angie- you are right on point. thanks for writing the things in my head! you are brilliant, dear. see you soon.

You make some good points, but many of the “boosters” to whom you refer are also in the business of problem-solving. Organizers of community gardens, for example, may be part of a trend that makes Cleveland seem like a vibrant and thriving city. However, the people who make these gardens happen know the reality of our city and are doing important work to eliminate food ghettos and improve the health of our citizens. The realities of our city are sobering, but there’s no harm in whistling while we work.

Angie, I get what you are saying and I’m glad you said it. I also think though, that when Forbes and others talk about how miserable Cleveland is there is a message of superiority and blame that comes with their comments that feels totally unfair. The root of Cleveland’s problems are systemic to the whole country: outsourcing of manufacturing, cheap oil, predatory lending, income disparity to name a few. Yes Cleveland has certainly exacerbated its own problems at times. But ultimately the lifestyle and political habits of the country as a whole have put us in this tough spot. So I beleive there is a need for boosterism to counteract the injustice of raising some cities up to be better than other cities. I think, too, that boosterism can support the message that ultimately, as you point out, how miserable or happy a person is in a particular city depends totally on who they are, what their income and education is, and what they want out of life (which hopefully involves helping to fix problems – then they are a great fit for Cleveland).

I struggle with the fine line b/t touting recent successes in Youngstown and being ‘one of those guys’ that overdoes it. Our town has gotten kicked in the teeth for 30+ years, a lot of it self-inflicted. So when I work to get the word out that we have turned the corner in some ways, and I dont write a disclaimer that we have a long way to go, am I being dishonest? My marketing book focuses almost exclusively on the positive, but I feel compelled to tell readers (esp international companies) that there is a lot to be done. Personally, when we do say its a work-in-progress still, I think we get a lot of credibility. Tough call.

Wonderful article, Angie. There is too much injustice and misery in a place like Cleveland for people to get too comfortable with boosterism. We must never forget those whose voices are not heard.

Cities are complex. They are at once depressing, beautiful, backwards, progressive, inert and dynamic. The “work” is never done, nor is it limited to certain post-industrial cities in a certain region of the country. If you don’t see a reason to celebrate your city until everything is perfect, then what are you fighting for? I love St. Louis for its sense of place; for what it was, what it is, and what it will be. No, I am not ignoring its dysfunctions and inequities, but I love it anyway. So much so, that I built a business on “boosterism” (albeit an authentic, realistic and sometimes self-depreciating brand of boosterism, I think). Its the rich character and sense of place that remains in spite of its problems that I think is worthy of celebrating and expressing.

Boosterism is “yay us!” puffery. Cleveland doesn’t need more of that, but it does needs to attract more business, visitors and new residents to the area, and to stimulate activity within our existing community. I worked in the meetings industry for a while in DC, and while I saw industry mailings, ads and articles about every city you can think of, large or small, I saw NOT ONE THING about Cleveland. It left the impression that Cleveland didn’t want the lucrative meetings business at all.

If we’re ever going to have the excellent school system and safe neighborhoods we once had, we need to market the city internally and externally to draw more people and dollars to the area. We also have to solve the problems – from segregation to the loss of manufacturing jobs – that have helped put us in a tough spot, no question. But it’s not either/or. Besides, some of the biggest “Cleveland Rocks!” people I’ve met are from rough parts of town.

For a few years now Pittsburgh has been heavily marketed all over Washington, DC as a business and arts destination. It isn’t “Pittsburgh is great!” It’s specific messages about their art museums, their food, their business offerings. On the flip side, those ads don’t mention Pittsburgh’s ongoing struggles, but why should they? That’s not the purpose of the ads.

There’s a weird expectation in Cleveland that the city must be made perfect for anyone to want to stay or to come here. No city is perfect. Actually, a three year Cleveland resident working on development issues told me that she fell in love with the challenge of Cleveland. Some of the biggest “boosters” are non-natives.

I’m wondering if this author has read Aldo Leopold’s article on boosterism, I believe from the 1930s when he was involved with the Chamber in Albuquerque. Similar take on boosterism.

Cleveland is not alone. Phoenix, AZ has the exact same problem. This tells me that most cities at the bottom wanting to work their way up probably do too.

