Charitable Colonialism
I was walking through downtown Grand Rapids last week.
It wants so desperately to be a cool city. It has places in it that are cool, but overall, it's always felt like more of a 2D facsimile of a cool city than a real one.
As I was walking, I think I finally figured it out.
Western Michigan is quite conservative, and the course of Grand Rapids, in this era, has largely been determined by two families: DeVos and Van Andel. These families have spent tens of millions on charitable projects, but also are so far right politically there's no room beyond them.
Van Andel and Devos founded Amway, the pyramid scheme-adjacent business that made them billions. The DeVos family is also (through marriage) connected with Blackwater, in case you need any black ops run for you (I'm joking, but barely).
Because of the money they've contributed, they have a disproportionate effect on the city's future. In effect, it's colonialism through charity.
They also own an enormous share of the city's business.
The truly creative, hip cities are almost always progressive. It's an environment that allows creativity to emerge. This city, though, is tightly controlled, and "hipness" is a top-down imitation instead of bubbling up from a multitude of sources.
In other words, not cool.
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