Is There any There There?

Grand Central Terminal
New York City

Play this game for me. Ask your friend to name a city and then say what first pops into your mind visually. If the city is Seattle; is it the Space Needle, evergreen trees or Pikes Place Market? If its New York is it one of the many place icons within the five boroughs ; the Statue of Liberty, the Chysler Building, or Grand Central Terminal?
One of the easiest and most lasting ways we remember cities is their iconic buildings, structures, artwork, topography, or natural features. Name a city and we instantly recall these images. When we talk about placemaking today, these images play a huge role in a city's identity. City's work hard to keep those images in your mind to get you to keep coming back, to locate a business, or to buy a home.

Featauared in Women's Health
In a recent issue of Women's Health (January/February 2012), the magazine featured an article "The Healthiest Cities for Women", highlighting the top ten as well as the bottom ten of their list of the 100 largest cities in America. The article also described just what makes them the healthiest.

Women's Health Magazine
January / February 2012
from my iPhone

The first page is a stunning visual of 3 of the top cities; Austin, Texas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my current city, San Jose, California. The photo of Minneapolis soon caught my eye. I had seen pictures of this Midwestern skyline, and the iconic Stone Arch Bridge built over 100 years ago in 1883. The bottom picture shows part of the beautiful Lady Bird Lake Trail in Austin, Texas.

However, as I glanced at the top photo, showing two young women taken at close range, I hesitated. This photo looked different. The visual of the two runners with big smiles on their faces almost seemed posed. The background was blurred and referenced no visual clues. It almost; shall I say look staged.

But then I got to thinking. What would the photo show anyway? Do we have a vista point in the city to show off a skyline. Do we have a trail system that rivals Austin's Lady Bird Lake Trail, or New York's High Line. Well we don't, and that's a sad thing.

When a national magazine can insert some generic photograph using staged models to represent your city, that's the collective collective American databank telling you that there may be nothing memorable about your city. That it falls into the many generic backdrops of similar post-World War Two "drive-bys" such as Phoenix, Dallas, Anaheim, and sadly in many cases San Jose.

Cities are defined by their ability to evoke a sense of place. No generic photo would ever take the place of a Manhattan skyline, a Diamond Head, or the US Capitol. The miles upon miles of beautiful orchards which used to evoke the phrase "The Valley of Hearts Delight" are gone. What image will now take their place.