Rochester: Made for Living

The cover of the current issue of Solar Today has the following headline, "Sustainable Cleveland: How the city is reinventing itself as a clean, green center."

I read this and wondered, why isn't Rochester doing something like this? We've lost our brand identity -- if we ever had one. We have no impassioned "hook" to get the general populous reinvigorated about living and investing here.

Ignoring the Radio Shack-inspired logo, our homespun "Made for Living" campaign simply covers the basics on why Rochester is seemingly a good place to live. But, it's flat. And I'm not pointing fingers at whatever ad agency developed it. They were just working with our current state. But what is Rochester's future?

I've been thinking about this for a few years. Ever since I read an article in Yoga Journal about how the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan is measuring itself on "Gross National Happiness." According to this article, they used Buddhist principles to identify four specific "pillars" upon which Gross National Happiness rests: good governance, cultural preservation, environmental conservation, and economic development. These may be difficult to quantify but presumably can be analyzed objectively.

Although "happy" is not a word I would even remotely use today to categorize Rochester, with a little work it could be. The city itself is a dichotomy. One one hand, we have urban decay (i.e., a soul-less inner city complete with housing projects on our riverfront) and nothing inviting along our lake shore except an infamous local rock club and tattoo parlors. On the other hand, we have pockets of hope for city revitalization (e.g., ARTWalk, Corn Hill Landing), stunning natural resources (e.g., Lake Ontario, the Genesee River, the Finger Lakes), a number of architectural gems, amazing cultural institutions (e.g., the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester City Ballet, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Geva Theater), top-notch school systems, and in my opinion, one of the best talent pools in the world: highly intelligent and well educated. In addition, unlike some other cities, the people here are extremely down-to-earth and, for the most part, willing to work hard. I really love the people here: they are by far our best differentiator.

With that said, why can't we reinvent ourselves? We have so much to offer. What would it take to become "the happiest city in the U.S." or "the healthiest city in the U.S."? Are either even desired? If so, how would we measure ourselves?

I have this daydream where I win the lottery (which may be difficult given that I don't really play). That aside, in this dream, I gather local leaders and economists (business, political, not-for-profit, education, religious, etc.), couple them with interesting, non-locals like Malcolm Gladwell, and use the money to treat Rochester like an incubator and invest in out-of-the-box recovery programs.

Like painting over the graffiti in the NYC subway system, maybe we could hire unemployed teenagers in the inner city to paint houses and plant flowers. We could train them and equip the teams with free paint (perhaps with a generous donation/co-branding opportunity from a firm like Benjamin Moore) with the hope of getting people to take greater pride in their homes and neighborhoods . . .

Along those same lines, perhaps we can create our own "Trading Spaces" program where the unemployed learn basic design principles along with useful skills like reupholstering. Donated items could be refurbished and either sold to raise money or given to hardworking but impoverished families in dire need of an internal "face lift."

From my distant standpoint, it appears that there are a number of organizations working independently to make a difference. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. However, I do feel we might be better served if we had a cohesive, collective vision for the future of Rochester along with fully aligned resources. But I'm a political outsider. If any of this is being done today, then someone needs to market it more effectively.

Please, give us hope.