Cecily Hastings
Publisher
About This Author
Cecily Hastings owns and operates Inside Sacramento and offers her insight and views on local issues each month.
Articles by this author
Connective Tissue
Before March 2020, Sacramento enjoyed a 10-year golden age for small business.
Independent restaurants, shops and galleries opened throughout the city. The transformation was remarkable enough that in 2016 and 2018, we published “Inside Sacramento: The Most Interesting Places in America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital.”
The book featured more than 100 local businesses across eight neighborhoods. Today, much of it reads like history.
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Covered Up
Since our first edition in 1996, Inside has published an estimated 1,400 works by approximately 400 artists. Because each of our four editions carries its own cover, we showcase an extraordinary range of paintings, photographs and mixed media.
From the start, I’ve selected every cover image. Of all the jobs involved in publishing Inside, curating cover art is my favorite. It satisfies a creative need. Selecting art and writing for the publication bring tremendous pleasure.
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Beauty Secrets
In an essay called “A Case for Beauty in Our Cities,” Walker Larson argues beauty is not a luxury in urban life, but a necessity. Beauty, he writes, helps humans flourish. It anchors us, uplifts and reminds us that our environment matters.
As I read Larson’s words, I thought about Sacramento—our blocks, parks, skyline, neighborhoods and mismatched corridors of brilliance and blight.
Beauty may not be the first word outsiders use to describe Sacramento. Yet anyone who has built a life here knows we have a beauty all our own. The challenge is choosing to create more of it when opportunities arise.
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Success Story
When people ask what makes Inside Sacramento successful after more than 30 years, I give the same answer: Local partnerships.
Yes, we publish local journalism. We tell stories about neighborhoods, people, businesses and public issues. But at our core, Inside Sacramento has always been about connecting people.
For three decades, we have been fortunate to partner with hundreds of nonprofits, schools, arts organizations, neighborhood groups and civic leaders who share a common goal—making Sacramento a better place to live.
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Espirit De Core
As cities rethink their urban cores, a new paradigm emerges: vibrant, walkable downtowns that feel like neighborhoods, not just business districts.
In “The Great Downtown Renaissance,” a recent piece in Dwell magazine, urbanists emphasize successful revival requires more than office towers and event districts. It demands thriving public spaces, mixed-use housing and a genuine sense of community.
Orlando, Indianapolis and Houston are reimagining their downtowns as places where people live, work and play. This “renaissance” is aimed at reversing decades of postwar planning that emptied city cores, prioritized cars over pedestrians and made downtowns ghost towns after 5 p.m.
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