Niehoff Studio: Leaving Campus to Learn

“I was dumbfounded when I discovered there are commuting students from the region that have never been downtown.” This statement from second-year DAAP graduate student Mathais Detamore explains why the Niehoff Urban Research Studio is so important to Cincinnati and why the department of geography and the architecture and city planning programs in DAAP are linking forces to support this unique interdisciplinary effort.

The Studio investigates urban issues that affect quality of life in Cincinnati and attempts to engage the community in problem solving to meet downtown's current and future needs. Participants meet in a renovated space in the Emery Building in Over-the-Rhine. Assistant professor Colleen McTague, who directs the program for the geography department, believes this location “encourages students to participate actively in the physical environment to gain understanding of an urban setting in a way that isn't possible from abstract discussions in classrooms.”

She explains that the academic focus for the past two years was the intersection of food and urban quality of life issues. Students have analyzed “issues like equitable access to urban retail food stores by diverse socio-economic groups, the distribution of these stores within the physical and social urban fabric, and the role food plays in lively (and not so lively) urban public spaces.”

That's where Mathias Detamore comes in. The architecture major took the first Studio course through DAAP but was so interested that he registered for the next class through the geography department. (Lately he thinks about seeking a PhD in geography.) McTague thinks his class project has a lot to teach urban redevelopers.

As part of a group research team, Detamore analyzed the Main and Vine Street areas of Over-the-Rhine and found that the greater density of eating and drinking establishments is in Main Street, where the most revitalization dollars have gone to attract non-urban residents. His conclusion is that the city will not be able to develop “an inclusive community for long-term sustainability if the majority of development concentrates on only environments for those who live outside the urban neighborhood.” He is refining the report to present at national conferences and to submit for publication.

Detamore says the Studio taught him even more than the importance of “getting students off campus and engaging them with the community. In this age of academic monopoly, where disciplines hoard information as if knowledge existed in a vacuum, it's good to have an institution that intentionally brings together a variety of academic backgrounds in an attempt to arrive at holistic solutions from differing perspectives.”