Some Things I Don’t Like
I love my city. However, some things vex me about it.
What don’t I like about Gary?
I hate how railroads divide neighborhoods. I don’t mean physically, but politically. Back when railroad right-of-ways got used to separate ethnic groups and economic classes, certain districts suffered from a lack of attention. It’s certainly not a problem that’s unique to Gary. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t say I like it.
Railroads get used as district boundaries to this day. Unfortunately, past practice has seen our districts arbitrarily scratched out with no thought given to how the railroads would affect who gets represented by whom and when.
Further exacerbating things for me is how the highways got planned and built. As with the railroads, these paths contributed to further social division. Additionally, highways have taken up prime real estate, preventing the city from growing in critical areas, specifically Midtown and Glen Park.
There’s nothing that we can do about the past. Engineers simply laid the town out in a north-south grid pattern when Gary got plotted. Railroads, rivers, and other natural obstructions be damned. While this might simplify getting around for our elderly citizens, there was no thought to integrating the city with existing nature.
Disregarding Ridge Road, Miller, and Aetna, few homes in the city sit on a hill. Few inspiring roads curl around natural habitats or shaded dunes. Instead, rivers and creeks are hidden under streets or got filled in. Dunes were excavated and used as filler to flatten land in areas not meant to be flattened. What’s left is a featureless vista with uninteresting subdivisions.
Next, I hate how the seat of our municipality sits in the shadow of Gary Works. Back when the mill was a significant parochial entity, this was fine. Today, the optics is a sad reminder of our dependence on this one industry and how we don’t receive any reciprocal benefit from its existence. I can’t stand how our fortunes seem to rise and fall with it, to our detriment most of the time.
I don’t like how our politicians try to “bring back downtown.” I’ve stated before in other places that our downtown district is dead and has been dead for decades. Considering the permanently changed socioeconomic demographics, I see no functional benefit in resurfacing it as Gary’s future economic center.
I have been against building low-income housing downtown. This is because politicians have indicated a desire to “bring it back” to its former glory. That’s silly, but if it’s going to return, it can not be loaded with low-income housing. Moreover, existing Fortune 500 companies will never headquarter new offices here if Section 8 communities surround them.
However, as a proponent of creating a brand new downtown district elsewhere, I am for more low-income dwellings in the historic downtown district. Then, improve public transportation, erect some restaurants, gas stations, and doctor’s offices, and move on.
Again, the historic downtown area sits in the shadow of Gary Works. The photics depict how the city crumbled under the watchful eye of the steel industry. This industry not only allowed this to occur but was responsible for it as well.
Gary Works and Pittsburg systematically blocked nearly all past attempts to revitalize downtown. They wanted to be the sole entity standing and wanted nothing that they deemed harmful to their bottom line. That meant sacrificing Gary and ignoring its needs. The quicker we can move away from depending on this shitty company, the better off we all will be.
I always say we need to look at Gary as a blank canvas. We are unique in the Region, for we can remake Gary in our image from the ground up. No other city can do this. Disregarding Gary Works, nothing prevents us from ripping up the playbook and going Willie Beaman (the one from the film Any Given Sunday, not the real Beaman).