There have been several major public building projects in downtown Eugene recently: a new bus station, a new library, opened pedestrian streets, a new federal courthouse. Several are planned: a new city hall, a new police station ...

Let's take the new city hall. Since this isn't a dictatorship, it seems like a $30 million city hall isn't necessary to impress the masses, or guard civic leaders from them.

Instead, how about using that money to fund 500 community projects to the tune of $60,000 each? It cost that much to start the Tango Center, or the Center for Approrpiate Transport, or Saturday Market ... all these institutions cost very little to get going.

And many of them have lasted as long as a building ... creating a community economy is as substantial an investment as creating a building. Especially since buildings these days seem to have increasingly short lifespans.

I'm listening to Mozart's Don Giovanni on the radio ... I've posted this before: we see these performances today in a form completely unlike their original one. they were written for halls where people were meeting for lunch & cards & drinking, and so the writer was really struggling to get the audience's attention. If opera seems repetitive and drawn-out today, it's not because people's tastes have changed ... but because the performance context is so different.

Look at the popular revival of some of Shakespeare's original context, from London to Ashland, and you can see that in the right setting, these shows can be massively popular again.

So, imagine, today, an opera house in the 18th-century style. It doesn't need to particularly look 18th-century, but it needs to have balconies and siderooms and interesting twisting passages for all kinds of social activities, from cards to weight-lifting to sex. I think you wouldn't be able to keep people out of the place.

I'm guilty of starting a Tango Center that's somewhat out of its original context -- no drinking. "Either kids or drinks" is the choice we have in the US today. It seemed like an all-ages dancehall was needed more than a drinking-hole for dancing. But we've still created a place where you go to do something, not just sit and watch performers. That's what's missing from most performance space today.

Maybe the worst thing that can happen to a town is memory loss. Weak analysis, publicly published, is one thing, but when weak anaylsis becomes history, it must be answered.

Certainly, the problem is much more serious at a national and international level, especially today, when Americans are just starting to realize that the US government has abused their trust for decades, and is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world. But the small distortions that sneak into local history, while less important perhaps, are very similar in nature.

An example in today's Register-Guard:

July 17, 2005

Building Blocks Of A Renaissance: The seeds of downtown's rebirth were sowed 20 years ago
By Joe Mosley
The Register-Guard

Former Mayor Ruth Bascom was a city councilwoman and new mayoral candidate in 1992, when she used three props - a hard hat, a rented jackhammer and a block of concrete - to offer what now seems a prophetic suggestion for the future of downtown Eugene.

The pedestrian mall built in 1969 had been a complete failure, driving retailers away and draining vitality from the city's core. An abstract concrete fountain - which Bascom referred to as a "tank trap" - stood at Willamette Street and Broadway, downtown's heart.

The mall did not drive away retailers. It was built by retailers, using city urban redevlopment money, and by developers, using the same money to tear down beautiful old buildings and apartments. The retailers were driven away by the suburban shopping malls on the outside of town. The downtown mall was a direct, explicit answer to Valley River Center, the first major shopping center outside of the city core.

Pretty basic error for a story lead, in the city's major paper. The only way to counter such misunderstandings are to write back.

Ideally, an exhibit should have all the benefits of a website -- a museum exhibit has the advantage of reality ... more tangible demonstrations, deeper interactivity, human interaction, workshops, demonstrations etc. But it should also be a place where you can sit down and delve into the subject more deeply, take notes, bookmark and annotate ideas, save them, buy something that relates, etc.

The easiest way to do this is to cluster exhibits into issues & subjects, and have staff there to rent & sell items, orient research, make demonstrations, answer questions etc. And then to have computers there, with access to the web, that let you investigate further, make notes, comment, act, etc.

For centuries, it was at Art Museums that the best artists gathered to teach the best potential artists. So, for example, a Geology museum should be the place where new geologists are born. A historical museum should be where the best historians gather ... etc. Others can gather their too ... a historical museum should also be a place where engineers and artisans learn how to make things at least as well as their predecessors, for example.

Unfortunately this isn't the case. Let's find some reasons.

1. No economy -- if the best also could make a living at the museum, they would spend all their time there.

2. No community, no communication -- if the museum only works one way, to tell people what they should know, rather than to engage them in a conversation to improve the presentation, then people will go, and leave. They'll be back in a few years, at best.

