The first image seen is a sign welcoming audiences: “YOU ARE NOW IN BEDFORD FALLS.” Even if initial audiences don’t know anything about this specific town, they “know” the community they about to enter: the American small town.

While we think of the small town as a place, it is also very much a journey to a former time. And by 1946, the year of It’s a Wonderful Life’s release, the small town had become associated with a fading past more than the urbanizing present. To enter the small town was to enter through the gates of nostalgia.

A quarter of a century earlier, the 1920 Census Bureau had declared the ostensible death of the small town. For the first time in U.S. history, more people lived in urban than in rural spaces. In The Urban Nation: 1920-1960 (1968), historian George E. Mowry declared that the small town in 1920 was analogous to the U.S. frontier in 1890. One era had ended and a new era had begun: a small-town nation gave way to an “urban nation.”

But this transition came with a paradox. Although a growing majority of Americans were leaving historical small towns for urban areas, the small town was never really left behind. In 1923, a mere three years after the Census Bureau revealed the precipitous decline of material small towns, sociologist Thorstein Veblen—today famous for his critique of the leisure class and for coining the term “conspicuous consumption”—recognized the small town as one of the United States’ most important “institutions” in “shaping public sentiment” and in defining the nation’s “character.”

In the early twentieth century, the small town ceased to be primarily a geographic form, and instead, became more of an ideological form. More specifically, the small became a trope—as the nation’s sacred home, a trope exemplified by It’s a Wonderful Life.

After an extended close-up of the Bedford Falls’ welcome sign, “You Are Now In Bedford Falls,” the camera enters the small town at night as snow descends. Although the town’s public spaces are empty, we hear various small-town subjects in voiceover praying for the well-being of the movie’s protagonist, George Bailey (James Stewart). Even though the public square is closed for the night, the small town’s communal identity of care and goodwill never sleeps.

In the next scene, we learn that the small town’s prayers ascend to heaven, reinforcing the ideology that Bedford Falls—and the small town more generally—is a sacred community. In heaven, two angels fret over George Bailey’s growing despair. Rather than a space forgotten by modernity, the small town proves a space directly connected to heaven and a space for which heaven cares. The angels decide to send the wingless angel Clarence to Bedford Falls to assist the movie’s protagonist. After the angels tell Clarence of his mission, one angel asks what book Clarence is reading, to the which the latter responds, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Through such textual references, the movie suggests that Bedford Falls is analogous to Tom Sawyer’s small town of St. Petersburg (modeled on Hannibal, Missouri), despite the 70 years (1876 to 1946) separating the two texts. This epitomizes how, in the 20th century, myriad, diverse, material small towns gave way to “the small town.”

It was possible to see the ideological power of the small town in the 1920 presidential campaign. Republican Warren Harding ran his campaign exclusively from his hometown of Marion, Ohio, which was staged and advertised as a “small town.” In the wake of World War I, the small-town setting was central to Harding’s message of the United States becoming an isolated and independent nation-state, delinked from international affairs. Harding’s small-town vision explicitly contrasted with the internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, who sought a “League of Nations,” an international community that would work collaboratively to prevent another world war. Although the small town may have been materially declining, the small town proved its political mettle. Harding won in a landslide.

It’s a Wonderful Life, in many ways, repeats Harding’s aesthetic, but 26 years later. Just as the candidate used a small-town setting to establish a more isolated, autonomous United States in the wake of a world war, so too did Frank Capra. The film’s director enlisted in World War II to make propaganda movies designed to win the hearts and minds of the American public; It’s a Wonderful Life was Capra’s first film after the war.

The invitation to enter Bedford Falls may seem like an invitation to leave the horrors of the present; to enter a space outside of modernity, like an American version of Brigadoon, the mysterious Scottish village of the famous 1947 Broadway musical. However, this small town is not a nostalgic place outside of time. Instead, it is a stage on which an alternative and accessible modernity unfolds, what can be called a “main-street modernity.” In this sense, the small town anchors a powerful form of U.S. exceptionalism.

