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This paper addresses the role of brand design in the validation of hegemonic narratives on the identities of cities, issued by place brands and local administrations. Drawing on concepts from Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse analysis, we address place identity(ies), as floating signifiers, appropriated by global and local discourses in order to gain hegemony, through the naturalization of their narratives.

This chapter explores cultural and political dimensions of the acceptance process of renewable energies at local and macro levels. Applying a psycho-discursive analysis of practices of local acceptance of a wind farm in Brazil, the extracts from news and interviews with local population illustrate the discursive use of people-place bonds to legitimize the wind farm construction, associating the new technology with local identity, and the ideological resonances of place talk echo the perpetuation of historical Global North-Global South power relations. Concluding, we argue that to achieve a democratic and just energy transition it is necessary to ground energy actions in social empowerment processes through locally driven socioeconomic improvement, and promoting active and critical citizen involvement in decision-making.

This chapter engages with the question, ‘who are we in an age of globalisation and mobility?’. To answer this question, the chapter discusses identity at an individual level before discussing place identity in contexts of linguistic and ethnic diversity. The chapter highlights identity struggles, feeling strange and being in-between in the face of socially desired moulds established through normalising discourses. In addition, it addresses how languaging enables and inhibits identity subjectivities mediated through power structures and emotions. It also problematises the ‘city’ as a site for linguistic diversity and argues for the importance of researching different levels of granularity (Schneider, 2020) in order inform narratives about place identity, as well as narratives about those who inhabit a certain place.

Brazil | Caio Esteves is the Global Managing Partner of Placemaking at Bloom Consulting, having previously been the founder and CEO of Places for Us, the Brazilian place branding and placemaking consultancy. Pioneer of place branding in Brazil. Caio has coordinated postgraduate courses in branding, in addition to working as a professor in several educational institutions. As a speaker, he focuses on human behavior and its relationship with cities and places, always linking place identity with community engagement, and the interrelation between place branding and placemaking.

In recent years, many Middle East countries have experienced unprecedented urban development and growth in infrastructure and transport, thanks to the discovery and exportation of oil. In these areas, the construction booming has produced a heated debate about the directions to follow for the growth of many countries. The intent is to balance two opposite trends: from one side the innovative construction of new buildings and from the other side the restoration of historical heritage to keep the identity of the nation alive. Simultaneously to such debate, while cities are growing, public space is shrinking and declining worldwide. The paper discusses some significant examples of recently completed heritage restoration projects and shows the growing need to strengthen the value of local traditions and culture also through the enhancement of public places linked to the heritage. In particular, the social value linked to public places is significant for the historical growth of urban centres, as collective places for social recognition and union, for the country's identity, for the collective development of a society. The analyses of some completed restoration projects in the Middle East show that heritage conservation is linked to preserving the place identity of the together with the values of a public, social, and cultural space.

In 2018, Romania celebrated 100 years of existence as a country. Countless events honouring the occasion provided opportunity to study representation of identity and territoriality on different scales. The commemorative outdoor exhibition called “10x10 Zece decenii de România in o suta de imagini” (10x10 Ten Decades of Romania in One Hundred Images), staged by the National Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj-Napoca, was chosen as primary source for this survey. Applying quantitative content analysis complemented by a semiotic analysis of the photographs, the survey intends to identify which elements consider the authors of the exhibition as representative for territorial identity statement in a national context. Further on, the paper focuses also on the contribution of the references to the creation and support of a place-based identity and to their impact on a sense of ownership and place-attachment. The analysis shows that the exhibition appeals to the public memory and confronts the visitors with a suite of events of the century, with major historical moments of national importance, but also with glimpses of everyday life, with personalities that have marked the city’s and the country’s life, and with the metamorphosis through which Cluj-Napoca passed over time.

This chapter explores the weird and eerie aspects of the Black Country landscape; places that are off-kilter, outdated, out of place and/or out of time. Considering the implications this post-industrial realm has on the communal and cultural psyche of the region’s inhabitants; and what part sensory information, or its lack, impacts sense of place and sense of self.

