The Fifth Time
Part 13 of Welcome to Charlottesville, a weekly visit to a town, a failed art project, and the future of America.
Goodbye to Charlottesville
One day my wife and I will die. Shocking and sad but true. I’m hoping we will be lucky enough to get old first. Many Americans don’t seem to believe that getting old is lucky, but the only way to not get old is to die before you do and that’s no fun.1
At some point before Jen and I get old (as I hinted) I expect we’ll move to New York again—either for Ellie to go to high school or while she’s in college or when Jen retires. New York City is where Jen and I fell in love and where Ellie was born, and I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful time. But while I think big cities are great places to be a little bit old, I don’t think they’re great places to be very old—as in infirm. (Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in a big city.)
So around 2040, as we’re approaching very old/infirm stage, I picture moving back to Charlottesville for a fifth time. It will be only Jen and I this time, moving back to Belmont to live out our twilight years while Ellie stays in the big city to enjoy her fabulous life.
When I started this series I wanted each of the times-I-moved-to-Charlottesville posts to mix personal history with history of the city during that period. Too often my personal history has taken over, but this time I’ll focus more on the city. In some ways that’s easier to predict. Plus I’m imagining when I get old I’ll do less and watch more.
2020s & 2030s
In 2040 two decades of upheaval have shaken the city, state, and nation. You might remember 2024 when Trump ran against Joe Biden for second time, and Biden dropped out too late for a primary, but the Democrats united quickly behind Kamala Harris. This set the stage for a close contest which the losing side would consider unfair and the winning side would take as carte blanche to do what they wanted.2 Meanwhile there was a war between Ukraine and Russia, and a slaughter between Israel and anyone it could reach.
The highly-financialized economic structure of the U.S. had continued to shift in ways detrimental to most citizens—particularly younger citizens—, and the disappearance of the old media world of primetime tv networks, hit-factory music, and daily newspapers, left the country in many ways like a 19th century version of itself. There were further shocks to global trade and shipping—especially oil. All this and more was creating a different world.3
But Jen and I arriving in 2040 to find the inhabitants of our beloved town happier than back in the 2020s! How is that possible?!
Leadership & the Basics
Leadership is not about being right in predictions of the future. Leadership is about preparing for a wide variety of possible futures, knowing that predictions are never completely right, and including resilience and adaptability in planning.
Luckily, Charlottesville’s leaders subscribed to and read Blame Cannon, and so were prepared to weather the storms!
Of the three major storms which any sensible leader could anticipate, they had responses in their back pockets, so when opportunities arrived with the railroad, state government, or University, they were able to act. They knew how and when to apply pressure, how and when to make peace, and how and when to walk away. Always they argued self-interest not values.
What are the storms?
One of the storms is actual storms, one of the effects of a significantly changing climate. Maybe the earth will warm so quickly we’ll die, or maybe there are feedback systems that will kick in any day now and temperatures will stop rising, but most likely leaders should plan for the sharpest temperature spike that humans have experienced since the end of the Younger Dryas.4 The problem is not a few degrees on the thermometer; the problem is a lot more storms, changes in rainfall patterns, coastal flooding, and increases in disease as animals shift their habitats.5
Energy gets more expensive. As fossil fuels get harder to reach, they get more expensive. That dirt-cheap Jed Clampett and JD Rockerfeller oil is already gone from the US. Someday it will be gone from Saudi Arabia too. In some respects the entire economy is just energy, so more expensive energy means more expensive everything else. Maybe solar, wind, and nuclear end up being cheap too, but hope is not a strategy. Cities should plan for the possibility of more expensive energy.
Health declines. The USA has a pretty bad healthcare system.6 It’s very expensive and frustrating at best. But leaders have to prepare for things to get worse. Rural and suburban water systems are going to increasingly fail because of age, storms—and because suburban development, while cheap to build, is too spread out to affordably maintain. Add in bacteria increasingly resistant to antibiotics, plastics and ‘forever chemicals’ harming our bodies, and the stress of all of the above.
2040s
Despite all this, Jen and I find a fairly prosperous, happy town. Although gasoline cost $6 a gallon (except when it miraculously goes down in election years), and this is killing county residents, the city has wisely made it possible to comfortably live without needing to drive everyday, so car use is way down and that makes streets quieter, the air healthier, and people healthier too.
