Urban Jacksonville

credit: amayzun on Flickr

The other night I Krung Fu (which was awesome by the way, you have to come next month) I was talking to my friend Chad about graffiti poppin up over town and could not remember this bad ass graffiti artist I follow on Flickr.

Well I found him, his name is bernie burns. Tracking him down inspired me to share some other favorites, so I put them together in a gallery. Local, freights and just plain rad comprise the set. So here is Freights and Graffiti!

Brain Drain in Jacksonville via the Grid Sketch blog

http://gridsketch.blogspot.com/2010/05/brain-drain-in-jacksonville.html
I found this new blog via a comment left on Urban Jacksonville and it’s a pretty solid sophomore article. He talks about Jacksonville’s brain drain or what economists refer to as creative human capital leaving a vacuum in the arts and sciences. Here are some highlights, but do read it for yourself, it’s thought provoking. Unfortunately I agree 100% with the article and have said as much in the past.

Richard Florida calls these talented people the creative class and like many other urban theorists believes that retaining them requires an understanding of place making. These places foster creative thinking not just paychecks and allow for interaction with other creative types. The office spaces are set up to encourage the spontaneous formations or groups within the company. These great places are adjacent to amenities that refresh their minds and spirits and allow for interactions with new people; places like coffee-shop/bookstores, pocket parks, pubs. When you get artist’s and engineers together you get iPods. A spontaneous meeting of lawyers and architects can yield new ideas for city zoning. But these meeting of creatives don’t happen on a solo commute home to the suburbs. It happens over a glass of beer in a pub or eating a sandwich during lunch in the Hemming Plaza.

Recently City Council has taken the line of looking for ways to tighten it’s belt. The Mayor calls this a slogan for a bumper sticker, implying Council is only paying lip service to reducing government spending. While Ron Littlepage has an interesting take on this who knows how everything will shake out. One thing’s for sure, there will be lots of budget talk between now and late September when City Council votes on the issue.

What follows is a note I sent to city council and the local news media. It was inspired by Tony Allegretti’s message to council last week titled “Quality of Life at Stake”, hence my title. It’s not pro millage increase or anti-waste reduction, but it is pro-Jacksonville.

Dear Council members and local news media

After reading Tony Allegretti’s message I felt compelled to write and weigh in on this issue myself.

Our city is uniquely positioned to lead the Southeast region into the 20th century by embracing arts and culture. To get there we need retain our smart, artistic people and attract new, innovative thinkers to our city.

We can do this by increasing or maintaining (at a minimum) current levels of arts, culture and historic preservation funding. We should take a step back and look at the long view for our city. What do we want our city to be for ourselves and our children? Personally I would like a city that is seen as innovative, arts and culture forward and architecturally significant. A place where people want to move to, not move away from.

When I moved back to Jacksonville from Minneapolis in 2005 I was distraught to see our city had barely progressed culturally in my 3 year absence. In order to move the city forward I started the Urban Jacksonville blog to show people, through technology, not only what our city had to offer, but what it could be.

What did I focus on? The arts, culture and developing historic neighborhoods. I feel these three items are an important barometer to gauge the health and future of a city. All major metropolitan cities have a history of embracing and supporting the arts. Minneapolis is a vibrant city who focuses on their arts and culture. Because of this, they are a major talent draw in the Midwest region. Attracting the best artists, chefs, designers, architects and musicians from small (Madison, WI) and large (Chicago IL) cities in the Midwest.

Jacksonville would be wise to position itself as an arts and culture leader in the Southeast. Imagine attracting the most talented from Atlanta, Orlando and Tampa instead of losing our best and brightest to those cities on a weekly basis.

We have a chance not only with this budget decision, but in every decision we make to position ourselves as an innovative city. Vision and leadership require tough and sometimes unpopular decisions. Please consider the future of our City and not just the present when making your decisions over the coming weeks.

Thanks for your time,

Joey Marchy

Mayor Peyton on Urban Jacksonville Weekly

This Tuesday at 5:30 Mayor Peyton will be out guest on a special budget issue of Urban Jacksonville Weekly. We’ll discuss how potential cuts to balance the budget could affect the arts and historic preservation in the Urban Core. We’ll also be joined remotely by our political correspondent Abel Harding from JaxPoliticsOnline.com.

Please leave any questions you have for the Mayor regarding the how cuts might effect the arts and historic preservation in the Urban Core on this post, on Facebook or on Twitter with the #ujw hashtag.