The Johnson House in Sandwich

05/27/2026

The Simplest Economic Development Strategy You’re Ignoring

There is no mystery to why certain streets thrive and others don’t. People are drawn to beautiful places. Not complicated, not controversial, just true.

When a street is irresistible, foot traffic follows. When foot traffic follows, shop owners notice. When shop owners notice, they compete for space on that street. When they compete for space, rents rise, buildings appreciate, and the surrounding neighborhood becomes more desirable. The homeowners nearby benefit. The tax base strengthens. The community grows.

This is not a theory. This is how value is created.

The public sector’s role in this chain is straightforward: invest in a high-quality public realm and enforce your building codes. That’s it. You don’t need another survey telling you that residents prefer to live in beautiful places. They do. Everyone does. Act on that.

Cities that understand this stop treating aesthetics as a luxury and start treating them as infrastructure. Because that’s exactly what they are, the infrastructure that makes every other investment work harder.

Make your streets irresistible. The private sector will do the rest.

05/26/2026

Been busy in the yard.....veggie garden in, front walk and porch done, finally installed the window boxes and planted them....amongst the rest of the scattered pots and misc...planted climbers on the grow arch....

05/25/2026

05/22/2026

Anything that isn’t done with care can’t be received with care.

You can’t shortcut a town worth loving. If your streets, buildings, and public spaces weren’t built with love and intention, don’t expect your residents to care about them.

National home builders won’t build you a town people can love. National chains won’t either. They’re creating wealth extraction operations, not communities. Places designed to mine money, not foster connection or pride.

Then everyone acts surprised when residents feel apathetic about where they live.

People respond to what you give them. Build ugly, cheap, and extractive and you get apathy in return. Build with care, intention, and beauty and you get residents who care back.

You can’t demand civic pride in a place that was built without any.

05/21/2026

The nationwide erosion of standards has run parallel to the rise of the sprawl economy, and that’s not a coincidence.

In the early days of our towns, when a local family built something, they understood that building was a reflection of who they were. They spent the extra time and money to construct something they could be proud of, something that signaled to their neighbors that they were people who cared about this place. They put their name on it, literally and figuratively. Local business owners understood the same thing. Extra effort meant more success, yes, but it also meant having something worth being proud of.

The things we’re associated with shape how others see us. They also shape how we see ourselves.

This is the real cost of ceding local ownership to the sprawl economy. The board of a publicly traded big box store doesn’t care what our community looks like. Exactly the opposite. Their concern is the bottom line, and every dollar not spent on aesthetics, context, or wages is a dollar earned. Their interests are diametrically opposed to the wellbeing of our city.

These businesses don’t lift standards. They prey on low standards. Their entire business model depends on them.

They’ll lobby to remove design requirements. They’ll threaten communities with lawyers or accusations of being anti-business. They’ll promise the world or warn that they’ll go somewhere else. Here’s the thing: they showed up because they can make money here, and they aren’t leaving over a design standard.

So why should our community lower its standards for an outsider? Shouldn’t the national chain have to meet our standards if it wants to come to our city?

Standards fall easily. They are a hell of a lot harder to lift. Don’t give them away cheap.

05/15/2026

A healthy community will always have its fair share of pessimists and bullies, but in a strong civic culture, they are just a background noise in a sea of positive voices. They may pipe up from time to time, but they don’t dominate the conversation. It’s only when things go awry that they seize the moment to do whatever the opposite of shine is.

These civic bullies aren’t the real problem; they’ve always been there and always will be. The problem is when everyone else slinks away and gets quiet.

Civic bullies are like any other bullies, they thrive only when they’re allowed to. They fill the void when things go wrong. They grab the mic when no one else wants it, then act like they’re the only ones who can hold it. But like every other type of bully, they shrink in the face of strength.

We don’t need to eradicate these people. though that does sound tempting. We simply need to be willing to stand up to them. And here’s the secret that makes this entirely possible: Nearly no one
agrees with them. They are a minority, though a loud-ass minority. They are louder than everyone else because most of us don’t like to be loud. Most of us don’t enjoy indulging in pessimism. Most of us try to avoid conflict. But these maniacs revel in it.

One of the best lessons learned in dealing with civic bullies came from Ryan Fairchild, owner of Dry Lake Brewing in Great Bend, Kansas. A few years ago, he explained how he helped create the Positive Social Response Team when the comments section in local discussions became inundated with negativity. When the civic bat signal went out via text or email, everyone on the list would jump in with positive and supportive comments. Eventually, the bullies lost
their pulpit and receded into the background. When no one listens to a bully, the bully doesn’t have much to say.

The lesson is this: Bullies will always exist, but their voice is only heard when no one else is willing to talk. The goal isn’t to out-shout them. The goal is to get the rest of the community to say something.

When the vast, and all-too-silent, majority finds its voice, the bullies will lose theirs. If this work has taught me anything, it’s that nearly everyone is positive, helpful, supportive, civic-minded, kind, caring, and non-confrontational.

We don’t have to fight the bullies.

We just need to encourage the rest to speak up.

05/07/2026

Had a welcome visitor this morning. Look closely and see the fox peeking out...I hope he/she stays around...

04/25/2026

Also, finally gave in and covered the office ceiling plaster damage with drywall. I hated to do it, but plaster repair people becoming extinct...

04/25/2026

So veggie garden already to get planted, grow arch as well....

04/23/2026

If you’re in the area, drive by to experience the floral spring spectacular display.....