Public-Private Regionalism

Just saw an unexpected commercial on television, on the surface a rare example of cooperation across state lines. An ad extolling the collective touristic amenities of the states along the Gulf Coast (Texas not included), rather than the time-honored provincial approach. As I watched, I thought to myself, "what a geographically unlikely and yet completely sensible idea". Right up until the end.

Y'all come on down to the Gulf and eat some gumbo, from your benevolent friends at British Petroleum! No wonder the states are involved in such a logical campaign. BP is facing billions in fines and clean-up costs (hopefully--the proverbial jury is still out), it makes sense that they would want to pool their resources, rather than paying each state's tourist board independently. The madness has even spread to the region's seafood processing trade group, whose executive director says "state marketing efforts are a mistake, trying to brand a product by a state label is inane." As true for shrimp as for steel beams or airplane parts.

So i guess all it takes for states and cities to rethink their spatial limitations is an environmental catastrophe. No doubt you've heard that local governments coast-to-coast are in trouble, and they increasingly look to corporations to finance everything from playgrounds to entire healthcare systems. Apple can spend $4 million to renovate one transit station in Chicago, or they can spend $10 million to spread the goodwill to five or six different cities through economies of scale. Probably a better investment than a Super Bowl ad.

Economy of scale also translates to a cookie-cutter attitude to projects. Rather than taking context-sensitive approaches, a company seeking some good short-to-medium-term PR can hire a design firm to create a playground/stadium/freeway interchange that "reinforces the brand" in some way, and offer the template up to cash-strapped municipalities across the land. Faced with crumbling infrastructures and lacking the funds to do anything about it, it's a deal many mayors and city managers desperate for tangible proof that they're doing something may be unable to pass up. It would be years (a couple of election cycles, at least) before folks realize whether or not a one-size-fits-all public works project in fact, does.

Driving Me Backwards

I have a confession to make. I am a bad driver. It seems like an almost un-American thing to admit. I've known this for some time. I was involved in three serious crashes (two of which were my fault) within two years of getting my license. No injuries resulted, thankfully, but only through sheer luck. I'm a little too easily distracted behind the wheel, and this was in the days before texting, GPS units and in-dash computer madness. After the third, I made the decision that not driving was in the best interest of myself and everybody else on the road. This wasn't too hard, I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time, and working downtown. As I've mentioned before, this predated there being many bikes on the roads, but Portland also has better public transit than just about any other American city of similar size. So no problem in the short term, I managed to get around quite well with my bus pass.

Later on down the metaphorical road, I had more difficulty. When I lived in San Diego, many of the jobs I was qualified for were situated far out in the suburbs with no transit access. I began to feel as though I was being penalized for making a thoroughly sensible decision. I think I'm an intelligent and capable person, and could have gotten one of these jobs easily. I could have caved and bought a car, but lucky (?) for me, I couldn't afford one. I also couldn't afford to live closer to the jobs that were available. So I lived in the urban neighborhood I could afford and I took a minimum-wage service job downtown that I could walk to. A vicious cycle, that. That, above all other factors, drove me to relocate to a city with decent transit infrastructure. I think a lot of people would like to do the same, but opt instead for getting a car to get to the job that's available to them. I've been fortunate in one sense, I haven't been at all financially successful, but I have been able to live my life on my own terms.

This has popped up again lately. Yesterday I applied for a job, the description of which sounds great. The location of which, however, is anything but. Far out in the suburbs, beyond the reach of commuter rail. Even if I had a car, I wouldn't want the fifty-mile roundtrip commute. So why did I even apply? Well, it's a good job, and I could use one of those...but it got me thinking. I've read article after article on how the younger generation of workers want to live and work in the cities. I can tell you that everything you read is true. I have friends all over the country, mostly late-20s to mid-30s, I can think of only a handful who live in the suburbs (even then, they're close-in ones like Evanston or Oakland). Those who do commute to suburbs for work unilaterally hate their commutes, if not their job itself. Even those with children have so far chosen to remain in the cities. Here in Chicago, with a good (if ailing) transit system and a nice Midwestern flatness that's conducive to biking and walking, I would venture to say that a slim majority of my friends don't own a car. I'll brag a little bit, most of my friends are pretty smart and talented people. By extrapolation, this means that setting up for business away from the urban core, you're probably missing out on some good talent.

Well, I went on a bit of a tangent there, so allow me to return to my original point. Being a bad driver hasn't precluded me from being a licensed driver, or even getting jobs requiring driving around for hours on end. After my old Oregon license finally expired, I went to get one in Illinois and I was appalled at how simple both the written and behind-the-wheel tests were. Driving a car isn't exactly rocket science, but I see people driving badly on pretty much a daily basis. The ad world's culture of fear has taught us that driving is very dangerous, due largely to human error. But thanks to the sprawl brought on by decades of federal highway subsidies and suburban tax breaks to companies willing to relocate to their god-awful industrial parks, making it more difficult to get a driver's license would unfairly prevent people from accessing good jobs.

Then again, if you've chosen to live without a car, you've already faced that disadvantage.

Winter in America

I've been awfully quiet over the past month, I do apologize. What with holiday travel, winter ennui and appointments to keep, December is always a harsh month. Just a quick post to reassure you that I'm still here, with things on my mind. I've been seeing this commercial a lot lately:



Um, terrifying? So yeah, proof that ice is bad for cars. Or, if you watch this as somebody who walks and bikes everywhere, proof that cars are bad for people.

Selling the Sizzle

Screen grab from Amazon Kindle commerical


I hate television commercials. And yet...I'm secretly fascinated by them. I can't remember the last time that I (consciously) purchased a product based on an advertisement, yet for years now, I have been paying much closer attention to them than might be considered healthy. Not so much to the products on offer or the slogans used to sell them, as to the settings and the mise-en-scene on display. It is for this reason, for example, that I have recognized the mean streets of Portland, Oregon (home to advertising giants Wieden+Kennedy) in an extraordinary number of car commercials over the past few years.

Like many people, I'm pretty much obsessed with Mad Men. I could go into a lengthy diatribe about what I think is going on, but I'll spare you. One of the things I think the show does really well is to illustrate how advertisers are able to tap into the mass psychology driving the zeitgeist (except for the times when they're hilariously out-of-touch, even for the time period). Even before I got sucked into Don Draper's world, I had been noticing something strange happening. Bicycles were everywhere in TV ads. These range from cutesy-schmootsey-ness to pointless mockery to downright irritation. But even more than these ads featuring (sorta) active cycling, there's loads out there where bikes are static props in the background. Small cars being marketed toward urbanites are especially prone to this, I've seen maybe a half dozen auto commercials in the past year where bikes are placed on the sidewalks like any other street furniture.

You're probably thinking, "So what?". Anybody who has ever taken a film class can tell you that nothing gets in the shot that isn't meant to be there. When sets are decorated, they don't just grab a bunch of stuff and throw it out there. Every frame is storyboarded over the course of weeks, if not months, and props are picked very carefully. This isn't to say the directors of any of these commercials is going to be the next Hitchcock (or even Ed Wood), but they do have budget constraints, and nobody goes out and buys a few bikes to stick in their ad "just because". They want their commercial to appeal to a certain demographic, and that demographic is increasingly viewing bicycles as a normal part of the street fabric.

So what if it boils down to little more than crass marketing? The marketing targets the money, and the attitudes of those who would spend that money has changed. Advertisers understand it already, even if politicians don't.