By Dylan Corbett
Our city stands at a turning point. Schools are closing. Young people are leaving. The global economy is shifting beneath our feet. What we decide now will shape whether El Paso sustains the character it has earned — or surrenders it incrementally.
I have chosen to raise my family here. As a parent, I worry that my children will struggle to find work that pays fairly in the community they know. That worry is shared across neighborhoods from east to west.
The problem is visible. A stagnant population, unusual for Texas cities. The outflow of young people. These trends erode the tax base and strain the services that hold a city together – schools, public safety, transit, parks. School budget cuts will cost jobs for teachers and support staff.
For decades, we built new schools in favored neighborhoods while allowing schools in neglected areas to deteriorate. We did this without adequate demographic planning, without honest assessment of where families were moving, without the political will to make hard choices about equitable investment.
The result: excess capacity in some areas, starvation in others and closures that fall disproportionately on already underserved communities. This is not mere policy failure. It is a failure of imagination. The same pattern repeats across our city – short-term thinking, decisions made for narrow benefit rather than common good.
For decades, the development model has failed to deliver broad prosperity. Downtown gambits, generous incentives for low-wage employers and unchecked sprawl have prioritized short-term gain over the good of all.
Developers and wealthier stakeholders have exerted outsized influence on our priorities. We have largely outsourced our long-term thinking on economic growth to individuals who reap benefits from international trade, without serious consideration of sustainable development that produces broad-based gains for our entire community. Tax breaks have produced limited job creation and heavier infrastructure burdens that the public bears.
We have long neglected neighborhoods south of the highway such as Chamizal, Segundo Barrio and others. Underinvestment in housing and uneven services have disproportionately harmed families there. Now those failures threaten the civic health of the entire community.
The expansion of the Downtown highway, the Downtown cap, and the arrival of massive data centers bring these tensions into relief.
Data centers have arrived with limited community engagement, little clarity about energy demands, and potentially significant impacts on the resources our community depends on. Citizens rightly ask whether these projects benefit the many or enrich the few. Trust between government and residents is essential. Civic leaders must answer these questions plainly.
Compounding these threats is the rising cost of living. Higher property valuations, increasing taxes and inflationary pressure are making El Paso unaffordable for young families and seniors alike. If the cost of staying climbs beyond the reach of those who built this city, we will accelerate the very exodus we seek to reverse.
El Paso has survived threats to its identity for centuries. Border theologian Arturo José Bañuelas teaches that El Pasoans have endured what he calls a triple colonization: the coming of Spain, the coming of America, and our insertion into the world economy through NAFTA.
In the face of economic displacement brought by each, El Paso has persisted by vigorously fighting for our culture, our values and our connection to this place and to one another. The current moment – massive data centers, pressure on our resources, questions of who benefits – represents another wave of forces seeking to remake our community according to external logic.
We must not allow this sacred earth, our people and our sustainability to become collateral damage.
No politician in Austin or Washington will solve what faces us. They are distant from our everyday lives, from the challenges only we understand. We urgently need a renewed local political culture, one capable of thinking beyond just the next election, of making hard choices, of honoring both our past and our future.
Protecting the common good requires three commitments.
First, fiscal discipline paired with stewardship. Adopt transparent budgets. Invest in planning that honors both our environment and economy – water stewardship, efficient land use, renewable energy – in a way that creates good jobs while preserving resources for our children.
Second, prioritize quality employment and housing stability. Replace scattershot tax giveaways with targeted incentives for sectors that pay fairly. Support small business incubation and workforce programs tied to our local institutions.
Third, recognize El Paso’s unique border and bicultural identity as civic strength. Center binational cultural life, bilingual education, and joint stewardship with Ciudad Juárez in our economic and cultural strategies. Invest in our historic but neglected neighborhoods.
We also need genuine cross-sector collaboration. The recent loss of substantial grant funding to build an aerospace hub was a major failure. It is a warning that reveals what happens when government, civil society and our institutions fail to work together. We cannot afford such divisions. Our city’s future depends on breaking down silos and building the partnerships necessary to sustain El Paso for generations to come.
When large numbers of migrants were arriving in years past, I worked with civil society leaders and city and county officials on managing migration flows and protecting our identity as a welcoming place. That experience convinced me that responsive governance is possible. Yet concentrated donor influence and a coarse political culture increasingly pull elected officials toward short-term choices that favor narrow interests.
This is not a call to austerity but to deliberate imagination and accountability. The responsibility falls to ordinary citizens to envision the future, hold leaders accountable and participate robustly in democratic life.
The recent rise in young voter participation and significant public outcry regarding the data centers are hopeful signs – proof that civic energy exists and can productively shape policy if mobilized, informed and sustained.
Citizens should demand specific, evidence-based proposals that grow the tax base through real job creation, that invest wisely in our infrastructure, that repair neglected neighborhoods, and that protect our commitments to families, workers and small entrepreneurs. Officials must answer tough questions about transparency and cost, especially for projects that reshape our city’s future.
El Paso has endured. El Paso has persisted. We have created beauty and meaning in a landscape of constant change. We have universities and research institutions, cross-border markets, a resilient small business sector, a bilingual workforce and a shared cultural life that draws people in.
If we invest in these assets with sober urgency and authentic imagination – if we govern with the courage those who contributed to El Paso’s legacy demonstrated – we will not only preserve what is precious in this place, but deepen it. Young people will see a viable future here. Our border community will thrive for another generation, rooted in our unique shared identity.
Dylan Corbett is the executive director of the Hope Border Institute.
The post Opinion: Data centers, school closures and sprawl are a signal that El Paso needs a new civic vision appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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