Taking world cities literally: Marketing the city in a global space of flows

Marcus Doel and Phil Hubbard

City, 2002, vol. 6, issue 3, 351-368

Abstract: This paper brings two literatures into dialogue. The first is the world-cities literature that explores the strategic importance of key cities in the global economy. The second focuses on the efficacy of city marketing and place promotion in boosting urban competitiveness. It is suggested here that both are fixated on an atomistic conception of urban processes that sees cities prospering on the basis of their indigenous characteristics (e.g. the presence of 'critical infrastructure'). Drawing on poststructural ideas, this place-based perspective is rejected in favour of a relational perspective that reconceptualizes competitive world cities as networked rather than bounded phenomena. The paper concludes that successful city marketing relies on pursuing a spatialized politics of flow rather than a place-based politics of competition.

Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1360481022000037779 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:cityxx:v:6:y:2002:i:3:p:351-368

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CCIT20

DOI: 10.1080/1360481022000037779

Access Statistics for this article

City is currently edited by Bob Catterall

More articles in City from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().