Communities Should be Unique

Found a couple of worthwhile quotes from Dan Gilmartin, executive director & CEO of the Michigan Municipal League, on his blog Economics of Place. This particular blog post is addressed to all City Leaders, Urbanists, Activists, Citizens, and “Would-Be” Energizers of Places.

Gilmartin recommends to these individuals that...

Learning from the experiences of other places is paramount to moving your own community forward. When visiting or researching be sure to take lots of pictures and ask questions of others like 1) Who was involved?; 2) What was the strategy?; and, 3)How has it changed? However, we must fight the urge to re-create our own places using the exact same formula that worked somewhere else.

He also says...

So go ahead and travel. See it all. Study your neighbors just down the road and your competitors clear across the globe. Ask questions of them. Learn from their successes and from their failures. Then carefully tailor this information into your own unique vision to make your community a greater place to live, learn, work, and play.

Are your community leaders tailoring information into a unique vision? Or are they trying to just copy what seems to work in another community?