The small town thus becomes a stage for an “authentic” America, a place where “authentic” Americans are at home, “authentic” American narratives unfold, and “authentic” American values are practiced. The small town can be used for multiple political purposes–to portray the United States as an isolated and autonomous nation-state, or to represent the nation as a space of whiteness and patriarchy—which happens in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Consider the nightmare sequence in which Bedford Falls loses its identity and becomes a city. The transformation of Bedford Falls into Pottersville is not just because of a growing population. Rather this geographic transformation is shown as a fall from grace. In Pottersville, the camera pans over signs in a hurried, frantic pace, representing the tempo of urban life: “Blue Moon,” a bowling alley that features “fights,” a hotel, a “Midnight Club Dancing,” “Bamboo Room Cocktails,” a pawn shop, a sign advertising “20 Gorgeous Girls,” “The Indian Club,” “Dime a Dance,” and more. Just as the sign “You Are Now In Bedford Falls” evokes community and togetherness, these urban signs show a fallen community, saturated in sin.

This is evident by the strip clubs that have proliferated and, moreover, by signs indicating that Bedford Falls is now home to African Americans. Many of these signs are racially coded, advertising a culture of fighting, late-night dancing, and invitations to “jitterbug,” activities that were then racially coded as black. In 1944, the federal government imposed a 30 percent tax against “dancing” night clubs (cabarets) and soon, “No Dancing Allowed” signs emerged throughout the nation. This was a sin tax that targeted what was perceived to be African American culture. High taxation on dance halls was an indirect way to keep spaces white and to prevent different races from mixing.

Bedford Falls becomes Pottersville, in large part, because it ceases to be a predominately white space. It also ceases to be a space where women are largely confined to the domestic sphere. Everywhere in Pottersville, urbanization means that housewives are becoming sex workers. Violet (Gloria Grahame)—who in Bedford Falls was innocent, boy-hungry, and owner of a respectable business—becomes, in Pottersville, a prostitute. In the film’s logic, urbanization means that women become wage workers. Mary Hatch (Donna Reid)—who in Bedford Falls became the homemaker Mrs. George Bailey—becomes, in Pottersville, a spinster who works as a librarian.

As the film suggests, geography is destiny—even if that geography is a U.S. fantasy. If Bedford Falls remained a small town, women such as Mary would be “safe” in marriages. However, the small town becoming a city results in the collapse of all traditional institutions and the unleashing of racial diversity and gender freedom, themes troped as threatening by the film.

The world of “Bedford Falls,” with its whiteness and its home-bound women, was very much a fantasy at the time the movie was made. It’s a Wonderful Life presents Bedford Falls as an island outside the dominant modernity of the country. Specifically, it ignores the Great Migration of six million African Americans from south to north—the largest internal migration in U.S. history. And it ignores the feminist revolution that had begun to unfold during World War II, when more than 350,000 women served in the U.S. Armed Forces and nearly one in four women worked outside the home. Yet It’s a Wonderful Life presents Bedford Falls as a place that erases all this history, and all its contemporary turmoil. The film’s female characters, for the most part, all work in the home, and the only African American in the movie is a housekeeper (Lillian Randolph).

Here it’s worth considering the real town upon which Bedford Falls is ostensibly based: Seneca Falls. That town was home to what is largely recognized as the first U.S. Women’s Rights Convention in 1848. During the convention, 100 of the roughly 300 participants signed The Declaration of Sentiments (including the only African American present, Frederick Douglass), which Elizabeth Cady Stanton modeled after the Declaration of Independence.

Today, if you visit Seneca Falls, you can visit the Women’s Rights National Historical Park and learn the history of the Women’s Rights Convention and how, according to the official website, the “story of struggles for civil rights, human rights, and equality, global struggles … continue today.”

Yet down the street is a different museum that stages a much different history: the Seneca Falls It’s a Wonderful Life Museum, opened in 2010.

It’s a Wonderful Life was filmed at the RKO Ranch in Encino, in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. But today, Seneca Falls markets itself as “The Real Bedford Falls.” Visitors are encouraged to take an extensive walking tour of the “real” Bedford Falls (a two-page map is available for download); there’s an annual It’s a Wonderful Life Festival during the first week of every December; and in 2009, The Hotel Clarence opened, named after George Bailey’s guardian angel.

Seneca Falls has chosen to portray itself as Bedford Falls—a small town outside of the dominant modernity—in large part, because like many small towns across the United States, it’s in economic decline. Today, Seneca Falls’ population is a mere 6,340 people and the poverty rate is 15.4 percent, higher than the national average of 14 percent. Seneca Falls was once an industrial town in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century with multiple mills. Today, tourism drives the town’s economy.

