I agree that council’s desired outcome is not in line with reality (this has been an implicit point of mine). My explicit point is that this unreality has not stopped council from doing long-term damage to our community in pursuit of this unrealistic (and to me, undesirable as well, for various reasons) goal. Perhaps I have not been effective in communicating my position, but it seems to me that in many ways you and I are not far apart in our assessment of things. We seem to differ mostly in our reading of council’s actions (and those of its ancillaries), and in our reading of the conduct of many recent elections.

Indeed, recent excursions into Detroit have only re-inforced my impression that Detroit is where genuine innovation is happening in Michigan, and that it is the place in Michigan to which the most determined “Strivers” are heading. That the new pockets of vitality in Detroit are more-or-less the result of spontaneous, grass-roots initiative, rather than government policy, gives them an aura of reality and viability far beyond anything resulting from the one-note-song of 5th & Huron’s Oracles of Density.

If council’s attempts at branding, for example, AREN’T about wanting out-sized population growth, then I can’t imagine what they ARE about (Boredom? The need to hear themselves talk?) My imagination may be two sizes too small – pray, enlighten me! Ditto the mass transit theme, ditto the doubling of our sewer capacity, ditto the rejection of German Town, ditto encroachment on The Old 4th Ward and The Old West Side, ditto the DDA’s contempt for resident input in the William St. planning process (“We’re the Downtown DEVELOPMENT Authority, so no parks”), ditto the campaigns of, e.g., Carsten Hohnke (successful) and Kirk Westphal (unsuccessful), ditto the mayor’s narrow-viewpoint board appointees, etc., etc. There is more than one way to look at anything. It’s possible that I am a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but these look to me like expressions of the desire to wildly expand our population, whether or not that goal is realistic (did you see an A2D2 “Public input” event at which “Status quo” was an option?). What do you see here?

It is more pleasant to be taken seriously than not, but my experience is that saying what I see is usually the best use of my energies. After all, if I’m right, the community will benefit from hearing about it; if I’m wrong, how better to learn of my error than to read others’ reactions to my thoughts? Thank you for your reactions, JQ. I’ll reflect upon them.

John – I’m assuming this is your attempt at over-the-top rhetoric. It’s not even close to reality and if you believe it is, one would have to assume that you’ve never actually travelled outside the city limits of Ann Arbor. I get that some people don’t like the changes downtown. I don’t like all of them myself. But I can’t take seriously people who believe in either the agenda or the potential outcome. Ann Arbor is never going to be the next Detroit. Rest easy, it’s likely that Ann Arbor won’t even be the next Grand Rapids.

My emphasis of the Small Town Feel/Big City Vitality theme was an attempt to suggest that the most viable way to achieve this end was to play to our strengths as a community, rather than to employ the Council Party’s destroy what’s there and working, in order to build a different city in the same geography (the “William Westmoreland” strategy: destroy the community that exists in order to “save” it). I personally think that Detroit is where Michigan will be re-invented, not Ann Arbor. However, as long as the Council Party establishment is determined to promote mega-growth here, outside Detroit, let’s do it in a way that makes the most sense – not the ways they are choosing.

To Steve’s point, Council’s approach has been to sell a vision of an expanded Ann Arbor to others, not to ask what will make our town better. Even if one supports a mega-growth agenda, Steve’s approach is more viable over time.

This brings to mind the word “perceptions”, which ties back to my comment about selling.

Looking to people outside the community for improvement, security, wealth, productivity, validation, and such is a precarious thing. It overlooks our own power and the value of our ourselves and our neighbors and distracts us from strengthening those aspects that we actually have some control over. It’s a form of arguing with reality (which are arguments that we always lose). The historical awareness of the stress that arises from desires is long.

Improving our community will either attract people or it won’t. Having a goal of attracting them is a suboptimal approach.

It isn’t out of hand for us to have a place to live that can work for all of us, but to get there, exercises just like this are needed — to set some visioning for a direction for our city to strive toward. I’m looking forward to listening to these statements and reading as much response as possible. I’m one of those young millennial folks that reports keep talking about and I love this city.

I feel blessed I found a job here and have been able to live in Washtenaw County since 1998. I’ve thought about leaving before, but there’s always been something that kept me here — and that something is connection to this area and all that is I’m aspirational — I look at this place, feel a sense of connection, and feel a sense of history, but also see a future respectful of that but that looks toward the future as a road that we can make work for us as a community.

Perhaps this comment is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, and perhaps without point but for an attempt to support Mr. Warpehoski’s notion that we look a bit wider than simply empirical data.

If these ass holes who run over & try to run over pedestrians were protected & imprisoned, maybe thump would be better & safer. The uses walks all need red lights. People run the Huron is one regularly but a seems a little safer.

I think this was likely “prosecuted” not “protected” “things” not “thump” and “cross walks” not “uses walks”. As far as identifying the general topic of concern and counting up percentages of people who wrote about a topic, this level of accuracy might be adequate. However, I would wish for cleaner coding than this (assuming that I’m right about this and other instances of suspected miscoding).

Here’s why the brand/reputation question has been a useful thinking exercise for me.

As I brainstormed themes for Ann Arbor’s brand, one was “world-class culture and amenities with small-city charm.” Another was “inclusive for people of all backgrounds–including economic.”

Seeing both of those on paper made me realize the tension between them. If we have these world-class amenities, lots of affluent people will want to live here to enjoy them. That will make it hard to be inclusive of working and middle-class folk, especially if we want to keep the small city charm.

A second point. Dave wrote, “this self-image does not translate to an empirically-based brand.” You can look at brand in terms of the current brand reality and the aspirational brand. Put another way, it is both important to ask, “what do people say we are?” and “who do we want people to say we are?”

For me, the inclusive community is aspirational, not current reality. I think it erodes the process to limit the discussion to only the “brands” that can currently be empirically supported.