Whither, Upstate New York?
Where is upstate New York headed? I believe the whole upstate region has enormous potential, and through wise management we may face a very bright future indeed. Your community does not have to be a place that young people just want to leave as soon as they graduate. My community does not have to be the place that cars only pass through on their way to Somewhere Else.
My community today actually shows some promising signs that it is becoming a destination in its own right — indeed, a place where young people would prefer to raise their families. What about your community?
The key to a brighter future lies in sound planning and rational management practices: carefully managing our resources, our assets, our opportunities, and even the risks we face. And wise management begins at the community level. Therefore this blog is dedicated to sharing with all New Yorkers some of the tools, strategies, and best practices that have made communities here in New York and elsewhere more prosperous, secure and livable — in a word, more sustainable.
This is a blog about the possibilities for upstate New York.
Don’t get me wrong: clearly these are tough times for upstate New York and for the nation as a whole, with new constraints and vexing challenges that will challenge our ingenuity. But we possess a great deal of ingenuity, and my faith in the ability of New Yorkers to apply their ingenuity to building more sustainable communities is unsurpassed. I believe in upstate New York.
Some say that nothing good will happen anywhere in this state until we lower the tax burden, eliminate unnecessary regulations and fix the broken political system in Albany. There is a lot of truth to what some of these commentators say, yet for the most part I will leave tax policy and political issues for other bloggers to deal with. Lord knows, there is no shortage of them on the Internet.
This entry will serve to inaugurate the blog that I call “Sustainable-NY.” In the days to come I hope it will evolve into a vital source of ideas and a challenging forum for discussion concerning the resources, tools and strategies we can apply today in order to build a better tomorrow.
This blog is about what communities and community-based organizations in New York can do for themselves, even in the face of an onerous tax regime state-wide and gridlock in Albany. It turns out there is a lot we can do for ourselves. (And there’s even more we can do with a little help from the State and Federal programs that do work.) The idea behind this blog — its purpose, really — is to connect people with ideas and tools from a variety of sources, so that change will happen in your community, and in mine.
News & Views, Setting the Stage, Tools for Communities | Chris Nill | 22 May 2008 |