To survive in global capitalism, real small towns must trope themselves as the small town. It is one final perverse triumph of It’s a Wonderful Life: A cultural fiction has become a geographic reality.

The post How <I>It’s a Wonderful Life</I> Seized on an Urbanizing America’s Nostalgia for the Small Town appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The wind kicks up, and branches click like skeletal finger bones. You make it home, run inside, wedge a chair against the door, and strain to listen. There’s a sharp rap at the window and when you turn, terrified, it’s there leering at you—a glowing, disembodied head with a deep black hole where its mouth should be.

It’s just a scooped-out pumpkin, nicked from a field by some local boys and lit from the inside with the stub of a candle. But it has spooked you. When you look again, it’s gone.

Halloween in early 19th-century America was a night for pranks, tricks, illusions, and anarchy. Jack-o’-lanterns dangled from the ends of sticks, and teens jumped out from behind walls to terrorize smaller kids. Like the pumpkin patches and pageants that kids love today, it was all in good fun—but then, over time, it wasn’t.

As America modernized and urbanized, mischief turned to mayhem and eventually incited a movement to quell what the mid-20th-century press called the “Halloween problem”—and to make the holiday a safer diversion for youngsters. If it weren’t for the tricks of the past, there’d be no treats today.

Halloween was born nearly 2,000 years ago in the Celtic countries of northwestern Europe. November 1 was the right time for it—the date cut the agricultural year in two. It was Samhain, summer’s end, the beginning of the dangerous season of darkness and cold—which according to folklore, created a rift in reality that set spirits free, both good and bad. Those spirits were to blame for the creepy things—people lost in fairy mounds, dangerous creatures that emerged from the mist—that happened at that time of year.

Immigrants from Ireland and Scotland brought their Halloween superstitions to America in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their youngsters—our great- and great-great grandfathers—became the first American masterminds of mischief. Kids strung ropes across sidewalks to trip people in the dark, tied the doorknobs of opposing apartments together, mowed down shrubs, upset swill barrels, rattled or soaped windows, and, once, filled the streets of Catalina Island with boats. Pranksters coated chapel seats with molasses in 1887, exploded pipe bombs for kicks in 1888, and smeared the walls of new houses with black paint in 1891. Two hundred boys in Washington, D.C., used bags of flour to attack well-dressed folks on streetcars in 1894.

Teens used to terrorize smaller children on Halloween. Image courtesy of The New York Public Library.

In this era, when Americans generally lived in small communities and better knew their neighbors, it was often the local grouch who was the brunt of Halloween mischief. The children would cause trouble and the adults would just smile guiltily to themselves, amused by rocking chairs engineered onto rooftops, or pigs set free from sties. But when early 20th-century Americans moved into crowded urban centers—full of big city problems like poverty, segregation, and unemployment—pranking took on a new edge. Kids pulled fire alarms, threw bricks through shop windows, and painted obscenities on the principal’s home. They struck out blindly against property owners, adults, and authority in general. They begged for money or sweets, and threatened vandalism if they didn’t receive them.

Some grown-ups began to fight back. Newspapers in the early 20th century reported incidents of homeowners firing buckshot at pranksters who were only 11 or 12 years old. “Letting the air out of tires isn’t fun anymore,” wrote the Superintendent of Schools of Rochester, New York in a newspaper editorial in 1942, as U.S. participation in World War II was escalating. “It’s sabotage. Soaping windows isn’t fun this year. Your government needs soaps and greases for the war … Even ringing doorbells has lost its appeal because it may mean disturbing the sleep of a tired war worker who needs his rest.” That same year, the Chicago City Council voted to abolish Halloween and instead institute a “Conservation Day” on October 31. (Implementation got kicked to the mayor, who doesn’t appear to have done much about it.)

The effort to restrain and recast the holiday continued after World War II, as adults moved Halloween celebrations indoors and away from destructive tricks, and gave the holiday over to younger and younger children. The Senate Judiciary Committee under President Truman recommended Halloween be repurposed as “Youth Honor Day” in 1950, hoping that communities would celebrate and cultivate the moral fiber of children. The House of Representatives, sidetracked by the Korean War, neglected to act on the motion, but there were communities that took it up: On October 31, 1955 in Ocala, Florida, a Youth Honor Day king and queen were crowned at a massive party sponsored by the local Moose Lodge. As late as 1962, New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. wanted to change Halloween to UNICEF Day, to shift the emphasis of the night to charity.

