Dirty Parks and Black Eyes
“We want this to be a place where people can drive around and say, ‘This is a pretty cool place to live’, and you can't do that without pride."
“We want this to be a place where people can drive around and say, ‘This is a pretty cool place to live’, and you can't do that without pride. Without pride, it's like pushing a boulder uphill—you can’t revitalize a city if you can’t get people to not throw their McDonald's bag out the car window.
For example, I saw a community spend millions on a new park—and two years later, it’s overgrown and looks like crap. There wasn’t enough pride in the community to maintain it.
Something that was supposed to be a big win turned into a huge loss, a black eye, and proof to the naysayers that ‘the city can’t do anything right’. Then what about the people who cared enough to create that park? They see that their energy and effort won’t be supported, so they move somewhere else where they’ll be appreciated or they stop trying.
When people stop trying, you get apathy, and once you get to apathy, you're doomed. The first time that that field is overgrown and not mowed, you’re screwed.
For revitalization to work, you have to get your base: people having pride. Once your base is set, then we can go forward and do these things.
Pride isn’t about doing something to get rich or to create 1000 jobs, it’s about saying, ‘Let’s meet a need’’. You need to have some basic things for a community to thrive: restaurants, shops, a good school system, and a government that's capable and engaged.
But to get all of that, people need to care about the city first, and you get people to care by doing things that make them feel better about living there. There’s a little old lady who lives next to a vacant house whose grass hasn’t mowed in three years, so she's dealing with rats, decreased property values, and the emotional toll of living in a blighted neighborhood. But you mow that grass and you tear down that house that can't be saved and all of a sudden, this little old lady's out planting flowers next year because it's clean.
That's why I think pride is the key to revitalizing. If I can get people to care about what's going on in their block, then the next block and the next block, that’s the wave. You start building a wave, and when that wave gets rolling, everyone will want a piece of it. You can't just say ‘I want jobs!’. What are you going to do to make your town better? If you do that, then the jobs will follow.
We want a bunch of singles, and maybe a double here and there. You swing for the fences, and you can only miss so many times before you're out.
There will always be naysayers and you're going to have areas where you can't get anyone to care. But if you can get the majority of folks caring, they will become personally invested in the city and that’s when the magic happens.”
—A former mayor in Ohio