It doesn’t take a lot to get proper publicity, and push for tourism. Actually I’m wrong, it does take a lot. A lot of brains, not cost.
The Christ the Redeemer statue, top right, is lit in red light to commemorate World AIDS Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Dec. 1, 2011. Rio de Janeiro’s city government illuminated several urban monuments in red as part of its actions to commemorate World AIDS Day, from MSNBC photoblog.
Almost all great, big, developed cities, well-known cities, unfortunately need an iconic structure to solidify that status. To some extent it’s understandable and makes sense.
This thinking, was partly what drove the idea to build KLCC, which has to an extent delivered that part of its objective as an icon to KL/Malaysia and prop those two on the global platform, an indicator of progress and development. In terms of economy, this has quite a significant multiplier effect.
The second purpose, I assume, would be the tourism element which also relates to the purpose above.
Since it’s an icon, people take pictures of it, that later gets viewed by many others. But what I want to bring forth is that, such icons need not be as massive as the Kuala Lumpur’s KLCC or Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue.
Windy city Chicago did something much simpler. They gave the world the Cloud Gate, or what most people just call the Bean. Read up on articles of how much ‘returns’ did Chicago get from the Bean. While what Rio did recently was clever, Chicago takes the cake.
- http://zainhd.com/2011/12/rios-christ-turns-red-for-aids/