Developing an Urban Edge Economy
The challenge of cultivating new opportunities
The Sunday Dispatch ~ September 10, 2023
Long ago, my friend Anni noticed that everything is a process in this town. Need change for the parking meter? Try to get change for a dollar and good luck to you — it becomes an arduous journey of looking for a bank because the local shop with a cash register won’t help you.
“Everything is so plastic here,” she said.
I attribute some of this obsession with process to the academic influence of the university that occupies this town.
It’s exhausting.
But more pointedly, this preoccupation with onerous process kills entrepreneurial and innovative enterprise. It wraps things up in red tape.
Things can’t get done.
Of course, it keeps bureaucrats employed, but what about the rest of us?
What happens when jobs hang in the balance?
Several years ago, I decided to embark on a journey to develop my skills as a bartender and found home at a bar on the north side of town where I fell in love. The sheen of the varnished wooden bar and the Brunswick style back bar wooed me. The bar is beautiful and provides a sense of refuge.