In this chapter, we study the impact that the visible degradation of a public square has had on the social behaviour and responses of the residents and local actors in terms of place attachment and participation. The main objective is to identify the factors that generated the negative image associated by residents themselves with the neighbourhood, the elements that determined the degradation and marginalization of the neighbourhood, and the consequences of these processes for the people’s behaviour. For this purpose, we collected data through surveys from residents and interviews with professionals on Traian Square, a public space, and the core element of the Fabric neighbourhood in Timișoara, Romania. This is a square with a long tradition and history in Timișoara, one of the symbolic squares of the city, which was marked by a process of transformation that led to a degraded place, associated in the collective imagery with a place of fear, mysterious and enigmatic. Without clear stages of the evolution of the square and its buildings, it is proven that the hidden elements are interconnected and can be revealed by a detailed analysis. The results indicate that the main factor that contributed to the marginalization of the square was represented by the local authorities, which allowed its physical and social degradation by not investing in improvements and allowing people with social problems to settle there. Facing this situation, many residents considered the option of moving to other neighbourhoods or reduced the degree of participation in the neighbourhood’s life. These consequences can, in a bad scenario, lead to segregation, which should be avoided with adequate strategies.

Food tourism is a unique segment of tourism that contributes to the development of tourist destinations. Recent researches show that local food experience can positively affect trip satisfaction, revisit intention, and destination’s attractiveness. However, there is still a lack of research focusing on the relationship between experience of regional theme restaurants and destination’s place identity. Our study aims to examine the relationships among tourist experience, emotions, and behavioral intentions based on a case of the local-specific theme restaurant Zaboi (“Coalface”) located in Kemerovo, Russia’s largest coal-mining region. Research design is based on a combination of a content analysis of online reviews and a visitors’ survey followed by regression analysis. We focus on various aspects of visitor emotions, behavioral intentions, and relationships between visitor experiences and place identity. In line with previous studies, our results confirm a significant positive relationship between emotions and revisit intention. In addition, our results provide new evidence on the role of place identity in shaping visitors’ emotions. The authentic coal-mining theme provokes a positive emotional response for both tourists and local residents. This response, in turn, is positively associated with intentions to revisit and to recommend.

The literature about place attachment and its role as antecedent of destination loyalty focussed in the last decade on the sunny side of tourism (recreational and beach tourism), more market(ing)-oriented. Despite the considerable growth in heritage, reenactement and place attachment research literature, studies about the later did not test models on the context of heritage tourism, nor assessed the implication of the reenactment activities in visitor’s experiences and their long-term bond genesis. We used correlation, multilinear regression, and mediation analysis in order to explore the perceived instrumental role of reenactment representations in tourists’ experience at heritage sites and how tourists with different levels of reenactment activities seeking, form their complex bond with heritage tourism sites. The results showed that variables such as the strength of destination’s identification with a reenactment site, the tourist’s level of reenactment attending motivation, independent motivation to visit or the perceived role of reenactment in enhancing patriotic feelings explain a significant part of place identity component in place attachment genesis. The evaluation of alternatives inspired from the transactional theory in the functional attachment genesis from the previous place attachment models does not verify, on heritage sites, as a block. The evaluating process of places against alternatives will take place in some cases, but not in others such as heritage sites with great historical significance for their national or social group. The perceived instrumental role of reenactment in the national identity affirmation seems to partially mediate the level of destination’s identification as an impact of the reenactment site’s impact on place identity.

Human coexistence in post-industrial cities poses a formidable challenge to the interior design, consisting not only of migration and the planet survival, social integration and welfare, but also of a liveability dimension based on intangible meanings. According to an ecological view, the human habitat should take account of people primary needs in their complexity, including their right to memory, beauty, interiority and to change themselves by changing their city. Reusing existing buildings allows to put a brake on the consumption of land, energy, built and natural heritage, but also to draw significant inspiration from the memory layered in complex historical spaces, taking their latent potentialities and developing them in an innovative and sustainable way. In the chapter, the concepts of place, identity, innovation are discussed and some reflections on the possible intersection between different fields (interior design, psychology, anthropology, preservation, neurosciences…) are proposed, to promote the creation of hospitable and welcoming physical and relational places.

