Creating something out of nothing:
Hay-on-Wye town, UK

Until 1961, Hay-on-Wye was a fairly unprepossessing Welsh border town, dependent on declining farming and agricultural markets for its economy. Richard Booth owned the half-ruinous castle and started to deal in second-hand books, which quickly filled up the castle, and when other buildings became reduntant and went on the market - the cinema, the fire-station - there was always a ready buyer. The idea that a whole town full of bookshops could become an international attraction was before its time. The Cinema Bookshop quickly became the ‘biggest second-hand bookshop in the world’ and was later sold on to a London businessman. By the early 1970s Hay had established an international reputation and there are now 42 bookshops in the town. They cover specialisms as diverse as cinema, the arts, the occult, history, militia, poetry, children, Americana, philosophy and economics. The publicity (and visitors) which the town and its eccentric trade attracted allowed more and more bookshops to be established, by Booth and others.

Richard Booth’s personal investment in Hay - with his staff of 26 workers and around 220 employed elsewhere - has brought it economic sustainability in a way that no chemical agriculture, factory farming, or supermarket retailing would bring to a rural area. Hay’s population is now just over 1400. It supports 15 large guesthouses and four hotels, plus plenty of bed and breakfast accommodation in the town, with more such places in the adjacent surrounding countryside. A dramatic rise in the number of cafes and restaurants has been seen, with 12 opening in the last four years. Ten antique shops have sprung up in Hay over the same period. Over 110,000 visitors come through the town each year; with a slight concentration during the weeks of the Literature Festival in May. Hay has not suffered the retail blight experienced be many rural towns in the 19802.

Richard Booth has helped set up an international book town movement as a means of revitalizing small towns, which include Montolieu in Southern France, Bredevoort in Holland, Redu in Belgium, Becherel in Brittany, St. Pierre de Clages in Switzerland, Stillwater in the US, Fjaerland in Norway, Kampung Buku in Malaysia and Miyagawa in Japan.

Source: Landry, 1996

So, what is Windsors “nothing”? What is it that will wrest this city out of the doldrums it finds itself in?

One of the things I get frustrated with the most is the fact that Windsor doesn’t seem to have a vision that guides its municipal decision-making process. Sure, you can point to our Official Plan as a guiding document, but ask anyone on the street what Windsor wants to be when it grows up, and you will receive a blank stare. If there is one, it’s a well-kept secret, and how do you rally a city in distress around a vision that they don’t know exists?

It’s a tough thing to ask a politican to do - show us their vision. It’s much easier to jump from low-hanging fruit to low-hanging fruit in a bid to prove your success as a leader. Once you bare your soul and tell the electorate what’s in your heart and mind, you give them a yardstick with which to measure your competence. Yeah, that a tough thing to ask a politician, especially at election time.

For if we are to make to discover what our “nothing” is, that things that’s going to bond us together, we’re going to have to do it together. We need a common vision to rally around.