Scientific Review of the Phenomenon of “Urban Identity” in Modern Foreign Studies

Abstract

Being a trend of our times, urbanization of city areas has affected not only transformation of the territorial identity, but also personal identity. The article raises the problem of interaction between the man and the city and the problem of city identity on the whole which is of great urgency and interest for contemporary society. The work provides the overview of foreign research aimed at understanding the nature of the phenomenon of city identity. As a result, the overview showed: a variety of terms ("place identity", "urban identity", "identity in landscape", "city identity", "urban place identity", "local identity", "city brand identity", "regional identity", "territorial identity", "community identity" and others) which help to describe processes of interdependence between the city and the man; authors' attempts to hierarchically structure these notions; the necessity to study this phenomenon by using both methodology of a particular scientific area and interdisciplinary approaches; controversy in defining the notion of urban identity; importance in relation to the need for developing brands of modern cities without loss of their historic and socio-cultural uniqueness. Characteristic aspects of the study of the phenomenon from the point of view of various approaches are shown. Two main lines for studying the nature of the phenomenon of urban identity have been defined: the first one is that the identity belongs to the city or geographical place, the other one says that the identity belongs to the person living in a particular area. The authors consider information and communication policy as an integrative way unleashing new opportunities for organizing theoretical-empirical analysis of this phenomenon. Strategies for further study of the issues relating to urban identity have been formulated: 1) analysis of national surveys on the problem; 2) defining and detailing of the research vocabulary for this phenomenon; 3) preparation and carrying out the research in the context of the region.