Place Marketing as Politics: The Limits of Neoliberalism

Aram Eisenschitz

Chapter Chapter 3 in International Place Branding Yearbook 2010, 2010, pp 21-30 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Place marketing of cities is commonly seen as helping localities attract the groups they need for their future, whether they are investors, house buyers, developers or tourists. The argument in this chapter is that place marketing should also be regarded as a political activity that resonates with the dynamics of a particular class settlement. Each political era constitutes a class settlement in the sense that it is constructed around a particular relationship between labor and capital. Since the 1970s, place marketing has been associated with the transformation of industrial cities during the transition from social democracy to neoliberalism, a politics that gave coherence to place branding in the form with which we are all familiar. While urban place marketing is concerned with the economic health of a particular city, it is none the less inextricably linked to the dynamics of the neoliberal settlement which strengthened capital and weakened the working class. This settlement is multifaceted, spanning measures to destabilize the working class, to create a global financial infrastructure that permitted the out-movement and privatization of industry, to weaken the welfare state, to promote hypermobility for capital and labor through globalization, and to oversee the creation of a business-friendly environment at the national, regional and local levels.

Keywords: Place Market; Social Democracy; Class Politics; Place Marketing; Place Branding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-29809-5_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230298095

DOI: 10.1057/9780230298095_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().