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Irredentist Happiness

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I often tell my students as they prepare to attend college to be ready, if they meet students from Hispano America, to hear very strong opinions expressed about the United States. This often catches young people by surprise as they have gone about their everyday lives and given very little thought to Bolovia, Perú, Nicaragua, or the Dominican Republic and therefore, in many ways, have not only a curiosity to learn more, but an open-mindedness as to what to think. It is for that reason that the strident nature of these opinions, good or bad, from outsiders can seem capricious and perhaps ill-informed.

The difference of which I try to make them aware is that people in these places spend a great deal of their thought energy on us: “When the United States sneezes, South America gets a cold.” We are the gigante del norte. I recently began watching the film Neruda and within minutes of the credits our role in Chilean politics was being woven in as a driver of the action. Leaving aside how some Facebook posts and, perhaps doubtfully, revealing the contents of actual DNC emails constitutes “hacking” an election, the irony of “Americans” (After all who else lives in this hemisphere?) being indignant over this sort of tampering with our precious democracy…that’s the democracy that gave us the Donald and Hillary as our two options…is precious.

In any case, it was this same lack of understanding of the disparity in mutual awareness which can exist which blind-sided me as I arrived first in the Mountain West, and then in Spain. Utahans in particular, and the young people from the rest of the United States all congregated in Provo all seemed to have a resentment for New York and Massachusetts which was not only palpable, but openly and proudly expressed. These, of course, were Mormons, and so what I was to learn was the right wing bent of the church was a major player in this anti-East Coast sentiment. Since so many of the people I met were Californians their anti Left Coast feeling were tempered by pride of place.

It really surprised me though when this attitude extended to Spain. When I first arrived it was within a decade of Franco’s death, and within months of the attempted coup by the military of Spain’s democratically elected left wing government. The backwardness was inescapable. Not only were even national monuments not maintained in prominent cities, whole blocks of towns were abandoned, mules still plodded down cobblestone streets, the airport in Sevilla looked like someone had put a rolly-polly baggage claim carousel into a mud hut, and the toilets were ribbed ceramic floors with holes to aim for.

For all of that the culture was strong, healthy, and proud. Everyday life had a vim and vigor which radiated from it constantly, the houses and streets were solid and dignified, the people energetic and solid. And the young men from the United States were, apart from platitudes about “loving the people”, universally dismissive of their host country; the cars and the streets were small, families living in apartments, not homes, recreation consisting of meeting friends at the Plaza Alta, and not riding jet skis on Lake Powell (pronounced “paal”) or riding ATV’s across some desert moonscape. 

I was all in for Spain. It was poor, but outside the tiny apartments was a full elaboration of a lifestyle I had only glimpsed in neighborhoods in my hometown. If I was confused about anything it was the gaps in city streets, areas that seemed almost burned out, the lack of care with regard to some elements of public space like city parks and rubbish strewn lots, and a really run down transportation infrastructure. I’ve been back many times over the years; a semester during my undergraduate studies, three summers in Madrid to earn my Master’s Degree, 10 trips with high schoolers, and my honeymoon. Four of those trips were after the collapse of the real estate bubble in 2007, including the 9 days for my honeymoon in 2015. What I read is that the economy in Spain has been terrible; young people struggling to find work, various sectors of the economy withering away, the social safety net fraying. I’m sure there’s truth in all of that, but what I see is a place that has combined a solid ancient culture with modernity in such a way that life is a joy to live, and there is beauty, man made and natural, all around.

When I see the vacant lots, the empty buildings, and the decaying asphalt of the parking lagoons in my hometown I remember what Spain looked like in 1983 and I think, perhaps we can do it too. Spain will never again be the center of an empire which spreads across Europe and the Americas, but it doesn’t need that to be a wonderful place to live, to love, and to die. Springfield will never again be among the most prosperous of cities in the United States, nor does it have to be in order to be provide what people most need to be happy: beauty, meaning, and community. 

