Concluding Remarks

Abstract

This book provides a picture of new urban management. It is ‘new’ in the sense that the idea of urban management is built on a new premise, i.e. on cities’ need to cope with increasingly fluid economy. Value flows cannot be attracted by infrastructures or amenities alone but require also collective symbolic capital. This is why city branding is a valuable method to any city that has or aspires to have an important role in some industries or niches in the global economy. The new urban management is, thus, a doctrine and practice that focusses on attracting flows of values, such as capital, technological know-how, innovative firms, creative people and tourism consumption, to branded cities in the purpose of guaranteeing resilient vitality and wealth through the maintenance and development of city’s transformative capacity. Taming the flows, in turn, is the key to cities’ future role as the primary loci of global solidarity.