Add Statues, Don’t Just Remove

Instead of treating de‑statuing as the only response to contested histories, cities should proactively commission many more traditional figurative statues — both canonical and obscure figures — to broaden civic memory and dilute zero‑sum fights over a few monuments. The proposal treats statues as public infrastructure: cheap to make, easy to site, and useful for creating more varied civic narratives. — Shifting policy from removal to expansion changes who controls public memory, affects permitting and budgets, and reframes culture‑war conflicts into questions about what to build and whom to honor.