Again I feel like I am floating on a puffy, white blanket of blissful isolation here in Salt Lake City after reading a recent New York Times piece about shrinking Flint, Michigan.
Despite the devastation that I know this process has been and will continue to wreak on the people of Flint and other cities like it, I can’t help but to hope for the future.
Maybe these desperate times will engage us Americans with the dynamic process of creating cities that are sustainable through thin times as well as thick. I take a short look around at the carnage that was our economic system and it is evident to all the effects of planning only for success. “My home will only continue to rise in value.” “The markets will certainly trend ever upward.” “Food and oil will always be cheep.” “We must certainly continue to get stupider!” Out of all of these, only the last one has been true.
Now this is the stuff of my childhood dreams. When my imagination was still unbounded and unfettered by the burdens of reality and the skepticism of age I dreamed of molding and forming society like play-dough.