had to drop what follows as a comment on the cheerleading going on at the University Circle blog for the misnomer corridor, where people have the opportunity to whiz through Cleveland without ever having a Cleveland resident breathe on them. EEEEWWW! Here's my comment:

I don't believe the Opportunity (for whom?) Boulevard (?) is a good answer either. Increasing bus riders and rapid riders is. Increasing Cleveland residency is. Making it quicker and easier for people to drive blithely through established Cleveland neighborhoods isn't; suburban people working in a host city should conform to the city; the city should not have to conform to the fact that the suburbanites have made impractical decisions about where they live and where they work. Nor should we have to economically support their distaste for mixing with native Clevelanders; we should not subsidize racial, ethnic, and social intolerance. Having neighborhoods with all social strata and all income levels, much like a small town, would have the effect of reducing the need for heroic roadbuilding. Let's get real, for a change. Our common financial resources are not unlimited. Work with making incremental, sensible, economical improvements to the rich city we already have.

marring the streetscape, for three administrations

Once again, I'm asking if anybody knows who is responsible for the omnipresent Omni Media advertising kiosks which have been marring the metropolitan Cleveland streetscape since Mike White contracted for their installation as one of his final cruel pranks. The PD article at the link has a date of 01/04/2001, nearly 6 years ago. Now that yet another year is passing, we should have some report of the revenue the City of Cleveland garners from these design monstrosities. I've seen nothing lately.

Can anybody tell us who controls these kiosks, who books the advertising, and how much the city gets for allowing its streets to be used so poorly? Who benefits? Is it some French company, perhaps the same one that currently controls the ads at the airport?

Why is our accountability so poor around here? Don't we deserve to know whether these things are delivering as advertised? There are 195 of them, according to the article, so who is responsible for them? I don't think this is asking too much, to know about assets with easements on our common city property. If they're not productive, then perhaps we should get them off the streets; to me, they are unwelcome visual clutter. If we are going to make a point of being a breeding ground of artists and other genteel, sensitive people who hold dear proportion and integration, we can't go around being so thoughtlessly tacky.