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.

Welcome to my $#!%hole

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Being appalled at someone using the word “shithole” to describe a place is easier than acknowledging the influence American policy has had in making it a shithole I suppose. And while it is impossible to double blind history in order to see if El Salvador, Haiti, or the Middle East might be remarkably different than they are now, I think it would be pretty easy to make the case that U.S. foreign policy has not had a salutary effect on them.

That said, I live in a shithole. Read the comments at the website of the city’s newspaper of record and “shithole” certainly outnumbers “The City of Homes”, “The City of Firsts”, or “The Birthplace of Basketball” as a nickname for my hometown. It’s likely that a lot of the same instincts which lead to El Salvador and Haiti being called shitholes get Springfield called “shithole” as well. I’m sure “immigration” from Puerto Rico would be addressed in the same way if Puerto Ricans weren’t citizens and Puerto Rico weren’t part of the United States; but it is and Puerto Ricans are migrating within the United States by the thousands and the hundreds of thousands. As it happens, more Puerto Rican students have enrolled in Springfield public schools than in the next 2 most impacted districts in Massachusetts combined, and Massachusetts ranks only behind Florida and New York as a destination for these refugees. 

Perhaps it is because they’re finding that this is not such a shithole after all?

For people fleeing from a failing island with underfunded schools and understaffed hospitals Springfield may be as solid a place to land as any in the United States. The city and the Commonwealth together have rebuilt a neglected public school infrastructure over the last 25 years at a pace that is truly stunning; the high school which has gone the longest since a major renovation in the system was built after I graduated in 1982. While many new schools have been constructed and historic schools have been completely modernized, the oldest and most problematic buildings have been given necessary upgrades and consistent maintenance while they await renovation or replacement: during the most recent sub zero cold snap a number of suburban schools had trouble staying open, but none in the city.

Further, I would challenge anyone to find a community with a better system of public parks, public libraries, and public museums. This is the central library:


But many of the 9 branches have been renovated as well in the last 20 years and provide neighborhood after neighborhood with the type of access to information that can help motivated people get out of poverty. 

The park system is even more impressive and well distributed. Forest Park is a world class resource but even the poorest neighborhoods in the city have remarkable recreational spaces which are adequately maintained; I say adequately because it is stunning how much the parks department gets done with a skeleton crew and minimal resources. Seriously though, in most cities Blunt Park, or Van Horn might be the crown jewel in the park system, here they not only pale in comparison to Forest Park but there are another half a dozen or more parks that rank just barely below them, and that is only for a lack of open space, not because they lack in recreational opportunities.

The park department website lists 21 parks, but that list is not exhaustive. Take “Jonny Appleseed Park”:

It’s in a tough neighborhood. It consists of a playground and a basketball court, one of the most used basketball courts in the city. A few weeks ago a car crashed into the fence separating the court from the street. Well, it’s wintertime, guess that will have to wait for Spring? Nope. That court has kids playing anytime the court isn’t snow covered regardless of season. It took a few days but the fence was repaired and it was back to business as usual.

Free museums? Yes. Any Springfield resident gets free access to the Springfield Museums every day. That’s this:

And this:

And all this:

Puerto Ricans who migrate to Springfield find not only a welcoming Hispanic community, but home prices that are dirt cheap and, at the very least, a functioning system of public transportation. That goes for people arriving from other places as well, the jobs are here, the colleges and universities are here, the hospitals are here. 

To everyone I say welcome, welcome to my shithole.
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The Noho Curbside Chat

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My daughter, graduating from Smith College(see curly headed one waving at the camera!):

Revisiting the Curbside Chat, and Northampton, for the first time in a while was enlightening. Media reports of the decline of Northampton’s Main Street have clearly been greatly exaggerated; yes there are a few more cell phone stores and corporate outlets, but Noho’s commercial and retail district must still rank in the top 1% of America’s walkable downtowns. It had been three years since I’d seen “the chat” live and in person. There are two responses to the chat: An understanding of why the car centered post war horizontal development pattern doesn’t work; or the rejection of the premise based on critiques that come from a desire to perpetuate the status quo. I find it interesting that a Paul Krugman presentation entitled “What’s the Matter with Economics?” given at UMass the same day got so much press attention when I’m sure the best answer to the question was given at Smith College by Chuck Marohn.

