Boosting local economies

[bw1]

Anybody out there interesting in boosting your local ecomony? I know
I am. Around Orlando's metro area I have noticed over the years that
while there exist some wonderful pockets of great local economic
prosperity there also appears to be vast areas where increasingly
things aren't looking so prosperous. Massive decline and decay is
evident in large stretches along our thoroughfares and many of our
neighborhood streets at every turn throughout the metro area. Yeah, I
guess this happens in most cities across the US. It seems that urban
and suburban decay and blight advances more rapidly these days than
ever before.

We've become a throw-away society. We throw away our food containers,
broken appliances aren't able to be repaired anymore (they're more
expensive to fix than to just throw them away and buy a new one!),
long long gone are the days of returning our glass soda bottles to the
store for a deposit (remember that?) we just throw the bottles away
now, many have even grown accustomed to throwing away old relatives
and abandoning them in nursing homes, wow we throw stuff away like
crazy if you think about it. Why not throw away old buildings and
just build new ones further out of town? Why shouldn't those who can
afford it just abandon old neighborhoods when they start needing
upkeep and extend suburbia a little further out moving into the nicer,
newer, snappier places? Well, too much of a throw-away mentality is
now catching up to us.

Thankfully, the trend is beginning to shift away from consuming
resources willy-nilly and toward conserving, reusing, and recycling.
Can we begin to value the old again? Many are realizing that
something is lost when we throw too much away too quickly. Can our
young people be taught by example and learn to value again the
richness of the past? Can families once again begin to embrace their
elders and value the contribution that aging relatives can bring into
our lives? Can't we finally admit that too much consumption if
allowed to go unchecked will eventually destroy the planet we depend
on for life?

One problem with the throw away mentality is that not all can afford
to keep up with the outward momentum of nice, snappy, new places to
live. Those left behind are left with neighborhoods that quickly
begin to fade and rust with neglect as all the money moves out to the
snappy new places along with the upwardly mobile. The old
dilapidating places are slowly reocuppied by those unfortunate enough
to have to settle for second best...

I'll talk about this some more in my next posts. Meanwhile, don't be
afraid to jump in with your own thoughts along this line. Agree or
disagree with something I've said? Have a completely different
perspective? I'd love to hear it.

[bw1]

So, what do we do about urban blight? Is it a matter of fixing the
cosmetics? Will imposing stricter aesthetic standards automatically
bring prosperity back to the neglected areas of town? I'll have to
agree with Michael Pyatok as he wrote in his NewVillage article that
this is a "chicken and egg" problem. Designers and planners do tend
to look at blighted real estate as mainly a design problem. I think
it is partly that, but it certainly goes deeper. We have to remember
that the visible signs of decay in a neighborhood are just the
symptoms of the real underlying issues. I believe there are actually
at least four basic issues that need to be considered in relation to
reversing blight and boosting a local economy: work & business
opportunities, education, crime prevention, and housing. I know there
are many ways to slice this. However, I think these categories might
work pretty well as a way of organizing our thinking concerning
community action and neighborhood economic development. Think of it
this way, when someone is moving their place of residence what are
they generally going to look at when making a decision about where to
live? These factors are all usually high on the list. "Can I find a
good place to work nearby?" "How are the schools?" "Is there a lot
of crime? (will my children be safe?)" and, "Can I find housing that
meets my needs?"