Above: An iconic Erie image
I’d like to share some thought from the “Inside Erie” column written by Erie Times-News columnist Pat Howard- and read by myself and many other Erie natives who no longer live there.
He writes this week about something I’ve observed a number of times - folks from Erie (and a number of other Rust Belt communities) can be pretty negative about their hometowns. And it sometimes seems that the loudest complainers are those who’ve never left.
But people who have lived elsewhere (i.e. Erie natives who’ve lived in …
Rust Wire has previously highlighted Donald Carter, the David Lewis Director of the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. (Take a look at our prior post on Carter’s efforts to trade the term “Rust Belt” for “Water Belt” and change “Sun Belt” into “Drought Belt.”)
Here’s a piece by Carter from Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discussing The Mayors’ Institute on City Design, which took place last month with mayors from Springfield, Illinois; Elkhart, Indiana; Canton, Ohio; Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia; Kenosha and Racine, Wisconsin.
See if you agree with …
Why not Detroit? Or Cleveland? Or a more compact, less-sprawled out city like Pittsburgh?
This Reuters story says Houston, the “petro metro” is aiming to be the electric car capital of America.
Stories like this make me so mad.
A city in the Great Lakes region would be much better suited to this, yet some folks in Houston are showing more leadership on this issue. For instance, Houston has signed a deal to build public charging stations. “Such agreements are key to easing skeptical consumers’ fears of running out of juice if their …
Check out the new Metro Matters podcast, from the folks at Next American City magazine and the Brookings Institution.
If you listen to this inaugural edition, you can hear about everything from the stimulus, to US exports, Richard Florida and manufacturing. There’s a good bit of Rust-Belt related discussion as well.
-KG
Can “branding” a city through a snappy slogan and slick marketing campaign work?
A lot of cities apparently think so, including Dayton and Cleveland, as outlined in this USA Today story.
They point to successful and memorable slogans, like “I love New York,” and “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” It’s also interesting to read the comments under the story- on mentions great success North Dakota has had marketing itself as a “Wild West” destination for bicyclists.
The story doesn’t mention less-successful campaigns. (I’m thinking of the Michael Moore movie Roger & …
Read here what one Buffalo woman misses after moving to Florida.
-KG
