By Jason SegedyMay 11, 2015Follow me on Twitter @thestile1972Chis Horne of The Devil Strip (a guy with plenty of great ideas of his own, and the creator of my favorite local publication) recently asked me if I had a “Big Idea” for Akron that I wanted to share.I do. The topic is especially timely, given the pending departure of Mayor Plusquellic - as true of a lover of Akron as there ever was, an authentic leader, and an idea person extraordinaire. Akron is going to need lots of new Big Ideas and lots of committed people to make them a reality. Mayor Plusquellic will be sorely missed. His legacy is that he took the bull by the horns and remade Akron as a wonderful place to work and play.
The next mayor has some big shoes to fill. We need someone that will stand on the shoulder of a giant, build on that legacy, and reinvent Akron as a place to live.So, as Akron transitions to new leadership, figuring out how to grow the city’s population needs to be a high priority. My Big Idea is “250 by 2050″ (i.e. getting Akron’s population back to 250,000 by 2050).All of us that care about this community should be working hard to ensure that we encourage and support the next mayor to help our city grow once again.Here’s what I shared with The Devil Strip: Name: Jason SegedyAge: 42Occupation: Director, Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study
(Greater Akron’s Metropolitan Planning Organization)Hometown and where you live now: Lifelong Akron resident. Born at
St. Thomas Hospital. They’ll bury me at Holy Cross Cemetery. I grew up in West Akron, near
Buchtel High School. I live in Wallhaven
today.How can Jane Q. Public contact you if she or her friends want to help? E-mail: jsegedy@akronohio.govTwitter: @thestile1972What is your BIG IDEA? 250
by 2050 - that is, to get Akron’s population back to 250,000 by the year
2050.We used to have 290,000
people. We’re at 199,000 today. I am convinced that we can grow again. Those of us that already live here know that
Akron is a great place to live. Our
challenge is to attract new residents to our city.We do this by making a great
place even better - by building new housing, by rehabilitating existing
buildings, by encouraging entrepreneurship and commercial redevelopment, and by
using artistry in urban design to create irresistible places for people to
live, work, and play.Why do you pursue your BIG IDEA?We’ve lost 91,000 people since
our peak population. On average, we tear down 500 single family houses every year, and we build 10. No matter how great of a place
this city is to live (and it is) we can’t grow again if we don’t figure out how
to build more housing than we tear down. It’s simple arithmetic. Right
now, we have lots of houses that people don’t want, and not enough houses that
people do want.So what, you say? Why does it matter if we keep
losing population?Because the size of our
population has incredibly important ramifications for our tax base; our
employment base; the performance of our schools; the distribution of everyday
amenities like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants; the delivery of public
services; and less tangible, but equally important things like our sense of
place and our sense of ourselves. As our neighborhoods are
abandoned, decline, and become hollowed out, access to social and economic
opportunities diminishes along with the population: the jobs disappear, the doctor’s offices
disappear, the grocery stores disappear – relocated, often, to a distant and
increasingly inaccessible locale. To pretend as though the economic
and social well being of city residents is not directly impacted by population
decline is to turn a blind eye to reality itself.When did you know your BIG IDEA was a good idea?In the 1990s, Akron’s economy improved
significantly. That decade, we only lost 6,000 people, and it looked as if we
were about to turn the corner. But in the 2000s, we lost 17,000
more people. That was a big wake-up call for me. I realized that one of the
main reasons that we lost people is that there are simply not enough viable places
for people to live in the city. We’re
essentially playing musical chairs with the housing in our better
neighborhoods, while many other neighborhoods continue to fall prey to blight,
vacancy, and abandonment.My pleasant surprise is that this
is an idea that really resonates with people - especially with young people. I
meet more and more people every day that care passionately about this place and
who are inspired to make it better. That
gives me a lot of hope!How do you hope your BIG IDEA makes Akron a little better?The legacy of my idea is this -
that in Rust Belt cities like Akron, too many people have lost the ability to
believe that things can ever be any different than they are today. Our regional
culture in Northeast Ohio is such that we do a lot of living in the past - “Akron used to be
great, but now it sucks” is not an uncommon sentiment.To me, that sentiment is
fatalistic bullshit. The only people that can stop our community from becoming
a place that more people want to live is us. Fatalism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We can do better than that. We ARE doing better than that. I see a lot of hope today, and that is
inspiring.Please understand - I’m not just
blowing sunshine here. We need more than
just “hope” to make our city better. But hope is a necessary prerequisite for the hard work that must
follow. In the end, it’s about people and
community, and being the change that we want to see. First “They” has to turn into
“Me”. Then “Me” has to turn into
“We”. Once that happens, the sky is the limit.
