Terrence “TAT” Taylor, radio personality, Hot 105.5 FM; family support coordinator, Decatur School District 61; and civic leader, Decatur

John Groh, president and CEO, Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, Rockford

Sara McGibany, executive director, Alton Main Street, Alton

Molly Parker, general-assignment and investigative projects reporter, The Southern Illinoisan, Carbondale

Marshall Jones, chairperson, Henry County board, Kewanee

From “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, TEDGlobal 2009:

“So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience, and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

From “Decatur Journal; City Winces in the Glare of the Spotlight on Tires” by David Barboza, New York Times, September 25, 2000:

“‘A further scan of national publications brought out all the stereotypical adjectives used to modify the proper noun Decatur,’ the editorial read. ‘They seem to trip off the keyboards of people who have spent all of one afternoon in Decatur – small, troubled city, a once-proud
factory town, gritty, blue-collar community – anyway, you get the idea.’

‘This is just a little small town,’ said Karen Holliday, the owner of Grandma’s, a popular eatery near the Firestone plant on the northeast side of town. ‘I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.’ Residents say they are proud of their working-class ethic and the small-town flavor. And some say the bad press is just another fact of life they have learned to cope with.

‘People here are used to getting the raw end of the deal because they’re blue-collar,’ said Chris Anderson, who moved to Decatur from Champaign, Ill., and now is a disc jockey at WSOY. ‘They’re working people. So I don’t think they think twice about it.’”

From “How Mayor Pete Used Good Urbanism to Revitalize South Bend” by Patrick Sisson, Curbed, April 14, 2019:

Note: The inclusion of this text does not imply that Illinois Humanities endorses the candidacy of Mayor Pete Buttigieg for President of the United States. As a non-partisan organization, Illinois Humanities does not endorse candidates for public office.

“‘You could shoot a cannon downtown and not hit anybody,’ Jack Colwell, a longtime local newspaper columnist, told Curbed. ‘It was really a desolate place after work hours.’

One of Mayor Pete’s signature initiatives, the $25 million Smart Streets plan, reshaped downtown with new streetscapes and pedestrian areas when it was completed in 2017, turning the one-way roads into two-way streets lined with trees, bike paths, and decorative brickwork.

Buttigieg’s redevelopment initiatives come straight from the pedestrian-friendly urbanism playbook. During his time in office, the city invested in road calming measures, parks, and placemaking, and created a River Lights arts installation to celebrate the city’s 150th birthday.

As Tim Corcoran, city planning director, told the South Bend Tribune, Mayor Pete’s moves began to reverse the damage wrought by postwar suburban flight. ‘South Bend was probably far more of a new urbanist place in the 1940s than it is today. We essentially tore down half the
city. That means there’s half the city waiting to be built.’

Business leaders told the South Bend Tribune the improvements added up: Hotelier A.J. Patel said the plan helped clean up the whole area and improve downtown, while local real estate developer Ed Bradley believes ‘it’s had a significant impact on people’s desire to be downtown.’ Colwell says the subsequent redevelopment of two old abandoned downtown hotels into new apartments, condos and stores, has been a big boost.

The density of people who come to First Fridays events downtown is a ‘visible representation of some of the progress that’s been made,’ says Dustin Mix, a local tech entrepreneur. Buttigieg claims that the city saw $90 million worth of downtown investment due to the more walkable urban core. ‘We’ve restructured our streets and downtown to make for a more vibrant city life,’ he wrote.”