The Observation Deck

...just goes to show you. It never for a moment crossed my mind that the kool-aid ref. in Lakewood application was the dark one of Rev. Jones! It seemed obvious to me to drink the kool-aid was to get the 'brand'. Then, last summer, I got accused of drinking some other kool-aid. I became confused. I longed for some windowpane to clear my scots head. Damn.

I agree with you in large part Joan. Once the end user has the product in-hand, the marketer's control goes "poof" and, as any seasoned marketer outside the ivory tower can tell ya, 'all sorts of bad mojo can happen when the customer actually owns the product'. But I get the fantasy of 'total control' and could see how a prof might heat up the branding concept.

...albeit, in my own riff I tried to differentiate between Branding and 'branding' as a fairly warm meme currently in Lakewood.

***

Who's to say it's HIS brand, HER brand MY brand, or NO brand that should be promoted? Start branding a community

Great questions. Maybe we can toss 'brand' into the dumper and discuss how every community or city or suburb realizes a shifting and fuzzy set of identities projected upon it by its citizenry?

Well, how isn't the question.

to be or not to be...

Jane Jacobs, Austin, New Urbanism, Regular Urbanism, Low Self Esteem, Vancouver, and the biggest problem in Lakewood...

I’m recently back from visiting friends in Austin, Texas. While it was fun to vacation, I was certainly ready to come home by the by the end of the trip. I will submit to you: we have it pretty good here. I’m baffled as to the low self esteem that we seem to have here in North East Ohio (a regional issue?). Yes, we have problems, but we don’t have Cedar Fever, poisonous bug/reptile infestations, lack of water, newspaper adds for virginity restoration, and cell phones that won’t work indoors. I would think that the low self esteem could come from the lack of sunlight in the winter, although I’ve been to cloud capital Portland and the folks there seem fairly cheery, even with the threat of the volcano burying the city. I think the bad attitude is unbecoming and counterproductive. Things could be worse.

It’s interesting to hear about Vancouver. While the city that Ms. Roberts describes is a type of city would have broken every rule of urban planning just a few years ago, the organic, offbeat mix of old and new is now considered cutting edge and is a return to traditional “old schoolâ€Â￾ planning practices: New Urbanism. I look at the last fifty years of modern planning and see the effect on the urban core; I welcome the new/old approach. Since WWII there has been a tremendous effort to develop the undeveloped with large scale projects on virgin soil as standard practice. This is not the situation we have in this city. It’s incumbent on us to define what we need. Historic restoration, Non-historic renovation, and building new when something is no longer of use are all decent ways of keeping this place going. I figure if we aren’t destroying than we are developing.

Jane Jacobs (my hero) talks a great deal about the “income sorting suburbsâ€Â￾ (how modern suburbs are designed to sort by income level). We don’t live in one of these. We have some sort of enigmatic thing going and it seems to make for a well rounded existence. The Lakewood brand seems to be a lack of brand, but isn’t that still a brand? The “open sourceâ€Â￾ theory of the Observer seems to be a decent attempt to capture the thing that cannot be captured. I don’t think (and I hope) the Lakewood Brand will never be captured in a catch phrase.

Mark, although Lakewood doesn't sort incomes to a monochromatic level, by definition, all suburbs to some large extent sort income. This isn't controversial at all: different rental and purchase entry structures provide (in a categorical sense,) entry into particular household economic models.

Aside from this the situation--in Lakewood--of very specific array of class consciousness is certainly an aspect of Lakewood's intersubjective identity.

For example, when persons express their anxiety about absentee landlords renting 'under-inspected' properties to "Section 8" families, and then, later I hear about how people are also anxious about young black teenage men running amuck, bringing the ghetto culture to Lakewood, learn about the anticipation of a degradation in livability in Lakewood due "to black squirrels," it is not then surprising to comprehend how this degradation might be preempted. Class and race consciousness 'take a stand'.

(My own sense is that this could open up to a discussion about teenage culture that is mostly color blind, but, at least, the discussion of teenage culture is complex right from the git-go.)

The demographic data being analyzed by Ken is not 'happy-making'. The fantasy of Lakewood is one thing, the complexities and segmentation and buffering between segments, and willful reductions in ignorance of the reality and in favor of the idealized brand are...

what I'm talkin' 'bout.

So: the question about 'meta-identity' is forced to recognize the critical tension between the idealized Lakewood and the 'just what they are' facts on the ground.

For example, I note the Grow Lakewood summary almost completely ignores the facts on the ground where they regard the complicated particulars of the rich economic and cultural currents in Lakewood.

