Tin Can Economy | Govern with audacity
- Published: September 10, 2026
I’ve been thinking a lot about a brief exchange that took place at last month’s joint meeting between some members of the school board, township trustees and Village Council.
There was this moment between Trustee Chair Moir and Council President DeVore Leonard in which they both acknowledged that, in recent years and like innumerable other communities, Yellow Springs is subject to outside economic forces in spite of local intentions — that, as they put it, development can “just happen to” communities, as opposed to being steered or carefully planned by the leaders of those places.
Of course, in that context, they were talking about their shared aversion to suburban sprawl and desires to avoid the fate of neighboring townships, where expensive homes pepper former fields and blur the boundaries of municipalities. To be clear, no leader in this town appears to want Yellow Springs to grow that way.
However, the point remains: Some things have “just happened” to Yellow Springs lately.
DeVore Leonard alluded to the Spring Meadows subdivision and its continued expansion as an example.
The political will in Yellow Springs has long been to build more affordable homes in town and here is a new neighborhood with market-rate homes consistently selling for more than a third of a million dollars. How did this come to be? The Miamisburg-based developer did nothing wrong — they abided by the provisions of our zoning for each phase of development and built what would make the most sense for each parcel and the company’s bottom line. Council rewrote the code such that code so that all annexed land would be high-density; lo and behold, that’s what Spring Meadows is building now. As a result we have about 90 new homes in that part of town, quite a few new neighbors living in them and about 190 additional units on the way.
I can’t recall a time when any local leader enthusiastically asked for Spring Meadows to be built. Sure, the roads were paved and infrastructure stubbed by the Village; housing studies and comp plans have recommended some new market-rate homes be built; but I think DeVore Leonard’s point stands — Spring Meadows, or at least to the extent we’re seeing, just sort of… happened.
I wonder, then, about what other projects are happening in Yellow Springs without clear intention. I think of the changing face of downtown, the continued decline in diversity, there being fewer civic groups, the incredible costs of living and so on.
And elsewhere?
All over the state, data centers are cropping up, pilfering scant resources and running up capacity charges for individual bill-payers — at face value, they’ve “just sort of happened.”
A corporate, rodent-themed gas station pops up one day in Huber Heights and the next, starts filing lawsuits against a mom and pop convenience store in Beavercreek over “similar” buck-toothed iconography. Certainly no one asked for that.
Next door in Springfield, jackbooted thugs are arresting and deporting our Haitian neighbors. No doubt a racist few have welcomed this fascist surge, but I believe — or would like to — that a greater majority is watching this happen with horror and disbelief. “How is this happening here?”
(Springfield’s Council did just renew a contract with Flock to erect more surveillance cameras throughout the city, thus helping ICE do its dirty work. Maybe that provides some answer…)
And then, around the world, the climate worsens. Biomes are being upended, species disappearing, small-towns flooding, crops failing and on and on. This summer is going to be the coolest for the rest of our lives.
I sure didn’t cosign any of that!
It’s easy to feel impotent or nihilistic under the yoke of all these existential forces bearing down, especially simultaneously. But the fact of the matter is that not a single one of these things “just happened.” They each are the manifestation of conscious decision-making — the output of human agency and preference, and as is often the case, greed and prejudice.
Climate collapse is a policy choice. Racism is legislated. Suburban sprawl is the consequence of poor zoning. Corporate gas stations running wild in communities happens when not enough commercial safeguards are put in place when decision-makers are given financial incentives to greenlight their coming to town.
At no level is capitalism inert.
The point I’m attempting to make is that I want more provisions encoded in Yellow Springs’ rulebook to ward off all these worsening-case-scenarios.
I want more moratoriums on that which patently does not align with our shared humanistic values of peace and equitable access to resources. To hell with any anxiety over litigation or imagined blowback — I want my government to be bold!
Why stop at putting moratoriums on new smoke shops and large data centers? Let’s figure out how to legislate against every conceivable intrusion of corporatism into our village.
A number of our local leaders — notably the elected ones who attended last month’s joint meeting — seem to be governing in that spirit. No one’s not thinking about the village of two decades from now. But I am calling for greater audacity in our collective stewardship of what makes Yellow Springs special. I think that’s what DeVore Leonard and Moir were gesturing towards.
No more of this “Aw, shucks. How did we get to this point?” If we agree we want something — affordable housing, greater diversity, a downtown that favors villagers over visitors — then divert the resources to make it happen tomorrow.
*Tin Can Economy is an occasional column that reflects on object, form and scale. It considers the places and spaces we inhabit, their constituent materials and our relationship to it all. Its author, Reilly Dixon, works in production and as a reporter for the News.
One Response to “Tin Can Economy | Govern with audacity”
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For all the talk of ‘audacity’ and ‘boldness’, this column stunningly light on ‘audacity’ and ‘boldness’. Why not use this space to throw some pasta at the wall and see what sticks? The paper (in general) and the column (in particular) have a megaphone. Use it. Rather than speaking nebulously about theoretical to-be-determined-later “moratoriums” that speak to the “shared humanism” of the Village, propose some. Be specific. Use your soapbox. Acknowledge the trade-offs of any such moratorium and argue why those trade-offs are worth it. For example, what would “a downtown that favors villagers over visitors” look like it and how would it be achieved? Stores that give away free stuff? Subsidized goods at below market prices? How sustainable is such a model? Who would sign up to run such enterprises? The people in big houses? I thought we don’t want any more of those. Who subsidizes it? Would they be like Mamdani grocery stores? The Village seems challenged at keeping the lights on, sidewalks maintained, and most of the treated water reaching its destination, so now we want them running businesses downtown? Or subsidizing them? What does that do for the cost of living?
The kerfuffle over Short Street closures gives lie to the suggestion of shared values. If the Village can’t civilly debate an innocuous issue like that, how can they be expected to civilly debate pocket-book issues with real cost of living and quality of life consequences.
Finally, the suggestion that “No one’s not thinking about the village of two decades from now” is curious. I’d suggest ‘No one IS thinking about the village of two decades from now’ and ever have been. As evidenced by the fact that virtually every edition of Don Holister’s ‘News From the Past’ shows that the village has been fecklessly debating the issue of ‘affordable housing’ for at least 8 decades.