The reason this comes up is that we seem to be losing proper nesting places, i.e., a full interactive town where people who know each other can live together, work together, play together and just generally have shared experiences. Looking at towns today we find them made up of bedroom communities with scattered shopping centers. Towns where everyone travels. The residents drive to another town to work; the stores are owned by out-of-town owners; the customers come from a large geographical area. The city management, including the police and firemen, live elsewhere. This does not build a town with roots; where local businessmen know their customers because they see them at local restaurants, at church, at school functions and, horrors! even at city council meetings. Where the misbehaving child remembers that the policemen know their parents and it would be a substantial embarrassment to get caught doing something wrong.
When I first started driving, I made a "second gear stop" at a stop sign before making a right turn and my father knew about it before I got home that afternoon with my first ticket in hand. I did not do that again.
With this nomadic life, how are we to develop a town where people really care about it? Today city management who live elsewhere encourage big box development or solicit national chains whose owners live elsewhere. Shopping center developers, who also live elsewhere, only want more national chain stores for tenants. How can local people hope to start a business and become a respected "Mom and Pop" business anymore?
This is not just here, it is across the country. The largest national retailer is headquartered in Arkansas and the second largest in Atlanta, Georgia. When Long Beach is absolutely desperate for money, it seems questionable to take public money (redevelopment money) diverted from schools and safety services and use it to build a new container terminal to be owned by the Chinese where any profits will go back to China.
While we can not, and do not, want to turn the clock back, we also should not abandon the hometown values of personal responsibility and of helping our neighbors and local business community be successful in our town. They are the ones who provide the entry level jobs that will help our young people learn how to work, just as our schools provide the building blocks for a lifetime of learning.
All this happens when people care about the town they live in and the parents instill their values in their children.