Autor: Herbert Barnes

So many towns, big and small, become whatever they become as a result of circumstance. They may start out as one thing, years or centuries ago, and then through the many thousands of decisions piled up over time, the people in the community wake up one day to discover the town is something totally different than its initial intentions. Sometimes these changes make towns better; sometimes they turn them into ghost towns. And often, to take control of a town’s destiny, the community has to get together and make some tough decisions.

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Any small town is a study of the small decisions that shape it. And those decisions, made by residents and businesspeople and the government that runs it, often take it in directions it might never have seemed able to go. But there it is: sometimes towns grow all on their own, and it seems like there’s nothing to be done but watch the changes, like a rebellious teenager. Sometimes, of course, it’s time to make big decisions too.

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As a town ages, it has to change too, to avoid stalling out, fading away. Repeatedly a town is settled for one selected object and then, years later, finds it necessarily to learn a new trick in order to stay practicable, which is inevitable. How this town goes about remaking itself says a lot about how hardworking the town itself is, but it also serves as a observation on us and our advanced times.

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A town needs to form and adjust to live, and frequently this can be a tough affair. A town that has been constituted for one rationale may find the need to search other options as times transform, which inescapably, of course, they do. Nevertheless the way a city changes is a matter well worth paying attention to, because it says a lot about the changes in our civilization at large.

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