Karen Heller: Obsession with the past obscures Phila.'s future

Here was the sales pitch: "Make Ringling Bros. part of your Memorial Day celebration as we say 'Farewell' to the Spectrum!"

Apparently, we're going to spend an entire year saying goodbye to the arena, as each team, performer and cavalcade of clowns abandons this architectural eyesore that's long on industrial cleaner and short on charm, certainly since the trophy wife of a venue, the CoreStates/First Union/Wachovia/Your Bank Here Center, opened next door.

Still, Philadelphians will surrender to the quicksand of nostalgia. Same thing happened with the Vet. Sure, the Flyers and Dead played the Spectrum, as did many ice shows. That makes the amphitheater a catalyst for memories, not a civic treasure on a par with the Roman Colosseum.

Nostalgia is Philadelphia's drug of choice. It's memory crack.

We're constantly looking backward to the good old days, the ones that weren't necessarily so grand to begin with. We savor life through a rear-view mirror, and a rose-tinted one at that.

Consequently, people want things the way they are because that's the way they've always been. We prefer an all-purpose excuse for resisting change and progress by living in a continuous loop of the History Channel.

The city budget is tethered by compensation to retired and outgoing workers. Government jobs are golden sinecures enriched by DROP and hefty pension payouts, an anomaly when so many other organizations have shifted to more economical 401(k)s, aided by employee contributions.

Our politics tend to break down along fault lines established during the Mesozoic Era. Almost every election, every battle, is still interpreted through the Rosetta stone of local political slugfests, Vince Fumo vs. John Dougherty, despite Fumo's having been convicted and Johnny Doc's inability to be elected to anything other than his own union.

We elect judges based on a 19th-century model that everyone agrees is terminally broken, yet nobody bothers to fix.

If Philadelphians weren't so motivated by imperfect memories, perhaps there wouldn't be such rampant nepotism. The region would be freed from a criminal inability to vote anyone out of office despite stunning incompetence.

Contrary to popular opinion, politicians are not wine or Dutch portraiture. They don't generally improve with age.

One of Philadelphia's great problems, I've noted before, is Philadelphians. People don't leave enough or get away to somewhere exotic, like, say, Maryland.

People don't know how to do things differently - or better - due to a lack of knowledge and contrast.

Not every building that comes down is great. Not every event is historic. Sometimes a Spectrum is just a concrete pit. By all means send out the clowns, but do it without becoming maudlin about yet one more instance of one last time.

Philadelphia is important, vital, vexing, irritating, and fascinating. Basically, it's family. But it's not the center of the universe.

That said, here's one possible solution to Philadelphia's economic woes that is, in a sense, rooted in the past: The city should grow to be the big place it once was. We should woo industrious citizens to move here, through tax incentives, job creation, innovations in housing, the arts, technology, basically everything.

A more populous Philadelphia would deliver a larger tax base, a safer city that's home to increased productivity and creativity. Poverty, crime, and their myriad attendant problems would cease to dominate the civic dialogue.

In looking forward rather than pining for things that are no longer here or should have been gone long ago, we might have a richer Philadelphia in every sense.