Sometimes identifying a public brand is relatively easy. When one thinks of Paris, they think of food, the Eiffel Tower, wine, and culture. New York City conjures hustle and bustle, business, multiculturalism, and, unfortunately, terrorism. Orlando is home to theme parks, Mickey Mouse, and fantasy. There are countless examples, but the bottom line is that these few cities named have a strong brand identity – for better or for worse. While most studies examine nation, state, and city branding, I look at the micro level of the neighborhood to better understand how neighborhood brands form and what they do for those areas. This chapter outlines definitions of a neighborhood, provides an overview of place branding and marketing, and then briefly explains neighborhood branding and identity related to place attachment.
What is a neighborhood?
No question I asked people gave them more pause than “What is a neighborhood?” I did not expect this reaction, but upon examining the literature it became clear there is no set definition of a neighborhood. People in this study usually defined it in terms of a geographic location, a sense of community, or both. Some examples of definitions from the interviewees include:
Hmm, that’s a tough question. A neighborhood is obviously a place where people live so they sleep there at night. But a neighborhood is also a community of people who can [band] together and help people out when they need it.
– Urban planner and Audubon Park, Orlando, resident
So a neighborhood is numerous homes clustered together with a sense of friendliness and collegiality, camaraderie among the people who live there. To me a neighborhood is safe and comfortable and serene.
– Celebration, Florida, resident
For me your neighborhood is your immediate walking area. I can go to other neighborhoods, but my neighborhood would be what I can get to in a few minutes. The adjoining residential streets next to me that would be part of my neighborhood. The things within half-mile walking distance, that would be my neighborhood.
– Dallas, Texas, resident
A neighborhood is an encompassing community that brings the environment, people, social, intellectual, together, hopefully dependent upon the community for the good of those who live there. There’s a level of cooperation, collaboration, reliant upon what people have to contribute.
– Baldwin Park, Orlando, resident
The physical and limited place that we see. That’s the first idea of what we think of a neighborhood – a name and geographic location. It’s similar to the idea of what is country? Probably the first thing we think is where it’s located. Following the parallelism with the country, I think that is has to have economic activities that define it, a very specific economy or lack of economy. Economic activities define what is a neighborhood, and it defines the types of people.
– Glen Elm, Tucson, Arizona, resident
Boy there’s a question. A lot of it’s just geography, its identity within that geography. In my experience, neighborhoods should have a central point where everybody knows to converge during certain times of the year.
– Main Street director, College Park, Orlando, Florida
That’s interesting. That could be a somewhat amorphous concept. I would think a local place identity really tied in with a feeling of ownership and whether that is an identity of ‘This is where I live,’ or ‘This is my community,’ or how this particular area acts or feels.
– Economic development expert, Washington, DC
That’s probably the million dollar question right there because that can shift. Different people can live in the same neighborhood and define it differently. I think often the definition is sometimes arbitrary. Sometimes it comes from outside of the community. Sometimes it’s defined by some sort of government process. If there are no geographic markers, it’s hard to say someone who lives on the other side of the block, are they part of the neighborhood or not?
– Community organizing expert, Washington, DC
That is a good question. What is a neighborhood? I would say a neighborhood is some place where you have a clear identity that’s either established by history, geography, personalities, common interest, diversity or all of the above. I see it as some kind of unifying characteristic where you can have a unique identity.
– Millers Bay, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, resident
To study neighborhoods, the US Census Bureau uses tracts, “small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county or equivalent entity that are updated by local participants prior to each decennial census” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012, p. 1). Many dictionary definitions of neighborhoods also exist, but one from National Geographic magazine stands out (2018, pp. 1–2):
A neighborhood is an area where people live and interact with one another. Neighborhoods tend to have their own identity, or ‘feel’ based on the people who live there and the places nearby… . Neighborhoods often have fuzzy geographical boundaries, so sometimes it’s difficult to tell where one starts and another ends. Major streets often act as logical boundaries, but people usually define a neighborhood by its characteristics.
The definition aligns with many interviewees’ perceptions of a neighborhood – geographically bound though potentially hard to tell, with a strong identity, and a sense of connection. Neighborhood definitions usually fluctuate depending upon how planners or scholars need to view the places (Kallus and Law-Yone, 2000). As Kallus and Law-Yone (2000) explain, the neighborhood as a conscious architectural unit emerged with the introduction of modern urban planning techniques, so neighborhoods are always part of a larger urban planning and design program. Neighborhoods by nature are smaller than the cities in which they are developed, so it is through neighborhoods where connections can form. “Accordingly, the neighbourhood becomes a convenient and easily defined urban area; a clearly bounded territory, a cluster of streets, and a service area, which generates a social network” (Kallus and Law-Yone, 2000, p. 817). Neighborhoods express the tension between professional planning and management, which attempts to control the urban environment, and social connection and cohesion, which is more independent and voluntary. Neighborhoods, then, become a “marketable product” (p. 818) Realtors and cities can sell as an economic success story.
