North College Hill Comprehensive Plan

The City of North College Hill, which has a population of under 10,000, has been declining for decades. Its population has decreased, its main business district has few active businesses, its public facilities are deteriorating, its people feel disconnected from each other and they lack pride in their city. 

CUDA Studio provided urban design and community engagement services with a consultant team that included Urban Fast Forward and the Greater Ohio Policy Center. The team devised a robust process to get stakeholders sharing their concerns and desires – and had to pivot when the community proved difficult to engage.

The team held what was to be the first of three public workshops. Not content when too few people participated in that first workshop, and insistent that authentic community engagement was the key to implementing a turn-around for the city, the team held a series of discussions with individuals and small groups – meeting them at various places in their city. Once people realized our community engagement effort was genuine, the team was able to evoke a collective vision for the future.

The resulting community plan has several key components, the most important being CUDA Studio’s design for a Civic Square. The civic square will provide the city with a sorely needed central public gathering space which will host festivals, regular park activities, and other civic events. The Civic Square will be bordered by a new City Hall, a recreation center, a senior center, the historical society museum, as well as new mixed use buildings.

The comprehensive plan also has components for new housing developments, transformation of a suburban-scaled commercial development, and reclaiming city streets to be safer and more pedestrian friendly.