Former mayor Dave Cieslewicz has a blog on Isthmus, and his post today is about how Madison should strive for becoming a New Urbanist mini-metroplis, lest we sink into the doldrums of the small-town Midwest. What I want to know is, why must we settle for such a Manichean choice?
There's a powerful identity that drives much of the politics in Madison, and it's bipolar. On the one hand it's insufferably smug about how superior we are: we're blue, they're red; we bike to work, they drive down the block; we shop at the co-op, they go to Walmart. On the other hand it has a massive inferiority complex over not being Portland or Chicago. You can see this identity manifest itself on State Street.
While Madison dithers over which urban planning fads to embrace, we ignore the good things they're doing in our real peer cities, places like Omaha, Des Moines, or even Fargo. They're building the sort of "creative class" amenities we take for granted without losing their essential identities, and providing affordable opportunities for young families like mine.
One of the reasons my wife and I moved to the Northside is that it's one of the few parts of town we could afford. But I must confess that, if I had it all to do over again, I'd take a more serious look at the Omahas of the world.
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