Of course, the real solution was already gaining in practice by that time. Since there were children already out demanding sweets or money, why not turn it into it a constructive tradition? Teach them how to politely ask for sweets from neighbors, and urge adults to have treats at the ready. The first magazine articles detailing “trick or treat” in the United States appeared in The American Home in the late 1930s. Radio programs aimed at children, such as The Baby Snooks Show, and TV shows aimed at families, like The Jack Benny Program, put the idea of trick-or-treating in front of a national audience. The 1952 Donald Duck cartoon Trick or Treat reached millions via movie screens and TV. It featured the antics of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, who, with the help of Witch Hazel’s potions, get Uncle Donald to give them candy instead of the explosives he first pops into their treat bags.

The transition could be slow. On one episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, costumed kids come to the door, and Ozzie and Harriet are baffled. But food companies—Beatrice Foods, Borden, National Biscuit Company—quickly took notice and got into the candy business, and even tobacco companies like Philip Morris jumped in. Halloween candy and costume profits hit $300 million in 1965 and kept rising. Trick-or-treating—child-oriented and ideal for the emerging suburbs that housed a generation of Baby Boomers—became synonymous with Halloween. Reckless behavior was muted, and porch lights welcomed costumed kids coast to coast.

Today, trick or treat has more variants: trunk or treat, where kids go car-to-car in a parking lot asking for candy; and trick or treat for UNICEF, where youngsters collect money for charity along with their treats. Few children, especially young ones, have an inkling of what mischief was once possible.

For those nostalgic about the old days of Halloween mischief, all is not lost. Query the MIT police about the dissected-and-reassembled police car placed atop the Great Dome on the college’s Cambridge campus in 1994. Or ask the New York City pranksters who decorated a Lexington Avenue subway car as a haunted house in 2008. There’s even an annual Naked Pumpkin Run in Boulder, Colorado.

The modern Halloween prank—be it spectacle, internet joke, entertainment, or clever subversion—is a treat in disguise, an offering that’s usually as much fun for the tricked as it is for the trickster. Halloween is still seen as a day to cause mischief, to mock authority, and make the haves give to the have-nots—or at least shine a light on the fact that they should. For that, Americans can thank the long line of pranksters who came before us.

The post When Halloween Mischief Turned to Mayhem appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Going to college in the city seems so normal now that it’s difficult to comprehend that it once represented a radical shift not only in the location of universities, but also in their ideals.

From the founding of Harvard in 1636 onward, college leaders held a negative view of cities in general, and a deep-seated belief that cities were ill-suited to educating young men and women. In 1883, Charles F. Thwing, a minister with strong interest in higher education, wrote that a significant number of city-bred students “are immoral on their entering college” because city environments have “for many of them been excellent preparatory schools for Sophomoric dissipation.” “Even home influences,” he wrote, “have failed to outweigh the evil attractions of the gambling table and its accessories.”

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, higher education leaders believed that the purpose of a college education, first and foremost, was to build character in young people—and that one could not build character in a city. When Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University, he wrote that college must promote “liberal culture” in a “compact and homogenous” residential campus, explaining that “you cannot go to college on a streetcar and know what college means.” The danger of cities was so self-evident that even the president of the City College of New York, Frederick Robinson, lamented to a 1928 conference of urban university leaders that commuter students “do not enter into a student life dominated night and day by fellow students” and therefore “miss the advantages of spiritual transplanting.”

A 1950 photo of the downtown brewery that housed the University of Newark before and several years after it officially became part of Rutgers University in 1946. Image courtesy of Rutgers University—Newark Library.

Urban colleges struggled to overcome the handicap of their locations. Columbia University, for example, moved three times to escape the encroaching city. In 1897, the new campus at the then-largely-rural Morningside Heights area in northern Manhattan was bounded by walls, with many trees planted inside, to isolate students from the urban growth that would eventually surround the school. Campuses with large numbers of commuters initiated a range of programs to “Americanize” students and get them to move beyond the culture of their working-class and immigrant neighborhoods. However, universities in cities also took advantage of the opportunities the city offered for research, teaching, and collaborations with local museums and cultural institutions.