Choguill (2008, p. 42) argues the definition of a neighborhood is “in the eyes of the beholder” because it can involve geographic boundaries, class, religion, race, or myriad other factors that could define the space rather than only set physical features. Similar to Kallus and Law-Yone (2000), Choguill (2008) also traces neighborhood development to modern urban planning, specifically to the emergence of garden cities in Britain as a means to counter crowded central cities. Thanks to Ebenezer Howard, the movement’s founder, garden cities would be their own contained units with housing and economic opportunities, along with chances for agricultural activities in a green belt surrounding the community to keep it safe (Choguill, 2008). Howard’s ideas transformed urban planning into a focus on spatial arrangements rather than public health as a foil to crowded cities. As the concept developed and was refined in Britain, America, and elsewhere, the focus turned to neighborhoods as spaces for connection rather than solely as dwelling units.
Melvin (1985) argues that the American neighborhood, however, changed the culture of cities from spaces of walkability and connection to the seeming enemy that required suburbanization. Walkable cities were the epicenter of social, religious, political, and economic thought and practice. The introduction of automobiles changed that, allowing people to live farther away from a city center in a suburban neighborhood. Immigration and a division of socio-economic status further ruptured walking cities (Melvin, 1985). Neighborhoods fell in and out of favor with a move toward metropolitan cities in the 1930s in the US. Then again the new urbanism movement with a focus on walkability and density also further pushed aside traditional suburban neighborhoods. She illustrates how neighborhood identification and study changed throughout the country’s development, along with swings in urban planning favor. All told, there is no agreed-upon definition of neighborhood, and the definition depends upon the era, how someone sees the neighborhood, and what someone wants to understand about the place.
Mumford (1954), in a classic treatise on neighborhoods, argues that “in a rudimentary form neighborhoods exist, as a fact of nature, whether or not we recognize them or provide for their particular functions. For neighbors are simply people who live near one another. To share the same place is perhaps the most primitive of social bonds, and to be within view of one’s neighbors is the simplest form of association” (p. 257). Similar to Melvin (1985), Mumford (1954) traces global historical developments in neighborhood planning, noting some experts wanted neighborhoods to center on a physical space, like a school, while others focused more on the social aspects of neighborliness. Neighborhoods, he argues, are boons to central city development because they take the stress off these cores, which could become (and did become) crowded and unsafe. In sum, Mumford argues that neighborhoods develop whether purposefully planned or not, so scholars and practitioners can try to “solve” neighborhood problems all they want but the unit will exist in some shape or form.
Place branding, image, and identity
Despite no single definition, neighborhoods are distinct places. Fields such as sociology, urban planning, environmental geography, medicine, and more use neighborhoods as units of analysis. As a public administration scholar, I am interested in the governance and engagement aspects of neighborhoods. I want to know not only why people choose places to live, but also how neighborhood entities and local governments work to strategically form neighborhood identities. I want to know the role that nonprofit organizations and other stakeholder groups (residents, business owners, etc.) play in this process. While the book is about neighborhood branding and identity, it also is a study in administrative practices at the micro level of the neighborhood. Given the core focus is on neighborhood branding and identity, I offer here a brief overview of place branding and identity to show where the research fits.
Specifically within public administration, place branding is becoming a key governance strategy that relies on networking, co-production, and shared governance for success (Eshuis and Klijn, 2012). Within a political realm, people might be more accustomed to seeing branding efforts of political parties or candidates, but within local governments more study is needed (Eshuis and Klijn, 2012). First, the terms brand and branding are complex and find natural homes in the corporate world. A branded product, company, or service has some kind of identifying name or trademark. Think about Apple as a corporate brand, along with its iPhone as another distinct product brand. If people love the overall Apple brand, they are likely to buy its various branded product lines (iPad, Mac book laptop, etc.).
Branding refers to the active process of developing and communicating the brand attributes. Anholt (2005) notes there are three ways to understand branding: popular, simple, and advanced. The popular way is as a marketing umbrella term referring to selling and promoting items. The simple way refers to logos, images, or slogans to identify a brand. And the advanced way takes more behavioral and emotional aspects into account, using branding strategies to build and cultivate relationships with consumers (Anholt, 2005).
