To Succeed, Cities Need to Be Themselves

Detroit — and other
struggling cities — should be themselves rather than trying to emulate
urban “cool kids.” (Photo: Sagittariuss
via Flickr)

How should cities think about branding
themselves?

Even if the whole idea of “branding” a city is distasteful to you,
keep reading. Because yesterday’s post about “The Authentic City” on
Aaron Renn’s The
Urbanophile is not about the kind of cute marketing campaigns that
word might imply. Instead, it’s full of important ideas about what it
will take for struggling cities to move forward.

For places like Detroit and Indianapolis, Renn argues, it’s not
about trying to be like “the cool kids” — the “world-class” cities like
New York, or the exceptional cases like Portland, Oregon. It’s about
building on a city’s history and its essential nature:

Unfortunately, most cities are still stuck in high school. They
think it is about having the accoutrements of the cool places, not
realizing that they are just like Charlie Brown trying to kick that
football. What’s worse, they actually seem determined in many cases to
downplay or leave behind many of their strongest brand assets in any
attempt to be like the cool kids. (For more on this, see my piece, “The
Brand Promise of Indianapolis”)

To renew our cities, we have to build on what they are, not what
they aren’t. The lesson of Portland is not the physical things Portland
did. The lesson of Portland is that they went their own way and did
what was right for them. Other cities need to find their own paths.
That doesn’t mean you can’t do something or aspire to be something
you’ve never been. That’s how we grow as people and as cities. But
suddenly deciding to just chuck your whole heritage, history, character,
etc. and go in a radically different direction is probably not going to
work. One reason, for example, the 1970’s era amateur sports strategy
for Indianapolis worked is that sports was something that was already
compatible with the local culture. It was a reworking of something that
was already there, positioned for the future — and it fit the city.

It’s well worth reading Renn’s piece in full.

More from around the network: Reimagine
an Urban Paradise wonders why so many trucks park on the sidewalk
in Pittsburgh. Transit
Miami writes about how McDonald’s — and its staggering dependence
on drive-throughs — influences in our energy policy. And The
Overhead Wire has a post on the ongoing tension between housing
density and NIMBYism.