The Towns We Love Are Real Characters
For some reason fall is the nostalgia season. Fall foliage has much to do with it. So this week I post the following, written in 2000, in simpler times.
They’ve got that thing, they’ve got that thing, that makes most scattershot places look like a bad golf swing… Some towns have a certain seductive charm that others, well, just plain don’t. Whatever it is that makes Chatham the “it” town on Cape Cod, or Stockbridge the heart throb of the Berkshires, or Nantucket Town a near-mythic seaport, that certain charm may hinge on a simple matter of looks. These places are easy on the eyes, and then some. That visual truth, which transcends all seasons and all weather, is what makes killer community character. If the towns people love were delectable French recipes, community character would be their secret je ne sais quoi ingredient, the secret of their success. Of course, the communities we love are not mere confections, and their visual character is not simply frosting on the cake. None were designed by planners, and marketed to Trumans under the Celebration franchise. They are the real thing.
The standouts remind us that not all places are created equal: appearances matter, in places as in people. Some places turn heads, and make cameras lose control. There are idols, and there are icons. Travel brochures and coffee table books, the kind sold in airports, fess up to this all the time; and in their own word-free way, post cards and regional calendars do the same. They know what it is when they see it, even if they don’t much explain it in celebrity places any more than paparazzi gone by could explain the equivalent elusive allure in celebrity people from “eternal Roman” Sophia Loren to “it girl” Clara Bow. The “It” place has “There”.
Even official documents struggle with the concept. As stated in their comprehensive plans of one sort or another, many communities in New England and beyond, and not just the Nantucketers among us, seek to maintain, preserve, or even “enhance” that thing, traditional community character. Even for towns of more average looks, this goal seems commendable and predictable. After all, no plan would exactly go out on a limb and call for a complete makeover, scuttling the town and starting anew, given the staggering short-term economic burden of demolition and reconstruction. Absent a flood or an earthquake or a hurricane, ain’t gonna happen, any more than would whole-body reconstructive surgery for a dissatisfied narcissist.
Second only to the quality of the school system and demographics, we take the local measure of the quality of life by the look and feel of our community as a physical place, a habitat. The preferred unit of measurement of community values is dollars, and property values afford a rough index. But very rough, given that the three factors they say most matter in real estate value are location, and living close to a major city may weigh as heavily as living in a good-looking community. Some may prefer living in towns with little commercial development and driving elsewhere rather than living in the thick of it; others may make the opposite tradeoff and live in communities with substantial commercial development, and though these places might add up to roughly the same dollar value, they will hardly look alike, the way Sherborn looks like Lincoln, or Framingham something like Dedham here in Massachusetts. Still, in both kinds of places, aggregate property value will reflect community character almost as much as location. And in both kinds of places New Englanders will be serious about preserving or maintaining or enhancing this thing called community character, or as in the Gertrude Stein line, the “there” there.
One way to get beneath the skin of a place, is to plumb the content of its character, to paraphrase Martin Luther King. There was a time not that long ago when most thoughtful people unashamedly believed in certain virtues, and earnestly believed in heroes, male and female, as exemplars of these virtues. This was Character in human terms. Now of course heroism is under assault; “virtue” is “virtual”, and, ironically, character may now be more often applied to communities than to people. But a place with “character” may have personality, indeed, character in the sense of “being a character”, fascinating, perhaps eccentric, but not necessarily heroic. We know good community character when we see it, and yet if we try to be specific, it remains elusive.
But we need to try. The more we can say, the more we can save. The more precisely we can define character, the more tightly we can defend it legally. Perhaps that definition will prove less elusive if we take this kind of metaphorical thinking to the level of looking at specific traits. Most obviously, like a person, a community may be attractive or ugly, charming or scary, tidy or shabby. Not particularly helpful yet. But beyond the superficial, places like people may sometimes display traits that might suggest gravitas or integrity, or simply be flawed in an interesting way that gives them personality. A community may range from good-natured to ill mannered, friendly to forbidding, confident to timid, honest to phony, charismatic to boring, down to earth to pretentious, low-key to loud, subtle to blunt, playful to serious, quirky to predictable, alluring to obvious, consistent to uneven, serene to uneasy, organized to chaotic. Each of these traits for me conjures up an image of outward appearance or pattern or detail, varying from a showplace dressed for success to a dive down on its luck. Some may find charm in the troubled town, but most people would want to step in and do something, just as for an addict in need of a little rehab.
For all around us are those less fortunate communities whose distance from their favored neighbors is more psychological than real, which seem to have negative karma and to suffer from intractable grittiness, and whose properties are bargain basement values. None of these places began life ugly. Many once had something going, that certain thing. Then circumstances changed, perhaps gradually, perhaps dramatically, but traumatically. A mill shuts down; zoning cannot cope with demand for cheap housing; the cultural elite flees; stores are boarded up; the park becomes covered with more cut glass than cut grass. The quaint term for this used to be “blight”. Such a place has gone from friendly to forbidding, from serene to uneasy, from organized to chaotic. Once a community that has been beloved and beautiful loses its looks, a good Main Street is hard to find. In retrospect this is a tragedy, because with proper care, a community, like a person, can look good at any age. In theory, there can always be a “there” there.
We cannot afford not to believe this. Our communities are a huge investment of capital, social and economic. The trouble is, we have not always been good investors. Our communities are like mutual funds performing indifferently to the decisions made by a committee of advisors, most of whom know nothing about stocks, acting without much coordination or urgency, slow to react to market news. Just as no one can seriously believe that an investment can take care of itself to grow in value, let alone avoid loss, we must stop believing that the good things in this world simply survive by default. They must be safeguarded, for eternal vigilance is the price of community as much as liberty, and no victory is permanent. Without that management, gradually the portfolio of place can be eroded, the social capital frittered away, and community character auctioned off.
What makes a preserved Concord or Ipswich, and a restored Lowell or North Adams special, are such character traits as a vibrant, inviting, and symbolic town center, a richly textured main street to stroll, along the way a rich mix of wares for admiring (architecture and perhaps public art) and acquiring (crafts plus delicacies), a balance of nature and structure, the random punctuation of shrines of meaning (historical, cultural, secular or religious), a menu of inviting byways offering the freedom to roam, the promise of vistas to the great beyond, and ideally an unusual setting near water or mountains. Between a well-loved town center and pristine landscapes to explore on the periphery lie quiet or special neighborhoods to live in. No one place is a perfect 10; places are human, after all.
Sometimes, like invisible chemistry, the meaning beneath the surface adds to the seductiveness. A landmark oak that has survived three centuries is more pithy than a puny Schwedler maple planted in the fifties. A church designed by Bulfinch two centuries ago carries more gravitas than a clone designed seventy years ago. A common where Civil War volunteers mustered is meatier than a park with playground equipment installed in the seventies. A local independent bookstore is more venerable than a local franchisee of a national chain. A granite rock that Wampanoags once used to grind corn is more poignant than a recently excavated boulder. A row of clapboarded millworkers’ houses is more elegant and rooted in its way than a new cluster subdivision. A familiar vista uplifts the spirit; a parking lot in its place is convenient and nothing more.
If there is a critical mass of traits, and if the gestures speak deeply and well, chances are it is love at first sight. And if we want this love affair to last, there are certain things that had best not be left unsaid.
© 2023 Thomas M. Paine
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