Place branding ideally takes the principles of the latter strategy and applies them to nations, states, country products, tourism destinations, neighborhoods, and more. A challenge is that within the public sector, there is an aversion to branding because most people adopt the simplistic definition of only promotion and selling (Anholt, 2005). Despite nomenclature challenges, place branding as an activity is becoming increasingly necessary in a globalized world that thrives on competition for often-scarce resources (Hanna and Rowley, 2008). Kotler, Haider, and Rein (1993) explain that public sector marketing and branding are a natural extension of business-based logic, which seeped into the public sector fully in the 1990s (Osborne and Gaebler, 1993). Within public administration, branding and marketing also are outgrowths not only of globalization but also movements such as New Public Management and Total Quality Management that advocated more business-like practices in government (Eshuis and Klijn, 2012).
A place brand is an emotional connection that serves as a cognitive shortcut to help someone identify the place in question, be it a country, destination, or neighborhood (Anholt, 2010). Place branding is the process of doing something to shape and communicate a brand identity, which often includes visual elements such as a logo and/or slogan (Anholt, 2010). Anholt (2010), though, is clear to say a place brand, just like a product brand, is not only a logo or slogan; those are helpful visual identifiers, but a place brand is more about feelings and connection. Related, the brand identity is what the organization attempts to communicate about its brand, while brand image refers to how people interpret those messages (Anholt, 2010). The success of a place or even product brand depends largely if not wholly on the people making purchasing decisions.
The public sphere is already complex, given the number of stakeholders who are invested in their cities, states, and countries. Related to place branding, interested stakeholder groups could include the city (or governing entity), nonprofit organizations, residents, business owners, the tourist board, hotels, museums, parks, restaurants, shops, etc. (Eshuis, Braun, and Klijn, 2013). All actors involved will usually have differing approaches to success, thus making any governance activities tricky and time consuming. Political and popular support, or lack thereof, is another challenge related to place branding as a governance strategy (Eshuis et al., 2013). For example, lack of political support might mean projects are underfunded, not funded, or removed entirely from the political agenda. Finally, another challenge, similar to what Anholt (2005) articulated, is that public agencies often are wary of the terms marketing and branding because they seem like mere rhetorical tricks rather than strategic processes (Eshuis et al., 2013).
Public administrators, then, might shy away from place branding efforts for fear of negative backlash. As an example, the city of Pittsburgh in 2019 rebuffed place branding efforts, calling them “a total waste of money” given the six-figure price tag for professional branding assistance (Smeltz and Murray, 2019, p. 1). The branding proposal meant to streamline visual identities for the city into a unified whole, but council members balked at paying $100,000 for outside branding services in a potentially trying fiscal climate (Smeltz and Murray, 2019).
Stakeholder involvement in public branding projects often is more vital than when compared with private sector counterparts. Government accountability requires openness and transparency, especially concerning fiscal matters. Within the public sphere, branding efforts usually are meant to attract residents, tourists, business owners, corporations, and other investors (Klijn, Eshuis, and Braun, 2012), so interaction between myriad stakeholders is not a necessary evil but a mandated action. Public administration scholars usually call these collaborative actions collaborative governance or co-production, whereby actors work together ideally with equal power to arrive at solutions to complex problems (Agranoff and McGuire, 2001). Klijn et al. (2012) import this same logic into the place branding process, as “those actors often have different perceptions about the place to be branded, the desirable solutions to problems and different ideas about the desirable image to be communicated” (p. 505). Klijn et al. (2012) find that stakeholder involvement improves brand performance and the ability to attract different target groups. Just as in public administration processes, stakeholder involvement in branding processes matters.
A simple Google News search reveals the prevalence of place branding and marketing strategies at all levels of government. The city of Painesville, Ohio, recently released its new branding campaign as a way to counter negative images about the city. Using an outside consulting firm, the city launched in 2019 a new brand logo and associated imagery. According to a press release, “This is an exciting time for our city and the new branding really reflects the changes we are making,” says City Manager Monica Irelan Dupee. “ ‘Our new brand and communication efforts will help our residents, business owners and stakeholders relay the stories that celebrate our city’s qualities, which will then attract others to participate, contribute and invest in what makes our city unique’ ” (City of Painesville, 2019, p. 9). The quote is emblematic of an economic-based view of branding success, focusing on investment within the city.
Similar to the case in Pittsburgh, some elected officials in Spring Hill, Tennessee, objected to a branding measure that cost $66,000 for a private firm, originally budgeted at $50,000 (Willis, 2019). When describing the efforts, the story writer put “place branding” in air quotes, as if to indicate this is not a real phenomenon. The story details tensions among elected officials when it comes to the city’s branding efforts, noting the cost and lack of measurable outcomes of success. Return on investment for place branding efforts always is tricky (Zenker, 2011), so it is no surprise officials would express concern.
Neighborhood branding and identity
The foregoing few examples show both the pervasiveness and trickiness of these pra...
