vision2020@moscow.com: Burlington,VT
Burlington,VT
Steve Cooke (scooke@novell.uidaho.edu)
Wed, 23 Apr 1997 16:02:42 PST8PDT
Dear Visionaries,
Kenton asked about Burlington, VT. So here is a personal perspective on
VT's largest city (50-60,000 pop.).
I was in Burlington from 1966-72 and 1974-76, i.e., 20-30 yrs ago.
Alot can change in that amount of time. What I remember is that
Burlington is beautiful w/ Lake Champlain & the Adorondack Mts. to the west and the Green
Mts to the east. The Univ. of VT is close to downtown, so off campus
living is w/in walking distance w/ a nice student ghetto near by.
There are no interstate or limited access highways going through
town, i.e., it is a nighmare to drive through at rush hour. There is a
pedestrian mall in the ctr. of town that include 2-3 blocks of the
ctr of town. It is the place to be for shopping, drinking, dining,
people watching & generally hanging out. Sounds pretty good. However,
....
Vt. is beautiful, so the beautiful people like to move in & play there. Tourism
is important to the state w/ dairy farming going out. It is in Vt. &
Burlington citizen's long term interest to be upscale tourist friendly. UVM
(Univ. of Vt) is expensive. The most expensive land grant univ. in
the nation. The students or more correctly their parents tend to have
money and lots of it. Again a driving force for upscale amenities and
ski bum mentality. Bernie Sanders, now Congressperson Sanders, was mayor of Burlington
for a number of years. Bernie is a socialist, so he was less
motivated by real estate/business /suburban interests than some.
Finally, I personally find Vt. in general and Burlington a little depressing.
Dairy farming is all but doomed. (I grew up on a dairy farm in
Bridport, VT.) I love VT but it has had to become the play ground of the wealthy tourist to
survive. This leaves the locals including me a little jaded in my
opinion. Burlington is made over in an outsiders' image of what VT should be and not
what I think I knew it to be. There may be an irony here somewhere in that you
destroy what you are trying to preserve in the process of preserving
it. Would I prefer an uglier but "more real" Burlington? Perhaps.
I know, my own thougths on ec. growth and dev. have been strongly influenced
by this experience.
A native son of the Green Mtn State,
Steve Cooke
Associate Professor
Dept. of Ag. Economics & Rural Soc.
University of Idaho
Moscow, ID 83843
http://www.uidaho.edu/~scooke/onepercent
208-885-7170 (phone)
208-885-5759 (fax)
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