A few notes on place branding and social aesthetics

Abstract

Places may also be brands, but the brand concept implies something paradoxical. It allows us a simple and direct reference to a given reality, or fiction, we may want to commonly circumscribe; yet, frequently we may not be fully aware of what, if anything, is being specifically circumscribed. The brand subsumes both polysemy and intricate communication strategies tailored to mobilize particular affective or cognitive meanings. As in everything else then, applying the brand concept to places or cities, a growing option nowadays, raises additional questions that extend to the ethic and aesthetic fields. We thus briefly introduce some disciplinary perspectives on ‘brand’, consider its possible extension to geographical places, namely as “smart cities”, and present a few words of caution on issues we then believe as problematic: social interaction as a fight of promises, and the danger of a stereotyped behaviour paired with a biased decoding of complexity. Finally, we argue on the relevance of aesthetics (/taste) in articulating the “smart city” concept.