Economic City Branding in China: the Multi-Level Governance of Municipal Self-Promotion in the Greater Pearl River Delta

Abstract

Abstract:In the urban development policy in China, city brands play an important role in setting targets for Chinese cities. These economic city brands, however, are not produced in an institutional vacuum: they are embedded in the visions national, provincial and municipal governments have for these cities, i.e., on multi-level governance. In this paper, a data-intense analysis of economic city branding practices has been conducted in the Greater Pearl River Delta, taking into account national, provincial and municipal documents in socio-economic, urban and land use planning. Evidence of economic and ecological initiatives through branding at the level of symbolic urban projects, such as new towns, has also been examined. It transpires that Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have adopted more sophisticated economic brand identities than the others and the reflection of brand-related targets from their actual projects is also more credible. While China's national plans focus primarily on Hong Kong and Macau, provincial documents place more emphasis on the wealthier cities on the mainland (Shenzhen and Guangzhou). The other cities attract less attention and have more freedom to adopt economic city brands, but their efforts to live up to their promise are quite limited due to their weak financial position.

City Branding in China’s Northeastern Region: How Do Cities Reposition Themselves When Facing Industrial Decline and Ecological Modernization?

“…This is different from what is often understood as city branding as a targeted process in which labels, slogans and logos are established which are subsequently broadly advertised across the media [23]. We utilize an analytical framework on urban developmental pathways that explicitly relates to urban and industrial profiles cities have and examine how their existing geographic profiles compare with their desired brands and pathways [9,13]. The alignment of past traditions, status quo and future ambitions is examined by comparing city branding practices adopted by cities with their urban and industrial developmental pathways.…”

“…Each of these concepts reflect a desired shift in the direction of ecological modernization where social, economic and ecological gains are presumed to come nicely together. Earlier studies in the application of city branding among cities in the face of ecological modernization focused on polycentric regions such as Rhine-Ruhr in Germany and Randstad in The Netherlands [11] and the three Chinese Mega-City Regions Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Jin-Jin-Ji [12][13][14]. From these studies, it appeared that city branding practices were quite commonly used but that cities with a strong tradition in manufacturing and heavy industry were reluctant to present themselves as such and preferred to dress up as service or innovation cities even if this seemed barely realistic in the eyes of their stakeholders.…”

“…We examined both (1) the city brand identity, which can be seen as a city's general self-image in which it includes its essential features and (2) its use of city-labels in connection with urban ecological modernization. This selection of city labels finds its origin in earlier work [10,24] where various different city labels were identified but then adapted to terminology as it prevails in the Chinese policy context [13,14]. These labels are sustainable city, smart city, innovation city, resilient city, tourism city, eco city, low carbon city, livable city, advanced manufacturing city, service city and modern agricultural city.…”

“…There were three credible plans that could act as sources for data collection: Social and Economic Five Year Plans (FYPs), Urban Master Plans (UMPs) and Land Use Plans (LUPs). The 13th FYPs and the most recent UMPs proved to be of unqualified significance for the topic at hand [12,13]. Since LUPs turned out to be too operational to serve for branding purposes, these were excluded.…”

An Exploratory Study on Local Brand Value Development for Outlying Island Agriculture: Local Food System and Actor–Network Theory Perspectives

“…Zhang and Zhao [49] found that city branding identity differentiates a given city from other cities by combining its spatial configuration and cultural values in a complex way. On the other hand, Lu, de Jong and Chen [50] focused on desired economic city branding and stressed a number of elements including features and beneficial attributes and as the core element of a brand, identity reflects how producers want city branding to be perceived by the outside world.…”