Scott M. Graves, founder M the Media Project

 used by permission of Jessica White

I recently engaged in conversation with two local neighbors, a long-standing local business owner and a former elected official who offered their opinions on my support for a ‘return’ to investments in transforming our city’s core into a walkable, bike-able, densely populated urban center.  

One man’s multi-generational business left the urban core more than 55 years ago to settle along the then ‘modern’ single-use commercial district just off the exit of the then newly minted highway.  

So I understand his hesitation to a long-term plan that seems to leave single-use development, i.e. his family’s investment, in the dust bin of history.  

The former political leader lamented the cost of ‘sidewalks and infrastructure’. Such a transition will cost too much in his estimation.  We hear this in our neck of the woods with regularity. 

How many politicians among us will readily offer their approval of poaching corporate entities to town with free or reduced tax liabilities. These projects typically require additional infrastructure paid for by residents and small businesses who do not receive such subsidies.  Subsidizing out of town companies and infrastructure supporting single-use commercial space and the car.

Ask yourself: Does that Wal-Mart parking lot generate as much tax revenue as any single downtown building when fully occupied?  Which development encourages a strong sense of community and a strong sense of place?

It occurs to me that what we’re really talking about is personal perspective.  Folks in my camp get accused of supporting ‘the past’. That creating environments for people to live and work in a smaller, denser area that supports the pedestrian and cyclist is somehow supportive of a former time that can never return. 

 

Particularly for Baby-Boomers, the recipients of ‘benefits’ from the post-war grand experiment in suburbanization only know this reality.  What they think of as ‘the future’ and the ‘American way’ is not only fiscally insolvent, inefficient and dangerous to the climate, it’s also an aberration from millennia of human development pattern.  It may be the only thing multiple generations of citizens of the US know, but the rest of the world and our ancestors wouldn’t be able to describe it much less conceptualize it.

And it’s a pattern of development that now fully represents the past.  And it’s strangling every one of our cities and towns.

Class also plays a role. Take our region for example.  For generations, success has been measured in one’s ability to escape the downtown apartment or off center of town family home in favor of that new, 3-4 bedroom ala cul-de-sac.