A Political Perspective on Place Branding

Abstract

We live in a world where the consequences of intangibles have become frighteningly tangible. The big challenges facing us today — climate change, global recession and violent extremism, to name but three — are complex in nature, but clearly have one thing in common: none of them can be tackled in conventional ways. What George W. Bush dubbed the “war on terror” self-evidently cannot be won with conventional weapons because it is a battle of values and identity, played out in the media as much as on the battleground. Climate change cannot easily be slowed down with legal or fiscal solutions alone because it is an international problem that is intimately linked to people’s lifestyles and behaviors. Recession is as much about consumer confidence as it is about toxic debt.