This article is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I agree that many self proclaimed urbanists and urban boosters often don’t acknowledge the needs or plight of the non-creative class i.e. the working poor and impoverished when we discuss issues like transportation and planning. We take for granted in our talk of hip cafe’s, light rail, TOD, and such that many people are barely able to afford sub-par housing, work menial jobs, have poor access to quality healthcare and education, and are faced with too many more pertinent issues to really care about bike lanes. At least from this side, we definitely need to acknowledge the problems of the people who have limited and low quality options when we talk about making better cities because they are a vital cog in the system.

But on the other hand, boosterism really isn’t a problem for Cleveland. Cleveland’s problem is that it has its failures and 99 other problems thrown in its face all of the time. Everyone locally knows about the problems. The people who live in the city deal with them everyday, and the people in the suburbs moved to the suburbs to distance themselves from the problems. And nationally, the only wide-known positives are the Cleveland Orchestra, The Cleveland Clinic and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You can only sell those three things to a certain extent. So what ends up happening is 1)no one wants to go to Cleveland because it “sucks,” so you can’t draw in new talent and 2)the talent already living there thinks it sucks too and they leave and never come back unless they are forced to. The people who are left behind are the ones who don’t have the means or opportunities to leave and they end up stuck in the cycle of problems with little hope of changing them because the negatives are all around them without a glimmer of hope. It doesn’t do any good to talk about Cleveland’s 99 problems and then not do anything about it. Talking about how bad the schools are isn’t going to help the 46% of students not graduating. Get out in the community and start trying to help the kids graduate.

So I think it is a good thing to have some people try to sell the positives because Cleveland needs to be able to draw in and keep the people who are motivated and have the knowledge, power, and skills to make change happen. These things take a group effort to change, one person isn’t going to come in and become Cleveland’s Messiah especially when it seems as if everyone including the the people living there have labelled Cleveland a lost cause. At least the people still living in Detroit are trying to counter it’s negative image and people are moving there and doing things, I hope to be one of them after I graduate.

As someone who runs a website focused on urban living in Columbus, I’d say that a lot of what I do could be considered boosterism for our city. I am a proponent of urban living, but I try to do my best to keep things honest and grounded in reality.

That being said, I think many of our urban cities need a boost. People need to hear something aspirational. That doesn’t mean that our problems should be ignored, but it also doesn’t mean that they should dominate us. I’m not sure what the local tv news is like in Cleveland, but in Columbus it’s the “crime, sports and weather report”. Rarely is any good news shared, and often times the only thing you hear about Downtown areas is that we’re wasting taxpayer dollars on urban projects and that those areas are crime-ridden and unsafe.

To a degree, I see responsible boosterism as a counterbalance to that equation. But I can also see where it can become irksome.

Great post and great discussion here!

I live in an affluent place out west, and our schools have the highest test scores in the state. People move here because the schools are so good. The fact that they are good, though, may have more to do with the affluence, education and involvement of the parents than the schools themselves. We have excellent teachers, but the district itself is very conservative, resistant to change, and very slow to adopt innovative new approaches. So my experience in a very different place, with a very different kind of problem tells me that boosterism, the unquestioning support of an institution, can itself be an obstacle to change.

I’ve only been through Cleveland once, and that was about 18 years ago. I found it grim, but the concert by the Cleveland Symphony was one of the experiences of my life. Then I read Ray Suarrez’ book on the “Old Neighborhood”, about the problems in the inner city there, and the attempts to create gated communities to draw the middle class back, written about ten years ago, and it made me think the city had made little progress since then. I’ve read about all the big showcase projects, but as someone who works on city issues, I’ve read little that would give me faith that the community is dealing with the underlying education issues, or the severe problems that go with having what amounts to a permanent underclass.

In this way then, boosterism insults the reader, for anyone considering taking a job or moving to a place like Cleveland isn’t going to be swayed by publicity, but will instead ask whoever they know in the place questions like “Where should I live?”, “Where are the schools good?” and “where is it safe to go at night?” The answers to those questions are inevitably going to come from the employer, the realtor or the friends and family. Those are the people who really need convincing, the community itself. No amount of press to the outside world is going to sway those people. Yes, they may be slow to change their minds, and yes, they may have outdated perceptions, but all the more reason for creating a reality of improvement, of really showing those people that the things that really matter are getting better. There’s an old saying in real estate that when it comes to place, first you have to sell those who have already bought, for those are the base of referrals that make the outside sell.