How My Hometown Can Heal Its Urban Renewal Wounds
When I posted my essay about urban renewal in my hometown of Auburn, N.Y., back in October, I honestly thought I was just giving voice to something I’d felt for a long time: How urban renewal and construction of the arterial road through Auburn in the 1970s had created a kind of trauma for me and shaped my thinking as an urban planner.
But I was not prepared for the outpouring of interest that the essay generated. The Citizen, Auburn’s local newspaper, printed the essay as a three-part series. I did a podcast for Fingerlakes1.com that Josh Durso (@FLXJosh) promoted heavily. And I heard from Auburnians past and present who contacted me literally from all over the country — all the way from Auburn to Southern California, where my high-school acquaintance Kevin Corcoran reminded me that he and I have a longtime friend in common (who, like me, is also a former mayor of Ventura, California). I had many wonderful email exchanges with these folks and even a delightful zoom session with Judge Jim Cuddy, now 92 years old, and his entire family.
A small world to be sure, but more important, a world where Auburnians past and present still hold surprisingly intense feelings about what happened in town almost a half-century ago. I realized more than ever how deeply people feel about the places they care about and how long the wounds take to heal…
