Place Reinvention

"Place Reinvention" goes beyond place branding and directs attention towards the relationship between symbolic, imaginative change and intended regeneration or place development. In it, places are reinvented by the interplay of industries, citizens and authorities, by projects of construction, promotion and consumption, and by processes related to information, identity and imagery. The reinvention is both planned and something that just happens as a more or less unintended consequence of people's everyday life. This concept of place reinvention not only addresses the complexities in processes of place transformation in world cities, but also in the small and medium-sized towns in the northern European periphery. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the case studies in this book show how the processes of place transformation in these regions are, in some sense, similar to those taking place in the central European regions, but are also quite distinct. While the use of symbols to attract investors, tourists and new inhabitants is not so different from the branding strategies used elsewhere, the forms of economic restructuring are quite different. One section of the book examines how the 'cultural turn' is affecting change, while another focuses on the reindustrialisation through heavy industry. Linking place reinvention to the economic, the symbolic and the political production of space, the volume puts forward insights into how 'marginal areas' understand their role in the global competition between places and regions through their branding strategies, playing with representations of the unique and the ordinary, urban and rural, reindustrialisation and cultural economy. It also shows how and why some places seem to retain and strengthen their uniqueness, whilst others are losing their local distinctiveness in the struggle to survive.