Steve Dale, the founder of Creative Urban Projects (CUP Projects), discusses the much valued 'Bilbao Effect' - how a couple of iconic buildings can transform a single city.

Now that the summer vacation season is upon us, ask yourself: Where would you like to be going this year?

To see I.M. Pei's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland? Calatrava's Art Museum in Milwaukee? How about the Daniel Liebeskind 'Crystal' addition to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto? Jean Nouvel's KKL in Luzern, Switzerland?

Unless you're one of the rather small breed of ‘architourists', you're probably going to none of these places. Instead you're probably going to a Caribbean island with ramshackle houses dotting the hillsides, a hand-built family cottage by the lake, or some old city with charmingly weathered downtowns.

For most, the architecture isn't the attraction, it's merely the backdrop.

And yet for the last 15 years, cities the world over have been tripping over each other in a misguided effort to recruit the latest ‘starchitect' in pursuit of the much valued Bilbao Effect.

Named for the Spanish city of Bilbao where architect Frank Gehry built the Guggenheim Museum in 1997, the Bilbao Effect states that one or two iconic buildings can transform run-down, industrial cities into wealth-generating, tourist-attracting meccas of prestige and cultural envy.

It's also an effect that probably doesn't exist. Two years ago Gehry himself called the concept "bullshit".

The success in Bilbao was a product of too many community-building initiatives to boil ‘the Effect' down to a museum. Not the least of these initiatives was the suspension of hostilities between the Spanish government and separatist terrorists headquartered in Bilbao.

Bilbao also isn't - and never was - Milwaukee or Cleveland. The downtown had never been hollowed out due to mass suburbanization and the city center is a conclave of stunning gothic buildings and narrow, crooked alleys. It was always just the prototypical European city you'd never heard of.

Bilbao also benefited from being an overnight train ride from Barcelona; a 45 minute drive from the glorious beach resort city of San Sebastian and a 90 minute drive from Pamplona and its annual Running of the Bulls.

Yet none of those things are ever mentioned when city councilors and boards of directors invoke The Bilbao Effect.

Instead, they use Bilbao as an expensive shortcut to prosperity when proper city building and originality of vision would've done the job better. With a blind eye for irony, they believe that by doing what everyone else is doing, they're going to craft something unique and remarkable and the world will land on their doorsteps.

Problem is, when everyone has a Frank Gehry, what's a Frank Gehry really worth? It's great business for the architects who collects tens of millions in fees but a lousy investment for the city and its taxpayers.

Likely the only starchitect to ever have a clear and lasting impact on a city and its fortunes was Antoni Gaudi and his work in Barcelona in the late 1800's. There, Gaudi built dozens of iconic masterpieces and designed a revolutionary plan for the city's eventual suburban expansion.

The thing about Gaudi is this: Virtually every single one of his commissions occurred in Barcelona. And so, if you want to see Gaudi, there's only one place you can do it. You can't find Gaudi in Pittsburgh.

In the practice of tourist-hunting, what draws people to Barcelona or New York or Paris or Rome is uniqueness of place, not ‘starchitecture.'

Consider Greece, one of the most touristed nations in the world. Greece is blessed with three major attributes for tourists: The Parthenon; being the birthplace of western culture; and the image of whitewashed homes overlooking the Mediterranean. Not a single one of them can be had any place else on earth.

In fact, those whitewashed homes are so specific, they can barely be considered Greek and are instead Cycladic. That is, they're specific to the Cyclades, a small Greek island group. More specifically, they're from Santorini, the black volcanic sand jewel of the Mediterranean that some archaeologists speculate is the location of the lost city of Atlantis. Unique, indeed.

There isn't a single piece of starchitecture in all of Santorini, just some small white homes with blue roofs. But because the city understands that small white homes with blue roofs are unique, they preserve them through some of the most restrictive building codes and regulations around.

Is it any surprise then that Santorini is one of the most popular destinations in all of Greece?

Architects may not like to admit it, but these small, vernacular bungalows are worth more to Santorini than anything Frank Gehry, Moshe Safdie or Renzo Piano could ever provide.

Steven Dale is the founder of Creative Urban Projects (CUP Projects) in Toronto, Canada. He is an expert on Cable-Propelled Transit with several years experience researching and consulting on the matter. Steven recently launched The Gondola Project, an information campaign in support of CPT. For more information, visit www.gondolaproject.com or www.creativeurbanprojects.com.