The title may not be accurate but energy is developing where I live, but then will things move? One of he major issues in CT is it’s relationship to up and coming brain power. Issue: the kids are leaving and may not come back. It’s pretty simple. High school graduates want to attend colleges outside the state. They will most likely move on for degrees in areas that have yet to develop or that will mature in some years, such as information tech and new sciences, and CT wont have opportunities for them to come back to to make a living.
Place is complicated. I’ve seen neighborhoods diminish for lack of opportunity. To question myself, it may be that people like me should have been more proactive about our places of origin. Where I grew up, the streets were loud with kids playing ball in the streets, we knew where not to go and who to watch, and we knew to whom those sneakers belonged (you know, the ones hanging from the power wires). Now, the old neighborhood bears little resemblance to what I’d known. For me, life did not move me back into my father’s home or into the neighborhood. I see the same thing coming in CT: when people leave, they take an energy with them. Those who stay have a tougher time innovating space because of human distribution. They don’t know the disposition of the dying neighborhoods.
Simsbury is in a position to innovate now. Will it?
My two sisters and I remained in CT until the eldest moved to FL after retirement. Their five children are in: D.C., Spain (navy), Philly, Seattle, and Sarasota. After college they never returned to CT because of the lack of job opportunity and the extremely high cost of living. The only immigration into CT these days is for welfare purposes; the retirees are leaving in droves as well to find more affordable ways of surviving. The entire face of CT is changing as folks pull up roots and bail out.
Yes, I believe that we should try to save the world; but our own cities and states are being neglected in the pursuit of the big picture. The old “forest for the trees” syndrome.