Urban Villages™. On the Commodification of Heterogeneity in the Branded Cityscape
Urban branding is based on a fundamental paradox: it seeks uniqueness—yet increasingly draws on what has traditionally resisted representation. It is the unruly, unofficial, socially unregulated spaces of the city that keep reappearing at the centre of the urban self-image. What was once labelled a slum, problem district or subculture now re-emerges under new terms: as an “urban village,” an “authentic quarter,” a “creative hotspot.” Formerly marginal areas are turned into carriers of urban distinction—stylised, formatted, and rendered marketable.
The attention given to those urban spaces now branded as “urban villages” has a long history. As early as 19th-century London, social reformers like Henry Mayhew (London Labour and the London Poor, 1851–62) and statistician Charles Booth (Life and Labour of the People in London, from 1886) studied the lives of the urban poor—vendors, domestic servants, day labourers—and mapped their social worlds. Though they did not use the term “urban village,” they documented dense social microstructures in urban fringe zones that would later become central to urban research: milieus of proximity, control, and stigma.
In the first half of the 20th century, urban sociology increasingly shifted its focus to the United States. There, socially segregated neighbourhoods were systematically studied by sociologists and ethnographers—most notably by the Chicago School around Robert E. Park and Louis Wirth, who analysed the big city as a space of social difference and segregation. William Foote Whyte’s participant observation of an Italian-American neighbourhood in Boston (Street Corner Society, 1943) brought the fine-grained social fabric of such communities into focus. Herbert Gans, in The Urban Villagers (1962)—a study of Boston’s West End—not only coined the term itself but also showed how a supposedly “backward” district harboured a functioning social life, one threatened by planning fantasies and demolition. That same year, Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, championing small-scale, mixed-use neighbourhoods in New York and becoming the most influential voice of a bottom-up urbanism.
All of these studies positioned themselves as counter-knowledge—as critiques of an urbanism that treated heterogeneity as a disturbance. What was once marginal in urban sociology has now become a preferred object of urban branding strategies. What was once the subject of ethnographic inquiry, sociological description, and—both curiously and fearfully—urban adventure, now functions as an identity-defining element in the competition between cities. In reportages, guided tours, and literary field experiments, visits to neighbourhoods such as Harlem, the Bronx, or Berlin’s Scheunenviertel became urban rites of passage—an ambivalent “walk on the wild side,” as Rolf Lindner put it. The difference once observed is now strategically deployed—as a resource for narrative, atmosphere, and distinctiveness. The urban brand no longer draws on social reality, but on its stylised form. The urban village becomes a signifier of urbanity—coded as creative, raw, “authentic”—detached from the often precarious living conditions that actually exist on the ground.
This development follows a clear logic. Urban brands thrive on selective visibility: they highlight what fits the desired profile and obscure what doesn’t. In the global competition for attention, investment and talent, cities are searching for a signature—and increasingly turn to what was once considered a flaw. Instead of iconic skylines or famous names, the focus shifts to micro-narratives, graffiti-covered walls, food trucks, and artists’ studios. Not high-gloss architecture, but the unfinished. Not homogeneity, but curated heterogeneity.
This appropriation follows a familiar pattern. First, a neighbourhood gains attention through artistic or alternative uses—such as Bushwick in Brooklyn, which evolved from an industrial fringe zone into a global hotspot for street art and creative urbanity. Then, images, stories and codes emerge to render the area narratable. These narratives are eventually incorporated into official branding strategies—as tokens of local authenticity. Everyday culture becomes image; social logics are recast as curated atmosphere. Kreuzberg in Berlin or—uniquely—Shimokitazawa in Tokyo demonstrate how culturally charged urban spaces are increasingly aestheticised and strategically staged: photogenic and unthreatening, above all.
What follows is a curious reversal. What was once regarded as a nuisance—the improvised, the precarious, the deviant—is now elevated to a distinguishing feature, not in its social reality, but as an abstracted style. In Cape Town’s Woodstock district, the patina of decaying warehouses serves as a backdrop for designer shops and slow-food markets. Formerly marginal infrastructure now underpins the staging of “authenticity.” The migrant-run bakery, the makeshift street market, the crumbling façade—everything becomes ornamental in a new urbanity that pretends it hasn’t yet arrived. Difference becomes a decorative resource, a badge of cosmopolitanism—globally reproducible, locally flavoured, marketable.
This dynamic results in a paradoxical standardisation of diversity: the more cities try to stage the unique, the more alike they become. The figure of the “urban village” becomes a universal template—slightly varied, structurally identical. In Manchester, the former working-class district of Ancoats is marketed as a “village in the city,” while in Shanghai, the alleys and Shikumen houses of Tianzifang are reimagined as a “creative labyrinth” for Western tourists. What began as a lived, conflict-ridden structure ends as walkable branding.
Urban brands thrive on compression, recognisability, emotional resonance. But they are not neutral instruments of communication. They shape perception, define belonging, determine visibility. The branding of the Urban Village™ exemplifies how selective a city’s self-description becomes. It is not what a city is, but what it wants to seem, that shapes its image. And what cannot be staged is left out—or adapted.
What began as ethnographic observation—attention to the social, the small-scale, the rooted, the unruly—has become a formula in the branded urban landscape. The Urban Village™ is no longer a place. It is a sign. A service. Against this backdrop, our modest proposal:Why not take the next step and develop the urban village as a modular export product? A plug-and-play neighbourhood kit— preassembled, pre-branded, emotionally preloaded. Delivered with vegan street food, rainproof graffiti façades, gentle gentrification pressure, and regulated diversity. Including the reuse of disused industrial areas as “urban laboratories”—with international flagship potential, as Zürich-West has demonstrated: from slaughterhouse to scene district, from freight yard to event hall, from wasteland to brand. An “authenticity-as-a-service” package for all cities that want to be different—but without the risk. Perhaps it can even be trademarked. Urban Village™. Coming soon to a city near you.
