Funny thing, progress. Sometimes, in the rush to build, expand and speed things up, we cancel out the benefits of what we had before.
So it was interesting to find that some of the more intriguing projects in this year’s 10/100/1000 Challenge involved reuse and restoration — proposals to give new life to vacant storefronts and discarded computers; to rediscover the pleasures of connecting with others over a book, a garden or even a pile of laundry; to reconsider the virtues of the oft-maligned bat. Even those projects on the cutting edge — ideas for new performing arts formats, or for nurturing the imagination of future inventors and entrepreneurs — depend on the old-fashioned but still indispensable act of getting together in a room with other living people, face to face.
10/100/1000 is the two-year-old joint project of Creative Loafing and Creative Tampa Bay, a non-profit organization (of which I’m a board member) that’s dedicated to building the creative economy. That term has perhaps lost some of its cachet since 2002, when urban studies guru Richard Florida made the then-startling (to some people) observation that cities might do better if they focused on attracting a diverse and cultured population rather than obsessing over who can build the biggest, baddest sports arena. That’s not to say cities have stopped such obsessing, but as anyone in Tampa Bay has seen in the last 10 years or so, the landscape has changed. And one reason our downtowns have come alive, our tolerance levels have (apparently) risen and our quality of life has improved has something to do with the kind of creativity and diversity that Richard Florida was talking about.
Flip through this issue and you’ll see some examples of the people helping to make change happen: the medical pathblazers at CAMLS, the true originals of ARTpool, the persistent retailers of Record Store Day, the locavore’s locavore at Boca Kitchen Bar & Market, the supporters of the Friendship Trail Bridge. Like the 10/100/1000 finalists, these are innovators who understand that progress is not only about pushing ahead, but about recognizing the value in resources we already have.
Many thanks to all who entered the 10/100/1000 Challenge this year. The judges — myself, Ken Cowart, Julia Gorzka Freeman, and Reuben Pressman of Swings Tampa Bay, winner of last year’s Challenge — had a tough time. The competition was strong; the proposals were solid; and all of our finalists were arguably worthy of the top prize. But CTB could give its $1,000 award to only one of the 10; turn to p. 12 to find out who that was.
Congrats to all of the applicants for taking the time to envision a better future for Tampa Bay.
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2012.