One Man's Alaska

Sarah Palin's Wasilla

July 17, 2010

Although I try to stay away from politics on this website, I have to say, I'm curious to see if Sarah Palin will run for President in 2012, and if she does, what will be said about Wasilla. As I've written here several times, Wasilla isn't so much a town or city as it is a spot on a map, a series of strip malls in a geographic area that are collectively referred to as "Wasilla".

I don't know if it was Mrs. Palin or someone else who is responsible for Wasilla evolving like this, but I have to say, whoever was in charge of Wasilla city planning did not do a good job. For instance, in a previous blog post I referred to "Downtown Wasilla" in a joking manner, because there is no area you can look at and think, "Oh, this is downtown Wasilla." (For the record, "downtown Wasilla" is the area near the library.)

I know that Wasilla grew fairly rapidly during the last 10-15 years, but come on, we're still talking about an overall population of less than 10,000-15,000 people; that's not much. Someone, somewhere along the way needed to practice a little bit of city planning, and all I can say is, that didn't happen. History shows nobody took charge here.

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