Quote of the day: on urban branding

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From Al Modarres, Director of Urban Studies at University of Washington Tacoma writing in New Geography:

The challenge of urban branding is that cities are not commodities. As such, urban branding is not the same as product or corporate-style branding. Cities are much more complex and contain multiple identity narratives; whatever the business and leadership says, there are other local voices that may challenge the accepted “script”. In fact, while city marketing may focus mainly on attracting capital through economic development and tourism, urban branding needs to move beyond the simply utilitarian, and consider memories, urban experiences, and quality of life issues that affect those who live in a city. A brand does not exist outside the reality of a city. It is not an imported idea. It is an internally generated identity, rooted in the history and assets of a city.

Catchy phrases, logos, shiny booklets, invented cultural events, or the latest urban design schemes are not the answer. Copying tactics from other cities won't make a city recognizable; it will make it less visible and less unique. The challenge is, then, to ask what assets a city has that others do not possess; which of these assets can be seen as a city’s mark of achievement or recognizable characteristics; and how does one activate, elevate and sustain those characteristics?

Interesting observations - many City marketers could learn from this outlook.

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Watching the middle class vanish before your eyes...

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Via Urbanophile here's an animated map show how from 1980 to today, people on average (or near average) earnings have been squeezed out of Chicago. Worth reading the comments below (although I suspect a closer knowledge of Chicago politics than I have would help.

And this isn't just a Chicago issue, it applies to all those cities facing pressures on land (self-infliected in the main), rapidly rising house prices and thriving economies. Like London, for example.

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MPs outside earnings - more unworkable populist nonsense from Labour

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I guess that this works well with the focus group and appeals to the hair shirt tendency in politics:

"There will be some business people coming into parliament [for Labour] but, after they have become an MP, there will be a short transition at the end of which they will not be allowed to work for, or be a director of, a company. A choice has to be made by Labour as to whether we want parliament to be a reflection of the people whom we represent or be perceived as an instrument of the corporate sector."

But what do we mean by working? Labour suggest that it's only the 'corporate sector' that's a problem - so the suggestion is that business is inherently corrupting. I find this deeply disturbing and it reveals that Labour retains its essentially anti-business, anti-choice agenda.

And in order for the proposal to work, we will need more monitoring and a new set of rules governing MPs. Rules that will allow the writer, lawyer, doctor or consultant to earn money while serving as an MP but not the businessman. Such a policy takes away from the essential contract between MPs and those who elect them.

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Plain packs, e-cig bans and the triumph of ignorance

Today marks the publication of the Chantler Review into standardised packaging for cigarettes, which follows the proposal from the Welsh government to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in enclosed public spaces. I haven't read the whole of Chantler's review but it's summary contains the observation that:

There is very strong evidence that exposure to tobacco advertising and promotion increases the likelihood of children taking up smoking. 

We know that advertising does not act to raise demand both generally and specifically for products such as cigarettes. So I have to assume that the 'evidence' relied on by Chantler is primarily the qualitative studies undertaken by tobacco control researchers that essentially show how children prefer pretty colours to drab colours. This may be true but there's a leap from 'I like pink' to 'I'll start smoking because I like the pink pack' that simply doesn't have evidential support.

Chris Snowden points out that Chantler finds only a 'moderate' impact on uptake - something that would be very difficult to prove one way or another especially since advertising (even where it is still permitted) has only a marginal impact on the decision of a person to experiment with smoking. More importantly Chantler says that this impact will only be realised 'over time' creating more vagueness and imprecision. I remain unconvinced that this is the best option for public intervention if our aim is either (or both) to reduce levels of smoking adoption or increase rates of smoking cessation.

Indeed, if the evidence is right that it is the person's environment (do parents, other family members and peers smoke) that plays the dominant role in the decision to experiment with smoking then the emphasis should be on smoking cessation rather than smoking adoption. And this brings us to the proposal in Wales to apply the same restrictions to using electronic cigarettes as apply to smoking tobacco.

The Welsh health minister, Mark Drakeford, said officials were considering a ban amid concerns that the products could "re-normalise" the use of conventional cigarettes.

He said there were also concerns that their spread could undermine the ban on tobacco smoking in enclosed public spaces, making it more difficult to enforce.

This is a truly egregious proposal since we know that electronic cigarettes are widely adopted by smokers to either quit or reduce their use of tobacco and that they eliminate nearly all the personal as well as all the environmental risks associated with smoking tobacco. Worse still, the argument made here contradicts the rationale for the smoking ban - protecting the health of others in the smoking environment.

