What Makes a City Great?
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Recently, I was asked - if I were redesigning Indy, no holds barred, as a young professional, what would I want it to look like? What amenities would I want to have? Two things I’m never short on: ideas and opinions. So, here we go!
1. Mass transit - having interviewed many young professionals for my next book, this was the #1 thing they wanted, far and away. So, if I had an unlimited budget and no worries, I’d be designing a bullet train system that started in Chicago, South Bend, Ft. Wayne, Terre Haute, Richmond, Louisville, Cincy, Bloomington, and run each of them right into Indy. Union Station, baby! And one of my friends suggested we run the tracks thru all the medians of the major interstates, as the state already owns that land. That rocks, that would rock, that could have infinitely high impact on creation of economic development.
2. Funky coolness - I’d love to see more mom and pop businesses. I want off the wall funky businesses! I’d like a cool antique shop next to an apothecary that stocks rare products to a coffee shop with fair trade products, to a free range meat market, to a farmer’s market, to a restaurant with local ingredients, etc. Blah blah blah. The possibilities are endless, but we must train our Hoosier peeps how to run a business and give them the tools, resources and support to make their businesses flourish. One last point on this: the city and the state need to make it EASIER on the small business owners who are WBE/MBE eligible. I had one of my businesses certified as a WBE, but when it came time to renew, I basically had to start all over again with a mountain of paperwork. NOT user friendly, and NOT going to do!
3. Transparent government - When I email a chuckhole into the Mayor’s office, I’d like it fixed in 24-48 hours. Furthermore, if the Mayor’s office has a problem and is seeking solutions, I want to have the ability to know what those challenges are and offer solutions back to her or him. Ditto with the Secretary of State and the Governor’s office.
4. More business ownership support - I’d like to see more mentoring and networking among young professionals who have the guts/tenacity to run their own business. We have some fantastic general leadership programs like Lacy, Options, UW, etc., but there’s nothing specific for young business owners.
5. Ditto on #4 with training on how to perform on not for profit AND for profit boards. Where is the training for our next generation of young professionals into leaders of the city? I found some good training, but it wasn’t in Indy. I have to go to Chicago or NYC for it.
6. Outdoorability - In France, you can literally walk down a brick road during the evening, where a bunch of restaurants are connected in a row, check out the menus, and feast outdoors. We don’t really have this in Indy, but it could be easily possible. Why not shut down monument circle in the summer and have live performances by the symphony AND restaurants serving outside al fresco? We need a city to be more walkable…the ‘walkability’ or ‘outdoorability’ factor.
7. More apparent arts/music/culture - I loved the Opie exhibit outdoors. We need more public arty space - downtown, and in the niches of Indy - Fountain Square, Broad Ripple, Irvington, etc. Furthermore, why not take older spaces that we haven’t been using and convert them into third spaces in these neighborhoods for us to hang out and trade ideas in? Now, with the new Low Profit Liability Company (L3C) business model, many states that offer this model are salvaging great old spaces and converting them into third spaces for the community. Why not here? Furthermore, we do a fantastic job hi-lighting sports in the community, but what if one of the TV news networks reduced the sports segment once a week and instead dedicated that time to music, art, and other cultural items going on in the city?
8. Now that we have one of the best airports in the world, it’s time to grow up and be a hub city for one of the major airlines so we don’t have to fly to ATL, ORD or other hubs to visit fabulous places. We should be cranking on this.
That’s enough for now. I’ll leave you with the same question: what to you, makes a city great?
Posted on: Monday, March 8, 2010 at 10:28 am 
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