I love to write. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I love what I write. If you could see what I see, you’d see 36 drafts of stories, blog posts, articles, humor pieces, and worthless digital chicken scratchings that I’ve saved but never posted for a variety of reasons. I’ve decided to clear them out and post them, unfinished, and see what happens. I wrote the article below after coming back from a road trip in Missouri. I wanted to point out a paradox- how Santa Clarita was fortunate to have so much money and development tossed its way (unlike the cities I drove through), but that all the development and growth we have here lacks soul, character, and a sense of place.
-Jeff
Last month, I completed an epic, four day road trip with my two brothers and my father from St. Louis Missouri back to Santa Clarita California. In between the late nights partying at dive bars with my brothers in no-name towns and Las Vegas, I had a lot of time to observe the scenery, explore the communities, and ponder the place I live in compared with the places other people live in. What I found was quite unexpected, and I’ll share it with you after the jump.
This was my first trip in years where I was able to escape what I call the “Southern California bubble.” The bubble of So Cal is a place in constant flux, a place where the landscape is remade year after year, where tens of thousands of people move to each year, a place of boundless, unceasing growth, a place where you might find a new mall or housing complex where just one year before, you found a vacant field.
This is the place I grew up in and got used to. This growth, this remaking of the landscape is what is normal to me. It’s what drives our economy.
But visiting St. Louis and many towns along I-70, the opposite was true. St. Louis is America’s fastest shrinking city, according to at least one estimate. The Gateway to the West, once a thriving place of trade, culture, commerce, and one of the largest cities in the country, is still beautiful to visit. But many neighborhoods are decrepit, falling apart, abandoned by developers, landlords, owners, and municipal authorities.
The results are striking. Along I-70 on the way into downtown STL you find scores of brick houses in once attractive neighborhoods that are literally falling apart. A missing wall here, a fallen ceiling there. Graffitti, broken windows, trash and debris everywhere.
Later in the trip, we visited my mother’s home town, Leavenworth Kansas. This is a curious little town, barely changed since the 1950s save for the new super-center Wal Mart and a few other big box retailers. You see, this town’s main industries are not real estate or business or commerce or anything like that. Leavenworth exists because of the federal government, which placed Ft. Leavenworth, an influential and famous army base, and the US Penitentiary at Leavenworth, a federal prison for violent and white collar criminals at the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers.
It’s always hard to notice the absence of something, but in both towns, the absence of commercial and residential development signs struck me. No one, save for a few developers building small tracts of homes, was willing to invest money in these places. That’s because no one was moving here.
Hence new perspective number 1: We’re really fortunate to have developers, business interests, and yes, people, interested in our community. For the last 50 years, we’ve grown from a no-name area with several different communities into a true city, mostly built by a handful of powerful developers who have turned this valley into, at the very least, a great place to live.
The trend continues today even during this housing slump and the credit crisis. Unlike Leavenworth or even St. Louis, Santa Clarita is still hot and people are still throwing money our way. Quality jobs in Santa Clarita continue to grow, crime remains low, income among most residents is high, and there’s still a world of difference between the SCV and SFV.