After a quick twilight run on the trail, tonight I went to the latest step in the city visioning project, the "BIG (Big Idea Gathering) meeting". It was an accurately named meeting, for it was little else than simply transcribing a few hundred ideas for ways to improve the quality of the city. I admit that I was a little let down at the lack of opportunity for discussing ideas--it made the two-hour meeting seem a little empty--but the turnout for the meeting was very good, many good ideas were proposed by the attendees, and it gave me a good look at what's on people's minds around town.

While the ideas proposed in my sub-group were all over the map--everything from building rail transportation between neighboring towns, to the city taking a more active approach in reintroducing those who've been released from prison back into society, to providing more affordable housing options in all new housing developments--when the top ideas from each discussion group were read out at the end of the meeting, it was interesting to see what themes emerged.

The most common themes, in terms of the number of groups who reported making them a high priority, included:

• Environmental issues--protecting wild areas, preserving trees, etc.
• Renewable energy--using more of it, energy efficiency
• Controlling growth--better planning of infrastructure, better quality developments
• Attracting business--drawing high-quality companies and jobs to the area
• Education--providing consistently high-quality education to children in all areas of town
• Looking out for the economically disadvantaged--providing loans for business development, making affordable housing and services available

It was notable that no strong pro-developer voice was heard, as far as I could tell. Even the obviously better-off members of my group, for example, were more concerned about quality-of-life issues like better airport services and a more vibrant downtown.

When I listened to the common themes being read to the overall group, I thought about what it all added up to in the end. It seemed that overall, the concern was about quality. Preserving natural beauty, using clean energy, reducing reliance on cars, attracting high-quality business to town (such as high-tech companies), and creating opportunities in the lower-income sectors. Not welfare, but opportunities--good housing, ways to develop economic self-reliance.

And it dawned on me that quality is precisely what has been lacking from Columbia's major growth and development projects lately. Nobody at the meeting seemed to be against growth and economic development. But they wanted good development--well-paying jobs, fewer franchises and more local businesses, more attractive and better-built buildings, and less environmentally-destructive developments.

Instead, what we've seen in the last few years in Columbia is an explosion of what amounts to junk-food developments. Large wild areas are clear-cut and leveled, and what goes in are cheap-looking strip malls and shopping centers, filled almost entirely with chain stores. Most of the jobs created are low-end, low-paying, part-time, with few benefits. Most of the money from such developments go to very few people, who already have money, and part of it gets sucked out of the community altogether, going to parent companies of the franchises. Housing developments are just as bad--builders come in, quickly slap together a neighborhood full of particle-board homes based on a few repeated designs, and leave in their wake something with no well-planned connection to city infrastructure, which often requires the city to fill in the gaps. On top of everything else, these commercial and housing developments are unattractive and often cheaply built.

And that's what's increasingly rubbing people in this town the wrong way--there's a lot of building going on, lots of new roads and new business, but in the end, what are we getting? Poor-quality jobs, unneeded goods and services, highly expensive housing, ugly concrete and neon landscapes, escalating burdens on city infrastructure, and little economic benefit for the majority of citizens.

This is a message that the developer and builder groups in the area would be well-advised to listen to. There's a growing wave of frustration and resistance to what developers have been doing. They can either change their ways and develop in ways that actually make the people of this town proud, or they can continue painting themselves into a corner. They can either be the engine of high-quality growth in town, or the biggest obstacle to it. What is the legacy they want to leave?

The visioning process is a long way from producing any tangible results, but a community voice is slowly starting to emerge. And it wants something better than what we're currently being given.

Labels: Culture