04/21/2024
I love this blog. The author is very knowledgeable and a great guy, if not a little verbose, but worth a minute of your time to scan for the salient points. Nobody sits around thinking about "downtown." If you are a resident, you can learn to be observant because, whether you agree or not, your surroundings affect you and impact how you feel. You can love the heck out of your town and still know it needs help.
I want to offer up a little simple advice for those seeking to make a difference in their community. Look around, see what doesn’t look right then fix it. That is it. It doesn’t take any particular expertise to do this. No one needs an advanced degree to see what’s wrong.
The process of improving your community is simple as the process of improving yourself. It’s a straightforward and pragmatic prognosis. Get a little bit better every day. Does anyone not know how to get healthier? C’mon. Eat better, exercise more, and go to bed earlier. Consistently make decisions that improve your health, decisions that make you look and feel better long-term, and you will find yourself on an upward trajectory.
This simple notion that we all understand as humans, does not suddenly get turned on its head just because we are dealing with multiple humans. The same lessons we apply to our personal lives, we must apply to our communities. If you wish you had more social connections, everyone in your town does too. If you wish the downtown was prettier, everyone in your town probably does too. If you wish that there were nicer places to shop or eat, everyone in your town probably does too. If you wish that cars didn’t threaten your life every time you dared to walk somewhere, everyone in your town probably does too.
If you are in a position to make a difference in your town, let me provide you with some free resources. Look to the towns that are healthy, consider your town when it was fairing better, and think about what you personally value. What you will find, time and time again is that the solutions are simple –
People want to feel a sense of pride in their place, so consistently improve conditions.
People want to have robust social connections, so make it easier to meet people.
People want to feel a sense of ownership in their community, so focus efforts on growing local ownership in real estate and commerce.
Nothing revolutionary, not even controversial, just incredibly obvious. Of course, this is how we go about improving our communities, how we increase a sense of attachment, combat apathy, and foster connections. The concepts are simple, but they can’t be done overnight, and you can’t hire someone to do them for you. Maybe that is why they aren’t more popular.
At the end of the day, the steps to improve our towns are known to us all. Make things better consistently. Bring people together, make the surroundings nicer and foster local ownership. Shift your efforts in these three areas and apply effort every day. Because there is no improvement without effort, ever. Anyone that tells you differently is lying. Your community cannot improve, without your community putting in the work to improve. Once you embrace this truth, you have all the answers you need to move forward.
