The New Norfolk?

Let's not ask who we are, Norfolk. Let's ask what we want to be in 10 years or even a 100 years.

We know who we are but think we're something else and no amount of dollars and no diabolical marketing machine will ever change that. Ever. 

Norfolk is a Navy town.

Norfolk's economy is based on federal dollars, from the school system, public housing and section-8 rental assistance to housing, jobs and retail generated by government dollars. 

Norfolk is a city for rent. Of the 85, 247 housing units in the city that are occupied, more than half are rentals.

Norfolk is a town with an ailing school system. I didn't say broken; I said ailing.

Norfolk is diverse. It's population of 246, 139 is 49.3 percent white and 42.8 percent black. Yet Norfolk's issues are not black and white; they are gray. 

Norfolk is run by moderate Democrats and Left of Center Democrats. It is also run by a handful of affluent voters.

Norfolk's per capita income is $24.631 and 18.2 percent of the population lives below the poverty level.

Norfolk isn't riven by racial conflict.

Norfolk is riven by not so subtle economic inequalities.

Norfolk isn't just downtown, Ghent and Larchmont, Old Dominion University and the West side. It is also Ocean View, Tidewater Drive, Ballentine Boulevard, Military Highway, Virginia Beach Boulevard and Norfolk State University.

Norfolk is habitually copying and pasting ideas and concepts from other cities, which are propelled and perpetuated by consultants.

We copied Waterside from Baltimore and pasted it on the waterfront.

We are copying and pasting and erasing and copying and pasting again and again.

What is Waterside Live!, Cordish Companies remake of Waterside? It is nothing more than a copy of another copy in another town. (How innovative: we change the name from Waterside Festival Marketplace to Waterside Live! A rose is still a rose by any other name. In this case, a dog is still a dog by any other name.)

We are trying to copy the cool factor from cities like Portland and Austin and paste it on the streets and storefronts of downtown Norfolk.

If we keep copying and pasting, we will be a pastiche of other cities. We will be a parody of ourselves.

We are so creative that our creative class copies the ideas of the creative class of other cities. 

Norfolk is obsessed with promulgating and promoting a “youth” culture.

But we have a problem Norfolk.

The unemployment rate among the young, our junior citizens, is high. The rate, as estimated by the Census Bureau, for the 20 to 24 set is 17.6 percent. For the 25 to 44 range, the rate is 10.2 percent. In July, the overall unemployment rate for Norfolk was 7.1 percent.

In other words, the young may not descend upon Norfolk because the jobs are not in Norfolk. They may be in Chesapeake or Virginia Beach.

In other words, Norfolk's economy is controlled by a bunch of old Baby Boomers who have their jobs, their pensions and their investments. And they vote.

This is very simple: get jobs and you get the people.

And the people make a town.

People create the cool factor. The cool factor doesn't create the people.

Maybe we're just not cool. So be it. Accept who we are instead of who we think we are. 

Note: Numbers cited in this essay are extracted from the Census Bureau's American Fact Finder and American Community Survey.