Cleveland's Identity: Your Contributions!

For your Friday reading pleasure, here are two of your contributions to our ongoing call to Help Define Cleveland's Identity.

First, reader Roy Larick takes the long, long view:

Cleveland’s identity shapes and reflects our place in time. Regional landscape (place) is always in flux. The forces of change play out in historical cycles (time), each with a beginning, climax and end. Each new cycle remakes the place.

Deep History. As pioneers, Cleaveland et al. stepped into a naturally structured place: a glacial cycle had recently remade an older sea bottom bedrock landscape. To the old rocks the glacial remake brought complex new ridges, valleys, lake and biota.

Present. Cleaveland et al. imported a contemporary Industrial Revolution (IR) identity. With it, Clevelanders could ‘exploit place resources’ in support of manufacturing: bedrock for building platforms, ridges and valleys for transport, lake for transport and sewerage, etc. The cycle is essentially played out; the landscape is now Rust Belt; identity is adrift and searching.

Future. In forcing a more biocultural cycle, Clevelanders may identify more with place and time. We may learn how to ‘live with place/time features.’ Emerging place/time-conscious institutions are positive identity shapers: CVNP (environmental/historical preservation, local agriculture), GCBL (bioregion awareness/innovation), CAH blog (identifying forgotten early IR buildings). The task is to identify in learning about and living with our place in time.

In contrast, reader Jason Popis gives Cleveland a much-needed pep talk:

I think, for too long, large projects have been emphasized in an
attempt to slap a band-aid or a quick fix on the region's identity
problem, and people have grown increasingly jaded and hardened.
Cleveland's identity problem goes much deeper than something that a
simple band-aid can fix.

Self-actualization is absolutely key to Cleveland's future. I think
we're beginning to see a small surge of this awareness through an
increased emphasis on things like education, but it needs to happen
more. More people need to make an investment in the city, and I'm not
talking about developers. I'm talking you and me. We need to start
dreaming. We need to start thinking about what our individual place is
in the grand scheme of Cleveland (and, dare I say it, NATIONALLY and
GLOBALLY), to realize that we are all pieces of a whole, and that
whole is bigger than all of us, but ALL have a part to play. There is
absolutely no reason any of us shouldn't have a part to play, and the
only reason we wouldn't is because we tell ourselves that we don't.

I guess, in summary, my desire for Cleveland is to become a city of
dreamers in 2010. To stop succumbing to the negativity that can so
pervade this town and shackle it like a man in bondage (just look at
the cynical comments on cleveland.com for proof), to realize that the
assets available to us are incredible, and there is no reason
whatsoever the future can't be absolutely bright. The problems are
great, and the task is daunting. But if we keep pointing to the size
of the mountain as an excuse to not climb it, not only will we never
reach the top, but the only reason we won't is because WE choose not
to.

Want to take a stab at defining Cleveland's identity in 200 words or less? Email us at clevelandareahistory [at] gmail [dot] com.

Cleveland's Identity

Last week we challenged you to sum up Cleveland's identity in 200 words or less. Before we post your responses, here is my own contribution:

Cleveland’s identity begins with the Western Reserve -- and may end with it, given recent talk of regionalism and “Cleveland+”. Without the Connecticut Land Company surveyor Moses Cleaveland, we wouldn’t have a name. Without that link to New England, we wouldn’t have a Public Square.

Cleveland’s identity is inextricably connected to the Cuyahoga River, which made us ideally suited to be the main port linking the Great Lakes to the Ohio River via the Ohio and Erie Canal. Like the East, we experienced an influx of European immigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like the rest of the North, we experienced the Great Migration of African Americans from the South during the years 1910-1940.

We prospered and grew and developed world-class cultural institutions.

We built a lot of things here, and now, not so many. Like it or not, Cleveland is part of the Rust Belt, but it’s important to remember that unlike many of the small towns that popped up as a direct result of the American manufacturing boom, we were already sitting on nearly 200 years of history when things started to fall apart. If we have to fall, we’ve got good cultural bones to fall back on.

Still want to submit your own 200-word interpretation of Cleveland's historic identity? Email us at clevelandareahistory [at] gmail [dot] com.

What Cleveland Needs in 2010: An Identity

Cleveland Memory Project director Bill Barrow has suggested that what Cleveland really needs is an identity. Something that incorporates its historic roots, its evolution, and its potential. A tall order, to be sure -- one that can’t fit onto a bumper sticker. An identity shouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker, anyway. An identity is fundamentally different from a marketing slogan, such as The Best Location in the Nation, or a brand, such as CLE+.

Now don’t get me wrong -- marketing is vital to a city’s economic success. But Cleveland can’t find itself solely through the trumpeting of its positive attributes -- no matter how positive they are. It’s like casting a blind eye to your kid’s obnoxious nose-picking habit because, well, he’s your kid, and isn’t he precious? In pop psychology terms, it’s the difference between building up self-esteem and encouraging self-actualization.

Understanding the city’s past is vital to constructing its identity. So the next logical step after a good, hard round of civic self-exploration is the construction of a cohesive civic identity. Something that won’t exactly fit on a bumper sticker, but could be summed up in 100-200 words.

Anyone care to give it a try? Email us at clevelandareahistory [at] gmail [dot] com and we’ll post some of our favorite responses. (We’ll try our hand at it, too!)