The most predictable question given Smith College’s focus on issues of social justice in the post chat q&a had to do with Chuck’s revelation, from Joe Minniccozi’s data, that poor neighborhoods always subsidize wealthier ones when municipal taxes and services are analyzed. It was obvious that Chuck had heard the question many times before. His response was exactly what you’d expect from an engineer; succinct, precise, and devoid of emotion. While rejecting an intentional exploitative agency in this universal reality, he merely pointed to examples which demonstrated that the poor tend to live in more traditionally designed areas, built and expanded incrementally, and that their design lent themselves to lower maintenance costs.

Putting myself in the head of a student at the ultra left leaning school, I can imagine that the constant harping on fiscal responsibility, even the repetition of variations on the theme regarding how “local government” should do “business” were setting off alarm bells. I kept wanting to scream “He doesn’t mean what you think he means!” I know Chuck wants sound development practices, in part, so schools can have art and music programs, so the sidewalk outside grandma’s house can be fixed and she can walk to the grocery store, and so that the library can be open 7 days a week, but I worry that they hear a more sinister (ironically), more right wing message. 

Returning to the theme of Northampton, I was surprised that Chuck asked me if I thought it was “true” that Noho’s prosperity came, at least in part, at the expense of Springfield. Absolutely. My lived experience is that hundreds of the best paying jobs in Springfield are taken by people who expressly state that they only drop below the Tofu Curtain to work. How many doctors at Baystate, professors at Springfield’s colleges, executives at MassMutual, and public service employees earn pay checks here and spend them almost exclusively up there? 

Beyond that there is the fact that Northampton provided an option for “boutique urbanism” right at the time Springfield was attempting to reinvent itself as a city in the early 1980’s and that Springfield came up short in comparison. In the long run it may prove beneficial that we have Northampton…and Boston and New York…so close to us providing people with outlets for their desires to get an “urban fix”; in order to be viewed as an acceptable option we will need to be better than we are. That doesn’t change the fact that Northampton’s Whiter, wealthier, smaller, more integral walkable downtown supplied people with activities that Springfield’s emerging reinvented self couldn’t compete with, and that drew away what limited energy there was for urbanity in the 80’s and 90’s: Had there been no Thorne’s, how might The Marketplace have done? Had there been no Calvin, how might the Paramount have done? What if The Hempest had been on Bridge Street here and not Main Street there? Would Johnson’s had become Faces if Springfield had been the only urban option?

Remember, when I was a kid, and we are talking about the mid 70’s here, NO ONE ever talked about Northampton as a destination for anyone but lunatics, literally. As the home of the state hospital it was a byword for a place for the insane. Northampton was no different from Westfield, Chicopee, or Palmer in anyone’s consciousness apart from that. My first experience with it being anything other than that came around 1983 when a friend’s dad happened to be dating a lady who ran a store in Northampton. It reminded me of the boutique my mom had worked at in downtown Springfield in the 70’s, but which had closed after Forbes and Wallace had closed. He took me to a cool record shop…a lot like Belmont Records…which had closed in the same place for the same reasons.

Two Springfield kids who a decade earlier could have had the exact same experience in Springfield were now in Northampton. 

With malls dying, big box stores closing, and chain restaurants struggling, there may be a bit more oxygen for walkable urban places to share. Springfield is trying to set itself up with the TDD and MGM to be, once again, the center of cultural life in Western Massachusetts. As always, there are rivals, and only being an option which rewards people sufficiently for the effort it does take to exit the automobile zone and enter the human zone will be enough to give us a reasonable expectation of success.

