Toellner Tells it

What were people thinking?

I'm usually an optimist.  But my glass is less than half full this morning. After the November election I was optimistic that the citizens of Kansas City were tired of the status quo and were going to vote to change it.  Get fresh blood into office.  Make a change.

Yesterday, the voters didn't step up to the plate...and many of our "status quo" candidates advanced to the next round. 

I can't begin to understand why some people vote the way they do. How several thousand people can vote for a candidate who's #1 qualification is "I'm an architect" and has yet to bring forth a single idea of what he'd do to improved the city, over two candidates who work their butts off in their communities, have stances on energy savings, improving the cities, neighborhood programs, etc, is beyond me. 

And yet they did. And not just in one district.

This has opened up a new research opportunity for me...I'm going to figure out how people choose who to vote for.  I did research on a lot of candidates. I chose who to support carefully.  Today, almost everyone I voted for sits at home pondering their next steps after not advancing to the general election.  Certainly a few of my candidates made it through...but fewer than I would have thought.  Am I wrong on what it takes to improve KC?  Or are all the other people making decisions differently.

I'm going to try and find out.

Further evidence that no one in charge in KC gets it

There always seems to be a reminder that KCMO Officials have no idea what is going on around them.  The world is changing...and city officials seem completely oblivious.

Dan at Gone Mild was one of the first to note that the city has closed down several polling places before one of the most competitive mayoral elections in city history.  And sadly, the Jackson County Election Board couldn't even get their website updated so people could get accurate information about where to vote Tomorrow.

Meanwhile, in a report in today's Kansas City Star, officials are expected only about 50,000 voters to go to the polls tomorrow (and the majority of them are going to be old people).  This prediction comes only 2 months after voters turned out en masse for the November election.  Sure, there were several major state-wide issues on the ballot, but I think people in public positions have missed a societal trend. 

In my work, we study a lot about generational trends.  Generation Y -- basically people who are roughly 15-28 years of age, are one of the largest generations of people in history -- and, as a group, are already proving themselves to be INCREDIBLY politically active. These are the people who supported Light Rail in the November election.  These are the people who are writing blogs about local politics like Tony's KC, Dan's Gone Mild and BlogKC.  These are the people who go to Tony's KC and make it one of the most popular local blogs in the city.  These are the people who will likely make Mark Forsythe, a younger candidate who has been very grass-roots in his campaign that included a very active online platform, one of the finalists in the 4th District City Council.

I may be wrong...but I think there will probably be nearly double the turnout at the polls tomorrow than "experts" expect.  And many of them will be younger voters. I think the lack of updated their website and lack of understanding that not everyone in the world is a Baby Boomer is limiting this city's progress.

Young people, please prove me right and the old-school KC People wrong...because I strongly think they are.

Why New Orleans will Rebuild

My wife and I just got back from a long weekend in New Orleans.  We took in some of the Mardi Gras frestivities in really the first year back following Hurricane Katrina.  We took a tour of the areas ravaged by the hurricane...I'll share some of that later in the week.

Today is about why New Orleans will come back. After seeing what we saw, and hearing the stories about the hundreds of thousands of people who were displaced from their homes, I can say that there may only be two cities in the United States that could overcome what they endured...and New Orleans is one of them

If people were forced out of Kansas City for several months -- I don't know that they would ever come back.  There is little that distinguishes Kansas City -- and its culture, from other midwestern cities like Omaha, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, Wichita, or St. Louis. If KC suffered this type of devastation, it would never get back to even close to normal.

But New Orleans is unique...its own culture.  It has its own food, its own music (Zydaco, Jazz, Cajun), its own accent, and its own architecture.  Its people are different...with their own style. And New Orleans is unlike any other place on the planet.  Therefore, the people will bring it back...they developed that culture and want it back.  And thus it will come back.

If anyone reads "Why New Orleans Matters" by Tom Piazza, they'll get these insights and more. But if you visit in person, you'll feel it.  Even as a shell of its former self, you can feel it...and that's cool.

But, if you can't get there in person (you should, if you can swing it), read the book...and you'll get a feel and an appreciation for something that is as unique as New Orleans.

More to come about the trip and what I learned...

Why have we learned so little since the 1970s

Even though I grew up in the 70s, as I have gotten older I have found that the 60s and 70s were about the worst decades ever in terms of crappy development in urban areas.  During that time period, tons of great old buildings were torn down to make room for surface parking lots and many empty lots in beautiful historic neighborhoods were used to build crappy 1970s-style duplexes that completely don't fit into the neighborhoods they're in.

I keep thinking we have learned something about urban development in that amount of time...but apparently not so much.  Late last week someone started breaking ground on a new 1970s-style duplex that will sit on a previously vacant lot in the middle of an historic boulevard.  So, in the middle of a whole bunch of 1920s beautiful art-deco buildings, a brand new, 1970s-style duplex is going to get plopped down in the middle of it. 

I really had thought that we had learned enough about building new homes in old neighborhoods that there would be some type of requirement to at least attempt to make new construction fit in to old neighborhoods.  Unfortunately, that doesn't seem the case.  So while one block down, two apartment buildings are required to spend millions in refacing their buildings to be sure they maintain their historical facing on this historical boulevard, this new ugly duplex is going to go in. 

It doesn't make sense...and once again the city has failed to maintain the integrity of its older neighborhoods.  You'd have thought we'd learned....