Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
With the exception of Johannesburg, all of those cities have the advantage of a temporal head start, sometimes of millenia--being a city on a river was much more of an advantage when land travel was limited to what a team of oxen could pull on a cart, and tradition carries great weight when it comes to social institutions like colleges and churches...
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All good points, and I think that you are right about the weight of tradition that gives institutions their clout, which is an advantage for older cities. Sacramento is not a small or new town though, there are some world class schools and museums here already. The greater Sacramento region has over 2 million people, which seems to be the threshold for becoming a global city.
I think one good strategy would be building up the industrial sector, so Sacramento becomes known as a productive city. Industrial jobs will help the population continue to grow.
Another strategy would be to surpass San Francisco in something, anything. Fashion? Sustainable technology development? Culinary arts? Furniture Design? If we take fashion design as an example, there will need to be a world renowned fashion design school here, as well as fabric suppliers, and an active fashion design industry built around at least one major high-end label. A first step would be attracting a school with a fashion design program with potential to be great. Some private donations to the schools endowment would allow them to bring in famous designers to teach and lecture. Then the school could begin to be very selective, choosing the best applicants to accept. Talented individuals would come to Sacramento to study, and a few would choose to stay and work here post-graduation. Maybe a few former classmates would succeed in starting a trend-setting clothing label. Then all of a sudden Sacramento is known as a hub for fashion design, and it takes off from there.
A less strategic approach can be found in Portland and Vancouver, where urban planning, design, architecture, and development trends have created interesting urban experiences that attract new residents. Creative people are drawn to those cities because they are dense, walkable, and full of variety. Sacramento is on the right track as long as there is some population growth to warrant the continued development of housing in the central city. When there are enough people living in an urban environment in close proximity to each other, spontaneous kinds of productive enterprise start to happen more frequently. Sacramento's identity will form and take shape on its own as new ideas and movements emerge.