Based on a research and fieldwork carried out in the framework of the EU-funded research project MODSCAPES (Modernist Reinventions of the Rural Landscape, funded under HERA JRP III call “Uses of the Past”, Oct. 2016–2019), this contribution focuses on the case study of the Pontine Plain. In the 1930s, as part of Mussolini’s ruralization policy, the vast swampy area was converted into a neatly designed countryside hinged on a hierarchy of villages and medium-sized towns such as Littoria (1932), Sabaudia (1934), Pontinia (1935), Aprilia (1936) and Pomezia (1938). How did architecture contribute in shaping a new “place identity”? This chapter questions the role of schools as fundamental collective buildings, helping the settlers put down roots. School buildings offered architects scope to experiment with new spatial layouts and architectural expressions aimed at the widest possible understanding.

At international level a new priority is emerging to implement the meaning of resilience, including a holistic approach to immaterial issues, knitting together people-centered and place-based approaches into integrated vision that share a common cultural thread.

Throughout history, war has caused fundamental political, economic and social transformations around the world, spatially impacting urban form. This is evident in cities undertaking post-war reconstruction where global influences on unique historical landscapes and the cities’ distinctive identities can be observed. Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq is such a city. The city hosts the Erbil Citadel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which dates back to nearly 5000 B.C. After war ravaged the country in 2003, a decade of reconstruction ensued with a long period of political and economic stability resulting in rapid urbanisation. The post-war reconstruction process was a challenge between aspirations to promote the city globally (as the capital of an emerging nation) and a desire to represent Erbil’s historical roots in the Citadel and the old town. This has involved an array of urban actors including international investors and NGOs, who have influenced the transformation of Erbil’s place-identity. This chapter studies the transformation of Erbil and its historical identity during the post-war reconstruction period (2003–present). It employs a morphological analysis of the city’s historic core and contemporary areas combined with knowledgeable interviews with key policy makers, locals and stakeholders in order to explore the impact of the intensive post-war urban development process on the city’s place-identity. Key findings of Erbil’s morphological analysis indicate that the post-war reconstruction process has radically transformed the city’s urban fabric both in the old and the contemporary areas. Arguably, this has reflected globalised design patterns and ignored the historic morphological traces that the city has acquired throughout centuries. Consequently, post-war urban transformation has been negatively impacting Erbil’s unique place-identity. There is an urgent need for a comprehensive urban design approach that can guide future development in the contemporary historic city of Erbil to enhance the continuity of its urban cultural heritage. More importantly, an approach that allows for the evolution of place-identity needs to be rooted in its rich historical and cultural values while looking forward to future opportunities.

This chapter examines four selected public spaces with diverse forms, sizes and locations in order to understand how public space can be operationalized by specific users.

The improvement of any city interacts with diverse architectural characteristics and illustrates its history of this amelioration through exceptional architectural styles. The built heritage might be spared and enhances the quality of life for local residents by utilizing accurate conservation strategies. This paper represents the urban heritage for the historical areas within the city’s development. Moreover, the encompassing historical buildings promote the crucial correlations between the historical district and the urban context for accomplishing sustainable, conservation action plans concerning the requirements and the imperative role of the domestic society. The paper discusses various hypotheses and conceptions regarding cultural heritage for exploring heritage’s definitions through history and discusses the various disputes in distinguishing heritage may influence its approaches toward conservation. It explores the correlation between memory and place, and how the place affects history conducting in two distinctive correlative features, tangible and intangible, which formulates the double-faced guise of cultural heritage. It debates with the framework of heritage places and promotes the expanding awareness of intangible heritage’s significance that acts as a marked aspect in the domain of heritage preservation. It affirms the heritage concept which is imparted over performance, acknowledged through experience, and illuminated by diverse activities that improve the place identity and maintains its spirit. The paper aims first to set an approach for the communities’ desire to preserve their built heritage through community participation and second to propose the challenges and opportunities for sustainable advancement. It infers that urban heritage preservation and protection of the probity and identity of the historic districts can aid its marketing and advancement in several approaches that may enhance the domestic society’s sense of belonging, users’ experience, and quality of life. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the significance of discussing the physical characteristics of built heritage together with environmental, economic, and social aspects as the main concern of any sustainable development. The results, concerning surveying the lack and degeneration of the cultural heritage, ought to be examined, explored, and discussed while considering obstacles and sustainability issues which are related that urban heritage preservation.

