Uneconomic development. Whoa, Cowboy!

Branding Blog is a new find around here. Bounding through it recently, I came across this:

DALLAS (AP) -- Dallas is going through an identity crisis.

With no singular defining characteristic -- no Golden Gate Bridge, no French Quarter, no Space Needle -- the city is stuck with an image that's not only inaccurate, it's badly out of date.

Phillip Jones, who took over as president and CEO of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau late last year, is trying to change that.

Jones says the perception of Dallas is J.R. Ewing, women with big hair and cowboys.

He wants to introduce the new Dallas with an aggressive new branding campaign.

The bureau hired a nationally known advertising firm based in Dallas, to craft a new, catchy "brand."

The Dallas-Fort Worth area was dropped from a list of "America's Favorite Cities" by Travel and Leisure magazine in March.

Adding to that insult, three other Texas cities were featured: Austin, San Antonio and Houston.

Hmmm. Austin's about music and high tech, oh yeah, and education--a slightly bent cultural oasis in Texas. San Antonio? That's The Alamo and Riverwalk (and not too far from my dearly beloved Del Rio.) Houston? Houston. Well, they're the heat, smog and murder capital of America aren't they? How'd they get on Travel and Leisure's list? Must be the BBQ and Lone Star Beer.

Back to Dallas. A few things make you wanna go "Oyy!"

• a new, catchy "brand."
• no singular defining characteristic -- no Golden Gate Bridge, no French Quarter, no Space Needle

Catchy? "Catchy" was The Pina Colada Song or Don't worry, be happy. Oddly enough, so fondly do people remember their "catchiness," those "catchy" songs will get you pelted with chicken wings and martini olives if you try them at your local Karaoke night. I don't know why journalists insist on resorting to describing "branding" as the equivalent of just scrawling a funny limerick. Wait, yeah I do. They're lazy. They're simplifyers, not clarifiers.

One would guess that Johnson, of Dallas' CVB didn't describe what he was setting out to do for he city that way. And that brings us to the next Oyy!

A singular defining characterisitic? The Golden Gate is a marker, a metaphor for a multivariate package of understandings and myth that is "San Francisco!" It stands for found romance, lost hearts, cable cars, the Barbary Coast, Karl Malden and Michael Douglas, Bullitt, exhorbitant rents, a liberal culture, and the love that dare not speak it's name and so, instead, shouts it. Voila! San Francisco!

Ditto The French Quarter, except it's flatter, lower, they talk funny, shout about any kind of love, drink like Europeans, and you're wetter out of he shower than in.

The Space Needle? Well, that's the worrisome part, as far as Dallas is concerned. I'm sure Seattleites will disagree, but I'm not sure what the Space Needle is an Icon of? It's a landmark, sure. It gives airline pilots something to point out to their passengers. Maybe some think "Seattle...Rain." Or "Seattle...Grunge." (Wait, that's over, right?) Perhaps, "Seattle...Starbucks" or "Seattle...Seahawks"? "Seattle...Extreme Sports," maybe?

I'm sure I've left something out, but Seattle is...precipitation, Pearl Jam, Coffee, decent teams, and fit-crunchies who can kick your Krispy Kreme eating butt? Yeah, I get all that from the Space Needle, uh-huh. Oyyy.

The current fads to create a future--a brand--for cities by pouring dumptrucks full of money into Crown Jewel projects isn't new. Just as, regrettably, many companies squeeze out a point-of-purchase display and call it "branding", cities also confuse things with feelings. And, like business, cities have their own version of the "best practices" goose chase. In fact, Tampa, Memphis, San Antonio, and several other locales have built quite a cottage industry hosting city fathers and business-leaders from lesser, identity-deprived burgs. They come to ogle monorails, trams, riverwalks, farmers markets, performing arts venues and various other flavor of the month "singular defining characteristics." Then they go home and shake the trees for money.

They do this a lot. Repeatedly. It's much like the old joke about second marriages being the triumph of hope over experience. Except many of these well-intentioned communities have been to the altar more times than Elizabeth Taylor.

Why all the flirtations, marriages and divorces? Because of a hurried, anxious urge to be doing "something, anything!" in the face of an entropy that leaves most builders, politicians and business thinkers scratching their heads.

Huh?

Exactly. Perhaps you've read me rail against bullet points and premature simplification before. This is another case where those urges fight against our desire for ultimate satisfaction. I want it and I want it now goes hand in hand with I want it and I want it in terms I define and ways that satisfy me. We then lie to our selves that our ideas and their products are good for the community, our company and our consuming citizens.

"It's the rationalization, stupid!" Remember to ask yourself what builders, politicians and developers are in the business of..... Spending money in order to make money. In many cases, the money is other peoples--owners, shareholders and taxpayers. The object is to get maximum bang for your buck, ROI, right? Of course it is. But, when it comes to this investment, often you're in long-term return country; you''re betting on the come. 10+ years down the road. And the potentially blame-worthy are long gone.

So, if you're gonna invest, might as well go big, because the fees etc that are the real here-and-now return on those investments only get bigger if the principal invested is bigger. In fact, it's the quality of your forecast and the accompanying support data that often qualify a project as a successful delivery for those doing the birthing of many of these projects. Not--not their long term viability.

For example: For a project with say, a 20-years-out break even date after city tax breaks, investment credits, customer and community acceptance, "success" or "failure" can only be judged when your baby is in it's adolescence investment-wise, when it comes into its real earning years.

Now, given that set-up:

• Bigger and splashier investments of moneys
• Business, construction, politicians hungry for action in terms of bricks, mortar, foot traffic and votes.
• A far horizon, beyond practical "blame-accountability range," for many of the decision makers.

What do you get?

You get a few who get rich today, claim or hope for success, and leave you--taxpayer or mayor, Rotarian or economic developer--saddled with remediating or repurposing or razing their often stunted offspring.

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NEXT: BrandSpace as relates to CitySpace -- Richard Florida meets Charles Darwin for coffee with Adam Smith and they pool their ideas to save a city.