While Springfield Mayor Charles Ryan undergoes a battery of mysterious tests today, apparently heart-related, posters on the MassLive.com Springfield forum ponder what will happen if he cannot serve, and the Republican blows out of proportion Lt. Gov. Tim Murray‘s noncommittal words last Friday about not wanting to extend the Finance Control Board much longer—all precipitating agitating talk about what’s next and how soon (Tom Devine summed it up rather gloomily well).
On a bright note, the city’s Office of Planning and Economic Development at last released another series of project reports for January that points to the largest volume of promising development activity this city has seen in perhaps decades. To balance it, Police Commissioner Edward Flynn issued a statement elaborating on whether a shooting victim is a victim, and a city youth composed poetry on MySpace about city mothers’ grief. And most depressing of all, a city councilor is getting on the casino-salivation bandwagon (to be televised locally at tonight’s City Council meeting), a bandwagon apparently loaded and launched this time around by our new governor (as opposed to our former mayor, who also proposed gambling as a local revenue source).
In the midst of the escalating urban pseudo-melodrama, I am fussing about where I will be moving to next, trying to let go of the impending sense of doom for Springfield. Let it be a passing phase, a storm cloud that will soon blow over.
A November New York Times article tells me that after the age of 35, people’s chances of moving "drop precipitously." How I wish that were true for me, because since moving to Springfield I have wanted to stay. This is seemingly despite the city’s zeitgeist that says, "You really don’t want to live here: it’s dangerous, the schools are bad, and the people have no respect for each other." I have found the opposite to be true. But the city does have an image problem (along with some administrative and infrastructural—which are being addressed), and a serious lack of confidence in itself. I find that strangely appealing.
Other cities’ semi-success is making news. For example, in Pittsburgh, where I grew up, people are apparently moving into high-rise, high-demand condominiums downtown, and Center City Philadelphia—a haunt in my college years, and subject of my urban studies—is seeing a renaissance that is now being widely, if still skeptically, recognized.
It is good to see such cities doing well, especially if it offers any hope for other northeastern locales. But I have no desire to return to such places. Practically speaking, I have a family, unlike a lot of the movers and shakers these articles talk about, and for some having a family brings with it a concern about where other relatives are located, what schools are like, and whether a place offers a little room to grow and play, all on a tight budget. I don’t care about the club scene, or whether a place is totally hip. Parenting does not necessarily lend itself to hipness. (There are those who could argue with that.)
Underlying all of that is the economy. To attract young adults, single or otherwise, a place has got to be able to offer jobs.
The factors that initially brought my family here—contract work at LEGO that couldn’t evolve into a permanent position, because of a company hiring freeze; and then salaried work that couldn’t last at ComColor Inc.—the efforts of my primary-breadwinner husband to locate work in or near the city have come to naught. So far no other factors have truly pushed us away, due in large part to sheer determination, and in small part to cost-benefit uncertainty. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
We now find that because of a great dot-com job, we are spread thin, across the state line, working in one place, and living in another, and it’s milking us dry, straining our family in a variety of ways. A one-hour commute might be worthwhile for some folks with a lot of extra cash and a home and a community that fulfills their every dream, and the time to spare. I don’t know how other families do it. We took it on knowing that it was experimental, and that we’d evaluate after a few months. That time has passed. The reality is that my husband hates to commute, and he wants to be able to see his kids before bedtime. I love Springfield, but not more than I love my husband’s sanity, or my family’s cohesiveness. To say nothing of my own.
I wring my hands over what will happen next to the city, becoming overly caught up in my own contribution to it, and what it means for me to leave it behind. It needs new people, new governance, new everything: a fresh infusion of hope, good will, and shining faces. People who will accept Springfield for what it is, rather than resent it for what it is not. The economy may or may not be on their side.
I want to see the city in good hands, and I marvel at how our new governor can look at us and believe that we’re on anything like firm ground now. We’re doing better, but the city has a long way to go, and so much important work has just been started—to improve the infrastructure, to boost the economy, to purge the white-collar criminals out of the system, to address policing protocols, and on and on.
In looking at a move to Hartford, I looked at the town Web site for West Hartford, which has a AAA bond rating: it’s the hip town lots of people say to check out. The idea of moving to such a town—which seems so walkable, with an above-average percentage of college-educated residents, and the Starbucks–Trader Joe’s–Whole Foods constellation of predictable, sanitized shops, and so on—almost makes me nauseous, but the place is understandably a magnet in our esteemed "knowledge corridor." When I ask Connecticut folks about Hartford, I have a hard time finding anyone to talk with who actually lives there, and people say the schools are bad. Reminds me of home…
My kids, for their part, say they’ll miss Springfield and the varying-ethnicity, streetwise friends they feel they won’t see anymore after this school year. Thickening the plot of our story, they now say they want to live in the countryside. I understand how they feel, but they may not yet know their mom all that well.
