Introduction and welcome Hans Sakkers
.... What is the difference between branding a product and branding a city? A product is ready and has to be sold; a place and its people have to be developed. You can consume a product, but a city has to be taken care of. In case of a product it has to be clear what it is or should be; In case of a city it’s an invitation to a coalition of the willing to re-create the future out of the existing present. The success of a product can be expressed in its commercial value; the success of a city should be expressed in its possibility to generate an equal opportunity for everyone to contribute to urban creativity. This is what Charles Landry has called ‘an ethical foundation of the city’.
Branding is thinking with an extreme focus: it makes the world more simple, less complex. But the development of cities needs an holistic approach instead of reduced complexity. It’s never only about innovation, business, green, accessibility, sports, centrality, talent, governance, beauty, heritage, culture, et cetera … bigger metropolitan areas and cities have to be all these things. Branding means a competitive way of thinking: Who is the best, most popular, best ranked? This way of thinking does not invite to search for ways that support cooperation, reciprocal support, sharing facilities and connecting talented people.
I think we have to go beyond this way of storytelling about cities; for example we should invest in similarities between places, spaces and people instead of focusing too much on their uniqueness; then we can learn from each other, for example, how to improve the process of quality and livability.
Could it be an interesting option for cities to develop the branding narrative into a more international but also more collective direction? Not branding your uniqueness, … but to relate yourself to similar cities, in our case for example to places like Bologna, Aarhus, Malmö, Stuttgart, Brno, Ghent, Graz, … and how could a joined campaign work? Could a network of attractive culture, creativity and knowledge oriented middle-sized European cities strengthen the individual local identities? Could we imagine a corporate worldwide campaign on airports and cultural festivals to attract the attention of new willing and talented people? Could we create a new European invitation to the world that goes beyond the rationality of competition? And could there be a second step to focus on issues that could be improved and could contribute to the urban space. Could we say: “Utrecht, Zürich, Oslo, Edinburgh, … a European invitation to the world”?
