Sometimes I think of a famous ad campaign from the 1960s: the Avis car rental agency’s “We Try Harder.” Implied in that slogan (and no need to imply, because the fact was well known) was that Avis was second place behind Hertz, then number one in the car rental game. The campaign is considered a brilliant flex because it took a weakness—being in second place—and turned it into a strength: We’re hungry. We’re still trying to earn your business. We’re not resting on our laurels like those number-one guys. This isn’t just clever advertising; it’s a snappy way to capture something true about human psychology and behavior.
I thought about this insight when my wife and I visited Croatia in 2022 and then Italy (Sicily) in 2023. In many ways they are similar places; we stuck mostly to the Croatian coastline, which is very Mediterranean. Both were once outposts of the Roman Empire. Both were controlled by many different peoples over the centuries. But as much as they resemble each other on paper, our experience of these places was very different.
Croatia, a popular but still basically second-tier European destination, felt clean, tidy, welcoming, well managed. Sicily felt faded, dirty, ramshackle. Sicily gave the impression of having seen all the tourists it would ever need to; Croatia was still positioning itself as a top-tier destination. Sicily didn’t need to do anything to be what it was anymore; Croatia was still hungry. We try harder. You know when you go to a restaurant and the experience is just seamless and perfectly executed? That was the vibe Croatia gave.
A pair of American cities that I visited back to back last year gave me this same sense of contrast. I visited Seattle for a weekend with my wife, who had a work event that week, and then I flew to Cincinnati for a pair of conferences on urbanism that I was attending. I imagined Seattle as one of America’s great cities. Surely it must be, with all that you hear about it? I knew very little about Cincinnati, and I suppose if you asked, I would have said maybe it used to be one of America’s great cities.
Yet Seattle felt underwhelming. Low energy. Like a place that didn’t have to try anymore, or that had given up. Plenty of other people, judging from comments I received when I wrote about my visit, felt the same way. The city’s downtown felt emptied out—which it kind of was, especially after the pandemic and its effects on the commercial real-estate sector—and the homelessness and public drug use were unnerving. But beyond that, the city felt just a bit uninspiring. It was expensive, but it didn’t deliver the value.
Cincinnati was obviously in worse physical shape. There were more vacant and run-down buildings, more of that eerie feeling when you suddenly find you’re the only person on a desolate block, yet you’re only a minute or two from a bustling block. (Surprisingly to me, the crime rate is quite similar between the two cities—I had assumed Cincinnati was more dangerous, but Neighborhood Scout, which may or may not have the best data, shows it as slightly safer than Seattle.)
However, despite that slight sense of ruin or faded glory, Cincinnati also felt energetic. Like it wanted us. Instead of Seattle’s cutesy Biscuit Bitch serving bougie Southern breakfasts next to a homeless encampment, there’s the local, humble Skyline Chili. Instead of Seattle’s potato-themed restaurant, there’s a greasy-spoon deli with a fine corned beef sandwich and a massive potato pancake for $13. We even found some excellent Korean fried chicken downtown. (What can I say, I pay a lot of attention to the food when I visit a new city.) I wouldn’t say you’d never know urban renewal, or the collapse of legacy industry, had happened. But Cincinnati felt like an ordinary place on the upswing.
At the end of my first conference, we made our way toward Over-the-Rhine, not too long ago one of Cincinnati’s most blighted neighborhoods, but also one of its most intact. We marveled at its almost Old World beauty, watching the sun set over the city nestled into the hills, from the rooftop of a local microbrewery. Whatever complaints about gentrification and affordability there may be, I imagine that the people who can remember a neighborhood left for dead are grateful, and excited, to see urban growth coming back. At least I got that impression.
Politically, Cincinnati has been ambitious: In regard to housing, which raises affordability issues even there, the council recently passed a city-wide zoning reform dubbed Connected Communities. Though it was controversial and took time, it showed that the city was willing to, you know, do something. Connected Communities basically allows moderate-density or “missing middle” housing in certain parts of every area of the city; this policy aims, in effect, to reverse-engineer old-fashioned urban growth and distribute it in a more organic manner than very large projects would do. (Seattle passed a similar reform—but at least in part because the state passed a law requiring localities to facilitate missing middle housing.) The scrappy, second-place Rust Belt city did the big thing first.
Heading home from our conference-closing happy hour in Over-the-Rhine, we hopped on a streetcar that took us back to our downtown hotels. This was an actually usable streetcar running a decent loop through the urban core, not just a little vanity project or gimmick. It was clean. It worked. It was full at 10 p.m. on a weeknight.
That was my broad impression: Seattle, despite being highly successful, felt dysfunctional. Cincinnati, despite struggling with decades of urban problems, felt like everything basically worked. Maybe because if it didn’t, the city’s recovery would be compromised.
Cincinnati felt like a city coming back, relishing its growth, appreciating every visitor and every dollar. In a way, being number one is a curse. You know how an airplane feels fastest when it’s taking off and feels like it’s going nowhere when it reaches speed? That’s kind of what’s happening here. And just as a lot of car renters in the 1960s went for the number two, I’ll take a city in its takeoff stage. I’m drawn to the places that appreciate that the best is yet to come—and that are still hungry for it.
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