Culture

CityLab Daily: Cities, Don’t Fall in the Branding Trap

Also: How the Green New Deal could retrofit suburbs, and Edinburgh wants a tourist tax.
Harrison McClary/Reuters

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Generic brand: Look at any piece of city marketing materials and you’ll likely see the same basic ingredients of things cities should be happy to have: bike lanes, microbreweries, streetcars, hipster coffee shops. But as recent promo videos for cities like Houston or Atlanta have tried to underline their “creative” or “innovative” qualities, you can’t help but notice how these branding efforts miss what makes each city unique.