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No Exit

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It’s easy to be negative about the media. For me anyway. That’s mostly because I’m a contrarian living a contrary lifestyle and writing a blog thereon. So when I read a news item that inverts all my negative expectations it raises my hopes tremendously.

Here it is.

Not only is east-west rail up for a some serious study but connecting the valley from north to south is in the negotiation phase of actually being put in place in conjunction with the brand new Hartford Line of CT Rail! It only makes sense, but that’s the point. 

Connecticut’s budgetary woes aren’t helped by the outlays required for the expansion of commuter rail from New Haven to Springfield. Obviously, if any part of the line needed to suffer cutbacks, the Massachusetts spur would come first. The Commonwealth coming up with some money to throw Connecticut’s way to run some extra trains north to Greenfield both gets the Bay State piece taken care of for less than if MassDOT had to put together the whole thing from scratch, (Keeping in mind that the newly renovated station in Springfield, the brand new station in Greenfield, the recently added platforms in Holyoke, and Northampton, and the modernized rails themselves have already been not only paid for but completed) and can reaffirm the Nutmeg State’s commitment to the program as it extends north of Hartford by making it worthwhile financially.

As I have written here on a number of occasions, as much as connecting to Boston would be beneficial, history and current data both demonstrate that Springfield is more closely related to Connecticut than greater Boston.

The icing on the cake of the article is the dismissive attitude of the state official to talk of expansion of highway exits on the turnpike. The state understands, I think, that encouraging sprawl in the Hilltowns would end up costing Massachusetts millions of dollars in infrastructure expansion, all the while negatively impacting both the rural and agricultural hinterlands and the urban areas, where billions have already been invested in infrastructure the use of which will not be maximized if the population decants to the hills.

Conspicuously Absent

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It’s late January and the usual “Homicides Are Up; run for your lives” or “Homicides Are Down: don’t be worried though, Springfield is still dangerous” article hasn’t yet appeared. The 5 year rolling average for murder is 15 and last year came in at 14 with the city being homicide free now for 3 months. It’s an increase of two over 2016.

I wonder if the storyline has become tiresome to the editors or if future advertisers MGM have suggested that they’re  not too keen on supporting a publication which hypes violence in the community where they will need to attract hundreds of thousands of out-of-towners in order to make a profit. My wife thinks that my message is getting through. If so, I’m sure it’s indirectly. I somehow missed homicide 14 and was preparing to write this assuming 13 was the magic number for last year. On the WWLP “Springfield Homicide Tracker” (map included!)they listed 14. I did a search for the victim’s name on Masslive and, sure enough; 14. What also came up was an article about a person of the same name being arrested for possession of heroin with intent to distribute: coincidence, I’m sure.

Sarcasm aside, it isn’t at all that I want anyone to be murdered, but years and years of experience demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of victims are engaged in gang activity, drug activity, or were in a violent relationship. That doesn’t mean they deserve to be killed but it does mean that living in a city is less the danger than the behavior they engage in and the people with whom they interact, in a city or not. 

Still conspicuous by its absence is any “Motor Vehicle Death Tracker” anywhere in the media. It’s a phenomenon which is: more causally connected to place than homicide; impacts more people in this region; and is more random in its distribution in terms of race, age, and gender.

Media Darlings

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Peruse my back catalog a bit and you’ll see that much of my initial energy on the Rational Urbanism website was focused on media criticism. That culminated last year with the Death Race feature at which point, perhaps at a subconscious level, I felt that I had said most of what needed to be said. Nothing has actually changed of course, I’ve just already commented on it. For that reason I want to take just a snapshot of this week in my media world and make some brief comments. I will link to older pieces which elaborate the ideas more completely should anyone find themselves in need of more examples or a more thorough examination of the topic.

The Valley Advocate continues to love our dysfunction. Click on the  “Springfield” tag and you’ll get these stories:

Just last week I debunked the “Food Desert” concept as it relates to Springfield. Bottom line, the whole idea relates only to people without a car and without a lot of cash, and the BEST place to be in the region if you are without an automobile and want to buy food is, absolutely and without any possible argument, Springfield: the hub of our regional transit system. The city has more food outlets than any other community and provides the means to get there. Most of the derisive focus in the SWAT article is aimed at other towns actually, but it’s informative to note that nothing else has been written about Springfield in the months since this article was published.

