02/15/2026
Jane Jacobs pointed this out in The Nature of Economies:
In nature, animals hunt until they’re fed. Then they tend to their habitat.
They groom. They maintain their den. They rest. They play.
They don’t spend 100% of their time hunting.
But cities? Cities only hunt.
Hunt for more jobs. More visitors. More growth. More residents. More investment.
Meanwhile, the actual habitat falls apart.
Buildings crumble. Sidewalks crack. Parks go untended. Standards vanish.
But, who wants to move to a place that looks like no one cares about it?
Why recruit new residents to a town not worth calling home?
Why chase tourists when your own residents won’t even walk downtown?
The fact that no one’s job title is “tend to our town” is insane.
Every city has economic development. Tourism offices. Planning departments.
All hunting. Zero tending.
Stop hunting for a minute. Tend to what you have.
Pull the weeds. Enforce the codes. Paint the building. Plant the flowers.
Make your town worth living in first.
Then people will actually want to live there.
(Adapted from my book, Your City Is Sick)
