Would you set Columbus up with a friend? What is this city to you – and what should it be?

Dispatch Editorial Board
Nov 8, 2023; Columbus, Ohio, USA; The setting sun illuminates the downtown Columbus skyline during the last few minutes of daylight shortly after 5pm. The end of Daylight Saving Time has brought sunsets an hour earlier this week.
Nov 8, 2023; Columbus, Ohio, USA; The setting sun illuminates the downtown Columbus skyline during the last few minutes of daylight shortly after 5pm. The end of Daylight Saving Time has brought sunsets an hour earlier this week.

Amelia Robinson is the Columbus Dispatch's opinion and community engagement editor.

Hypothetically speaking, how would you describe your friend Columbus to a potential blind date?

Would you say she was friendly and personable? Would you mention how entertaining she is, or call her "fine" and talk about her natural and man-made beauty?

Would Ohio State football or/and state government even come up?

Or would you simply recall her formative years, and describe her as a former cowtown that has grown into so much more?

The new year offers a fresh opportunity to revisit one of Columbus' most popular questions: What are we as a city, and — taking things further — what do we as a community want to be?

Dispatch readers and community leaders had a lot of ideas, both before and after an article on Columbus' identity by veteran reporter Mark Ferenchik published last spring.

"We have to inspire people to want to come here," said Niel Jurist, a member of the Columbus Metropolitan Club Board of Trustee and a member of its planning committee.

Niel Jurist, senior director of Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission's communications and engagement department.
Niel Jurist, senior director of Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission's communications and engagement department.

Jurist, senior director of communications and engagement for the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, suggested "What is Columbus known for?" as a topic of one of CMC's weekly forums.

Letters: Chicago, San Francisco, and New York bicker, Columbus' downtown grows

When the Dispatch asked readers for their ideas about Columbus' identity, the idea that Columbus should be a welcoming place came up time after time.

"Welcoming, accepting, enthusiastic, cooperative and kind," Sandy Woyach of the Northwest Side wrote in an email.

We also asked readers, "What do you think of when you think of Columbus?" More than 300 responded.

The results were not all that surprising:

  • 36% — Ohio State athletics/academics

  • 28% — A welcoming Midwest city

  • 24% — Something else (not listed)

  • 7% — Ohio capital/Statehouse

  • 2% — Banking/insurance hub

  • 1% — Pro sports — Blue Jackets, Crew, Clippers

  • 1% — Columbus Zoo

Our View: A cowtown no more, but what will Columbus become?

What about Columbus of the future?

With a regional population expected to grow to 3.15 million residents by 2050, innovation from Intel and other companies on the horizon, growth in the medical sector, the second-largest LGBTQ population in the Midwest, and neighborhoods like Northland burgeoning with new Americans from Somalia, Nepal and beyond, the Columbus of today won't be the same as the Columbus of tomorrow.

It is clear that the city cannot rest its future on its past, what it is known for, or the attributes a friend would use to describe it to a potential date.

"Clinging to the past is not how you become a "welcoming accepting, enthusiastic, cooperative and kind" community that "inspires people to want to come here."

Our view: Columbus' housing market not cutting it. We must all open our eyes to crisis

Why aren't we there yet?

We want people to come here, stay and have happy lives.

That's easier said than done in a community where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment jumped from $831 in 2016 to $1,295 in 2022.

The fair market apartment rental rate for a studio/ efficiency apartment in the city is $730.

That's easier said than done in a county where two to three babies die every week before the age of 1.

"As cities go, you are how you treat the least of your citizens. That is what our city is, identity or no identity," Columbus writer Scott Woods said in a Dispatch guest column about Kevin Smith, published after the articles about identity printed in April.

Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith

Smith, a volunteer and well-known member of the South Side community, was shot and killed sleeping in a detached garage in the 600 block of East Whittier Street shortly before Woods' column was published.

Smith was homeless.

Columbus will continue to question itself about identity, and that's not a bad thing.

When we talk about the city's attributes, we should also talk about our challenges.

Solutions are out there.

Finding them will make Columbus a city that only a fool wouldn't find attractive.

Amelia Robinson is the Columbus Dispatch's opinion and community engagement editor.

What do you think?

What is Columbus and what do we as a community want to be?

Let us know in a letter to the editor of 250 words or less emailed to Letters@Dispatch.com. Include your full name, address and a daytime phone number.

This piece was written by Dispatch Opinion Editor Amelia Robinson on behalf of the editorial boards of the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal, Canton Repository and other USA TODAY Network Ohio news organizations. Editorials are fact-based assessments of issues of importance to the communities we serve. These are not the opinions of our reporting staff members, who strive for neutrality in their reporting.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What is Columbus best known for? What is its new identity?

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