Sometimes I wonder which crazies have been making the planning decisions for our city.
We have chased people out to allow more space for suburban scum [a redundancy, I know] to commute.
We have built handicap apartments and then closed the street which serves their building.
We have allowed railroads to wreak their own will pretty much anywhere they want to and have allowed polluters free use of so much property that we have later had to find a way to clean up that it is pathetic.
We have through zoning, funding sources, and enforcement allowed some areas to become disproportionately occupied by economically disadvantaged people and then wonder why we have schools and neighborhoods in stress.
Political, corporate, geographical, and social decisions from every level and numerous perspectives over many decades have brought us the city we have.
I have lived in two cities in my lifetime. The other is Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
We are dry. They aren’t – and won’t be for a long time.
When we have floods, we have to vacate some business properties, but downtown stays open and almost nobody has to leave his/her home. We have been smart or lucky enough to build on the bluffs and not at the river level. A repeat of 1965 or 1997 or 1969 [even a few more] or any of those good years cannot bring us the kind of distress happening there.
So let’s thank our geography and the planning which has happened since the mid-nineteenth century for the blessings we often overlook, even if we question the thinking or motivation of how it happened.
We have chased people out to allow more space for suburban scum [a redundancy, I know] to commute.
We have built handicap apartments and then closed the street which serves their building.
We have allowed railroads to wreak their own will pretty much anywhere they want to and have allowed polluters free use of so much property that we have later had to find a way to clean up that it is pathetic.
We have through zoning, funding sources, and enforcement allowed some areas to become disproportionately occupied by economically disadvantaged people and then wonder why we have schools and neighborhoods in stress.
Political, corporate, geographical, and social decisions from every level and numerous perspectives over many decades have brought us the city we have.
I have lived in two cities in my lifetime. The other is Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
We are dry. They aren’t – and won’t be for a long time.
When we have floods, we have to vacate some business properties, but downtown stays open and almost nobody has to leave his/her home. We have been smart or lucky enough to build on the bluffs and not at the river level. A repeat of 1965 or 1997 or 1969 [even a few more] or any of those good years cannot bring us the kind of distress happening there.
So let’s thank our geography and the planning which has happened since the mid-nineteenth century for the blessings we often overlook, even if we question the thinking or motivation of how it happened.
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1 comment:
I received an email from Midway Barb Wednesday saying that she had tried to put the following comment on this post, but that for some reason she couldn’t. I tried to do the same thing and also ran into some kind of problem. Maybe there was some kind of snafu with the people who host this or maybe there was some other kind of screw up, This is certainly not the preferred way of adding comments, but in this one case I will add what she sent.
Hey, Ray
You obviously think of planning as more than what commissioners and politicians do. The major planning decisions for our city were made by businessmen [yes, men]. Our railroads are a prime example. Our development along the old street car lines is another.
If you are wanting us to think of planning in a big picture like this, you are on a good track, although it is hard to keep the big picture in ones perspective. If I want to open a café or saloon on a corner and have the money, I may need somebody’s approval, but it was somebody else’s planning which put the corner there. And the character of my business may then be a factor in what others plan to do with their properties down the street.
Midway Barb
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