The Daily News Biz Bits column included a quote from an essay by
former Moscow resident, Stephen Lyons (published in the Denver Post).
The essay cites Moscow and the mini-contraversy over the possible URA-sponsored
hotel and Vision 2020's discussion. Here is the essay.
BL
----------------------
No-growthers
destroy communities
By
Stephen Lyons
Stephen
Lyons
Sunday,
May 20, 2001 -
My 21-year-daughter is finally leaving the small Western college town she
grew up in for a large West Coast city, and I couldn't be happier. After
low wages and a cul de sac of career opportunities, she finally figured
out that her quality of life would increase educationally, culturally and,
most importantly, vocationally in a metropolitan setting.
I
had left a year earlier for the Midwest, and two years ago her mom left
for California. Like so many of her friends, my daughter had been brought
to the West so her parents could fulfill some back-to-the-land, experience-the-West
fantasy. Then we left and she stayed.
Truth
is, there isn't much of a future in the inter-mountain West for young adults.
Whether in Moab, Utah, Hamilton or Livingston, Mont., or Sandpoint, Idaho,
these safe, pastoral enclaves may be great environments to raise kids,
but they are not great places to raise young adults.
And
we, their parents, have only ourselves to blame. For it is our own strident
opposition to development that stifles opportunities for our offspring
and forces our children outward. Though we will deny it, this exodus kills
any continuity of community.
Recently,
a proposal to build a hotel-convention center in a dilapidated section
of Moscow, Idaho, was met with fierce opposition by the usual suspects.
The possibility of an evil out-of-state conspiracy was raised by a Fresno,
Calif., native. A retired professor - a Stanford alumnus - barked out his
concerns on an Internet chat line about how Californians needed to control
"their breeding." Despite all that chitty chat, no one mentioned that nearby
Washington State University was graduating dozens of young, ambitious adults
annually from its hotel and restaurant administration program who would
have loved to cut their professional teeth in the area. Seattle, San Francisco
and Portland, here they come!
When
you have college and high school graduates fleeing the premises each year,
what is left is a cantankerous, unimaginative group of grumpy men and women
in their 40s and 50s who cling desperately to an unrealistic goal of no-growth.
We Western baby boomers, who were supposed to be the cool generators of
change, have become paranoid obstacles to sustainability. As our children
give up on their homes, they take with them the vitality of youth, along
with their creativity and nerve - the very heart of any viable community.
One
begins to wonder just what kind of development would be acceptable to the
old guard, aside from a food co-op, a vintage clothing boutique, a cafe
featuring bitter coffee and an independent book store full of romantic
memoirs about the splendor of living "Out West."
Why
are we so anxious, for example, to preserve scraggly weed-choked lots on
the edge of towns? Why do the veins in our collective necks pop out when
a new subdivision is proposed, even though many of those new homes will
house long-time residents who want to trade up, freeing older homes for
first-time buyers? Do we think that, unlike nature, our communities have
to remain static?
We
hold on to such fallacies at the expense of our children. They grow up
absorbing our complaints about dead-end jobs and our lack of career choices.
They see us settle for less. They listen to us at the dinner table rail
against developers and marinate in a stew of fear. "The sky is falling!
A gas station opened down the highway! Everything's ruined! Two new houses
in the last six months! More tofu, dear?"
It's
not that we should roll over to bad development plans. Involvement and
vigilance in local planning is key to healthy towns. But when every proposal
is instantly condemned as part of some evil right-wing menace, how does
one even get a chance to sort out the good from the bad? When do we begin
to factor in our children's economic future?
In
other parts of the country, multi-generational roots are set more firmly
into the social soil. In this part of the Midwest, where I now live, there
are so many opportunities that the kids - whether they go off to college
or not - have the choice to leave permanently or to settle in and start
families and small businesses. The plumber who installed our new shower
went to grade school with the floor man who played T-ball with the carpenter
who built our new door. Roots are so strong that it would take much more
than a convenience store to cut them apart.
We
want our children to spread their wings, fly away and conquer the world.
But if they ever do want to return, we should be able to offer them more
than skateboard parks, groovy cafes and frustrated parents.
Stephen
Lyons lives in Monticello, Ill., and is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News.
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