Echoes From a Dying City

Rochester on the Genesee was sometimes referred to as "Smugtown," because it seemed to be impervious to the calamities that were ruining the great cities of the "Rust Belt" after World War II.

Pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction.

The secret of Rochester's early successes was a simple one: It kept re-inventing itself.

From a canal town to the "Flour City," to the "Flower City" and finally onto becoming a great manufacturing and industrial city.

"Rochester-made means quality" was the city's proud boast during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This was accomplished by intelligent inventors, investors, developers and a competent City Council,  which Rochester seemed blessed with a surfeit of.

City government consisted of a strong city council-city manager, with a weak mayor, which was changed only in the 1980's to a strong mayor form of government.

Just before Rochester's precipitous decline. And, at that point, Rochester ceased to reinvent itself.

People probably imagined that this was just a temporary phase in Rochester's glorious history.

But as "White Flight" to the suburbs continued at breakneck speed (largely a result of the physical damage and racial tension inflicted on Rochester by the 1964 riots); as businesses and factories either went out of business or relocated elsewhere, not being replaced by new employers to hire the tens of thousands of newly unemployed workers; as the new "strong" mayors and city council seemed unable or unwilling to recognize this trend, residents realized that Rochester was in trouble.

We lacked intelligent leadership then and we still do.

And the "phase" has become a permanent condition.

Politicians treat us to hypocritical, "encouraging" platitudes about "The best is yet to be," without believing it themselves or doing anything to accomplish it.

This terminal state of entropy is what has enveloped Rochester.

It will be the subject of future blogs.

I must warn you, they will not be for the faint of heart.