Since we want fewer smokers then we should be supporting the adoption of electronic cigarettes by current smokers. Not just to benefit the health of those smokers but to reduce the probability of their children, brothers, sisters and friends taking up the habit. By seeking to denormalise electronic cigarettes, the Welsh government is describing the devices as no different from tobacco with the result that children are as likely to adopt the latter as the former. Plus, of course, increasing the likelihood that the vaper will switch back to tobacco - a point succinctly put by Tim Stanley:

Force me to stand outside and I’ll calculate that I may as well go back to the Marlboro Lights.

Although these proposals are filled with analysis and wrapped up in stuff that looks like science, they are at best selective and at worst simply ignorant. In the case of packaging, the review relies on studies by non-marketers working in tobacco control research and completely ignores the substantial body of research evidence on the role and effectiveness of brand advertising. And for electronic cigarettes, the assumption is that they will act as some sort of gateway for tobacco rather than (as the evidence suggests) quite the reverse.

It does seem that what we have here isn't an example of good evidence-based policy but rather a victory for anti-smoking obsession and a triumph of ignorance.

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George Galloway blames Ukraine's problems on Israel

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Quite incredible really but true. George told callers to his programme on Iranian propaganda channel, Press TV, that 'the Zionists' had sent gunmen to the Maidan to help the 'revolution' so the Nazis could win and the remaining Ukrainian Jews would have to go to Palestine.

It's bad enough that one of Bradford's MPs isn't remotely interested in the problems of the City but when he spouts such nonsense you have to question Galloway's fitness to be an MP at all. Although he carefully skirts around outright anti-semitism (unlike some of his callers), the language and approach is still pretty appalling. But not quite as appalling as his use of lunatic conspiracy theories as a way to wind up naive supporters.

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The Lendal Bridge Saga - How not to close a bridge.

York City Council decided that it wanted to close Lendal Bridge to cars:

The traffic restriction trial aims to reduce daytime traffic across Lendal Bridge as part of a wider long-term vision to address city centre congestion and improve the reliability of public transport.

During the trial, Lendal Bridge will be open between 10.30am - 5pm to pedestrians, cyclists, buses, taxis, and emergency vehicles only.

The trial will test how the transport network operates and new road signs will warn drivers of the changes as they approach the bridge. Automatic number plate recognition cameras will enforce the new traffic measures.

And this is fine - there's a pretty strong case for reducing traffic in city centres and especially centres with narrow streets and plenty of pedestrians such as York. However, the City Council has demonstrated throughout this trial and since just how you shouldn't go about closing a bridge to cars.  It wasn't just the Facebook page with over 3000 'likes' nor the slightly arrogant attitude of York's Labour leadership or even the extremes to which the Council sought to enforce the ban. It was that, despite all this effort the Council completely cocked up the closure:

At a Traffic Penalty Tribunal it was concluded that the scheme, which was put in place last year, to stop drivers crossing the bridge during the day, and another one on Coppergate are not valid as the road cannot be described as a 'bus lane'.

The council has made at least £1.3 million from fines on Lendal Bridge alone.

That's a lot of fines that the Council may well have to pay back. Not to mention court costs, administration charges and officer time diverted from things that actually matter to local residents. Sadly this sort of outcome is all to typical of local authority initiatives especially 'radical' transport and traffic schemes.

In reality the York scheme was timid - they closed one bridge just to see what would happen to traffic. And this resulted in confusion made worse by inadequate (and possibly illegal) signage. What should sadden us is that the officers and councillors responsible will not examine their decision-making approaches, project management or even stand on the bridge and say "we got this one wrong didn't we".

But all we get is an anonymous statement saying:

“City of York Council is seeking independent legal advice in relation to the adjudicator’s decision on this specific appeal.

“The restrictions remain in place on Lendal Bridge and Coppergate and we would advise drivers to continue to adhere to these.”

Will local government ever learn? I'm not picking on York here (although this is premier league in the cock-up stakes), every Council makes these sorts of mistake and every council prefers to obfuscate rather than admit error.

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On the ideology of public health

Building London's sewers - real public health work

I know I rant and rave about them, complaining about their outlook, attitudes and policies. I've called them health fascists, nannying fussbuckets and the Church of Public Health. And I don't regret a word if it.

However, being a kindly sort, I thought I'd have a bash at understanding what we mean by 'public health'. Not just for the entertainment but rather to set out why the approach and strategy - how millions in public funding is spent - might be improved.