When repaired sidewalks have been widened and a third of houses along the major streets have been replaced by small apartment complexes, 4-6 stories, with 8-20 units. (These always include 3- and 4-bedroom apartments for families because “Graduate Student Housing” is textbook discrimination.) Property owners are required to build individual structures, not block-long monoliths.
In other ways neighborhood zoning has been radically paired back so most blocks have a daycare and a small grocery. Almost a tenth of houses keep chickens for eggs, and at least that many keep gardens.
Summers are only a couple degrees hotter than in my childhood but by the 2040s the city leaders have wisely enacted building codes to encourage those 4-6 story buildings and reduce setbacks so the buildings shade the sidewalks. Businesses that serve food have to have awnings, porticoes, or arcades and outdoor seating. A second pedestrian mall is open on Preston near the railroad bridge.
Speaking of railroads one great innovation has been to get the railroads to rent their tracks for an inexpensive tram system. This was based on similar plans in Canadian cities. The Central Station doubles as the Amtrak station, and Amtrak—freed from the need to sideline passenger trains for freight—is prospering.
Conservative state governments have largely abandoned schools, but wise local educational leaders have taken up the slackon , merging an innovative curriculum based Esau Jenkins’ and Septima Clark’s Citizenship Schools model with an expansive technical and apprenticeship program creating the electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and masons to build those new apartment buildings. The high school merged with PVCC (our community college), which moved into town, occupying former commercial buildings along the red line, so students either specialize in a trade or graduate with an associate’s degree in the same time frame that would now get them a high school diploma.
With the decline of newspapers the country as a whole cannot rely on a professionalized government being checked by a professional media. Charlottesville realized this early and deprofessionalized the government. The mayor has been elected separately for a four year term since the 2030s, taking on many of executive powers of the City Manager. City Council has expanded to 18 members—a number large enough to prevent a small cadre of developers from controlling the agenda—and has a built-in expansion program. At first enlarged councils did not go well since citizens weren’t used to governing themselves and thought they should be arguing values like they did online. It took a few terms to figure out that there was an alternative.7
In the 2040s the City forced UVA to pay assessments in compensation for the old property taxes which UVA was exempt from. But that’s too complicated to get into here. By the 2040s rumblings that first impacted state colleges are starting to impact elite colleges like UVA.
2050s
Jen and I pass from this mortal coil in 2050. Ellie, now in her 40s, returns for the memorial service, with her husband and teenage children (who often visited in the summers). Ellie is a screenwriter and movie director admired for her adaptations of Rebecca Stead novels and hit movies based on own middle school life. (Many of her former classmates have written heartfelt letters expressing regret for not appreciating her enough when they had the chance.)
Ellie is struck by a new bustle and energy mixed with politeness, the culture of a sort of citizenship developed by public speaking in the city council meetings, the citizenship school education, and the egalitarianism of pedestrian life where so many spend so much time not being able to scream at one another from behind car wheels and websites.
The city is also visibly growing, which might seem strange. By this time the United States population, after leveling off around 2030 has begun to decline.8 Declining demographics will impact consumption patterns, real estate, taxes, and everything else. But Charlottesville’s population is increasing at a rate similar to before the widespread adoption of the automobile. This is partly due to citizens from the coast moving inland after insurance rates make coastal housing unaffordable (due to more frequent storms), and partly due to rural citizens moving to towns like Charlottesville due to high energy costs making driving too pricey, and the failure of rural utilities and services.
Ellie also notices a new card being used. Charlottesville legally makes every resident an employee and gives them a medical insurance card that can be used as a credit card to pay (city) taxes. Instead of a percentage being sent to far-away banks for every financial transaction, the fees go to the city in lieu of meals taxes. Business happily encourage the cards.
Religion has gone through cycles of fervor every 80 years or so in American history, and by the 2050s just such a period is coming to a close with changes now embedded in the region’s spiritual life. One of the most unusual changes, inspired by a town that once lay a short distance up the Rivanna, is that young people are raising a new burial mound in McIntire Park. The ashes of the dead are mixed and buried together. It’s quite popular. Seeing this from the train heading north Ellie reflects on how bizarre her grandmother would have considered it.
Another strange cultural change is that by now a quarter of houses are raising food, and many of them, instead of chickens—there are too many eggs to make a profit—are raising rabbits. Weird but true.
2060s & Beyond
In 2061, Ellie is invited to return as part of the dedication ceremony for the Blame Cannon Monument in Blame Cannon Park (next to the library).
