Edwards Manor House

06/11/2026

Blight can’t be erased overnight.

But decline can be halted in an instant.

The moment you begin to maintain, you are fending off the forces of chaos and disorder. The moment you start getting incrementally better, you shift a trajectory. And trajectories dictate where you end up.

It may start with pulling weeds and picking up trash. It may lead to planting flowers and applying paint. It’s hard to say exactly where the process takes your town, but it is guaranteed to be somewhere better.

A community cannot improve itself and not experience a boost in self-esteem.

When people see that progress is possible, something changes. When they become proud of their surroundings, they stop distancing themselves from their town and start identifying with it.

You don’t need a master plan. You don’t need a grant. You don’t need permission.

You need a broom and enough people who refuse to accept decline.

Start there.

06/11/2026

06/10/2026

Contact me if you want to be part of our “weirdo” group. It’ll take all of us pulling together to make a difference in our community!

I want to talk to the weirdos for a minute.

The preservationists. The urbanists. The building huggers. The people who show up to council meetings and actually give a damn.

You are not the norm. Most people don’t know how to look at chaos and envision order. Most can’t view blight as opportunity. Most have never lived in a place that actually improved in their lifetime.

And we can’t keep hoping they’ll suddenly become civic-minded. We can’t keep trying to convince people to show up and care.

We have to start doing the relentless work of making things better.

Not hoping for change. Making it.

Because here’s what happens when you do: The potential that only you weirdos could imagine starts to seem realistic to everyone else. Progress stops feeling impossible and starts feeling expected.

And when things really get good? People will want to associate themselves with your town to boost their own self-image.

That’s when you know you’ve won.

Keep going, weirdos. Your town needs you, we all need you!

06/08/2026

“Why would you move here?”

“Why would you want to start a business here?”

“Why would you renovate a building here?”

I hear these questions in a lot of places I visit. People asking them of their own community, about their own home.

That’s not pessimism or realism either, but low civic self-esteem and it’s plaguing too many of our places.

The problem with low civic self-esteem is that it can’t be fixed with the typical approach. There are no technical solutions that lift self-esteem. All the grant money in the world can’t make a community like itself. Even the best plans can’t force a town to believe in itself.

Cities don’t behave like machines. They behave like people. Because cities are made of people, not parts.

06/06/2026

Even though we don’t have this type of official signage at any of the entrances to PK, the gist of the statement is still relevant.