Rust Belt shows inaction’s result

Notions flawed but popular cling like moss in the cavernous quiet of Waynesboro’s core. Some town sages, so-called, and others from whom little is expected and less is gained contend that downtown revitalization is unnecessary, a thing sought by a vocal minority in a place where people are mostly satisfied with the current state of affairs. Still others suggest a clash of ideologies, what some call progressivism versus conservatism. We suggest the dichotomy is false.
Cities and the businesses that fuel economies concede inertness at their own peril. The North’s Rust Belt offers a precise look at the effects of such thinking. Communities throughout that region waded through decades of industrial collapse awaiting the return of steel in its former role of savior while turning blind eyes and deaf ears to the economy’s shift. Many of those towns now are locked in what urban policy wonk David Rusk has described as a state of irreversible decline.
That transformation naturally has coincided with an economic rapture – young people have vanished from northern city streets and reappeared in the South, a place left behind during the 1950s industrial boom but reborn during the technological revolution. The graying of Waynesboro’s population and some forces compelling it mirror the northern metamorphosis. The city lives in DuPont’s shadow as manufacturing recedes from its former role as economic driver and young adults leave town in a steady flow on the verge of turning to gusher.
If the latter happens, as Virginia Employment Commission statistics project that it will, what becomes of Waynesboro as now we know it? Gaze northward to New Castle, Pa., for a possible answer. Like Waynesboro, New Castle once was an industrial hub surrounded by bucolic countryside. The city’s vibrant economy slipped with the fall of manufacturing and today stands in tatters. More than 20 percent of New Castle’s 24,411 people are 65 or older. Vacant stores overlook barren downtown streets. Crime has crept in where jobs and opportunity have departed.
Waynesboro offers amenities that New Castle does not. The River City boasts proximity to scenic driving routes through the Blue Ridge Mountains, picturesque national parks, historic gems such as Lexington and Charlottesville, the Appalachian Trail and more. But the city cannot subsist in perpetuity on the allure of its potential.
Progress, a term feared by some, is needed. It will not take place without the concerted effort of city leaders. This will require more than the preferred course of some to limit government’s role to keeping taxes and spending level. Those aims are laudable and necessary but insufficient given the city’s demographic movement.
City council candidate Chris Graham, whose politics are decidedly different from our own, won this newspaper’s endorsement last spring primarily because of his plans to pull high-tech industry into Waynesboro. Fulfilling that call in conjunction with downtown revitalization initiatives could ensure that this city retains its present charm while growing its economy and tax base – without raising a tax rate that is among the state’s lowest.
Absent action along those lines, opportunities sleep in a city district that seldom wakes. And visions of New Castle loom.