From the train she notices the burial mound in McIntire Park is higher and notices the glimmer from the surface of the new reservoir near Locust Avenue. The city created it due to the severe drought and weather changes of the late 2050s—and a distrust of the reservoirs in the county.
Relations with the county have been fraught for decades. The county with a far-more suburban settlement pattern is bankrupt. When they raise taxes to pay for sprawling services the citizens flee back to town who just a generation before had been driven out of town by a lack of housing. Only Scottsville bucks the trend. It’s growing for the first time in centuries.
With increased use making public transportation more reliable (and vice versa) driving is reduced enough that Charlottesville has a third pedestrian mall in downtown Belmont and a fourth on the UVA “Corner.” With gasoline at $12 a gallon those who moved to Charlottesville early enough to own buildings feel very lucky.
By 2080 the world population is falling as the US had started falling a few decades earlier.
Around 2100 there is the next great crisis in American history. Such upheavals tend to happen around 80 years apart. Not because history is a clock, but because when eighty years have passed all those who witnessed the last crisis as an adult are dead or very old, so there is only the stories of the past to organize thought. I’ll return to this phenomenon in future posts,9 but for now we can hope that the 2100 crisis, whatever it is, unlike the 2020 crisis, might bring wiser leadership to power. Maybe some of the ideas and experience developed in cities like Charlottesville will make their way into national politics. Ellie will be in her 90s, hopefully happy with wherever she is living and however her children and grandchildren (and great-grandchildren?) are weathering the crisis.
I originally was going to title this post The Final Time instead of The Fifth Time, because I envision my fifth time moving back to Charlottesville as being my own final time, and it sounded cool, but it’s too easy for it to sound like Cville is doomed, and it isn’t.
The future will not be flying cars, artificial intelligence, robots, or virtual reality. The future will not be asteroids and barbarian armies either. (At least not anytime soon.) But what people really want is not flying cars, artificial intelligence, robots, or virtual reality, but friends, spouses, children, creative work with a boss who isn’t terrible (or better yet, no boss at all), a comfortable place to live, medical care when needed, a pension when old, and the knowledge that our children can reliably have their own friends, spouses, family, creative work with a boss who isn’t terrible (or better yet, no boss at all), a comfortable place to live, medical care when needed, a pension when old, and, well… add the grandchildren and keep going.
Cities can give us those tools to thrive. Cities can put lots of people close to one another in multi-story buildings on narrow streets that open into larger spaces with public buildings. In this way products and services are exchanged more easily, transportation is eased, and there are a critical mass of population to collectively afford running water, sewer systems, telephones, and electricity. Plus people can specialize which improves the quality of products and services. And cities mean opportunities for niche products and services like books, plays, movies, and music. Laws and customs should be directed toward making cities possible.
Next week we’ll finish up the Police Stories posts and talk about those laws.
Thanks for reading Blame Cannon! This has been Part 13 of Welcome to Charlottesville. We have two more full posts to go. Here’s an index if you’re looking for previous posts.
Please subscribe and share!
Comments are welcome but please no personal insults or profanity!
By the way billionaires will never be able to download their consciousness onto computers, because (1) that’s not how consciousness works, and (2) that’s not how computers work.
Note 4/11/25. Trump won and is doing far more and worse than that. The fears people had of Trump’s fickle dictatorial temperament in the first term are actually playing out now. His worst critics turn out to have been right.
But the new world will still be earth. After more than 50 years of space exploration it’s clear that there is no remotely affordable way for any significant number of people to live anywhere but on our own blue rock for the forseeable future—and by forseeable future I mean hundreds of years.
Or before that the Allerod portion of the Bolling-Allerod Interstadial. Both are periods of time tens of thousands of years ago after the last Ice Age when the earth warmed very rapidly. The causes are disputed, but the end of the Younger Dryas is paired with a lot of changes. We’ll explore these possibilities in a future Blame Cannon series.
Even when diseases aren’t tied to government laboratories.
We’ll talk about how the US ended up with employer-based heathcare in a future Blame Cannon series.
The biggest state and national changes in laws were the repeal of the Jones Act, utter repudiation of Dillon’s Rule, changes in the status of Corporations, and a Land Tax in place of Property Tax. We’ll take these up. Believe me.
How quickly this happens depends a lot on immigration, since immigrants tend to have more children.