“Tomorrow’s gonna come whether you’re prepared or not.” I was raised by a Little Rock mama who LOVES a catchphrase and this was one of her favorites when we were growing up.
Whether it was getting ready for school or getting ready for life, she instilled in us that living life with no consideration for the future was a setup for failure because if you’re lucky enough to simply live, tomorrow will be there no matter what you do. Instead of being mad, being negative, or being avoidant, she charged us to be ready to face whatever we needed to face with the confidence of preparation.
I think about that a lot when I think about city planning and the future of Little Rock. Great cities don’t come about by happenstance; they are the result of great planning and future state thinking.
This means even while dealing with our city’s present day, we have to maintain an additional and separate track of focus that is looking beyond the problems of today and is trying to peer into the future and set a course for what we think it might be and to plan for what we want.
Right now across Little Rock, there are tax proposals and master plans circulating that are trying to put a more tangible budget and vision to what the future of downtown Little Rock and Little Rock as a whole could be. It does not ask us to ignore the problems of today or yesterday nor do they propose that any one thing is an end-all solution to every problem in Little Rock.
Over the course of the next few weeks and months, we’ll be talking a lot about the future of the city and what we want! I hope you’ll take a moment to consider all plans and your true opinion in earnest.
So many of the things we love and take pride in within Little Rock today were once renderings that gave us pause. I hope you WILL pause, think, consider and take a moment from the present’s strife in preparation for the city you want to be a part of in the future. The future is ours and it’s coming regardless. Why not plan for what we want?
“Tomorrow’s gonna come whether you’re prepared or not.”