Being the Divide

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I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst a few weeks ago because someone had heard a commentary I had done for New England Public Radio. I had no idea what I was getting into, what the format would be, or who would be present at the event. I was invited a month before and was told that more information would be forthcoming. When the day before the event arrived and I hadn’t heard anything more I sent an email communicating that I was assuming the event was cancelled. They quickly returned that email communicating that the event was still on(!) but still without telling me what the event was!

Regardless, I went. The program, it turns out, was the first public event in a nationwide journalistic exercise (See here and here) designed to explore the issues dividing America. (For the best treatment of this topic I recommend this piece by John Michael Greer) Once my fellow panelists and I were invited to the stage we were each given a chance to introduce ourselves and our topic. First was deindustrialization. Yes, indeed, the working class has been devastated here in the Northeast by the flight of industry first to the South, and then overseas. Next was immigration. We were joined by a Dreamer who told us her story. 

After that the moderator shifted to the last two panelists who were to speak on education. I was joined by a newcomer to Springfield who was happy with his choice of living in Springfield and sending his children to Springfield schools. You can watch the event here.

If I could add anything to what I said about schools it would be not just that the people in the audience were the problem, having fled from Springfield above the Tofu curtain to send their children to de facto segregated schools, but that this desire to divide America which they have is obviously deep and abiding because they pay a huge premium to do it! The poor kids in Springfield and Holyoke or, better stated, their parents, can’t move to wealthy Happy Valley towns to “undivide” America, but these people could save tens of thousands of dollars every year by living in Springfield or Holyoke. 

The answer to the question: “Who is dividing us?” 

“You are.” How many people in that room at UMass or watching the program on Northampton Community Television couldn’t move to Springfield or Holyoke and send their kids to the schools in question? As usual what the people looking for “solutions to the issues of a divided America” are really looking for are things that other people can do in response to the issue so that they can continue to do what they’ve been doing. 

Call me crazy, be the solution. Segregated neighborhoods and schools bother you? Live in a place that allows your kids to make the schools more integrated. Decaying historic buildings bother you? If you can, buy one and fix it up. Think agriculture should be more local? Buy locally produced food. Climate Change is a problem? Make decisions to reduce your carbon footprint. 

As part of his introduction to the event the moderator discusses a chance meeting at the General Store in his hometown of Harvard, Massachusetts where the idea for this project to understand what is dividing America began to germinate. Yeah, that’s a real head scratcher that is. Here in a town with 6,500 people, 92% of whom are White, with an average household income of $139,000 a year. A real puzzler. Someone should get on that.

The Call is Coming from Inside the House

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It’s funny. So much energy expended in the discussion of building a wall to keep out the Spanish speaking hordes from Mexico, but an island famous for its walls is already inside “Fortress America” and the savage category 4 hurricane named María seems destined to bring hundreds of thousands if not a million of those Gringo Hispanos to the mainland. Already citizens, they can’t be stopped. No one can prove that the elaborate Chinese Global Warming Hoax played a role in the rapid strengthening of María to a Category 5 hurricane as it passed from Cape Verde to the Lesser Antilles, but I wouldn’t put it past those inscrutable bastards!

The data I’ve seen says that roughly 50% of Puerto Ricans who leave the island come to the Northeast, and roughly 10% of them choose Massachusetts. Springfield, according to some sources, has the 4th highest Puerto Rican population of any city on the mainland United States and Holyoke, part of the Springfield msa, has the highest percentage Puerto Rican population. In talking to my neighbors those numbers are about to increase. Of the 3.4 million people living in Puerto Rico today, an island already in the throes of a bankruptcy process and where out-migration was accelerating, how many will leave in the coming days, weeks, and months is anyone’s guess, but as full American citizens it is hard to imagine that many will not avail themselves of the option to ride or fly northward.

