As Place Branding has become a widely established but contested practice, there is a dire need to rethink its theoretical foundations and its contribution to development and to re-assert its future. This important new book advances understanding of place branding through its holistic, critical and evidence-based approach. Contributions by world-leading specialists explore a series of crucially significant issues and demonstrate how place branding will contribute more to cultural, economic and social development in the future. The theoretical analysis and illustrative practical examples in combination with the accessible style make the book an indispensable reading for anyone involved in the field.
As Place Branding has become a widely established but contested practice, there is a dire need to rethink its theoretical foundations and its contribution to development and to re-assert its future. This important new book advances understanding of place branding through its holistic, critical and evidence-based approach. Contributions by world-leading specialists explore a series of crucially significant issues and demonstrate how place branding will contribute more to cultural, economic and social development in the future. The theoretical analysis and illustrative practical examples in combination with the accessible style make the book an indispensable reading for anyone involved in the field.
This compendium offers a textured historical and comparative examination of the significance of locality or "place," and the role of urban representations and spatial practices in defining national identities. Drawing upon a wide range of disciplines - from literature to architecture and planning, sociology, and history - these essays problematize the dynamic between the local and the national, the cultural and the material, revealing the complex interplay of social forces by which place is constituted and contributes to the social construction of national identity in Asia, Latin America, and the United States. These essays explore the dialogue between past and present, local and national identities in the making of "modern" places. Contributions range from an assessment of historical discourses on the relationship between modernity and heritage in turn-of-the-century Suzhou to the social construction of San Antonio's Market Square as a contested presencing of the city's Mexican past. Case studies of the socio-spatial restructuring of Penang and Jakarta show how place-making from above by modernizing states is articulated with a claims-making politics of class and ethnic difference from below. An examination of nineteenth-century Central America reveals a case of local grassroots formation not only of national identity but national institutions. Finally, a close examination of Latin American literature at the end of the nineteenth century reveals the importance of a fantastic reversal of Balzac's dystopian vision of Parisian cosmo-politanism in defining the place of Latin America and the possibilities of importing urban modernity.
Place branding is often a response to inter-place competition and discussed as if it operated in a vacuum, ignoring the needs of local communities. It has developed a set of methods – catchy slogans, colourful logos, ‘star-chitects’, bidding for City of Culture status etc. – that are applied as quick-fix solutions regardless of geographical and socio-political contexts. Critical views of place branding are emerging which focus on its unexplored consequences on the physical and social fabric of places. These more critical approaches reveal place branding as an essentially political activity, serving hidden agendas and marginalizing social groups. Scholars and practitioners can no longer ignore the need for more responsible and socially sensitive approaches to cater for a wider range of stakeholders, and which fully acknowledge the importance of resident participation in decision-making. The contributions in this innovative book set out to introduce new critical ways of thinking around place branding and practices that encourage it to be more inclusive and participatory. It will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of branding, critical marketing, and destination marketing as well as critical tourism and environmental design.
The spread of newly 'invented' places, such as theme parks, shopping malls and revamped historic areas, necessitates a redefinition of the concept of 'place' from an architectural perspective. In this interdisciplinary work, these invented places are categorized according to the different phenomenological experiences they are able to provide. The book explores how such 'cloning spaces' use placemaking and placemarketing in attempt to replicate the characteristics found in urban spaces traditionally viewed as successful, and how these places can affect society's environmental perception. A range of international empirical studies illustrates how such invented places can be perceived as legitimate urban spaces, and contribute towards the quality of life in today's cities.
Place plays a fundamental role in the structuring of the discipline of Art History. And yet, place also limits the questions art historians can ask and impairs analysis of objects and locations in the interstices of established, ossified categories. The chapters in this interdisciplinary volume investigate place in all of its dynamism and complexity: several call into question traditional constructions regarding place in Art History, while others explore the fundamental role that place plays in lived experience. The particular nexus for this collection lies at the intersection and overlap of two major subfields in the history of art: South Asia and the Islamic world, both of which are seemingly geographically determined, yet at the same time uncategorizable as place with their ever-shifting and contested borders. The eleven chapters brought together here move from the early modern through to the contemporary, and span particular monuments and locations ranging from Asia and Europe to Africa and the Americas. The chapters take on the question of place as it operates in more obvious settings, such as architectural monuments and exhibitionary contexts, while also probing the way place operates when objects move or when the very place they exist in transforms dramatically. This volume engages place through the movement of objects, the evocation of senses, desires, and memories and the on-going project of articulating the parameters of place and location.
Ray Oldenburg’s concept of third place is re-visited in this book through contemporary approaches and new examples of third places. Third place is not your home (first place), not your work (second place), but those informal public places in which we interact with the people. Readers will come to understand the importance of third places and how they can be incorporated into urban design to offer places of interaction – promoting togetherness in an urbanised world of mobility and rapid change.
Through an interdisciplinary approach combining the concepts, methods and tools in language and discourse studies and insights from marketing and tourism research, this book examines the online place branding of Hong Kong, one of the most visited cities and well-known spots in the world. The book compares how the place brand is officially constructed and conveyed by the institutional bodies, as realised on the Brand Hong Kong website online, with how the place brand is publicly experienced and perceived by individuals around the world, as realised on the TripAdvisor Hong Kong travel forum online. The book also includes comparative analysis between Singapore and Hong Kong to provide better understanding of online place branding and findings from the comparative study identify interesting similarities and differences between the official portrayal of the place brand of Hong Kong and its public perception in the digital realm, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore in online place branding. The book also offers evidence-based suggestions on how we can bridge the gap between the online representation and perception of a place brand and how to enhance online place branding in general.
Investigating how people and places are connected into the creative economy, this volume takes a holistic view of the intersections between community, policy and practice and how they are co-constituted. The role of the creative economy and broader cultural policy within community development is problematised and, in a significant addition to work in this area, the concept of ‘place’ forms a key cross cutting theme. It brings together case studies from the European Union across urban, rural and coastal areas, along with examples from the developing world, to explore tensions in universal and regionally-specific issues.
Over five hundred years since it was named, utopia remains a vital concept for understanding and challenging the world(s) we inhabit, even in – or rather because of – the condition of ‘post-utopianism’ that supposedly permeates them. In Rethinking Utopia David M. Bell offers a diagnosis of the present through the lens of utopia and then, by rethinking the concept through engagement with utopian studies, a variety of ‘radical’ theories and the need for decolonizing praxis, shows how utopianism might work within, against and beyond that which exists in order to provide us with hope for a better future. He proposes paying a ‘subversive fidelity’ to utopia, in which its three constituent terms: ‘good’ (eu), ‘place’ (topos), and ‘no’ (ou) are rethought to assert the importance of immanent, affective relations. The volume engages with a variety of practices and forms to articulate such a utopianism, including popular education/critical pedagogy; musical improvisation; and utopian literature. The problems as well as the possibilities of this utopianism are explored, although the problems are often revealed to be possibilities, provided they are subject to material challenge. Rethinking Utopia offers a way of thinking about (and perhaps realising) utopia that helps overcome some of the binary oppositions structuring much thinking about the topic. It allows utopia to be thought in terms of place and process; affirmation and negation; and the real and the not-yet. It engages with the spatial and affective turns in the social sciences without ever uncritically being subsumed by them; and seeks to make connections to indigenous cosmologies. It is a cautious, careful, critical work punctuated by both pessimism and hope; and a refusal to accept the finality of this or any world.
