Know your city. Know your market.

I love my city, and I often defend it proudly to any of its detractors. I stayed here for a reason: Maybe Austin is hip, San Francisco is the best and New York is the only city that matters, but Indianapolis is home. It’s not where you live, I’d claim, it’s what you make of it.

All of this changed when I learned of Richard Florida’s “Who’s Your City”. Florida debunks the myth of a “flattened world,” where an Internet connection is all one needs to be connected to the global market. Instead, Florida writes, "where we live affects every aspect of our lives," from dating to job markets to marketing and PR. He even offers a quiz to determine the top city for you, all with great visuals. My favorite is the personality type maps:
 
For marketing and PR strategies, it’s important to know what your market is. Understanding a city's personality and how it trends will maximize your efforts. Who's Your City is a great place to get a feel for the importance of place. My town, Indianapolis, is nowhere on his list of top cities for anything, but I’ll take it! Is there a map of inter-connectedness, how anybody worth knowing in this town is less than two degrees of separation away? Not yet on whosyourcity.com. But if there were, Indy would probably have a good showing.