Their most popular destinations in the past include also storm ravaged Florida and Texas along with equally financially troubled Illinois and Connecticut. Some analyses show greater Springfield as having one of the most solid economies in the country…except in the area of growth where it stands in the “Lower 20”:


 

Prosperity though…”Upper 20″:

And what they deem the most important category, Inclusion, “Top 20”:

The growth in question here is economic growth not population growth, but if 5,000 or 10,000 people move to the area over the next few years looking for housing, excellent schools, and employment it could create some real growth in the overall economy.

As I compared the Silver Bullet development that is the MGM resort in the South End to the small scale infrastructural improvements in the North End the one thing both neighborhoods have in common is their dominant ethnic culture: Puerto Rican. Both have Boriqua owned businesses. Both have vacant lots and abandoned buildings. Both could easily accommodate an influx of hundreds of newcomers if given time to do so. 

Schools might be the weakest link in terms of immediate accommodation; the Springfield Public Schools are already the second largest in New England with a population at or near its all-time high. The city has aggressively built, acquired, and renovated schools in the last three decades all while experiencing middle class flight to the suburbs. Families with school age children might very well be the first to leave the island if schools and medical facilities can’t be brought back online quickly.

The weeks ahead could tell an interesting tale. I’ve always found it interesting, even perhaps slightly ironic that at the entrance to Springfield’s most Puerto Rican neighborhood there is a statue honoring the soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American war of 1898. In Spain the Generación del ’98 grappled with the decline of their country, its loss of empire, and conflicts between tradition and progress. The nation which inflicted upon them the defeat which created such bitter awareness of their circumstances is now engaged in the same process, and once again Puerto Ricans, willing or not, are participants.

The Stormcrow

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“You have ever been a herald of woe. Troubles follow you like crows, and ever the oftener the worse. I will not deceive you: when I heard that Shadowfax had come back riderless, I rejoiced at the return of the horse, but still more at the lack of the rider; and when Eomer brought the tidings that you had gone at last to your long home, I did not mourn. But news from afar is seldom sooth. Here you come again! And with you come evils worse than before, as might be expected. Why should I welcome you, Gandalf Stormcrow?”

(Theoden to Gandalf-The Lord of the Rings-J.R.R. Tolkien)

From the moment I heard Chuck Marohn speak I knew that his message was one that not only needed to be heard, but which could also be translated into action. If Jim Kunstler was John the Baptist raling against the American Automobile Slum, Chuck’s message appeared softer and less judgmental, less that is until he commanded your fig tree to wither and die.

Knowing that there was a Curbside Chat program that was ready to be presented to the public in communities just like Springfield I set about to get him here. Post tornado Springfield had developed a plan for recovery and had empowered a local non-profit development organization to spearhead the efforts; it seemed to me that DevelopSpringfield could use the “chat” to give people a broader framework for understanding what was happening, what had happened, and what was potentially going to happen in Springfield. 

I was sincere about what I viewed as the importance of the message, but I also had a selfish desire not so much to meet Chuck, but for Chuck to meet Springfield. The further east he ventured from Minnesota the more he gushed on his blog and in interviews about the “good bones” for building Strong Towns that existed here; in Pennsylvania, even in North Adams, Massachusetts. I knew that I might finally meet someone who would see the beauty which I had always seen here. 

Jay Minkarah, the president and CEO of DevelopSpringfield, took Chuck and his incredibly insightful sidekick Jim Kumon on a walking tour of the neighborhood and I was hearing what I knew I would hear: Chuck and Jim were impressed with Outing Park, a subsidized housing complex that looked more like a million dollar enclave in Manhattan; Jim made the whole group pause to appreciate the architectural detail of the façades of two buildings facing each other in an alleyway; later we bought grinders at Frigo’s and Chuck famously bought some pastries at La Fiorentina and went back to my house to talk about schools, cars, making America function again, and how it was that so much good food could cost so little money!

