The city as a brand. (6/6)

A series of six contributions.

It must be the dream of every ambitious brand maker: to turn a city into a strong city brand. It is certainly a highly fascinating task. But is it realistic that cities can be turned into brands? Going even further: is it desirable for cities to be turned into brands?

These questions are addressed in six articles that are published on an ongoing basis in the business of brand management. The articles are each excerpts from Häusler and Häusler: How cities become brands. Developing city brands purposefully and thoughtfully, Springer 2024 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-43776-3 (German version, Springer Gabler 2023 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-41456-6). The articles have been slightly shortened and edited.

"Practical work well done".

In the end, a general attack on the identity-forming cornerstones of the social figure brand creator becomes necessary. Modesty is certainly not one of the essential characteristics of the professional group in its three constitutive manifestations: designer, consultant or manager. And yet it is true: the brand creator “in the city acquires honour by practicing in a way whose terms are modest” (Sennett, R.: Building and dwelling. Ethics of the city. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2018 p. 13).

What might this mean? The inner compass of the brand creator must be reversed: from big, fast and arbitrarily to slow, cautious and local. In many respects, a challenge. The clear plan would have to give way to trust in evolutionary developments. The purposeful and rapid approach would have to give preference to a situational feeling of the “possible to the doable”. It would have to be conceded to those affected that they are capable of action and have co-determination rights (agency and ownership for and by the city population). In addition, city brand creators would have to live with the fact that city brands—far beyond the trendy co-creation—are designed by numerous authors and their manifestations are fed from many sources. What could and should remain is the claim “to do good-quality work”. Overall, this required pragmatism in the development of city brands stands provocatively in stark contrast to the widely spread (self-) stylization of practicing craftsmen as all-knowing and -powerful ‘gurus’.

Photo: Wolfgang Fach

If rules for good city brand creation—“practical work well done”—are formulated here in conclusion, then these are to be understood as rules of thumb. They result from the positive interaction of …

• realistic assessments of urban conditions. These also include odd mixtures and crooked paths. Contradictions and uncertainties characterize the object of the effort to make it (the city) a brand.

• idealistic ideas of possible urban futures. One then necessarily finds oneself in a struggle with “brutal simplifiers” (Jacob Burckhardt), shapes the process and understands the result of brand development as (largely) open.

• pragmatic behavior when it comes to delivering appropriately modest good brand creation craftsmanship: “proactive urbanism can combine with ethical modesty” (p. 16).

Above all hovers a storm cloud, a dialectical element of city branding. The (supposed) development of a (so-called) city brand could—at an extreme point—be irrelevant, useless and wasteful. A city brand can—on the other hand—be successful for the external marketing of the city, but at the same time have highly questionable effects on city life. The development and strengthening of city brands obviously follows the law of diminishing (or even negative) marginal utility. The battle cry would then be: The city is dead. Long live the city brand (the Venice syndrome). At this point, city brands resemble drugs: in too high a dosage, they threaten to become harmful (or deadly). As is well known, you can also oversalt the soup. There is—when it comes to city branding—something like too much of a good thing.