Selling the City: Strategies in Urban Marketing, Branding, and Identity

Conceptual Frameworks for Selling the City

The academic discourse presented by Professor Tania Rossetto explores the multifaceted strategies utilized in the contemporary era to market and brand urban environments. This process, termed as selling the city, categorizes urban centers based on their dominant economic and social identities. These typologies include the global city, the cultural city, the creative city, the entertainment-focused city, the green city, the technological city, and the smart city. Each of these categories reflects a strategic positioning intended to attract capital, tourists, and specialized labor. The process is rooted in neoliberal urbanism, where city governance shifts from providing services to active place promotion and city marketing.

The Entertainment City and the Simulation of Urban Space

One of the primary iterations of the city as a product is the city of entertainment or fun city. Rankings such as those provided by Lonely Planet highlight cities like Buenos Aires, Ibiza, Berlin, and Havana as locations where boredom is impossible. Interestingly, major destinations like Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Rio de Janeiro were excluded from specific lists, prompting debate on what constitutes a vibrant entertainment hub. A quintessential example of the simulated entertainment environment is Disneyland. The concept of Main Street, U.S.A. serves as a foundational model for themed urbanity. These environments, such as those in Disneyland California built in the mid-$1950s$, Disney World Florida built in the late $1960s$, and Disneyland Paris opened in $1992$, are essentially identical. They offer a sanitized, nostalgic, and carefully controlled urban experience that has influenced real-world urban design through the creation of themed districts and souvenirs that commodify the urban experience.

Waterfront Renaissance and Urban Renewal in Baltimore

The case of Baltimore, Maryland, provides a significant example of how a city can be rebranded through industrial-to-tourist transformations. The Inner Harbor area was transformed into a centerpiece of downtown Baltimore, becoming a world-famous tourist destination. This renaissance was spearheaded by urban planner and journalist Martin Millspaugh, alongside developer James Rouse and the Baltimore Architecture Foundation. The project, specifically Harborplace, which opened in July $1980$, played a critical role in shaping modern-day Baltimore. To commemorate its $30$-year anniversary in $2010$, presentations and walking tours led by figures like Charles B. Duff facilitated a deeper understanding of this outstanding example of urban renewal. This shift from maritime industry to a vibrant waterfront that includes dining, entertainment, and shopping (such as the Domino Sugars landmark) illustrates the transition to the city as a consumed experience.

The Discourse of the Vibrant City

The term vibrant has become a central keyword in urban marketing and territorial design. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, vibrant is defined as being full of energy and life, often specifically exemplified as a vibrant cosmopolitan city. Professor Rossetto argues that this term functions as a discursive atmosphere that contains the semantic legacy of post-Fordist reinvention. As noted by Amendola ($2003$), the urban territory must be vibrant and overloaded with stimuli to attract and stun the flâneur. This involves a phantasmagoria or bazar approach to urban signs. The vibrancy is also linked to chromogeographies—the bright and striking use of colors ($Philo$ & $Kearns$, $1993$)—and nightscapes, where artificial light and projection mapping (spatial augmented reality) like the Festival of Lights in Berlin ($2020$) are used to create euphoric and hedonistic urban imaginaries.

The Green City and Environmental Branding

The city of the future is increasingly marketed through the lens of sustainability, summarized as the green city. Initiatives like the European Green Capital (EGCA), established by the European Commission, use competition to encourage environmental sustainability. Winning cities include Stockholm ($2010$), Hamburg ($2011$), Vitoria-Gasteiz ($2012$), Nantes ($2013$), Copenhagen ($2014$), Bristol ($2015$), Ljubljana ($2016$), Essen ($2017$), Nijmegen ($2018$), and Lisbon ($2020$). The benefits of this designation include an increase in tourism, positive international media coverage worth millions of euro, and a boost in local pride. Bristol, as the first UK city to win, used the brand story of a healthier, happier city to create a blueprint for city living worldwide, emphasizing a circle of good where everyone is in it together.

Siliconization and the Smart City Paradigm

The technological city, characterized by the phenomenon of siliconization, focuses on replicating the success of Silicon Valley. This is seen in Beijing's Zhongguancun Electronics Avenue and Venice's VEGA (Parco Scientifico Tecnologico di Venezia), which seeks to incubate innovative startups in sectors like ICT, design, and biotechnology. This evolves into the smart city, which is evaluated across six dimensions: Smart Economy, Smart Mobility, Smart Governance, Smart Environment, Smart Living, and Smart People. In Italy, metrics such as the iCity-rate ($2013$) ranked Trento and Bologna as leaders in the smart city revolution. However, this transition is not without critique. Reports in publications like The Guardian argue that the data-dense, sensor-reliant smart city—exemplified by Songdo in South Korea—might threaten democracy by prioritizing electronic surveillance and technocratic governance over civic participation.

Strategies of Toponymic Commodification and City Branding

City branding often relies on toponymic sloganising and commodification. The landmark I Love NY campaign ($1976$) set the standard for urban identities. This was famously adapted by Amsterdam in $2004$ with the I amsterdam brand. This campaign shifted focus from the city's association with drugs and red-light districts to a narrative of inspiration and creativity. The brand became so successful that it spurred an entire ecosystem of merchandising (the I amsterdam Store) and social media engagement via YouTube and other platforms. Similarly, Glasgow underwent multiple rebranding phases: from Glasgow's Miles Better ($1983$) featuring the character Mr. Happy to address past notoriety, to Glasgow: Scotland with Style ($2004$) highlighting Charles Rennie Mackintosh's architecture, and finally to People Make Glasgow ($2013$). The latter campaign represents a shift toward participatory branding, where the citizens themselves are marketed as the city's greatest asset.

Berlin and Manchester: Authenticity vs. Identity

Berlin's be Berlin campaign, launched in $2008$, utilized a red speech bubble frame to encourage identification among residents. The campaign evolved from a regional level to a global one, using slogans like be brilliant, be bold, be berlin. It aimed to counter negative prejudices and show diverse stories, from students in Neukölln to corporate innovators. However, this generated resistance in the form of anti-campaigns like Don't be Berlin!, where slogans were subverted to be Neoliberal, be Baugruppe, be Gentrifizierer, reflecting concerns over gentrification. In contrast, Manchester's I Love MCR campaign, born out of the $2011$ riots, became a symbol of defiance and unity following the $2017$ suicide bombing. The symbol was held by mourners and seen city-wide on billboards, demonstrating how a marketing logo can be reclaimed by the public as a totem of community resilience in times of tragedy.