Urban development today tends to inject new fashions into neighborhoods without acknowledging existing physical, social, and economic characteristics that define the urban fabric. Cincinnati’s West End has seen this in the past with the wholesale removal and homogenization strategies of Modernist superblock planning with Laurel Homes and Lincoln Court and today with New Urbanist City West. Struggling albeit unique neighborhoods like the West End have shown heterogeneous solutions through their organic growth. However, the weak links of the disparate threads of the urban fabric make the neighborhood susceptible to the urban renewal homogenization process already underway in downtown Cincinnati.
By building from existing networks in the art and food sectors and using existing buildings, this thesis project will demonstrate a process that accentuates the neighborhood’s heterogeneity on a block of Findlay Street in the Northeast Quadrant of the West End. This new location will seek unison of the disparate parts of the neighborhood and provide a self-sustaining environment without affecting the existing architectural character and local businesses. This process will ensure that the community can continue to make improvements on the development in the future by drawing upon their own resources. Residents will have the opportunity to seek education and job training in creative fields and connect with other Cincinnati residents who are attracted there. The outcome will reconnect the neighborhood into the urban fabric of downtown and provide an example for the rest of the neighborhood to follow with small-scale interventions rather than sweeping urban designs.