City Branding as a Tool for Urban Regeneration: Towards a Theoretical Framework

This paper studies the concept of city branding in general and its objectives, and examines the most common branding strategies – the creative city and the experience city. Further on, the paper elaborates on the notion of image-reality consistency and explores the role of flagship developments in branding and urban regeneration. Consequently, a strong casual link between city branding and urban regeneration is established

Towards a Green Metropolis: Designing a waterfront in Riga, Latvia

The project proposes to develop a recreational space network in the city of Riga which would supply the residents with local daily-use recreational spaces and simultaneously provide access to large seaside, woodland and lake landscapes outside the city. The city centre waterfront which combines the benefits of the ‘green’ and the ‘blue’ landscapes is designed as a flagship development.Delta Interventions StudioUrbanismArchitectur

Challenges of civic engagement in the (post-socialist) transitional society: experiences from waterfront urban areas Mezapark in Riga and Kalarand in Tallinn

Current case studies examine the shortcomings of civic engagement strategies during the design process and ratification of detailed plans for urban areas of strategic importance − Mezapark in Riga and Kalarand in Tallinn. Detailed plans caused public outcries and led to long-lasting and distressful negotiations between local communities, developers, designers and municipalities over the future development and use of these areas. The debates about detailed plans raised an increasing public interest in planning related issues and growing demands for greater civic engagement in decisions shaping the city. At the same time, the debates demonstrated the inability of local planning frameworks to meet public expectations. There appears a salient need for changing the planning culture. This paper studies the shortcomings of civic engagement strategies and the desirable changes through a series of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders involved and the analysis of planning related documentation

Тowards consensus between stakeholders with conflicting interests: experiences from urban areas Kalaranna, Tallinn аnd Mezapark, Riga

Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The case studies examine the conflicts between local communities and developers during the design and adoption of detailed plans for urban areas Mezapark, Riga and Kalaranna, Tallinn. The conflicts are examined via a series of semi-structured interviews with the actors involved in the conflicts, the communities, developers, designers and municipality. Stakeholder opinions are complemented with expert opinions. The case studies aim to discover the causes of conflict during the design and adoption process. The conclusion is, the conflicts arouse due to (1) mutual bias between the stakeholders, (2) inadequate engagement strategy and (3) the lack of flexibility and initiative in the actions of municipality.Published versio

Narrowing the Implementation Gap : User-Centered Design of New E-Planning Tools

Developing new digital tools to fit the needs of communicative urban and green area planning requires understanding of the various prospective user groups, the different contexts of use, the planning tasks, and the communicative activities at hand. However, it is not self-evident that user research can be applied in research and innovation projects with limited human and time resources. In this article, a user-centered design (UCD) approach is applied in the development of new collaborative 3D tools for urban and green area planning in a multidisciplinary research team in the GreenTwins project. This research shows how essential it is to select easy-to-learn user research methods, identify the knowledge needs for tool development, and ensure that user insight is transmitted to development. In the GreenTwins project, this was achieved by applying a simple UCD framework (PACT) and engaging the research and development team in the process. Despite the challenges, the results show that the methodology used was beneficial.Peer reviewe

Global city as place branding strategy: the case of Bonifacio Global City (Philippines)

This chapter revolves around what can be considered as an emerging trend in the Philippines, where the cityhood concept—in this case “global city”—is utilised as a place branding and urban re/development strategy for urban spaces that are not officially designated as cities. This chapter looks at a specific urban space called Bonifacio Global City as a case study in terms of how its naming or place branding strategy has overshadowed the real city that it is part of and argues that its effective city branding application has created an image and public perception that it is indeed a city