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Eduardo Oliveirais a PhD candidate at the Department of Spatial Planning, University of Groningen. He was born in Braga (Portugal) where he studied Geography and Planning (University of Minho-UM). Then, he completed a post-degree in Tourism (Catholic University of Portugal). He completed his M.Sc. in Marketing at the School of Economics and Management (UM) and University Sains Malaysia. Eduardo has been appointed Student-Representative of the Regional Studies Association. His work focuses on the theory and practice of place-branding in strategic spatial-planning.ABSTRACT Places are facing major challenges at the environmental, financial and economic levels. These crucial issues demand structural changes and emphasise the need for robust strategic thinking and active instruments that shape and frame what a place is and what it aims to become. As traditional planning instruments become markedly less effective, spatial planners are required to develop new instruments that cope more effectively with the challenges they face in an unbalanced, dynamic and complex environment, while at the same time addressing the social, spatial and economic needs of a place. Place branding has been used to foster economic restructuring, social inclusion and cohesion, political engagement and participation, place identification, and the general well-being of citizens. This article aims to contribute to the academic debate by discussing why and how place branding can be used as an instrument in strategic spatial planning to support a structural change in places. This conceptual article emphasises that place branding as a strategic spatial planning instrument can contribute to improvement of economic and social structure of places and reshape responses to contemporary challenges faced by places.

Strategic spatial planning is increasingly practised throughout the world to develop a coordinated vision for guiding the medium-to long-term development of urban regions. However, from a theoretical and conceptual perspective, strategic spatial planning is hard to grasp, as it is multidimensional, embedded in sociopolitical and institutional complexity and highly contextdependent. Moreover, current planning debates mainly focus on the outputs of the strategic planning process while largely neglecting the impact that strategic spatial plans can have on urban transformations. Here, we show an empirically-based analytical framework grounded on an analysis of 21 European urban regions, representing the key components of plan-making and planimplementation as well as the main interrelationships among them. The proposed framework (SPlaMI) reflects current planning practices and intends to contribute towards consolidating a European understanding of strategic spatial planning while providing the basis for dialogue with broader discourses on sustainable development in a global context.