Place branding and growth machines: Implications for spatial planning and urban development

ABSTRACT

Place branding is increasingly being adopted by cities in advanced economies, with recent evidence suggesting that branding has expanded beyond its traditional role of presenting an image reflective of an existing local identity and is instead now able to play a role in guiding local planning and urban development. As with other elements of contemporary urban development, however, place branding also required scrutiny regarding what configurations of local stakeholders are involved in the branding process as well as the resulting implications for planning and development. In this regard, place branding presents a contemporary example of the growth machine thesis. Using this context, the key stakeholders, their roles, and the implications for spatial planning and urban development due to the configuration of the coalition are explored through a series of in-depth interviews with local officials (n = 18), semi-private economic development practitioners (n = 8), and place branding consultants (n = 10). Findings of the study show that the growth machines are dominated by private-sector stakeholders—in particular consultants—who guide the branding process. As a result, these private-sector actors are setting the broad policies that guide the urban development policies and spatial planning of cities.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which provided financial support for this project through its Joseph-Armand Bombardier and Insight Grants. The authors also extend special thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Evan Cleave

Evan Cleave is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Ryerson University. His research focuses on place branding and marketing issues, including how and why policy is formulated by local governments, as well as the influence of place branding and other location-based factors on where talent and migrants chose to live, and business chose to operate. He also examines issues of urban and local economic planning and policy development and effectiveness.

Godwin Arku

Godwin Arku is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Western Ontario. His research examines local impacts and community responses to global economic, social and environmental changes. Within this field, he looks at issues such as local impacts and policy responses to plant closures, municipal economic development policies, transnationalism and immigrant housing, impacts of economic liberalization on housing markets, and economic reforms and built environment changes.