City remake starts with a basic housecleaning
Readers say they're tired of big talk and little action
Gary Lamphier
The Edmonton Journal
Saturday, November 17, 2007
EDMONTON / Thursday's column on Edmonton's chronic image woes triggered a torrent of heated e-mails from readers, and a handful of phone calls.
Predictably, some were defensive about their hometown, and slammed any visitors -- or know-nothing newspaper scribblers -- who had the gall to criticize their fair city, no matter what their motives.
Others were oddly tetchy -- including a local lawyer, who stoutly defended the garish "peep show" parlour off Jasper Ave. East as a "legitimate" business, as if that had anything to do with the topic at hand.
Most readers did get the point of my column, however. And most agree that Edmonton -- to put it politely -- is long overdue for a makeover.
While a national promo campaign may indeed raise awareness of the many positive things Edmonton has to offer, they say it's futile unless the city starts to care a lot more than it does about its physical appearance.
As one reader put it, a promo campaign built on nothing but hot air "is like putting lipstick on a pig." Lousy first impressions, he says, are killing the city.
Forget the media relations campaigns. Let's start with the basics, readers suggest -- such as improved litter and graffiti cleanup, tougher landscaping standards, enforced paving of hundreds of dusty, garbage-laden parking lots, and more care and attention to key city entry routes like Gateway Blvd.
If we do a better job addressing these simple issues, the argument goes, perhaps we can build a bit of momentum, and Edmonton will start generating the kind of positive buzz that cities like Calgary enjoy.
I also received another message from local corporate types, whom I'd criticized for failing to show up at an EEDC-organized meeting last week to map out a vision for the city's future. They're fed up, they say, with empty jawboning exercises that have traditionally gone nowhere.
"Attend meetings to discuss makeovers? Are you kidding? People are too busy working. Don't just talk about it, do the image makeover. Think really big Mr. Mandel, and make your vision a reality," wrote one exasperated ex-Montrealer.
"Many of us have been through it all before," said the CEO of a major real estate firm. "There has been study after study of these types of image problems, and it seems the city's solution is to talk and not act," he complained.
"During my long career as on operations management consultant, I used to be asked how I knew whether a potential client wasn't 'world class,' " wrote another.
"The easy answer was the first impression -- the state of the housekeeping. Housekeeping in this city is next to non-existent."
He's right. I've written about it many times. Yet nothing seems to change, year in and year out. The city looks as trashy as ever.
In Edmonton, what passes as good enough, just isn't good enough. It's second-rate.
Which is why the city continues to suffer an ugly-duckling image.
Don't get me wrong. Despite Edmonton's image problems, I'm not suggesting that other cities don't have their own challenges. Far from it, in fact.
Consider Vancouver. It consistently ranks among the world's most livable cities. Its spectacular natural setting is a marketer's dream.
Local house prices have long levitated in the stratosphere, but that hasn't stopped thousands of people from moving to Lotus Land every year, in pursuit of the mythical West Coast lifestyle.
After living there for 13 years, I concluded that Vancouver was a fabulous place to live if you're comfortably retired, rich, or young and single. Not so great if you're a middle income earner with kids and a mortgage. So I left.
With the 2010 Winter Olympics now barely two years off, you can expect to hear a lot about Vancouver for the next 26 months, culminating in two weeks of wall-to-wall media coverage. When it comes to eye candy, few cities in the world can match Vancouver.
But beneath the glittering surface, there's a growing sense of nervousness in Vancouver about the city's economic future. Other than the gravity defying real estate sector, the Olympics-related building activity, and the busy Port of Vancouver, the city's economy has few other drivers.
The forest sector is in deep trouble. Manufacturing is stalled. Exports are falling. The province's natural gas sector has been sideswiped by the high loonie, just like Alberta's.
The number of local head office jobs has been falling for years, thanks to a string of corporate takeovers. The local tech and biotech sectors are struggling.
And with U.S. real estate prices in decline, speculators who bet on continued gains in Vancouver condo prices are getting antsy.
Since Vancouver's inflated real estate values are at the very core of the city's continued prosperity, a correction of even 10 per cent could put an end to the consumer spending boom that has kept the city's economy afloat.
When one considers the fact that per capita income levels in Vancouver are well below those of Edmonton, the seeds of future economic problems in Lotus Land are already sown.
glamphier@thejournal.canwest.com
© The Edmonton Journal 2007
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