In their end of year Halos and Horns feature only the celebration of Springfield dysfunction gets any halos:


Anyone or anything actually succeeding in Springfield gets placed in purgatory or worse:

Notice that MGM is criticized despite supporting the same policy as the Valley Advocate. It wouldn’t be hard to see critics of casinos pointing to the loosening of restrictions on ex cons in the gaming industry as an example of why MGM needs to be watched carefully.

Richie Neal is the most interesting case. Here is a congressman, senior democrat on the House Ways and Means committee, from Springfield who consistently gets funding for things like Union Station for example, which not only help the poor and the elderly, but which also make serious inroads regarding climate change. Crickets. He doesn’t spend enough time talking to the White folks in the hinterlands of his district! Rural poverty sucks; the isolation stemming from the great distances one needs to travel to get food, health care, social services…all by car (bad for the environment) because mass transit isn’t cost effective with such diffuse population. It’s almost as though the poor, the sick, and the elderly ought to live in more urbanized places if they need services. Hmmm.

Then there’s this:

Yeah, WWLP and WesternMassNews, if you’re going to promote “sensationalist, racially charged stories”, make sure they focus on Springfield and Holyoke like responsible journalists!


Here’s one from last week:

Take in the headline. As you read the article, however, you see not only that greater Springfield has added jobs at a higher rate than Worcester and Boston, but that in terms of raw numbers Springfield is blowing Worcester away despite the latter’s proximity to Boston. I also enjoy the fact that the economist quoted in the article specifically mentions that Springfield’s regional strength comes from giants like Mass Mutual (Headquartered in Springfield) and Baystate Medical Center (headquartered in Springfield) and that the future looks bright for employment based on the opening of MGM (in Springfield) yet somehow the article’s main spin is that the city is the weak spot of the region; which it is ONLY if you ignore WHERE the jobs are.

I understand that we count employment and unemployment numbers by where people live and not where they work; perhaps because, while the unemployed do not work ANYWHERE they have to live somewhere…and where are unemployed people going to live? Telling us a greater percentage of the unemployed in the region live in Springfield is, essentially, telling us that poor people tend to live where the poor people live. 

A more interesting data set would be to tell us how many jobs each community provides in relation to the people in the workforce from each community. Springfield, I think, would comfortably lead the way in the surplus of jobs it provides to the region. 

The most upbeat treatment Springfield has received of late came courtesy on the Boston Globe as this article describes how seamlessly the Springfield Public Schools have added over 500 new students from Puerto Rico in the last 3 months. The insight that the schools here have been able to accommodate twice the number of any other district in the state with less obvious impact is that the Puerto Rican community is so broadly integrated into every neighborhood that every single one of Springfield’s schools have seen students arrive from Puerto Rico in the aftermath of hurricane María, but none has received more than 2 dozen. Also mentioned was the city’s overall affordability. 
Someone gets us.
 

Not Going Out Of Their Way (This Time)

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You might recall the great pains The Republican took to point out that “Springfield’s” #13 ranking in quality of life by US News & World Report was really about THE REGION AS A WHOLE.

Here’s an example of more metro level data expressed with just a little less emphasis on its regional character:


From the article:


Oh. So the 1,800 job losses (“nearly 2000”) were for the region?

No mention of “The Pioneer Valley” here, and no labored description of exactly what “the region” is.

Funny how different the two headlines and the two articles are.

How Deep Does the Stupid Go?

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As I think about it this could be the blogpost version of the movie “Inception”, but if you enjoy urban design and have a fondness for anachronism it could be worth delving through the layers.

Worcester and Springfield (pronounced “Spring-Field”) are similar cities facing similar problems but all in all Worcester is ahead of Springfield. Worcester never fell as far as Springfield during the bad years, and it has taken advantage of the most recent movement toward urban Renaissance more quickly and more successfully. I think I’d like to explore that in depth in a separate post delving into how the two municipalities got where they are, why, and what their assets and liabilities are moving forward; it might be fun to get some input afterwards from the citizens of Worcester who read Rational Urbanism to get their perspective.

