Healthy community requires a healthy core

I've been disappointed by recent articles about our city's core areas. For years I've heard our council wants infill and to slow unwanted urban sprawl, and density is what creates a tax base sufficient to provide city services. But many articles have supported the special interest of big developers, advancing the premise that “moving up” requires “moving out” of a core area to one surrounded by cornfields. This message promoting sprawl harms our city because a healthy community requires a healthy core.

Long ago I helped get the “new” First Avenue Hy-Vee built, because it was essential to a stable neighborhood. Neighborhood schools are no less important. City government, the school board and The Gazette are not interchangeable. But they must work together to invest in and protect our core's reputation. And I don't mean by closing Second Avenue for Physicians' Clinic of Iowa. Recent articles would lead me to believe the areas where I live, work, shop and worship (Uptown District), that of my alma mater Coe, and even the esteemed PCI medical center, are in a dangerous center of arrests. No one reading The Gazette recently would be encouraged to purchase or rent in a core area. Would I be wise to run out and buy property on the outskirts of Cedar Rapids, where it's safe?

Karen Guse

Cedar Rapids