Big Vision: Neighborhood branding and the quest for incremental development. Part 2

Demonstration project for our Midtown Urban Trail concept

 In order for a neighborhood to grow and thrive there has to be something to organize around. It has to be something that is identifiable to a community. You have to have a brand and that brand has to be real. It can't be some ridiculous realtor created phase like SoBro or MidHi  it has to be real to the community it represents. Fake realtor created names do not move your neighborhood forward, authenticity does.

This was the old Midtown fire station that once stood on 15th st.

In our case our area once had a historically used reference called Midtown. As the city grew further east, this became less relevant because it was no longer in the "middle of town" but because of eastern sprawl and new subdivision it gradually lost its identity as a 'place'. It had also lost all the things that made it a community like neighborhood shops and stores.  It was just blocks of houses where people lived.

Neighborhood Logo Sign

So bringing the "brand" back as Midtown was easy in our case as we had a historic a reference point. We were also the center of the German Austrian Community from 1880-1920 but calling the area "Germantown" or "German Heights" would have had no relevance to the people who live here today. Ours is perhaps the most culturally diverse neighborhood in our city, so "branding" it after one group of people made no sense. Neighbors and the few businesses that were here started using the reference by saying "oh we are in Midtown" and five years later? Realtors, city officials, and everyone else now using it. It is our brand, our identity our reference point. We resisted the idea of respelling it to "Midtowne" a spelling many cities now use in and attempt to make it appear pretentious. 

You don't reverse decline overnight. It is all about small steps.

So how do you get to incremental development? Incremental development comes only after you have achieved some level of branding and stability. This is not an overnight thing , it can take a couple of years.. This is generally because when you start, there is often an unwillingness or a belief that "nothing can change". That decline was inevitable. Incremental development occurs when one person does something like an improvement and neighbors see that and also do improvements. It may be taking a long vacant house and getting it back to occupancy. It may not yet be 'restored' in the traditional sense, it could still have vinyl siding on it for example but it is one step closer to eventual restoration. The "baseline" has been raised, the standard has become higher. Eventually that asphalt or vinyl siding come off and originality is revealed.

Next time Big Vision: Creating clout, strategies and alliances.