With that relationship between Springfield and Worcester in mind let us continue: Yesterday I was about to head down to Bueno y Sano’s Friday “burrito bar”; Worcester probably has a handful of local burrito places with the menu written out in chalk, clever burrito names, craft brews on tap, all that stuff; we just got one place to agree to opening under a tent for two hours a week at least during the summer! In any case, before leaving I glanced at my phone and, checking Masslive I read the headline of an editorial from The Republican, Springfield’s paper of record:


I’m intrigued, but I assume that the title is a reference to the “slots in a box” casino that Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods are planning to build on the site of an old movie theater to siphon off visitors to MGM’s Springfield casino. I’m sure this does have MGM pretty ticked off, but it was never their revenues that interested me: the movie theaters, the retail, the street improvements, the entertainment, the ice skating, the market rate housing, those are the things that matter to me as a neighbor. But the editorial has nothing to do with that at all.

The editorial is about Worcester. It makes some of the same points that I would about competition between similar cities struggling with similar problems and how Worcester does have some advantages but that Springfield is making enormous headway right now and, if we keep moving forward and don’t rest on our laurels, we can continue to compete. I might have added a few more words about this not necessarily being a zero sum game, but that to should be put aside as we continue down this rabbit hole.

What was the motivation, the concept, the idea, the development which spurred the Editorial Board to write their Knute Rockne speech? Was it news of Worcester’s expanding innovation center, more expansion in the canal district, another local entrepreneur expanding his or her business, yet another market rate housing development coming to the downtown? Nope. I had seen something in banner headlines earlier in the day but couldn’t bring myself to read the article; I’m not a masochist. I can be a bit shallow when it comes to my jealousy; it takes me a while to accept when perceived rivals leap ahead of my community.

Be patient, we’re almost there.

Earlier in the day my wife had asked me about this same Worcester development…it’s called “Sky…something or other” and she had asked me if it was some sort of airwalk or something and I said (remember, I didn’t read the article): “No, it’s some big development, I think it’s a big retail/residential thing. No one is building airwalks anymore. That’s stupid.” But as I read the editorial I clicked on the link and it took me to this:


Yup. It’s an airwalk. An airwalk which, to their credit, the city is only moving forward with because they are being forced to do so because some moron, I assume, promised the developer of a new hotel, obviously another idiot, that the city would do it more than a decade ago. An airwalk. To quote William Whyte: 
 “They have not worked very well. When you take a street away from street level you take away what makes it work. Remove the intricate mixture of people, the pedestrian bustle, the shops, and the traffic, and what you are left with is a corridor. It can be…very bleak…”
This is what the intersection looks like now:


Are these perfectly crafted pedestrian corridors? No, they are not. But way short of $10,000,000 the city could find a way to improve these crossings for pedestrians all the while NOT reverting to the oldestest or worstestest of 60’s and 70’s era gimmicks for revitalizing a downtown.

Here at home we have are own problems. Our local deep thinkers, with all the great things happening in Worcester, find out about the stupidest thing Worcester has done in a generation, and instead of giving us an inspirational exclamation akin to: “They’re  digging in the wrong place!” 


They tell us to keep our heads up because, in spite of this genius move, we can still get to the Well of Souls before our competition! It’s like your best friend sees the chief rival for your promotion shooting heroin in the bathroom and tells you that you still might have a shot at landing the position if you just nail the interview. 

I can’t believe that Worcester only argued that they shouldn’t be made to build the pedestrian bridge because they don’t have the money; they should have gone with the “Your Honor, I know my predecessor said I’d hit myself in the face with a hammer, but…” defense.

There is one last, divinely inspired exclamation point on this whole thing. Somewhere, at the Republican, at Masslive, someone chose a photograph to symbolize Springfield’s readiness to compete in this, the dawning era of the new city! And what photo did they choose? Is it the new Innovation Center? The Maker Space? Silverbrick Lofts? The Park Street Lofts? Some part of the new MGM complex? I know, the newly re-opened Union Station? Well, sort of. They chose this picture:

Yes. It’s a parking garage. Parking. The key to any urban resurgence! Build for the car, prioritize the car, make room for the car: People love it when you do that! I mean, weren’t the 60’s great for cities? What could go wrong?