City branding has been widely adopted by entrepreneurial local governments to strengthen city identities and to attract global attention amid intensified intercity competition. Asian global cities, in particular, have competitively branded themselves to signal that they belong to the group of advanced global cities. This paper illustrates the transformative role of city branding in the making of a global city’s local identity, which has been hitherto underexplored in the literature. Specifically, it examines Seoul’s branding exercises, focusing on its unconventional projects that reflect the city’s recent efforts to become a “human-centered,” progressive city. We suggest adding a “transformative-enhancing” dimension to the existing “external–internal” city-branding framework, and argue that Seoul’s transformative city branding is, in fact, communicating the mayor’s new signature policies with citizens. When combined with a strong mayor’s efforts to cater to changing societal pressures, city branding is no longer solely a neoliberal marketing exercise, but a political project of policy change.
Young adults are prone to psychological stress and anxiety induced by major transitions to adulthood. While employment has predominated in previous research on the social determinants of young people’s mental health, this study examines the association between young people’s housing problems and mental health in the context of an unaffordable housing market. Using the Survey on the Living Conditions and Welfare Needs of Youths (n = 1308) in Korea, the study found that perceived poor housing quality and material hardship are negatively associated with the mental health of young adults living independently. Specifically, while poor housing quality and material hardship induced by housing cost burden were negatively associated with single-person households’ mental health, only poor housing quality was associated with non-single-person households’ mental health. This study is one of the few studies examining the linkage between housing problems and mental health of young adults and informs the interventions aimed at promoting the psychological well-being of young adults in the transition from parents’ homes to independent living.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.