Writings
Choices for Worcester, page 2
The third alternative, as you might expect by now, is:
The High Road
It’s easy to describe cities on the Main or Low Road because we have seen them. What characterizes the High Road? Are there models to follow or must we think it through ourselves?
There are, in my estimation, at least five driving forces that determine whether a city gets to travel the High Road. They are:
A growing economy. To fund improvement in our public infrastructures, public education, and other necessary government activities we need a growing economic pie. We need jobs and particularly ones that pay salaries that enable a family to live with dignity. A High Road city must have a love affair with business. An expanding economy can fund the High Road. A declining economy requires splitting a shrinking pie and is always divisive.
Superior education. Troubled cities took over thirty years to get into their current predicaments. Transforming them will not happen in months, a year or five years. It will take a decade to see early results and more to achieve outside recognition. Today’s fifth graders will be parents, workers, and voters during some part of the journey. They must be able to read, write, count, think, draw on their values, and compete with a global work force.
Government that works. Career government personnel must be competent at executing basic functions such as public education, public safety, public health and public works. Elected government officials must lead a cooperative effort for the common good over the long term. Most cities have been afflicted with a government driven by shortterm (expedient) responses and special interests. The climate for government employees need radical improvement. They are often treated as second-class citizens, managed by the numbers, seldom appreciated and highly criticized. Under those conditions what kind of public services can we expect?
A sense of aesthetics. Taste sets standards that affect spirit and behavior. Parks, streets, buildings, landscaping all set a tone to a city. Minimal taste can be governed by regulation. Good taste is usually adopted voluntarily. Peer pressure can influence the course of good taste. And good taste can become contagious.
Citizens’ spirit. Civic spirit can range from a spectrum to distrust to apathy to boosterism to deep-seated commitment to the common good. I don’t know any way to stick a thermometer in the city to get a reading. My guess is that the proverbial citizen in the street is somewhere between distrust and apathy. No transformation of a city can take place without the commitment of a large number of citizens.
These are three alternate paths to Worcester’s future and five forces that drive a High Road renewal. However, all renewal must be grounded in an accurate view of current reality.