Place Marketing and Citizen Participation: Branding as Strategy to Address the Emotional Dimension of Policy Making?

Place marketing is increasingly used by local governments to enhance the image of cities and achieve policy goals related to economic and spatial development. Place marketing has become part of local and regional governance processes. Critics have argued that place marketing is often applied in top-down ways that exclude citizens. Drawing on survey data this article empirically confirms this critique. But the article shows with a case study that citizen involvement in place branding can be used to enhance the quality of the brand and include citizens’ emotions in governance processes.