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Originally Posted by cmmcnam2
Fairly new here, long time lurker. I've always believe one of Chicago's biggest problems was public relations, basically what the rest of the country and world thought about Chicago does not really line up with everyday realities and I know a lot of the commenters on here feel the same way. Luckily, it looks like the city is finally starting to realize this and they created a plan to bring the 4 main sectors of the city (Civic, Commercial, Education, and Arts and Culture) to promote the city on the world stage. All in all, the idea is to clean up the image, increase tourism and investment, and use the momentum to get the residents to care for, engage, promote, and work for the betterment of the city as a whole. The report is a great read, highly suggest checking it out.
https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/si...tm_content=pdf |
Quote:
Originally Posted by IrishIllini
Chicago has awful PR. A lot of that stems from angry conservatives spreading misinformation for political points and a lot of it is self-inflicted. Great to see the City is finally "woke" and working to address these issues. There's no reason places like Boston, DC, NYC, or even Philadelphia can post population gains and we cannot. Chicago is far better equipped than all but NYC to contribute to the knowledge economy. We have a large, education workforce, excellent transit, and we're FAR more affordable.
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Yep. My girlfriend, whenever she'd visit Chicago, would say the same exact thing "Chicago has really terrible PR. It's too bad people don't know the truth." She's in marketing too (has a masters in it) which at least to me means something because she knows what she's talking about. When her parents came to visit from China, I had to convince them to come to Chicago for a few days. They didn't want to because they heard about the crime. Chicago is now their favorite American city to the point of when I was in China last month, they were completely bashing NYC and saying how much better they thought Chicago was LOL. Before their visit, they wouldn't have ever thought to say these things. Their thoughts of Chicago were pretty far behind the actuality of today.
I've always thought that Chicago needs some sort of organic campaign on social media like an instagram to show people what the city really looks like - all the facets of it. It definitely needs better PR as it's pretty awful. Can't tell you how many times I've met people, especially from other countries, who visited Chicago (maybe because they were in some sort of corporate training) and came away completely blown away of how wrong their pre-conceived notions of the city were.
The study is very interesting. Will anyone take action on it? The thing about international population and what not is interesting. I've always felt strongly about that and it's something the city needs to get better at, and encourage companies to take more risks on. I had met a number of international people who had to move away from Chicago or couldn't move to Chicago when they wanted to because nobody wanted to sponsor them for a visa. Also interesting that they only look at unemployment until 2014, 3 years ago. That data is readily available and Chicago has reduced its metro and city unemployment rate a ton - and surpassed now many cities as far as reduction goes. Back in 2014 that wasn't the case, but it's much better today. I don't necessarily agree with all aspects of the report. One of them for example says that Los Angeles hasn't recovered from the recession which is completely false as of June 2017. Same as Chicago - it has recovered, but they're only comparing to 2014. It's weird because they were using 2015 ACS but were only using 2014 unemployment numbers when you could freely go online right now and get March or April 2017 employment data. In any case, the study is interesting and I do agree with the spirit of a lot of it. Chicago has a ton of positives - a lot more than people think. It needs better international PR and to keep improving its globalness. Also fix some of the major issues at home of course.
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