Out of the hospital, up on the top floor but realizing that the 8th floor down the hill is lower than the 8th floor up the hill. It's all about perspective?
Looking back on my hospital room, and now without the Oxygen tanks pumping into my lungs, I feel even stronger now, more at peace, ready to take on new challenges but with a different spirit for the 'fight'.
What does 'redevelopment' mean to you? Is it altering a decaying concrete structure into a living piece of green art infrastructure, an elevated park, a high-line, that few people have seen for over 15 years because of mis-management, corruption and poor governance by the politicians who proclaim to 'care' but instead line their own pockets with beggar-dollars?
The City of Pontiac has had a long history of incompetent and self-serving leadership. The recent election voted out all 7 city council members, and replaced each and every one of them with new people. Change is in the air, but for change to be lasting and real, to serve the people of this city, it must be structural and for the greater-good.
But what is greater good? What is redevelopment?
You cannot fix a problem with the same mind that created it. Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
These statements underline the need for 'outside input,' for a willingness to seek out the best and brightest people and ideas from outside a place which is looking to evolve. And evolve is a must to leap frog the decay we are facing. This is a global world.
If you look at the world today, and I have, you may find, as I have that 5 countries lead the way in advanced society, technologies, working with nature instead of against it, respect for human life... it may be surprising but Costa Rica (environmentalism, education, green infrastructure), South Korea (education, advanced technologies, industry and skilled employment), Isreal (high tech, health care, agricultural advances), Norway (energy, mobility, science and research), Iceland (environmentalism, finance, governance).
If you want to see the future, these countries are already in the future. If you want to underline the future - China, UAE are worth seeing too.
I have been to all of these places in the last 7 years, some of them twice, with the exception of Norway (soon). It's not time travel but it might as well be. If you haven't been outside the USA, and you still believe the myth that you live in the greatest country in the world, I'm sorry. We cannot debate, nor should we. If you are getting all your information from the internet, I'm sorry too.
Change your perspective, change your mind.
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