After World War II, federal and state governments increasingly saw college education as critical, a view reflected in the G.I. Bill and the massive expansion of state universities. College attendance in America grew dramatically, from 1.5 million in 1940 to 2.7 million in 1950, 3.6 million in 1960, and 7.9 million in 1970. By the 1960s, government officials and civil rights leaders also sought to expand access to higher education for low-income students in order to enable poor people to move into the middle class. Two-year community colleges opened across the country, largely in cities. City University of New York inaugurated “open enrollment,” guaranteeing that any high school graduate could attend a CUNY institution.

But even though the higher education landscape was changing dramatically, the term “urban university” still bore a stigma as low-status institutions that enrolled large numbers of local commuter students seen as socially unrefined and academically weak. As a result, “urban university” became a low-status label, which many universities in cities tried to avoid. In 1977, the Association of Urban Universities, which was founded in 1914, voted itself out of existence—reflecting the resistance of its members to its own name.

Then, in the last 25 years or so, higher education’s longstanding ambivalence about urban students and colleges evaporated. As many central cities have revitalized dramatically, growing numbers of upper-middle-class people have chosen to live there. In addition, cities appeal more and more to relatively affluent young people who grew up in homogeneous low-density suburbs. Cities are now “cool,” and the kind of worldly education they offer is in demand.

By 2012 an NYU admissions administrator told a Chronicle of Higher Education writer that, “whereas 20 years ago the city was our Achilles’ heel, it’s now our hallmark.” Freshmen applications to NYU grew from 10,862 in 1992 to 43,769 in 2012. Two years later, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article entitled “Urban Hot Spots Are the Place to Be,” arguing that “a college’s location might be more important than ever to its long-term prosperity as a residential campus”—because college students seek “hands-on experiences” which are most available in the “vibrant economy of cities.”

As students and schools have changed, the once controversial innovations pioneered by colleges in cities have prevailed. City institutions pioneered the democratization of undergraduate education, and universities across the country now strive to enroll large numbers of the kinds of “urban students,” including immigrants and minorities, once viewed with deep skepticism by many in the academy. It was urban colleges, particularly municipal institutions like City College and Hunter College, that began the once-controversial practice of providing college to commuters who could not afford to live away from home while in school.

Today, the overwhelming majority of college students commute. Urban colleges also initiated programs, controversial at the time, for adults and part-time students, including evening classes. Today, adult, part-time, and evening courses are nearly universal in state universities and widespread in private institutions. The broad access to college that was initiated by innovative city institutions is now central to the overall mission of American higher education.

Urban colleges also changed curriculums and research agendas by developing a commitment to community-based research, taking advantage of the extensive resources of the city, and encouraging the study of local problems and policy issues. This kind of research is now widely practiced. The Engagement Scholarship Consortium, founded in 1999, encourages all universities to do research that is important to their communities. Its member institutions are located in cities, towns, and rural areas.

Relatedly, service learning and community engagement by college students has become a central focus of American higher education—vigorously championed by organizations like the National Society for Experiential Learning and federal government agencies like the Corporation for National and Community Service. This is another area pioneered by the so-called urban colleges.

Universities are also seen as key players in the economic development of their communities, a change that would not have occurred without the leadership of urban schools. In 1994, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter founded the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City to “spark new thinking about the business potential of inner cities.” In 2001, CEOs for Cities and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City released a study arguing that higher education institutions are well-positioned “to spur economic revitalization of our inner cities.”

The following year, Carnegie Mellon Professor Richard Florida published a book arguing that economic development depended on a “creative class” and that universities were “a key institution of the Creative Economy.” Florida re-envisioned the city as a fountain of economic growth and intellectual activity, placing the university—and its knowledge—at the center. Universities have become key entities for economic development in the post-industrial technology economy, not just in inner cities but also across the nation. Old prejudices about the urban university are effectively dead.

The purpose of colleges and universities—and undergraduate education itself—are still widely debated. Many people are deeply critical of American higher education. These conditions make it important to understand the history and value of college in the United States. Today, access to college makes it possible for millions of Americans to improve their socio-economic status and to live richer lives. Many do so while living at home, working, and attending part-time. Colleges teach traditional-aged students and adults of all ages, both full-time and part-time, including many minorities, immigrants, and people from low-income families, in degree and non-degree programs. Colleges play an ever greater role in our nation’s economy. And college students engage extensively in experiential learning, developing work skills and a commitment to civic responsibility.

All of these conditions began many years ago, in universities in cities. Whatever the deficiencies of American colleges, we must not forget how profoundly they serve society—and how those practices emerged initially in urban institutions.

