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Paducah2020: Developing Social Capital in Paducah and McCracken County

Introduction

The notion of well-being comes from many dimensions. Some folks rely on what they can see. Others are capable of vision into things that could be. What we want to do here is brainstorm and catalog some ideas that could transform our local community into a more solid network of projects with goals and resources both potential and existing. We want to move Paducah and McCracken County forward in terms of collective well-being characterized by positive steps toward community health, to which we attach the term "Social capital".

A table representing our current "catalog" of existing projects, plans, goals and resources that we have identified as elements capable of producing results toward our overall goal of increasing the net value and sustainability of our local community will appear here someday.

Paducah2020 is, more than anything, a "meme" of sorts that focuses, not on a particular "plan" but on a set factors, trends and possibilities that may or may not exist in the near future. The year 2020 is a long way off. In terms of vision, 20/20 refers to sightedness as in "Hindsight is 20/20". It is important to build a sense of community upon our sense of place and our sense of history.

The factors may include economic conditions such as an increase or decrease in the population, plant closings or other factors that impact the region. Some trends may be tracked locally such as sharp or subtle changes in fuel prices or in local or global attitudes brought about by the reaction to terrorism or political change. Of the possibilities, the most important is probably that of a major earthquake along the New Madrid Seismic Zone. As an inland city, the threat of terrorist attack is a remote possibility, but in the minds of many credible scientists, a deadly quake is a certainty in the near future. Will Paducah survive? How can a small city prepare for such a thing?

Mapping the region

The city of Paducah was built at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio rivers because of economically desirable geographic features which made it an ideal inland river port. What we now call Island Creek was at first navigated extensively to prime Paducah's economic pump, allowing a way to move goods to and from stations upstream toward the Tennessee Valley Ridge.

The Purchase Area Watershed Mapping Project will be an effort to build a comprehensive map to augment the existing geophysical survey. This map will become a multi-dimensional model that can aid in understanding both the existing built environment and the natural environment we inhabit. Hopefully, the map will provide insight into better ways to cooperate with nature shifting Human capital toward more sustainable and ecologically sound usage of our physical substrate.

Reconstructing the past

Many questions about the future roll around in our collective mind. As a community, we seem to have left our future in the hands of a proverbial "they" who will figure out the future. Many have resigned from a sense of both the past and the future . Paducah2020 is designed, first, to map out where we are and where we've been. Then perhaps we can gain some insight into where we're going.

Kentucky Historian Lauriette, the late Thomas D. Clark said, "Without a sense of History, you can't possibly have a sense of community." Our goal is took look at a timeless version of our locale as a dynamic place for life to happen.

Before European and African Americans settled this valley, Native Americans used the confluence areas quite differently. The new Confluence History and Archeology Taskforce (CHAT) will probe deeply into regional history. The effort will be to locate and research primary sources within the public records, newspapers and other archives to suppliment and verify existing library resources and perhaps even fill in some gaps providing freely available digests.

CHAT Field work, aided by PAWMP will be conducted to locate and document actual sites of historical activities, focusing on water courses like Island and Perkins creek and the Tennessee Valley Divide.

Sponsors and volunteers

DucahDollars are units of local currency that volunteers can earn doing field work for CHAT, PAWMP and other Paducah2020 projects. Restaurants, lawn service providers, daycare centers, retailers and other Paducah businesses can show support for projects by accepting DucahDollars. They will in turn be given a bit of extra attention in publications and other by-products of the Paducah2020 project. This system is based on the Ithaca Hours project in Ithaca, New York.

Some members of this project are also members of WikiProject Kentucky at Wikipedia. They help to create, edit and maintain a set of articles including a portal and a main article about Kentucky. They do this work on a volunteer basis under the GNU Free Documentation License. Smallwikipedialogo.png

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