3. No progress -- if a museum is changed, it should change using a very simple rule: keep what works, and fix what doesn't. It should not gut itself at once, in order to please a major donor, or it's new director, or the newest trend in museums.

4. No warmth -- somehow, even though museum workers tend to be very committed people, they manage rarely to be good at sparking enthusiasm in others. They are not activists, they are experts. But this doesn't serve the community, and it doesn't ultimately support them either. They must create a phsyical & social environment that invites people to join in an intimate understanding of the subject at hand. Itstead, one way or another, museums tend to present an intimidating presentation of established dogma.

5. Too commercial -- this is a new problem for Art museums, but an old one for, say, Science museums, which often had nuclear power exibits sponsored by General Electric. The community must come first, and the higher goals of a community, to empower and inspire individuals to do things for each other, to find their potential, to find independent and cooperative relationships with others, and to give their passion to something of their choosing.

When Eugene's population was only 3,000, downtown Eugene was a busier place than it is today. And Eugene's population is now 130,000. On a busy night, there may be 3,000 people downtown. Everyone else needs to come and see what's happening, and get away from the TV, the multiplex and the malls.

With 130,000 in a city, anything is possible. We started a Tango Center in downtown Eugene, Oregon. It works. Other odd things downtown: a lovely tea shop, two independent playhouses, dozens of unique concert venues, cafes, bars, clubs, and restaurants. There are a dozen galleries, two independent grocery stores, five independent bookstores, two independent music stores, etc.

But the place is still relatively empty. This is because of a number of looming buildings that used to house major department stores. Even if they were still running, the downtown wouldn't be very exciting. The department store district of Seattle is the least interesting part of the city. In contrast to this, we want downtown to truly become the heart of the city.

Even though the franchises are gone, most of the activity downtown is still based upon consumption of imported goods. The major exception is the Saturday Market/Farmer's market, where the people selling are required to also make what they sell. This is by far the most dense actvity in downtown Eugene.

This success indicates that new actvity downtown needs to revolve around small-scale production & sales of local goods. These can be combined with education -- drop in classes, public lectures & demonstrations, interactive learning centers, and appreticeship programs. Already, there is a small herbal apothecary downtown which takes this approach, and the Tango Center does too. So does the bicycle center (CAT), two textile shops and a jewelry/bead shop. Teaching & specializing works ... and it makes the town a more vital, self-reliant place.

In the Tango Center we'll be starting two new programs ... a Bistro/cooking school, and a shoe-making & costume center. A printmaking shop will let us promote downtown activities in a fully expressive manner, and a recording studio will be part of our international Tango Musician's network activities.

One bookstore downtown is considering offering bookbinding/restoration classes. We'd like to find ways of getting all the bookstores to stay open late, creating a late-night bookworm scene, like Powell's in Portland. One way to do this would be to have writer's workshops downtown. These could also be playwright workshops -- we have so many playhouses. And screenwriting, lyric-writing, poetry ... tying book sales to the creative act brings us back to the origin of bookstores. Combine them with hostels, so people can camp out with others who share their obsessions.

There is a reasonable base to create a non-profit film/video school & center, along the lines of DCTV in Manhattan. This would also have a film library for rent, arrange film festivals, show local work, and host the local Cable Television network. Films letting out can feed a number of late-night activities & shops with customers.

But people need to build things. Ceramics, metalwork, woodwork ... around specialties. The bike center (CAT) teaches metalwork, but it is a bike-building center, not a "metal shop". This gives it focus and purpose.

One purpose is "practical public art", which the Art Noveau movement advocated a centurry ago, resulting in works like Guimard's Metro stations in Paris. A shop could be dedicated to creating beautiful amenities throughout the city. It would be an easy thing to get people downtown with such purpose, all hours of the night.

If a hundred important projects had storefronts, then people could simply vote with their feet, and get involved, with the issue they feel is most pressing. This could lead a civic approach to resolving problems of inequality, poverty, healthcare, and the creation of meaningful work.

Speaking of which -- everyone wants to see a tram system in Eugene. There used to be one, and it shaped the town. Also, we'd like to see better bikeways. Both of these things usually delegated to city government, which begs for money (back) from the feds, so they can buy expensive trams. But it is possible for a community to make its own trams ... in fact Portland did this with some historic reconstructions still in use today. Imagine the economic consequences of the revival of that small-scale industry locally! We could restart the running of passenger trains all over the northwest. No more cramped cars, late Amtraks or old Greyhounds ...