By nature, I am an overly optimist person. So, it naturally pains me to ask that we refrain from any additional use of the word “recovery” for at least two years.
Recovery implies that business is building back to a pre-COVID point. Recovery assumes that we’ve reached a past state of normal. As long as 40% of the population does not feel safe traveling outside their own community, recovery is an overly optimistic, perhaps unrealistic, concept.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe recovery is possible, but reaching that elevated state requires community economic recovery efforts to first embrace and follow the Stages of Wound Healing. Building around each of those steps can help destination organizations work collaboratively with economic development agencies, municipal leaders and community groups to first salvage their primary economic existence and then methodically and gradually shift towards, dare I say, recovery.
Over the next few days, Clarity of Place will focus on each stage of the wound healing process to clearly illustrate a new way to stabilize our most important wound victims, the communities in which we live and work.
More on this Point of View tomorrow…
