(1st in a series of posts on the Rose Garden)
(see the Northside 2027 and Neighborhoods threads as well)
Mount Airy Neighborhood Association
Gadfly has been buzzing only for about six weeks now, but one of the topics drawing his interest almost right away is Bethlehem’s neighborhoods.
He said recently that he’s aware that when he thinks of “Bethlehem,” he tends to think of downtown, especially the Northside downtown.
Not fair. Not right.
Lots going on out on the frontier.
Northside 2027. Streetscaping on the Southside. Now Gadfly would like to add the West Side and specifically the Rose Garden to the line-up here.
Back in his first post in the Neighborhood series (Oct. 18), Gadfly lays out the cluster of bullet points that he realized added up to his own awareness of the neighborhood pulses and his own almost subconscious yearnings for a greater feeling of “neighborhoodliness.”
Let me add to that cluster Senator Ben Sasse’s new book Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal. I didn’t really know Sasse except as an occasional bright, articulate talking head on tv news. Turns out he’s a PhD from Yale. (Ha! Big whoop, some of you will say!) Anyway, he was on the morning news shows pitching the book. And talked about neighborhoods, which piqued my interest, especially with all going on in our town. I’m not far into the book yet, but here’s a few early bullet points:
- loneliness is killing us
- there’s a loneliness epidemic
- people yearn to belong, and when healthy forms of belonging vanish, people will turn to more troubling forms of tribalism (and you all know what he’s talking about!)
- lots of us miss the “hometown-gym-on-a-Friday-night” feeling
Enter the Rose Garden as a space for healthy forms of belonging.
Take a few minutes to digest Rose Garden Toulouse and the Rose Garden masterplan.
And we’ll come back and talk more later.
(Whom should we be reading about urban quality of life these days? I saw Jane Jacobs’ name on several stickies at Streetscape – she still the guru?)
