before I moved here nine years ago has
anybody else heard that plano has no
soul
now everyone agreed plano had great
schools good city services it was safe
affluent but it was soulless just a
suburb of Dallas populated by corporate
folk all livin in brand-new matching
McMansions now having lived here a while
I think that’s unfair but started me
wondering what do we mean when we say a
city any city has no soul and when I ask
people what are some cities that do have
souls
why don’t always get the same answers
everybody says New Orleans many people
said New York Austin Boston San Antonio
San Francisco what is it that gives
these cities their souls as a journalist
covering religion
I learned that almost every major faith
tradition has some concept of soul so it
stands to reason a community which is a
living breathing organism might have
some shared heartbeat that we could call
its soul some thing that makes that
community more than just a good place to
raise kids or a good place to build a
career it’s a place where we belong a
place where people know our names where
we have something to contribute a place
that nourishes our spirits now if we
listen to the wisdom of the world’s
great religious traditions
we learn that those Souls need tending
you don’t become a good Christian or
good Muslim or a good Jew by making up
your mind you practice spiritual
disciplines like prayer or alms giving
or doing good deeds so that’s the idea
so you tend to those souls and that’s
the idea I want to share with you today
what if we nurtured the souls of our
communities with the same intentional
focus that we give to maintaining our
schools or maintaining our roads what
would that look like
now you can’t buy a soul as the AppStore
there’s no ad campaign that’s going to
make a city soulful it has to happen
organically but I do think that there
are ways that we can individually
contribute to the soulfulness of our
city we can make individual choices and
they relate to three things that I think
all soulful cities have in common a
shared history shared conversation and a
shared story I learned the value of
shared history when I lived in Boston in
my 20s my home was a 19th century 19th
century brownstone my church was the
place where Benjamin Franklin was
baptized being a Bostonian meant
breathing Boston’s history connecting to
it and wanting to help write that future
write that history going forward
Boston’s history gives that city of soul
shared conversation is what made New
Orleans so soulful it’s a port city that
brought together Spanish and French and
African American people cooks sampled
each other’s foods and exchanged ideas
and the result was New Orleans
one-of-a-kind cuisine musicians who
they spoke different languages jumped
into this improvised musical
conversation and New Orleans became the
birthplace of jazz shared story is what
gives a community its unique identity it
distills the teeming varied life of a
community into a single narrative and
that captures the imagination it’s a
story that people want to be a part of
so think of the story of Silicon Valley
if you want to be in the middle of the
tech revolution that’s where you go now
there’s one key ingredient that helps
that story emerge creative people
storytellers they see everything that’s
happening and they tell a story through
pop culture or through art or even
through a bumper sticker take New York
we know that there are eight million
stories in The Naked City but chances
are you know New York through a single
narrative such as New York it’s the city
that never sleeps and if you can make it
there you can make it anywhere now how
do we know that through pop culture
through a little song sung by a guy
named Sinatra so a city with Seoul has a
shared history shared conversation and a
shared story now what if those are
missing can we tend to the soul of a
city that has no soul I think we can and
for an example let’s look at the city
where we are right now Plano Texas now
Plato makes a great case study because
Plano literally had a national
reputation as a sterile soulless suburb
and it started with tragedy in the 1980s
we had a series of suicides and in the
1990s we faced a heroin crisis
and that brought the national media
spotlight to Plano and it resulted in
coverage like the article by Rolling
Stone that called Plano a pop-up city
and a sea of gated communities and
subdivisions but Plano is not that
different from other big new
fast-growing suburbs around the u.s.
like the ones outside of Atlanta or
outside of DC or Raleigh North Carolina
these suburbs mushroomed in the last
three or four decades around corporate
and university hubs they’re new they’re
affluent and they’re populated by highly
educated people they’re great places to
live but they can seem soulless why
because they lack that shared history
they feel rootless in these suburbs
corporate nomads could move in into a
lovely new home but the kids in a great
school and then move on in a couple of
years people who don’t plan to stay very
long naturally don’t put down deep roots
they don’t get to know the history of a
city but that changes as the city
matures take Plano a surprising number
of people are choosing to retire here
now and many are staying longer in 2000
two-thirds of our community two-thirds
of our residents had lived here five
years or less today only about a third
are newbies and a quarter of our
residents have lived here 15 years or
longer as people stay they start to put
down roots and they get interested in
the history of a city and Plano now has
an enthusiastic group of citizens who
are weaving our history into the life of
our city people like Russ he’s the one
in blue Russ realized that kids here had
no sense of history no rootedness so he
started he helped start a museum now
Russ is telling school kids about planos
history
every day another reason why growing
fast growing suburbs may seem solace is
because they lack those shared
conversations busy cities are full of
busy people and it’s easy for us to stay
siloed in our jobs and our homes and our
own groups now remember in New Orleans
the place that brought this unique mix
of people together into shared
conversation and the result was John
balaiah and jazz fast-growing suburbs
have half of that equation
they attract educated ambitious people
from different cultures around the world
as these suburbs mature they become
incredibly diverse and eventually those
shared conversations start to emerge so
people come out to festivals that draw
different cultures together or they’ll
come out to bustling new developments to
walk around outside and have some food
and some fun and family time or they
might join a shared conversation like
the one started by Nick he’s a young
Plano resident this group meets in
ethnic restaurants and they hear from
people who grew up in that culture
shared conversation happens when people
start moving past tolerance and start
talking to each other and then there’s
the shared conversation right here
TEDx Plano where we we’ve got a variety
of people who’ve come together with no
agenda except to share ideas how cool is
that
finally fast-growing suburbs can feel
soulless because they lack that shared
story
they’re just suburbs they don’t seem to
have unique identities I’ve started to
think about that a little differently
these are newer cities their stories are
still being written
places like Plano don’t lack souls they
are empty canvases
if you’re creative you love the idea of
an empty canvas it’s an opportunity to
imagine and invent that’s why creative
people are migrating to Detroit they
love the idea of building a new city out
of ruins the good news is that
fast-growing suburbs are not that
entrenched it’s relatively easy to start
a museum or a dinner group or TEDx and
that’s the soil where the shared story
will eventually blossom so what’s your
community story and who will write it
find your creatives they may be artists
they may be talented people who work in
marketing or technology or design that’s
the raw material for a soulful city
smart creative people diversity ambition
imagination so if you live in a city
that you think feels like it has no soul
I leave you today with three challenges
get to know a little about your city’s
history its origin story find a way to
get out of your silo and join one of
those shared conversations or start one
hang out downtown read the local paper
and finally get inspired by then empty
canvas ask yourself what would make my
community a place that truly connects to
my soul and if that’s missing don’t
write off the community make it happen
what could be more exciting than helping
to shape the soul of a city you might
just transform it from the place that
you live to a place that you love a
place that truly hold your heart thank you