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Abstract
Regional competitiveness has become a truism for many places today. In line with this “competitive discourse”, planners in Umeå, Northern Sweden, are seeking to create a “sticky” place where capital and people are attracted by enhancing the cultural sector through the hosting of events. By implementing the bid for the title of European Capital of Culture in 2014 through a positive growth-oriented discourse, it is hoped that a multitude of stakeholders will come together in a network of “co-creation”, and enhance an image of the city as a creative and gushing place with endless development possibilities. This paper studies how a development proposal is implemented among the stakeholders by seeking to create positive expectations. With a point of departure in stakeholder theory and interdiscursive analysis, this study explores the role of discourse in stakeholder dynamics and engagement. The results of this study show that implementation is not merely a marketing process, but different opinions will emerge that may contest the “official” discourse, and that the outcomes of the implementation strategy may be hard to control unless the “official” discourse is consciously elaborated to adapt to these counter-discourses.