Since my last about Midtown Plaza, it has closed its doors–which begins a process of transformation for downtown Rochester. I’d like to share an article from City Newspaper and talk about some ideas it has evoked for me. I mentioned in my last post that the demise of Midtown was due, in large part, to the opening of the various suburban malls. Mary Anna Towler expands upon how those malls opening somewhat expressed a need for convenience for those living in the outer suburbs, yet at the same time, when these malls and big box shopping centers were being built, population wasn’t booming. It’s almost as if Towler is saying that there wasn’t a concrete reason for all those malls to be built.

For whatever reason, those malls thrived because people shopped there, and those same people, by shopping at those malls, rejected the downtown Rochester experience.

I don’t have anything against people living where they want to live. I can’t force people to live in a city, and there is definitely something to be said for living in the suburbs or a rural area. We all have preferences and choices. But, people make choices and fail to see how their choice affects the grand scheme of things. Being the rugged individuals that we are, Americans keep seeked to move further and further away from the center of things; to find space; to have their own space. But what happens to those still living in cities? You are all pretty familiar with the outcome of sprawl.

What I liked about this City article was the suggestion that what is happening to Midtown and Rochester in general is due to specific choices people have made and the failure of people to think about how what they really want in a community lines up with those choices. An excerpt:

Our sprawl is due to mindset, more than anything. We complain about gas prices and about the high cost of government that sprawl feeds. But until we want a different kind of community, we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing.

Maybe we just don’t have a clear sense of what we want to be. We mourn the closing of Midtown, but too few people wanted to shop there. We want a vibrant community, with healthy retail and arts, but we think we can have one without a strong central core.

Our vision, I guess, is of a community of separate little communities.

Or whatever develops.

That’s what we have. And that’s what we’ll get in the future.

We have to plan for the kind of community we want and support endevours that line up with that–if you want to see our urban center thrive, you have to support what is going on there. That means actually going downtown–or whatever neighborhood it is you are trying to support. It doesn’t do any good to sit around and reminisce about the “good ol’ days” that someone else may have had at Midtown or that you may have had once. Realize that this event, Midtown’s demise, has to do with preferences and choices.