Let's admit it - while the Wildwoods may have once been home to the largest surviving collection of 1950s & 60s era mid-century-modern "Doo Wop" resort architecture anywhere in the world as recently as the late 1990s & early 2000s, giving this southern-New Jersey shore community newfound fame & opportunity as architects, historians, small business owners, and design students "re-discovered" the landscape, and Doo Wop-led preservation, revitalization, and redevelopment efforts were being launched - a majority of those famous Doo Wop Motels were actually lost to demolition in the few short years that followed, before the vision ever really even had a chance to get off the (atomic-rocket) launching pad.
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Some blame it on progress, some blame it on greed, others on poor planning…
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Some say it's just capitalism and democracy at work…
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Some say it's just the natural evolution of things…
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Some say it's just the world (and in this case, the Wildwoods) adapting to modern tastes…
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We say… it's none of the above.
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OK, while all of the above may have been factors to some degree, if you wanted to boil it down to one primary culprit that enabled all the others, we have a theory; the loss of so many of the Wildwoods' historic Doo Wop Motels in such a short period of time was quite simply enabled by one thing: central bank policies in the 2000s (which neither you nor I got to vote for - for those who care about the whole "democracy" thing).
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Wait... connecting topics like central banking and U.S. monetary policy with topics like Doo Wop Motels, historic preservation, and the Jersey Shore? You must be thinking... are we crazy? Well, maybe. But maybe not for all the reasons you think.
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Without those centralized policies (i.e. the suppression of interest rates and dramatic expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve during this period) being implemented by un-elected central bankers to suppress & distort free-market forces, thereby commanding the economy in one particular direction over another (in this case, a short-term speculative real estate bubble over a long-term income-producing and job-creating tourism & lodging industry), it's quite possible that all the other factors in play could have been overcome by local, independent entrepreneurs with a little ingenuity, passion, vision, hard work, and community pride - that is, if they had been left free to set their own course, rather than be subjected to central planning.
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The irony is, Wildwood types - including those who cashed in on the condo craze in the 2000s - don't really care much for "central" planning. They didn't like the idea of "centrally" planning a historic district in the Wildwoods that would have established protections for all those beloved Doo Wop Motels as historic landmarks, because doing so would have restricted the rights of private property owners. We get it. What we don't get is - if you're not a fan of "centralized" planning, why would you choose to go along with one version of "central planning" over another version of "central planning"? Is one form of "central planning" really any more "democratic" than another version of "central planning"? If "central planning" isn't your thing - then maybe the real solution is decentralization? This way, nobody gets to "decide" on the outcome. Instead, everyone gets a chance to create it.
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Without centralized policies of any kind - it's quite possible, if not downright likely, that the trajectory of "Doo Wop" in the Wildwoods (and perhaps the fortunes of middle-class dreamers & doers all over the world?) could have taken a very different course from the turn of the 21st century on out.
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Why is this significant? Why do we think Wildwood is a microcosm of changing working & middle-class fortunes (and hopes & dreams) as the 20th century turned into the 21st? How can we learn from this unfortunate sequence of events to build a bigger, brighter, better tomorrow for everyone involved?
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