- The city branding processes: the case of Madrid   53 kb by    Vaggione, Pablo & Seisdedos, Gildo | Gildo.Seisdedos@ie.edu    Short Outline Creative economy and the cultural and technological environment have a key link: city brands. Authors develop a theoretical framework for city brand reinvention and show an empirical application of this framework to Madrid and its new brand image. Abstract Inwards vs outwards approachs in city branding processes: the case of Madrid Creative economy and the cultural and technological environment are rapidly developping a key link: city brands. Interest on cities as brands is growing as territorial competition increases. City brands are perceived as the corner stone of urban strategies for development. As a result, many cities are creating new brands or reinventing the existing ones. In this context, thinking about the way city brands are made is key. There are two converging poles in this issue. On one side, city brand stands for city identity. On the other, cities need also to be competitive. Fortunately, competitiveness and strong urban identities are no longer a dilemma: it's an opportunity window for sustainable development. One of the main challenges concerning urban identity heritage is increasing its visibility for both citizens (as a cohesitive element) and visitors and investors (as a developing tool). > Developing cities in a balanced territorial context needs firstly from a collective perception of its existence. This is the main and essential core of cultural heritage: sharing values. These values need to be confirmed and many European cities are loosing their sense of belonging to a collective project. And with this, their common values, the roots of all cultural heritage expressions. > Once these values are identified, visualized and their preservation and evolution criteria settled, they become a growing opportunity for sustainable development as they create their identities. Shaping identities for cities (or territories or cities and territories) is a very useful tool in order to foster productivity, increase social integration and provide environmental quality. > As a third stage of this process, these identities are ready to act as a competitive advantage in territorial competition for visitors, tourists and investors. Well developed and fine tuned identities are suitable to be changed into powerful and real brands. And this brands need to be designed through participative processes. Brands that also need to be designed thinking of the market segment they intend to address and projected on to their markets through conventional and non-conventional private-sector marketing tools. Madrid has recently faced this whole process, reinventing its brand and looking for its real identity, for the root. Authors develop a theoretical framework for city brand reinvention and show an empirical application of this framework to the case of Madrid and its new brand image. Keywords city branding, urban identity, city marketing, city image Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2005: Making Spaces for the Creative Economy   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper