SOUTH FAIRMOUNT DREAMS GREEN...
Nestled away at the base of the Greater Cincinnati's watershed, South Fairmount sits eerily quiet—devoid of pedestrian interaction on the ground level—as throngs of commuters zoom through wide streetscapes on their way to and from work. Despite the mass influx of people entering South Fairmount on their daily commute, the community itself sits quietly idle. As other neighborhoods in Cincinnati find growth, South Fairmont finds itself collapsing, with buildings crumbling, at mercy of the constant threat of flooding, and residents migrating out to the newer subdivisions in Cincinnati.
South Fairmount is sandwiched between Queen City Ave and Westwood Ave. The Lick Run project will develop that small square of green into a stretch of green development and park space that stretches like a finger from watershed's entry point into the Mill Creek.
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Today, South Fairmount finds itself in a dire situation, struggling to become more than a transit corridor between the suburbs of Westwood and West Price Hill, and central downtown Cincinnati, while simultaneously battling the threat of over flooding from Mill Creek, a nearby water stream running adjacent to South Fairmount.
In an ambitious proposal to remediate the threat of flooding, provide cleaner drinking water and spur new economic and commercial investment into South Fairmount, the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSD) has begun plans to build and construct an urban waterway park, known as the Lick Run Valley Conveyance System (VCS) project. With no project of this scale in existence to serve as a reference, the MSD project seeks to blend green infrastructure and social amenities within an economically challenged community. |
As other neighborhoods in Cincinnati find growth, South Fairmont finds itself collapsing, with buildings crumbling, at mercy of the constant threat of flooding and residents migrating out to the newer subdivisions in Cincinnati.
Many skeptics look on to MSD’s VCS Project fearing the worst—that the community cannot recover decades of disinvestment, and that hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on a failed project—posing the question “why South Fairmount”? Although there is no assurance to exactly how successful the social components of the VCS Project will be, designers, planners, community organizers involved with the project agree at the very least, it is a great starting point for a community like South Fairmount that has not garnered any positive public attention in several decades.
In an effort to learn more about the challenges, complexities, and latent opportunities surrounding the construction of MSD’s VCS Project, four curious University of Cincinnati students set out to interview planners, designers, community organizers, and a preservation expert involved with the project, in hopes of understanding the major decisions made in the planning of this project and how will these decisions impact the future of this community.
In an effort to learn more about the challenges, complexities, and latent opportunities surrounding the construction of MSD’s VCS Project, four curious University of Cincinnati students set out to interview planners, designers, community organizers, and a preservation expert involved with the project, in hopes of understanding the major decisions made in the planning of this project and how will these decisions impact the future of this community.