City branding, regional identity and public space: What historical and cultural symbols in urban architecture reveal

Abstract

City branding as produced by local governments has been widely recognized as a modern version of government communication. Local governments convey attractive features of their identity to current and potential stakeholders in their cities. In this contribution, we examine how municipal governments have used urban design as a form of city branding reflecting the identity of the historical (sub)region in which they are located. We do this in a French border region where features of medieval, Burgundian and Spanish Netherlandish traditions can still clearly be distinguished in public buildings: Nord-Pas-de-Calais, and more specifically its five subregions Maritime Flanders, Roman Flanders, Hainaut, Artesia and Cambrai. We systematically map historical and cultural symbols found on leading public urban architecture and indicate to which era of origin and identity feature they refer. We do this for a selection of 17 municipalities of over 20,000 inhabitants. We find that symbols to pre-French traditions are still very conspicuous (Flemish architecture, typical beer bars, selective use of ancient Dutch language), but also that as new political powers establish themselves in a region these symbols are redefined such that such regional identities are in line with new 'national requirements' and become 'innocuous'. Classicist building styles, French military works and war memorials and modernist architecture embed and blend with these ancient traditions and make regional identities multi-layered. Either way, 'thin' instrumental and identities pushed by governments grow 'thick' and deeply felt over the centuries.

Historical imaginaries, historic urban branding, and the local state in China: rejuvenation discourse, manufactured heritage and simulacrascapes

“…Historical imaginaries 1 and historical urban (or city based) branding 2 are a global phenomenon (see Mac-Donald 2009;Guzijan 2021;de Jong and Lu 2022;Shedid and Hefnawy 2022). Coalitions of developers, the local state, and a whole network of urban actorsincluding realtors, planners, urban designers, heritage specialists, conservationists, tourist agents and local businesses -can come together to construct, support, and maintain a specific historical urban imaginary and/ or an associated historical urban brand.…”

‘Thin’ Regional Identities: Economic Instrumentality or Pathway to Thickness? The Case of the Pearl River Delta

“…Thin regional identities are often criticized for being less connected to historical and cultural roots and lack acceptance among locals (Terlouw 2018). One reason is that new regional identities are promoted in a short time by new established powers to strenghten national identity (de Jong & Lu, 2022). The fact that in our case, the PRD and the GBA are located in a polynuclear cross-border region with complex and multiple identities that are sometimes deeply ingrained (Bie et al 2015), makes it all the more unlikely that newly introduced thin regional identities will quickly replace old thicker ones.…”

Environmental Protection Goes Digital: A Policy Perspective on Promoting Digitalization for Sustainable Development in China

“…Other variables considered as potential determinants of CO 2 emissions in this study, as recommended by the prior literature, included gross domestic product (GDP) per capita [27], population intensity, foreign direct investment (FDI), industry structure, and patents per capita. In accordance with the widely accepted paradigm of the nexus between economic growth and the environment, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework posits that pollutant emissions are expected to escalate in tandem with the gross domestic product (GDP) until a certain threshold is reached, after which further economic growth leads to the mitigation of pollutants [28,29]. Previous studies have confirmed that innovations, especially patents related to energy and technology sectors, are conducive to economic prosperity and carbon reduction in the long run [12].…”