The post How Universities Migrated into Cities and Democratized Higher Education appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“Both” was the answer that emerged over the course of the hour-long exchange among Morain, editorial page editor and political affairs columnist for The Sacramento Bee, and a panel of civic, education, and community leaders before a packed audience at the Capitol Events Center in downtown Sacramento.

The lunchtime event, co-presented by Zócalo Public Square and The California Wellness Foundation, was built around the query, “Is the Central Valley Finally Embracing Its Urban Future?” Even as the Central Valley’s population swells in cities such as Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, and Stockton, and officials grapple with characteristically urban challenges like air pollution, soaring housing costs, and sagging infrastructure, California’s San Joaquin Valley still retains its agricultural roots and clings to certain elements of its pastoral lifestyle.

Bridging that dual urban-rural character requires comprehensive regional measures, and problem-solving approaches that aren’t either/or, urban vs. rural, said Meg Arnold, managing director of Valley Vision, a regional leadership organization working on issues like transportation, air quality, and economic development in Northern California.

For example, Arnold said, developing more agricultural-based manufacturing across the Valley would be a way of “taking a strength and adding to and augmenting it.” Capturing a greater share of “value-added-income” in industries like agricultural technology will enable the Valley’s economy to “unify its assets” and “harness them to shared goals,” Arnold said.

Joseph Castro, who has served as president of California State University, Fresno since 2013, agreed that the Valley needs to build on its heritage as “the worldwide hub for agriculture,” even as it keeps urbanizing. “We should embrace our agricultural roots and invest more in that area,” he said.

Dirk Brazil, who has been Davis’ City Manager since 2014, said the region is underfunded in any number of key areas, including education and health care. Local and state governments are cautious about coughing up more money because they’re trying to figure out the spending and social priorities of the new administration in Washington.

“It’s all about the revenue, it’s all about, ‘How do we fund this stuff?’” Brazil said.

Several panelists were raised in the Central Valley, or have lived there for decades, so they were personally familiar with the complexities of its rapidly changing character. Moderator Morain introduced the topic of the region’s mass transportation shortfall and the desirability of high-speed rail by asking how many panelists had driven by car to the gathering. Everyone, as it turned out.

Gayle Garbolino-Mojica, who’s serving her third term as the Placer County Superintendent of Schools, and who said she arrived in her electric car, noted that high-density traffic in places like the Lincoln-Roseville-Rocklin corridor, where State Route 65 meets I-80, can cause bottlenecks that bedevil commuters and school-bound students.

Brazil said that California state officials and legislators must produce a comprehensive transportation plan and a bill to match, since individual cities lack the resources to prop up a strained transportation network all by themselves. That’s also important for forging ties between the Valley and adjacent high-job-growth regions like the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. “We would love to see Facebook spin off a division that’s based in Davis,” he said.

Meeting the Valley’s growing educational demands was a recurrent theme. Garbolino-Mojica said that a fair proportion of her district’s students go on to college; after graduating, some move back to the area and are able to find work locally with Sutter Health Care and other major employers. She stressed the need for more educational investment, including in public-private partnerships, and for more innovation in creating educational training programs.

Castro said that 70 percent of Cal State Fresno students are first-generation to college, and 60 percent receive Pell grants. The vast majority of students rely heavily on public transit, namely buses. “The difference between going to college and not going to college may be transportation,” he added.

Some of those students’ parents are migrant farmworkers, both documented and undocumented, and audience member Vanessa Richardson asked the panel how agriculture’s dependence on migrant labor factors in the Valley’s future.

City Manager Brazil said that shifting federal immigration policies will heavily impact local wineries and other labor-intensive industries, and also will have “a huge impact” on the movement of visiting scholars and international students at UC Davis. “There’s a lot of tumult and confusion on campus right now,” he said.

Morain brought the discussion full circle to whether the mega-region, somewhat monolithically known as the Central Valley, could cooperate across its many municipalities. The panelists concurred that it was necessary for communities to recognize their mutual inter-dependency even more in coming years.

Arnold said that regional jurisdictions will “have to attend to their own knitting” and take care of their own problems, but also work together to permit jobs, dollars and workers to flow across counties. As a resident of Davis, she said, she’d like to see any job stay in Davis. But she’d rather have it go somewhere else in the Valley than go to Austin, Texas.

The post It’s Time for the Central Valley to Grow Up appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.