The chat went well. I was a little too passionate in my intro to Chuck but the rest of the program along with its Q and A were exactly what we had hoped for. Chuck had changed the bit about “believing that growth could solve all your problems” at my behest: No one in Springfield is infected with that mindset. Our problem is that we don’t see how our stagnation over the last 40 years has left us with a lot of neighborhoods and streets which, with a little TLC, could be transformed into truly prosperous places. The major take away from the chat and the follow up discussion on the next day was that the North End was a perfect place for the city to focus attention. It constituted a real small town Main Street on its own, but the beat up sidewalks, declining street trees, along with its isolation were leaving its potential untapped. 

On the way out the next day I gave Jim and Chuck a quick auto tour of State Street. Jim laughed at our New England version of a stroad. We didn’t make it as far as the changeover from State Street to Boston Road where our Yankee stroadiness is as crappy as anyplace in the good ole U.S. of A. because I wanted them to tour the North End. They could see the potential we had discussed earlier. I told them that Holyoke was like the North End on a much larger scale. As an aside: In my opinion there is no better community in the Northeast in terms of its long term future potential than Holyoke, Massachusetts; I cannot believe that no one in Holyoke has thought to bring in Chuck.

But now we get to the sad reality of the aftermath of the Curbside Chat in my hometown, of the unforeseen consequences of that amazing visit by Chuck and Jim: Springfield has become a hiss and a byword. (Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) One of the worst things imaginable for any neighborhood took place in my neighborhood on the evening Chuck was presenting the Curbside Chat, perhaps even while he was asking all of us what our priorities were regarding traffic engineering and design: 


A little girl was killed, and her mother and her cousin seriously injured in a crash on State Street. 


As fate would have it the crash occurred in the exact spot my own daughter had made a video about pedestrian safety in conflict with street design which I had sent to Strong Towns to be part of their “See It Differently” YouTube channel. I had sent it because another video had appeared on their channel with a much less impressive library on a much less impressive corridor; it was a humblebrag: “When we screw up our pedestrian-traffic interface we do it with City Beautiful architecture on historic avenues!”

Chuck, much to his credit has made not just pedestrian safety in this city, or in this neighborhood, but on that very street at that very spot his cause. He has made our decades long fight his fight without being asked to do so. I want to say “I don’t believe in destiny”, but under the circumstances I must use the more clumsy “I have no belief in the supernatural”. Chuck does. And I do believe that he sees or feels that this confluence of events: publishing the video, being in the neighborhood, crossing that street, giving the chat, and spending the night in a home all in close physical and/or temporal proximity to the death of Destiny González makes him somehow obligated to take up this cause both as symbolic and as an end unto itself in his efforts to protect the American people, and in particular American children, from the scourge of the automobile.

I’ve contributed something to this fight, but what I have “sacrificed” pales when compared to what the González family and thousands like them have sacrificed and what Chuck Marohn, Jason Degray, and countless other members of the Strong Towns movement have given to change everything from the overall zeitgeist of a continent to one small stretch of roadway in an insignificant New England city. From a completely selfish perspective it hurts to know that, in the short term at least, my efforts have redounded to the discredit of the city I love so much, but I also know that to enable and overlook is not to love; helping another to overcome their weaknesses and achieve their potential is love. May we prove worthy of it.

Rochester Americans

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(That’s two AHL inspired headlines this month)


I had the most interesting experience while hanging out at my favorite local farm last weekend. I was in conversation with a father who described how beneficial the experience of being on a farm had been for his “city kids”. As the family seemed clearly to be middle class my interest level ratcheted up quite a few notches. His wife corrected him: “Suburban kids”. As the gathering included friends and family, my family and I being in the former group, I had to ask where they were from; Rochester, New York I was told.

The conversation continued. I was eager to talk to people who so readily accepted a connection to a hard luck northern tier industrial city like Rochester, as those people are few and far between in the suburbs of Springfield. In that vein, and as the conversation continued, I made reference to just how similar Rochester and Springfield are. Not even his reflective sunglasses could hide that the comparison made my discussion partner cringe; I mean he literally, visibly, winced. “In population I suppose.” He then went on to proudly defend Rochester in a very measured but assured way.