Natural disasters and degradation phenomena interrupt the organic evolution of a place; this phenomenon invests, therefore, a vulnerable and weakened system, which inevitably becomes exposed to risk, within a territorial context already characterized by high seismicity or reduced resilience. The research identifies the tools to assess values and meanings of a territory, that have to be appropriately documented and communicated in order to inform decision-making process for conservation or reconstruction. Landscape documentation and its graphic transcription, according to new technology applications, provide a cognitive framework but also an operative vision to regenerate places and buildings according to local traditions. The research proposes the integration of models, representations and visualizations based on repertoires, high-iconic databases and predictive simulations. Promotion of local identity and psychological and environmental wellbeing requires the definition of tools for collecting and documenting local characters: analysis of urban patterns, construction techniques and tonal analysis of the urban environment, classification of architectural and landscape vocabulary.

Social communities, territorial identity and place attachment are examples of the important soft factors in smart city concepts. Meaningful network of links between physical environment, communication networks and social community is essential for every sustainable smart city. Smart cities and smart communities are also those ones that make more efficient use of physical infrastructure and engage effectively with local people in the process of citizen participation and building a place attachment towards given locality. Every concept of place attachment requires a particular work within the community, its effective transmission to all the members as well as to outward environment. In the sense of place attachment, there is the idea of urban gardening that generates uniqueness – specific character of places created by urban gardening contributes to calibration of unique place identity and develops emotional and social ties related to certain place. Urban gardening provides opportunities for social interactions that help residents develop their relationships in community, support community life and develop community and place attachment as well as enhance the quality of urban environment in the smart cities. Urban gardening is often viewed as one of the strategies which can improve urban sustainability and promote sustainable urban development in the smart cities.

Pride of Place (PoP) is the positive emotion that people can have for the place they identify or associate themselves with. It is linked to one’s own place identity and attachment to one’s own place, whether at a local or broader geographical scale. Positive pride of where one comes from can elicit a series of behaviours that are of prosocial and caring character, a pride that is too extreme, however, can result in nationalism and antisocial behaviours (at least towards what is outside one’s own place). In this book chapter, the literature around the emotion of pride is reviewed, being it historically and religiously regarded as a vice, specifically in relationship to places within a religious context. Pride of Place and religion are discussed in relation to the affective, cognitive and conative aspect of people–place bonds.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the proper management of cultural resources such as natural food products (based on theoretical principles, practices and methodologies developed currently in the field of place identity and destination branding) can help in the development and promotion of an area. As a case study, the natural foodstuff pistachio and the island of Aegina in Greece will be presented. A small island, such as Aegina, would be expected to willingly use its cultural resources, in an effort towards sustainable socioeconomic development of the local community. Combined use of mainly qualitative research methods and technique was adopted. Additionally, a limited research was conducted, concerning the residents’ attitudes in relation to the pistachio as a cultural resource. It was ascertained that the place branding process is not simple at all. As long as Aegina considers pistachio as an ordinary product and not as an industry that involves risks, that also requires promotional processes as well as pioneering initiatives and innovative procedures, the resulting process is inefficient, promotion is fragmentary and does not result in the expected success. Using merely a pistachio logo does not lead to the results of adopting a study of a long-term strategy. It is suggested that the island of Aegina should invest in the creation of a new identity. Priority should be given to an ambience of cooperation and, as the research has shown, an alliance between local businesses would be beneficial.

