Every city has its legends.
Cincinnati has flying pigs, a questionable obsession with chili, and a bridge that seems to spend half its life under construction.
But what if we started inventing some new mythology? Not about the city's past. About its possible futures.
I've been imagining an entirely fictional municipal government operating somewhere in the margins of Cincinnati. A sprawling, slightly ridiculous bureaucracy devoted to making the city more imaginative:
A Department of What If, responsible for asking questions nobody else thinks to ask.
A Ministry of Play, tasked with making public life a little more delightful.
An Office of Unheard Voices, dedicated to listening to people who rarely get a seat at the table.
And naturally, an Office of the Unnecessarily Complicated, which would have an extraordinarily difficult application process.
None of these departments would technically exist. But their missions? Those would be very real.
I'm fascinated by the possibility of building an entire civic mythology around Rethink Cincy! Imaginary departments with official seals, commissioners, memos, annual reports, and occasional bureaucratic disagreements. A so-called ‘government’ that exists entirely in our collective imagination, yet occasionally manages to get something useful done. Because mythology isn't just about explaining where we came from. Sometimes it's about imagining who we might become.
(And perhaps there's something powerful about giving people permission to play pretend with the future of their city!)
After all, every institution, every public park, every bridge, and every neighborhood improvement began as something that didn't exist. Somebody had to imagine it first. So consider this an unofficial announcement:
Rethink Cincy! is establishing a government that doesn't exist.
Its departments will be imaginary. Its paperwork will be unnecessarily official-looking. Its ambitions will be entirely serious.
And everyone in Cincinnati is invited to participate. No election required.
— Rethink Cincy!
#RethinkCincy #Cincinnati #ILoveCincinnati
Various (fictional) departments