Logan, Utah, isn’t too anything. It’s not too big or too small, but it’s also not just right. Like many Western towns and small cities of about 50,000 people, it’s as confused as a hormonally challenged adolescent.
Policy moods swing wildly between pro-development mayors and ones who want to go back to family-friendly neighborhoods. We want to restore the downtown, but we keep building more big-box stores on cheap land near the city boundaries. We put in parking meters, then rip them out, like kids throwing tantrums. We’re like teenagers who change their hair color to fit their mood. We just don’t know who or what we are yet.
To put our community’s age into perspective, my house was built about 100 years ago. Many people praised me for taking on such an ancient fixer-upper instead of building something new. Of course, 100 years is old only by Western standards. On the East Coast and in the Midwest, some houses have washing machines that old. Take a trip across the Atlantic Ocean and you’ll find homes with plumbing designed by Druids and Roman arches actually built by Romans.
While there are many desirable things about youth, fickle, irresponsible behavior is not one of them. Adolescents long for popularity and often do embarrassing things to achieve it. I know I was thrilled to get a Lowes, Home Depot and Starbucks in town for my own selfish consumptive reasons. Gone were those trips to the big city for provisions. Many other locals applauded the arrival of Old Navy, PetSmart and Chili’s as signs that Logan was maturing into a metropolis. But every binge is followed by the next morning, with its painful hangover and feelings of regret.
Do we want to be the popular kid with an iPhone and all the right clothes or are we more like the bohemian kid who artfully mixes thrift-shop ensembles and writes poetry at the coffee shop? Because we are filled with the throbbing hormones of youth, most days the answer is yes, no and somewhere in between.
via www.sltrib.com
Great read. What are the things that make a town into a city?
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