Now, does anybody really want to be part of the project, "the city that knew itself better than any other?"

In July 2005 Lakewood Public Library prepared a Claritas P$YCLE report, which yields a broad snapshot of Lakewood’s income and asset mix. A taste of that report is here:

Group 1 – Wealth Market

These millionaire households with income-producing assets of over $1 million command a disproportionate share of U.S. income and a substantial portion of income-producing assets. They are peak consumers of all investment products, particularly deposit products and private banking services.

The Wealth Market group includes 524 households in Lakewood (2.03 % of all Lakewood households)

Group 2 – Upscale Retired

The Upscale Retired group includes retired households with more than $35,000 per year in household income and less than $1 million in income-producing assets. Ninety-one percent of this group owns their homes. This group ranks highest for two-member households, and the members tend to use retirement, investment, and credit products at a high rate.

The Upscale Retired group includes 626 households in Lakewood (5.65% of all Lakewood households).


Group 3 – Upper Affluent

These households have annual incomes in excess of $75,000 and income-producing assets under $1 million. They include rising, educated young executives; small business owners; and established professionals. They are heavy users of nearly all banking and investment products including money market accounts, credit cards, annuities, and personal lines of credit.

The Upper Affluent group includes 4,688 households in Lakewood (18.16% of all Lakewood households) and consists of the following segments:


Group 4 – Lower Affluent

Lower affluence is a relative term since these households are still well-above average in terms of household income, making $50,000 to $74,999 per year. They are more mainstream than their Upper Affluent peers and they tend to be employed as managers, professionals, or experienced craftsmen. However, they are similar to the Upper Affluent group in their use of financial services, but they maintain more modest balances and slightly lower penetration rates.

The Lower Affluent group includes 4,518 households in Lakewood (17.5% of all Lakewood households)


Group 5 – Mass Market

The middle market's appetite for credit is readily apparent in this large group. This group is solidly middle class – consisting of young families with children, new cars, and homes in the suburbs, and incomes averaging $30,000. They are prime targets for most credit products and have low usage rates for savings and investment products. However, as they age, their savings and investments increase.

The Mass Market group includes 9,257 households in Lakewood (35.86% of all Lakewood households)


Group 6 – Midscale Retired

The Midscale Retired group includes retired households with more than $35,000 per year in household income and less than $1 million in income-producing assets. This group ranks highest for one-member households, and eighty percent of this group owns their homes.

The Midscale Retired group includes 1,785 households in Lakewood (6.91% of all Lakewood households).

Group 7 – Lower Market

Lower Market households have incomes below $15,000 and income-producing assets under $100,000. With many living below the poverty line, these families struggle with the financial demands of everyday living: rent, utilities, food, and transportation. Few are college graduates, and quite a few are unemployed. Their use of financial services focuses on the most basic products such as savings and checking accounts, money orders, and bill paying services.

The Lower Market group includes 2,244 households in Lakewood (8.69% of all Lakewood households).


For more detail see:
http://www.lkwdpl.org/focus/psycle2005.pdf

I think the range of incomes and assets captured here speaks to Mark’s point about a sorting of income that to a considerable degree defies the clear-cut suburb stratification.

I am currently reviewing the latest P$YCLE NE market data, which shows Lakewood capturing demos classified as “Younger Years,â€Â￾ and continuing to do so in 2010.

Lakewood’s top five P$YCLE NE segments classify in “Younger Years,â€Â￾ for 2005 and 2010.

These are

Forever Young (mid-scale) – 13.56%
Loan Rangers (mid-scale) - 9.29%
ATM Nation (up-scale) - 7.40%
Young Urban Renters (down-scale)- 6.62%
Fiscal Rookies (up-scale) - 4.88%

Broadly speaking, incomes are lower in “Younger Years.â€Â￾ And there is income stress among these cohorts.

But the P$YCLE NE projection for 2010 suggests more of the same for Lakewood.

There is dynamic quality that comes from the churn in “Younger Yearsâ€Â￾ which comes and goes through Lakewood. As these segmentations shift to “Family Life,â€Â￾ many will depart from the Lakewood scene for suburban sorting and stratification Mark has cited.

I don’t believe this unhappy news, however.

I do believe that it is important to develop a sophisticated understanding that the dynamic, churning quality of the Lakewood market may have something to do with life stages, and how incomes and assets may propel someone to sort out from the eclectic mix, go gated, go suburban....

Kenneth Warren