Best Practices
Sensible Status Seeking

Summary: In Design for Ecological Democracy, Randolph T. Hester argues for a deeper appreciation of individual contribution to regional development. In this case study, he shows how Astoria, Ore., recognized the value of its history as a fishing town, rather than feeling ashamed of it, and are developing a tourist location with character and validity.

by Randolph T. Hester
Reprinted from Design from Ecological Democracy

Many communities suffer from inferiority complexes. They compensate by being something they are not. Misguided status seekers lose their collective identity and increase wasteful public consumption of scarce resources but never achieve the prestige they desire.

For years, Astoria, Ore., a port at the mouth of the Columbia River, compared itself unfavorably to Seaside, a charming oceanfront resort nearby. Astoria residents felt ashamed of their blue-collar history of fish-processing plants, shipping, and port activities and wished to become a tourist destination like Seaside. Susceptible to planners who preyed on the community’s poor self-image, city leaders approved a plan to bulldoze much of the downtown and port and replace them with a highway, parking, and oversized resort projects.

Waterfront businesses, the town’s considerable history, and fine historic buildings were scheduled to be razed, and a placeless resort—not at all like charming Seaside, without any relationship to Astoria, and undistinguished from hundreds of other chain hotel complexes all over the world—was scheduled to be built. Worse, the waterfront would be severed from downtown and accessible only by car, creating segregated tourist enclaves.

Some years later, Astoria leaders had second thoughts and, with the help of the Oregon Downtown Development Association, reversed their course. Their alternative reinvestment strategy embraced the working port as both primary industry and attraction for visitors. Public investment is stabilizing and, in some cases, expanding ports businesses. Abandoned port buildings are being repaired for a wide variety of new uses, and pedestrian improvements (including sidewalks, flowers, and street furnishings) encourage people to walk from downtown to the waterfront.

In stark contrast to the highway proposal, this action has helped reconnect the port and Main Street businesses and has stimulated economic activity in both. Local people have rediscovered the special pleasures of their won town. Visitors come not for staged tourist experiences but rather for t he working waterfront that was once a source of local embarrassment. Yes. The fish processing is of major interest to tourists. It is real work and authentic entertainment; it allows the city to be what it is.

Tourists and local sightseers enjoy the port activity from “people places”—specially designed viewing aediculae, which are small, raised, partly enclosed towers. Located not to interfere with the working waterfront, they are close enough so that visitors feel that they are a part of the fish-processing, cargo-loading, and tug-boating activities that usually are hidden from everyone but the laborers. Within walking distance through the waterfront is a one-of-a-kind maritime museum that reinforces the ambiance of the working port. By reversing its ill-placed status seeking, Astoria is revitalizing its economy through an appropriate strategy that is grounded in its traditional, if modest, identity. Its new prestige is a model of place-appropriate economic development.

Copyright 2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Reprinted with permission.