We recognise that public health begins with us recognising that there are environmental factors that affect the health of populations. The classic example is John Snow and the Broad Street Pump but there are many other examples where interventions in the environment improved health - clean water, sewage systems, the clean air acts and the whole system of driver training and road safety. We should also note that, while the medical profession was involved in identifying the problem, its solution was largely in the hands of different professions, not least the often criticised environmental health officer.

Within public health budgets these interventions are still important - responding to epidemics and disease outbreaks, vaccination and inoculation and pollution control. But the profession made a significant shift away from public health being about environmental intervention to improve people's lives. Instead of clean air, clean water and inoculation against disease, we got this as a definition:

The science and art of promoting and protecting health and well-being, preventing ill-health and prolonging life through the organised efforts of society.

This comes from the Faculty of Public Health and represents a significant change from the idea of public health being about interventions where either an all-population or environmental justification exists.  We've gone from using science and statistics to understand how cholera can be prevented to using price intervention to try and alter the behaviour of alcoholic. And the starting point for this shift was smoking - or rather the long campaign against smoking.

I won't revisit the history of anti-smoking - if you want to know more read Chris Snowdon's 'A History of Anti-smoking' - but the decision to target smoking allowed public health people to link environment and personal choice. And, at the beginning of the campaign, smoking was more-or-less an all population problem - most people smoked. In this campaign (and it was, up to five or six years ago, very successful) the crucial moment wasn't Professor Doll linking smoking to lung cancer but the acceptance that passive smoking was a health problem. There may be some question over this belief but there can be no doubt that eliminating passive smoking provided the substantiation for other public health interventions in lifestyle choices.

Running in parallel with this idea of societal harm from the cumulative impact of lifestyle choices (typically drinking, smoking and overeating) was another idea - the passive consumer. Popular books such as Naomi Klein's 'No Logo' presented us as victims of marketing, led by the nose into excessive consumption, at the mercy of manipulative corporations. This idea's inception goes back to what TV viewers should see as the 'Golden Age' of advertising when discredited theories such as 'subliminal advertising' were proposed. However, it was another age of excess - from the mid-1980s for about ten years - that spawned the idea of consumption as sinful and the consumer as victim.

By portraying the individual as a hapless addict, some public health thinkers were able to justify extending public health interventions into those individuals' personal choices. Both because those choices affected wider society (such as by costing publicly-funded health services more) and because the individuals weren't making real choices but were merely responding to an 'intoxogenic' or 'obesogenic' environment.

To complete the picture (again Chris Snowdon has the definitive review here) we need to add an older tradition - moral disapproval. We know that the temperance movement has considerable influence within public health and this more considered moralising is compounded by the more hypocritical sensationalism in popular media.

These three factors - environment as a factor in personal choice, the passive consumer and a sense of moral offence - combine to create the platform on which today's public health policies are constructed and support for them from politicians and media is obtained. And it presupposes the significance of government in health:

...recognises the key role of the state, linked to a concern for the underlying socio-economic and wider determinants of health, as well as disease

So, when Bradford Council considers its new role as a public health authority, it brings its broader ideology into the discussion.  Onto the prevailing ideology of state-directed opposition to certain choice behaviours is latched the idea of 'health inequality'. At present nothing has changed, public health remains unchanged in Bradford. But, at some point, the imperative of inequality will mean that the idea of public health addressing environmental (and all-population) issues is further blurred as resource is targeted to those places suffering 'health inequality'.

My concern with all this mission creep is that the ideal of public health becomes lost. It seems evident that anti-smoking campaigns have stalled as campaigners focus their efforts on denormalisation rather than on the reduction of harm. And, with the apparent success (in political not health terms, I might add) of these approaches, other areas adopt the denormalisation palette rather than approaches aimed at reducing harm or preventing harm from occurring in the first place.

Also this focus on choice and lifestyle overlooks some important public health issues - reducing excess winter death in the elderly population, improving air quality in cities, extending vaccination programmes - in favour of media-friendly campaigns around smoking, drinking or fast food. We enlist other parts of the local authority into these campaigns - trading standards, planning, licensing - pulling them away from their own public safety and regulatory responsibilities.

My polemic - the stuff about nannying fussbucketry and health fascism - is a reaction to all this. And it reflects a real desire to get public health back to its roots - concerned with the real environment in which people live, with preventing the spread of disease and ill-health and with promoting well-being. None of these require the condemnation of lifestyle choices let alone their denormalisation.

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