Vince DeSantis
Vincent DeSantis, the author of “Toward Civic Integrity: Re-establishing the Micropolis,” published eleven years ago, works in the spirit of Holly Whyte: quietly, carefully and with great acuity. Vince was my host, at his B&B, on my trips to Gloversville, New York. He is a Gloversville native, an attorney, served as the City Court judge in town for years and is now the at-large member of the city’s Common Council. He’s the moving force behind many of the good things happening in Gloversville. What I didn’t know, I suppose because of his reserve and modesty, is that he wrote a book that was years ahead of its time and that even today should be essential reading for everyone involved in placemaking. Back in 2007, Vince was conclusively making the case for small cities and how to revitalize them.
The book is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Civic-Integrity-Re-establishing-Micropolis/dp/1933994258/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529418592&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3AVincent+DeSantis or here:
http://shoptbmbooks.com/toward_civic_integrity.html.
A Ted Talk by Vince on the topic can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1qEpNWJGSk.
“Towards Civic Integrity” describes why the small city is a rewarding place to live and how it provides a fruitful medium for supporting an enriched civil society, using Gloversville as an example. Vince discusses how the economies of small cities work – how they add value to raw materials by making things and selling them to the world beyond, thereby creating wealth. He describes the social bonds that are created among citizens of small cities – and how small cities promote civic engagement and simple neighborliness. The book identifies the problems created for localities by capital markets and large corporations driven by lowering the prices for manufacture – and both their utility and their indifference to localities and human impacts. His vision for the future for Gloversville, articulated a decade before I came to similar conclusions after a couple of visits, was of a relatively low-cost, high quality of life for creative people (in the broadest sense) who engage in small-scale manufacture of high quality goods and delivery of unique services. This is economy made possible by the internet and efficient modern delivery systems – and replaces the manufacturing economy.
Downtown St. Louis has made as little progress in urban revitalization as any big city downtown I have been visiting over the last twenty-five years, despite a number of high-profile projects, like Union Station, and the continued success in a number of other St. Louis neighborhoods, like the Central West End, Grand Center, Lafayette Park and Laclede’s Landing. It is significant that the Downtown does come alive, to a certain extent, on the nights of Cardinals games. But when there is no game, both at night and during the day, the streets and sidewalks of the Downtown are dead.
