In It Together For the Long Haul
We are all unique people. But too much thinking of ourselves as unique can make us flippantly refuse to learn from others because we think we are so different. A lot of things are “best practices” that can be adopted by anybody. So too with cities. All cities are unique, but there’s a lot we can learn from other places. Falling prey to too much of a belief in “Indianapolis exceptionalism” can blind us to reality.
But there are things that are legitimately different about Indianapolis which set it apart from other cities in important ways. One of the biggest is the way that we’ve been able to sustain focus and execution on civic initiatives over the long term through bi-partisan community consensus and commitment.
Think first about the civic initiative for which Indianapolis is most famous: sports. The origins of this probably go back to the very early 1980s or late 1970s. Here it is 2020–40 years later — and Indy is still at it and still at the top as a place to host events.
That didn’t just happen. It took multiple generations of civic leaders to make it happen. It’s especially notable that during the last couple of decades the city of Indianapolis went from a Republican mayor to a Democratic mayor, to another Republican mayor, then back to a Democratic mayor. Our sports industry kept motoring along through all of these transitions, not just between different mayoral administrations but between political parties. In most other cities, a civic initiative like sports would have been put aside or radically reshaped even with a new mayor from the same party.
A similar thing happened with the Central Indiana Transit Initiative. It was developed under a Republican administration but voted on and implemented under a Democratic one with no changes. I have never heard of anything like this anywhere else.
A more common scenario played out in the New York City area when the various governments in the region agreed on a plan to build two more critically-needed rail tunnels under the Hudson River. When new New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was elected, he pulled the plug on the project even though construction had already started. Today, New York is still trying to figure out how to build new tunnels. There’s only a single pair of existing railroad tunnels that are a hundred years old and badly need to be closed for repairs after being flooded during Hurricane Sandy.
In Indy, we’ve developed a very collaborative approach in which a broad set of civic actors work to achieve consensus on major undertakings. This sometimes make Indy slower to act than other places, but when we do, we almost always succeed. And we sustain that success over time.
Every community needs to be able to continue changing and evolving into the future. We are no exception. But we need to make sure that as we move forward we don’t inadvertently spoil some of the magic like this that does really set our region apart from most others.