People create Places, but can hardly distinguish Places from Space as the definition of Place is a complex integration of nature and culture manifested in physical terms, which has been developed and is still developing in particular locations. Places are linked by a flow of people and goods between them, and each of them has its attributes—altogether creating the Identity of Place. Proper respect of cultural and natural heritage values, along with adequate safeguarding and maintaining, will help in preserving the Identity of Place. The most effective tool a planer can use in managing and controlling the Place Identity and its valuable identity attributes is a clearly defined planning process that will result in setting clear and omni-understandable planning ordinances and proposed methodologies for conserving/preserving (protecting) the Identity of Place. This paper proposes possible planning steps that represent a planning model researched and developed within the HERU, scientific project, which could help achieve this goal. The planning process today is a multidisciplinary one, with professionals from different fields taking part. The planner’s role is to coordinate and combine all of their efforts within a single document (physical or urban plan), a document that will create a unique searchlight for the Place development. To make it possible and reach that planning model, all participants must speak the same (professional) language. We need something we all shall agree upon—a relevant glossary within a field that will be prepared by professionals, not by lawmakers.

Tourism industry presents a remarkable development, with more than 1185 million international travels in 2016. This situation poses enormous pressure on world tourism destinations. The impact of tourist activities is increasingly perceived as a negative question by local residents, affecting their quality of life. In this context, the present chapter investigates how linkages between personal values and tourism development can modulate the perception of tourism impacts by local residents. Social and physical attributes of a given place help to conform the sense of being of the local population. This sense is known as place identity in literature. Mining heritage destinations deeply root on that sense while developing their tourism activities. In the analysis of the mining heritage destination of La Union in Spain, we employ structural equations modelling in testing for this main research hypothesis. Results of the investigation show that place/product identity helps to modulate the perceptions of tourism impacts by residents. Main effects are found to arise on attitudes toward socio-cultural impacts, where identity issues seem to exert the highest influence, increasing the quality of life standards of local population. In this regard, research findings recommend building on local identity issues to increase the level of sustainability of tourism destinations.

The neo-endogenous development paradigm advocates the democratic use of local resources in order to improve the quality of life of local residents in a given area through intense social and economic interaction with the global system. A theoretical basis for this development paradigm could be the “culture economy”, which dictates that a locality, through its local institutions and the civic society, should promote its self-perceived distinct territorial identity both at the local and the extra-local level in order to achieve its development goals, especially through tourism. This is due to the fact that the local identity has been recognised as a decisive factor that favours neo-endogenous development through the processes of democratic legitimacy and community empowerment. Herein, we examine the practical implementation of the European Union “Alector” project and its local pilot implementation project “Tobacco Perfumes. Drama 1840–1940. Stories, Passions, Protagonists” under the theoretical framework of the culture economy in the specific area of Drama, Greece. The “Alector” project, implemented by nine (9) multi-level partners in seven (7) countries (namely Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey) from 2014 to 2016 was funded by the Black Sea Basin Joint Operational Programme 2007–2013. The project sought to develop quality heritage tourism standards in selected areas of the Black Sea Basin; as such it demonstrated a great potential in as far as cultural assets’ rejuvenation and local identity formation and promotion is concerned both at the local and the extra-local level. We argue that local cultural assets, despite the current practical difficulties of their rejuvenation due to the economic crisis in Greece, can contribute to the formation of a specific place identity that could in turn trigger a broader post-productive development process. In this respect, it is of utmost importance to ensure the initiation of an involvement and consumption process by all segments of local society in order to ensure the sustainability of the culture economy approach and the creation of a long-term development repertoire for the locality. We finally provide practical implementation suggestions for similar projects falling into the culture economy approach.

Sommer offers a new perspective on the musealization of immigration in settler societies, focusing not on institutions of national significance but instead on a small volunteer-based museum located in Puhoi, New Zealand. Employing multimodal analysis of the permanent exhibition—presenting the exploits of a group of Bohemian immigrants—and qualitative interviews with staff and visitors, he shows that dominant multicultural narratives on a national level are not readily embraced by smaller institutions; rather, the focus lies on creating hybrid identities and fostering of local ethnic narratives. Faced with representing an immigration story touched by expulsion and conflict with indigenous groups, the museum employs a nonalignment strategy and shows the potential and pitfalls of community representation in a nonprofessional environment.