Quote:
Originally Posted by realcity
This is what Hamilton (a city) should be promoting. It's urbanness. Not the 'nature' around it.
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I
am outdoorsy. I'm in the woods everyday, and I love the fact that this city is so interwoven with it's natural surroundings, but I absolutely agree. From a 'branding' point of view (if we must 'brand' our city at all, but that's another discussion), we should be promoting the fact that we are still one of the densest cities in the country (in spite of the best efforts of a succession of political leaders and their sprawl developer buddies), with one of the largest remaining collection of c19 and early c20 building and housing stock, etc., along with all the social, cultural, and economic benefits that entails.
Our natural surroundings are essential for the environmental sustainability of our city, and may help attract some of those 'creative class' types we hear about, but Ecklund's flogging of the waterfalls doesn't address these benefits, and instead promotes the waterfalls merely for tourism. Hardly something to build our economic future on. The SUV's and the babes do as much of a disservice to the falls themselves, and the important part they play in the ecosystem of the escarpment - a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve - as they do to the urban character of our city.