Saddest Sidewalks?

Via CityKin, this post from a Minneapolis-St. Paul resident about his visit to Cincinnati is wonderful. It is well-written, with beautiful, helpful pictures of downtown, OTR, and the riverfront. Though he had some factual errors, such as with Fountain Square (pointed out by me in the comments) and with the streetcar progress (pointed out by others in the comments) and he somehow missed the Gateway area (though I'm not sure when he actually visited), I think his overall point is fair and pretty accurate considering it came from a weekend visitor to the city.

"If the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood were in Minneapolis, or Saint Paul, or San Francisco, it'd be one of the nicest, most interesting, most desirable addresses around. In Cincinnati, the very same neighborhood is languishing in a city that has spent all its investment capital on skyways and stadiums, leaving Over-the-Rhine to serve as an emblem of the tortured racial inequality that has marked America since its inception. It's why walking Cincinnati's streets you find the saddest sidewalks in America."

Cincinnati's languishing potential must be obvious, even to a visitor. What is not so obvious is the real progress made recently and still being made. The several lengthy and passionate comments on the post defend the status quo.

Also, his comment at the end also got me thinking about Cincinnati's interesting historical timing.

"As a far midwesterner, whose cities grew far later than did yours, I can only look at Cincinnati's intact beautiful buildings with envy and awe."

That is, the city was really a part of all the great East Coast city growths. But we were just a little bit too late, and a little bit too inland. Like how if the subway started just a little bit earlier, maybe the invention of the automobile would not have prevented it from completing. Too young for the historical quality in cities like New York. Too old for the planning in cities like Indianapolis.