Crises present opportunities.
In late March, I wrote a column suggesting ways that Savannah could emerge from the pandemic as an even better destination city. My main argument was that we needed to take creative action to begin recalibrating downtown as a destination for locals as much as for tourists.
In April, Thomas Wilson, city planning expert and author of “The Oglethorpe Plan,” argued in an op-ed in this newspaper that Savannah and Charleston should act immediately to address the danger of “each city’s historic core irretrievably becoming an exclusive preserve of affluent tourists and wealthy part-time residents.”
“City residents are increasingly alienated from the historic core that was once theirs but is increasingly becoming the sterile domain of wealthy outsiders,” Wilson said. “They are angry and disillusioned over this trend.”