Kuka päättää kaupunkibrändistä? : eroavaisuudet virallisten paikkabrändääjien ja YouTube-sisällöntuottajien esittämässä Soulin kaupunkibrändissä

In a global competition for resources, differentiation and visibility are key elements for winning. Even countries are not exempt from the efforts of creating a positive image for themselves. This favorable positioning in comparison to other countries is reached through planned branding efforts This Thesis focuses on studying a city brand of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The aim is to discover whether the city brand of Seoul presented on YouTube by official place marketers, such as the Seoul Tourism Organization (STO) and the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG), differs from the city brand presented through user-generated content (UGC) created by the residents of the city. As a city brand consists of city perceptions of several diverse stakeholder groups, the differences and similarities between the Seoul presented on the promotional materials and the user-generated content have an impact on the city brand of Seoul. The research method used is qualitative video content analysis. The study includes a total of 59 videos, of which 28 are user-generated content on YouTube and the rest are official promotional videos of the Seoul Tourism Organization (STO) and the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG). The analysis of these videos is based on six primary categories and 24 subcategories, constructed from existing frameworks created by Beerli and Martin; Aaker; Anholt; and Margolis and Pauwels. As a result, four major differences in the projection of Seoul city brand between UGC and the promotional videos are found: representation of different seasons, nature as a tool, diversity of the city, and shopping and café culture as experiences. Additionally, five minor differences include family-orientation; emphasizing events; the focus of food and cuisine; public amenities, public transportation and getting to places; and prices. Furthermore, six major similarities, as well as two minor similarities are found: connection of nature and urban life, social media-readiness, coexistence of history and modern day, coexistence of people, editorial choices, vitality of the city, overcrowding, and safety. The more commonalities between the place marketer videos and the videos created by the stakeholders, the more cohesive, interesting, unique, and accepted city brand is possibly built. If the UGC and the promotional videos only had differences, the Seoul city brand would likely not be recognized or accepted by the city’s stakeholders and could damage the already existing city brand. The found similarities indicate that the place marketers and internal stakeholders of Seoul share perceptions of Seoul city identity to an extent where a strong city brand can be built. Additionally, the found differences indicate that the place promoters have made decisions on which stakeholder groups they wish to cater to more than the others. This is good, since lack of consistency and an effort to suit all target audiences simultaneously leads to diluting and weakening the brand

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 1: Change, Voices, Open

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 1 includes papers from Change, Voices and Open tracks of the conference

On The Corporeal Exchange: Thai Boxing's Sacrificial Movement

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of Thai boxing (muay Thai) understood as sacrificial exchange, exploring the practice of this martial art in the context of contemporary Thai society. Drawing on two years of apprenticeship and participation research in Northeast Thailand and Bangkok, I consider the fighters’ integration in broader patterns of seasonal labor migration as they move between rural, regional tournaments and Bangkok stadiums. Focusing on the training of one particular boxer, I investigate interactions between trainers, managers, family, patrons and ancestral spirits. The boxers’ embodied actions as they unfold in time represent the sovereign relationship between living and dead, nature and culture, performatively establishing the boundaries between growth and decay. As the living move through a world of animate social relations, accruing debt, the boxer’s embodied patterns of repetition and exhaustion in training, and of destructive action in combat, create a possibility for shifting this balance, accruing merit for those otherwise occupied in handling materials which support the powerful, and transforming the established hierarchical order of everyday life. Against the background of the impermanent, closed, linear, cyclical or progressive temporalities of monasteries, factories, the military and the monarchy, the temporality of the ring remains open, giving fighters the elbow-room to performatively engage crucial symbols of life and death, male and female, human and animal, affording otherwise politically disempowered Northeastern Thai families the opportunity to create meaning and possibility in their lives. Acting as both victim and executioner, fighters accrue credit for the assembled audience, reinvesting each tier of the community with a degree of responsibility for life. I argue that these practices occur within a ‘deathworld’, in which the heightened attentiveness to the limited possibilities for action reaffirm the local position of the individual within the collective. With embodied motion that cuts across local categories of stillness and mobility, the living and the dead, with ever-greater stamina, Thai boxers become increasingly valuable and credit-able, paying the debts, material and spiritual, that their assembled supporters have incurred as they live their kinetically excessive lives, allowing men throughout the community to remain accountable to Kings, Buddha, ancestors, factories and patrons.Doctor of Philosoph

