Position Paper – Cultural Aspects of Urbanity, Gender and Migration

                                         Zuzana Révészová

                    Workshop 1 – Claire Colomb                       17.10.2012


                                      Staging the New Berlin


            Obligatory literature concerning place marketing strategies in Berlin describes several
tactics of urban actors in the city of Berlin after the Wall fall in 1989. Obligatory chapters deal
with the methodological problems and implacement of place marketing strategies (Chapter 2),
analysis of two specific sites as icons of the place marketing (Chapter 6) and political discourse
with reaction on the development procedure, describing the transformation of the strategies of
politicians towards the local citizens and tourists (Chapter 9). As a choice of obligatory reading
followed, I chose an article of Elsa Vivant – How underground culture changes Paris.

            Place marketing and the notions of cultural sociology have been quite surprising
connection for me, because I considered place marketing as a policy strictly economically oriented.
I can only assume it was influenced by my central-europe-centrism-point of view. I considered (from
a laic vision) place marketing as a tool for increasing profit of a city or a district. However,
seeing the strategies of Berlin and partly one site of Paris, it is not only profit that marketing
can increase. I would assume from the suggested reading, that the city development and
restructuralization has been a main goal of both examples described in the literature.

            In the case of Berlin, the specific socio-historical situation has led a motivation of
place-marketing actors (citizens, politicians- local and national, global actors- international
companies, civil sphere) to reinvent the symbol of Berlin as a meaningful spot on the map of the
world. The strategies have differed in the past twenty years and  the interests of different actors
have been leading it. However, as the author claims, it was the two main motivations that led a
transformation – power and deliberation [Colomb 2012]. This resulted into the unique
culture-motivated place marketing strategy that built its face on visual image and attracted not
only business actors, but also the tourists, artist and supported the development of „fringe“
culture. Even though the book doesn't stay with the assumption of the success story of
restructuralization (critically points out the negative implact on the regular citizens), it is
still very positively depicted transformation.

            Much more sceptically towards the culture-led place marketing urban strategy sounds the
description of the Parisien disctrict La Chapelle- Staliningrad. The author describes how cultural
center-the residents of artistic ateliers interacts with socially excluded background. As the
article is quite old, it is not clear how the actual development ended up. However, it is probably
not that successful as the Berlin story, as the gentrification process is made by the political
interest and not from the grass-roots movements as happened in the Berlin case (although it is not
that clear which motivation was first – if th political powers, or the liberation euphoria
attracting the youth from all Europe).

            The topic itself is dealing with a problem of gentrification of the problematic areas
and their transformation through certain order (strategy that is intentional, not spontaneous). As
it is put in Staging the New Berlin the place marketing can be methodologically understood under
certain concepts of sociological theory (the policy, the discourse, the imagery). Viewing it from
the visionary cite in the Chapter 6 was very compelling. I would certainly want to read more about
the commodification process which is a direct result of the “city celebrity“ like Berlin is. The
understanding of the process of gentrfication also needs to cover the opposite of the shiny and
cool result – the increasing prices, the ghettoization of the poorer (as is very much visible on
the Budapest case, where most of the Roma population – which is moreover visible and therefore
threatening, becomes isolated on the edges of the city, or moves to the countriside, where their
employment possibilities are downgraded).

            Place marketing is in the mechanisms described in the literature only possible in the
gentrified areas. Culture-led place marketing is therefore the only strategy seen as successful in
this case. The reason behind is probably the possible connection of the local actors or the
perpetuum mobile once created by the engagement of the creative class to the process. Using it as a
universal tool can be, however excluding process of those, who find the high culture brought to the
problematic area a symbol of pressure and unequality.


Colomb, C. (2011) Staging the New Berlin. Place Marketing and the Politics of Urban

Reinvention post-1989. London, New York: Routledge.


Vivant, E. (2009), ‘How underground culture is changing Paris’, Urban

Research & Practice, 2(1): 36-52.