Now, it might seem that I’ve been down on Chagrin Falls lately, what with my pointing out that the CF Schools dropped the ball vis-a-vis the Obama speech to students. To the contrary, one makes those kinds of arguments when you want to see change for the better. Its called partaking in civil society, and I actually think that Chagrin works pretty well.
Thus, I was not surprised a couple weeks back when I saw this nugget in the paper; Cleveland port redevelopment plan: Chagrin Falls on the lake – cleveland.com. Now, there are lots of reasons this is a good idea, but in practice it might be a bit of a pipe dream. Among the pipe dream reasons are the relative affluence of Chagrin Falls, as well as relative population density. The lakefront would need both of those things to generate the functioning district being sought. But perhaps most of all, it would need a spirit of engagement and investment, not just cash but real human cultural investment. I am not sure that this sort of thing is possible without transforming how we live our lives, meaning re-centering people’s lives in the center city.
Either way, I would recommend, for a historical perspectives on downtown, reading Alison Isenberg’s Downtown America or Robert Fogelson’s Downtown. Both are superb and do what historians often do really well–show that things are more complex than you might think.