With a facility indicative of experience in a classroom setting he asked me about Springfield’s economy referencing jobs in particular. I mentioned that most of the region’s major employers were in the city from Baystate and Mercy medical centers to the second largest corporation headquartered in Massachusetts, MassMutual, along with a handful of colleges, Big Y, and Smith and Wesson: “The problem is that the people who have the best jobs choose to live outside the city. The region is actually very prosperous” I concluded.

When we got home after the party I went right to Wikipedia. I was very surprised at what I saw. Instinctively I think of Rochester, and Syracuse, and Bridgeport, and Scranton and perhaps a dozen or more other cities in the northeast as being, essentially, the same as Springfield. Given the obviously strong visceral response I had seen when I compared Springfield to Rochester I assumed that I was going to find data which confirmed that perhaps my assumption in that regard was a bit hasty and inaccurate. Indeed it was. I’m sure the City of Rochester has a lot going for it, maybe as much or more than Springfield in ways that can’t be measured, but what I was startled to find was that Rochester is in pretty rough shape demographically, even when compared to The City of Homes.

People often perceive Springfield as having a violence problem; I was surprised to see that Rochester had over 3 times the homicide rate of Springfield. Springfield is thought of as poor; Rochester’s per capita, household, and family incomes are anywhere from 10%-20% lower than Springfield’s. In terms of population Rochester has lost roughly 1/3 of its population, losing 120,000 people since its peak; Springfield’s population loss has been around 10%, losing almost exactly 20,000, leveling off, and actually growing slightly over the last 40 years; Rochester has lost nearly 10,000 people per decade just since 1980.

I also found it interesting that Rochester’s 209,000 people are spread out over almost 90 square miles. If Springfield were to annex Chicopee and West Springfield it would still cover 15 fewer square miles but have a population of 238,000.

It sounds like I’m picking on Rochester, but that’s not the purpose of my post. What I want to know is, how does a place in such demonstrably worse shape than my hometown illicit such pride from its suburban inhabitants when I find it a challenge to find anyone, resident or suburbanite, who has a kind word to say about Springfield? It could be that I just met the only well-to-do people outside of Rochester who feel kindly toward it, and I just happen to be acquainted with only naddering nabobs of negativity in Western Mass, but I don’t think so. Is it just so much further from Boston and New York City that expectations are lowered? I’ve often thought one of Springfield’s biggest problems to be its proximity to two of North America’s standout cities and therefore expectations are too high.

In further conversation the family revealed that they live in a community which borders a community which touches Rochester. If we ever see a day when people in Southwick, Hampden, and Belchertown feel about Springfield the way these folks feel about Rochester it will be a marker of tremendous progress. 

Syracuse, Crunched

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Read this:


Did you catch it? Read the excerpts of this one now:


There you go. You see? The Quality of Life ranking is for the METRO area, not just the city. People in Syracuse might miss that, despite the brief nod to “metro area” in the story, and walk away feeling good about their municipality. No such fears in Springfield: the headline makes clear the study refers to the entire “Pioneer Valley” and, well, the focus of the entire piece appears to be making sure that no one accidentally believes this has anything to do with Springfield the city.

On the other hand, a quality of life survey which uses “averages” in the Springfield metro will be heavily impacted by the  quality of life in the city of Springfield: quality of “life” generally being divided by the denominator of “lives” of which Springfield is one quarter or more. Educational attainment is measured, and more children go to public school in Springfield than there are people in Northampton. As far as weighting goes, more than twice as many lives are lived in Springfield than in the entirety  of Franklin County. Access to health care? Imagine if Springfield’s hospitals and medical offices were removed from the study.

I’d say this survey actually does say something about life in Springfield, so to the rest of the residents of the Valley I say “you’re welcome” on behalf of the residents of the city. Glad we helped make you look so good.

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?