We hear much about community development in Whitewater, now more than ever. We depend on our fellow residents; their success or failure affects us greatly. It was Aristotle who famously remarked that one who freely lives outside a city is either a beast or a god. Americans are not so convinced of town, let alone city, life as Aristotle — many of us spend happy moments in nature, beyond our small, beautiful town. (I cannot resist the temptation to note that Aristotle’s view would never apply to the City of Whitewater, where there are those within the city who behave as beasts, and yet think of themselves as gods.)
There are countless terms of art for efforts to improve a community: civic improvement, community development, pro-growth, fair growth, sustainable growth, etc. etc. A more comprehensive definition of community development may be found elsewhere. Many of these social and intellectual movements depend on some plan to limit or channel growth.
I will begin with a more basic idea, and branch out from there. I will exclude a discussion of the geography or natural characteristics of the city. They are generally fixed, not of our doing, and hardly a matter of credit or blame in a town of our size. What man-made things do you see when you walk about Whitewater? Other than personal property, you see principally one of three things: private residences, private businesses, or public works. Each is not exclusive of the others, but together they describe the practical artificial development of a city, including a small city like ours.
The occupants of our private residences may be owners or tenants. Our private businesses may be industrial, service, or retail. Our public works may include streets, utilities, parks, boat landings, public buildings, public housing, and any other developed public property.
When we think about our city, and walk about it in the days ahead, it’s worthwhile to ask: is what I see residential or commercial, public or private? They are not of the same value, generally, and are of shifting values as the proportions of each change.
I’ll leave this introduction with the following observation, from James Lileks, who wrote recently about the foolishness of superficial community beautification efforts in Minneapolis:
If you’ve ever visited one of those sad deindustrialized cities with a moribund core, you know how they tried to bring the downtown back: banners and trees. If not trees, then flower baskets hanging from ornamental light fixtures. But certainly banners. If you hang something from every block that says History District or Pennsylvania’s Culture: On the Grow or Home of the 2003 Upper West New York Jazz Festival people will come back.
But they don’t. I wince when I read about beautification programs, like this one. Downtown Minneapolis isn’t dead – but when they start talking banners and trees, I can hear the mortician rummaging through the drawers for the right shade of lipstick.
I wrote something similar, earlier: “Our economic development is less about a free market economy than about any number of empty municipal gestures. We could hang birdhouses, or painted chairs and wooden fish, from our lampposts forever and still businesses would close and go elsewhere.”
There’s more to Whitewater’s recent development than that, but sadly less than meets the eye.
More tomorrow.