The City as Illusion and Promise

In The City as Illusion and Promise, the author examines the claim (by Henri Lefebvre, and later David Harvey) that the city no longer exists, at least as we know it. What we have instead is merely an illusion, something that Martin Heidegger also implies in some of his later writings, notably his seminal work on the essence of technology. In confronting such an extreme proposition, the author first raises a conceptual problem: Is the city a city insofar as it is not a province? And vice versa? But the conceptual problematic of course is also manifested in actual material conditions. Can the city exist without the province? What is the relationship between the city and province? While the author finds merit in recognizing the illusion that is the city, he nonetheless invites the reader to imagine other possibilities, however impossible they may seem: Either we settle with the illusion that is the city of our age, or reimagine and work towards the realization of new possibilities for the city, one that restores and respects the balance in nature that we have for so long forgotten and covered over with our illusions

Making Sense of the City: Public Spaces in the Philippines

Making sense of the City is a collection of essays from scholars in the humanities and the social sciences examining the city within the Philippine context. With Metro Manila bursting at the seams, as tensions continue to intensify and more intractable problems arise than those that are being solved, it becomes a matter of survival for all stakeholders to come together and shape the future of the city

Tourism in contemporary cities. Proceedings of the International Tourism Studies Association Conference: University of Greenwich, London, UK 17–19 August 2016 Conference Proceedings

The 6th International Tourism Studies Association (ITSA) Biennial conference was held at the University of Greenwich, London, England from 17‐19 August 2016. This was the first time that the conference had been held in Europe and it provided a unique opportunity to meet, hear from and network with tourism scholars and professionals from across Europe, Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. ITSA has a mission to encourage interaction and cooperation between developing and developed countries and the conference was successful in attracting 130 delegates from 29 countries. The main theme of the conference was 'Tourism in Contemporary Cities' with four conference sub‐themes of ‘Tourism Cities and Urban Tourism’, ‘The Chinese Market for European Tourism’, ‘River, Cruise and Maritime Tourism’, and ‘Heritage Tourism in Cities’, The subthemes were chosen to reflect the unique location of the conference on the UNESCO Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, and London which is Europe’s most visited tourist destination. The conference also presented ‘Dark Tourism and Cities’ and ‘Tourism and Communist Heritage’ as special sessions

Remaking Downtown Toronto: Politics, Development, and Public Space on Yonge Street, 1950-1980

This study explores the history of Torontos iconic downtown Yonge Street and the people who contested its future, spanning a period from the 1950s through to 1980 when the street was seldom out of the news. Through detailed analysis of a range of primary sources, it explores how the uses and public meanings of this densely-built commercial strip changed over time, in interaction with the city transforming around it. What emerges is a street that, despite fears for its future, remained at the heart of urban life in Toronto, creating economic value as a retail centre; pushing the boundaries of taste and the law as a mass-entertainment destination; and drawing crowds as a meeting place, pedestrian corridor, and public space. Variously understood as an historic urban landscape and an embarrassing relic, a transportation route and a people place, a bastion of Main Street values and a haven for big-city crime and sleaze, from the 1950s through the 1970s Yonge was at the centre of efforts to improve or reinvent the central city in ways that would keep pace with, or even lead, urban change. This thesis traces the history of three interventionsa pedestrian mall, a clean-up campaign aimed at the sex industry, and a major redevelopment schemetheir successes and failures, and the larger debates they triggered. The result is a narrative that ranges widely in theme: planning, automobility, and youth culture; vice, moral regulation, and citizen activism; capitalism, corporate power, and urban renewal. Engaging with the North American and international historiographies of these topics, it places the politics of downtown in Toronto in larger historical context. It offers an account of urban transformation that emphasizes complexity in the interaction between ideas, structures of power, and the often idiosyncratic decisions of a range of downtown actors. An increasingly interventionist local state, dynamic capital investment in retail and real estate, and diverse citizen mobilizations all contributed to transforming Yonge Street, helping to create the modern, globalized downtown shopping street and public space we know today