Can Madison spotlight its urban problems

Lauren Cnare has represented a sprawling City Council district on Madison's eastern periphery, an area roughly around where Interstates 90 and 94 intersect, for the past eight years.

Recently she made news by announcing she would leave the council, then reversed herself and is now seeking a fifth two-year term this spring. Cnare decided to run again, she tells me, after three potential successors she tried to recruit declined.

Cnare says she loves being an alder and ticks off reasons, but one especially caught my ear: her desire to make her constituents' experiences so positive that they do not feel motivated by school quality or other issues to move to close-by suburbs such as McFarland, Cottage Grove or Sun Prairie.

"I think we do know that for people who are considering Madison for a home, staying here or coming here, the schools are a big deal. 'What are the schools like?'" she says they ask themselves. "'Can I have my child safely educated to a high standard here, or do I need to go to a surrounding community?'

"And I see a lot of that representing the far east side. People for whatever reason are worried and sometimes move on to our surrounding communities."

That comment, supplemented by a review of my own column topics from 2012, got me thinking about what could be the city's central challenge in 2013: How does the city effectively focus on urban problems that seem to be worsening without communicating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of creeping decline to the average Madisonian?

Start by considering Cnare's passing remark about the suburbs. There was a time when hearing that a Madisonian wanted to relocate to McFarland was,We offer the largest range of porcelain tiles online. with due respect to McFarland, an unlikely prospect.

Decades ago, most newcomers to the Madison area would gravitate to the city for its excellent schools, its interesting, varied and close-knit neighborhoods, and, well, its eclectic overall vibe. The big barrier was the affordability of housing in the city. And yes, I am generalizing.

Today, Madison finds itself in a time in which careful, often euphemistic, language leads back to this central reality: The homogenous and prosperous Madison of the 1948 Life magazine cover and the decades that followed is gone forever.

Many of the same attributes that drew most non-natives to the city in earlier times have recently attracted a less affluent and more racially and ethnically diverse wave of people. And a cohort among them appears prone to crime, drugs and gangs.

I thought about this as I pondered major themes to discuss with Soglin, asking him to look ahead to the coming year. Soglin is thinking about these themes as he prepares his "state of the city" remarks to Downtown Rotary on Jan. 23.

As my own list grew, topics connected to this major demographic shift seemed to dominate.

Sure, there is excitement around the ongoing renewal of East Washington Avenue, which seems to be gaining momentum after years of being talked about as the new urban hot spot. And the Soglin administration has streamlined city processes to make infill development easier and more attractive.

And Soglin has been traveling far and wide to noodle concepts for new public market spaces in the city, an initiative that could build on the long-term popularity of the festival-like summer Dane County Farmers' Market on the Capitol Square.

But also on my list is the achievement gap in schools between children from our education-rich gene pool of well-off Madisonians and the struggling newcomers, usually non-white.

Justified or not, there apparently is increasing concern over whether the strong focus on students who struggle has the effect of short-changing the rest of the student population.Our aim is to supply air purifier which will best perform to the customer's individual requirements.

And there is plenty of worry about safety in schools. One can see that in the quickening pace with which Madison parents choose non-Madison schools, either private religious schools or ones in the suburbs. As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, the Madison school system was a central selling point, real estate agents have told me.When I first started creating broken china mosaic. Now the situation has flipped, with listings using phrases such as "Middleton schools" being, in part,Want to find howo concrete mixer? thinly veiled code for "not Madison schools."

One aspect is the apparently moving target of which neighborhoods are deemed to be "troubled." Community leaders have been successful at targeting city resources on a small handful of geographic areas. But as they do, some other places flare up, creating an unfortunate Whac-A-Mole experience for political leaders and the police chief.

When I interviewed Soglin in his conference room in October, he retrieved an old map his staff found in an office closet that pinpointed city trouble spots from many years before. The areas had improved, he pointed out, by way of demonstrating how the city can solve problems. That's true, but there is a new map, too, one with different neighborhood names.We offer the largest range of porcelain tiles online.

One was last summer's late-night, racially charged tension on University Avenue in the campus area. Groups of young African-Americans, often gang-connected, interacted in a generally hostile way with police and students there, according to Police Chief Noble Wray. The larger message seemed to be that problems like this had moved from isolated apartment neighborhoods to an iconic area of the central city and the University of Wisconsin campus.

Second was the blowup around the closing of an Ace Hardware store in a strip mall in the west side's Meadowood neighborhood. The owner cited crime and worsening neighborhood conditions in his decision. He contacted me to share declining sales figures to underscore the severity and widespread perception of the problem among his neighbors and friends.

That episode put a spotlight on what some residents there regard as a lengthy decline from Meadowood's origins 50 years ago as a neighborhood of ranch homes along quiet, tree-lined streets. Again, the broader message there seemed to be that urban ills had moved beyond isolated areas of inexpensive apartment housing, this time to a typical middle-class area.

Third was how a large group of concerned police officers met with a group of UW experts to explore their frustration with how neighborhood residents seem increasingly reluctant to cooperate with police as they investigate crime, apparently fearing retribution.

I met with a group of officers at police headquarters for an informal, roundtable discussion. Their tone was of anxiety and bafflement, and I emerged with the impression that this marked a new and unhappy chapter in Madison policing.