Reality TV Redoes Small Towns

Jeffersonville, New York, is the first small town to be made over for TV in a new series called "Town Haul" on TLC. As a town "already on the way up," it was a prime candidate for Genevieve Gordon, a designer from "Trading Spaces.""Naturally Jeffersonville is not without aesthetic glitches. Gorder observes that an aluminum-siding salesman must have come through town covering up 1830s facades. Her intent, she says, is to 'unwrap' those buildings. And she sees opportunities to demonstrate how design can solve social problems. She wants to 'show what design can do, that it’s not just the icing on the cake' by, for example, building a new teen center so that kids don’t have to hang out at the Sunoco station. As sincere as Gorder sounds, she still has trouble staying away from the icing. 'You look good, you feel good,' she says, commenting on the potential benefits of the new uniforms she proposes for the local baseball team."

Thanks to Heidi Schallberg