Columbus Facts

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Columbus

Columbus

A City Sets Out to Rediscover Itself

Since it was incorporated in 1834, Columbus, Ohio, has grown steadily. Accessible by rail, river, highway, and air, it became a manufacturing town as well as an agricultural center in the mid-1940s. Columbus is the state capital, and government is a major employer, as is Ohio State University. The economy has always been diverse enough to avoid the shocks caused in other cities by market shifts.

Growth in recent years has been mostly outward. The “Old City,” which was Columbus until 1950, covers 40 square miles; the city as a whole, after 40 years of annexation, covers 213 square miles.   It is in the new areas of the city that most growth is occurring: according to the City of Columbus, only 4 percent of new single-family homes and only 3 percent of new multi-family homes were built in the Old City between 1993 and 1998.

Outward growth has left many in the inner city behind. Neighborhoods in the Old City lost about 8 percent of their population between 1990 and 2000, and although Columbus as a whole has a low unemployment rate of 5 percent, neighborhoods like North and South Linden Hill and Northeast Columbus have an unemployment rate three times that. With little new housing construction, the central city has been strained by the influx of migrants from Somalia, Latin America, and many of the poorer regions of Appalachia.

In response to these problems, CDCs and other civic and private groups have united to promote business and housing.   Columbus’s Consolidated Development Plan has proven a particularly effective way for civic groups, entrepreneurs, and government agencies to collaborate on the revitalization of entertainment centers and residential neighborhoods. Since the early 1990s, the Columbus Housing Partnership, Homes on the Hill, Christian CDC, Northside Development Corporation, St. Stephens CDC, and others have taken the initiative in funding safe, affordable housing.