The Left-handed Layup

The other night fifty to sixty people gathered at the Emporium to discuss the challenges in the 100 block of Gay Street. Overall it was a great meeting.

The meeting was facilitated by city officials Jill Van Beke and Bill Lyons. Those in attendance ranged from business owners, residents, city council, TDOT, KPD, Volunteer Ministry Center and concerned citizens. I appreciate Jill and Bill taking the initiative to respond to the citizens needs for such a conversation.

As the meeting started people outlined frustrations with safety, parking, accessibility, and the homeless. People argued from their point of view, of course, offering comments that do not include the interests of the rest of the room. That is the nature of a person's point of view: it is their point of view.

This is the problem with "problems." If your car will not start, the problem is not with the key. When it comes to our car this is obvious but when it comes to our community challenges it is not.

Most people enter a conversation or discussion with a clearly formed picture in their heads about “the problem,” and articulate their point of view from where they touch, feel or experience “the problem.” Thus the key analogy. Others listen and then object because what they are hearing does not feel the same as the problem they have experienced. Everybody sits in the room with a different experience about “the problem.” And the discussion bounces around the room with everybody growing uneasy and dissatisfied with what they are hearing because each presentation of the problem contains only the interests of the person speaking.

The only place for people to go with this situation is that everybody else must be stupid, stubborn or at best ignorant to what the real deal is.

At one moment a great idea drifted through the room. It was like watching a single plume of smoke entering a house. Will the smoke alarm (the people) detect the idea I wondered. The suggestion was to form a neighborhood association and convene a meeting with all the stakeholders.

I say this is a great idea because the “challenges” being discussed in the room are adaptive, not technical. Problems that will not be solved by running them all down one at a time but rather by strengthening the relationships between the KPD and the residents and the business owners and the operators of the homeless shelter and even with those people called homeless. This is not a romantic idea. This is a very practical idea.

When your car fails to start your auto mechanic ignores the key. He (or she I suppose) will look at the entire system and how it is working or not working together and from their determine the problem.

In the end some of the people took to the idea of a neighborhood association and others not. I think people intuitively understood that it would take work and with all of our busy schedules…well we need to do something now was their thinking.

Part of building downtown will be to learn how to live downtown with each other and for each other. I am confident we will in the end learn to do it. To use yet another analogy It is a like a basketball player who is very competent shooting a right handed lay-up shot who now must learn to shoot with the left hand.

Living in the suburbs is different than living in a denser, mixed use environment and we will have to learn to live in this new way together and not by asking others to solve our problems. If we don’t we will have to pay for more police and more government. I know we don’t want to do that. Right?