Unruly Urban Brands: How Informal Image-Makers Are Reshaping Post-Industrial Detroit and Newcastle
Laura Crommelin
A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Faculty of Built Environment
June 2015
CONTENTS
FIGURES 5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 6
ORIGINALITY STATEMENT 7
1 INTRODUCTION 8
1.1 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM: A MISMATCH BETWEEN POST-INDUSTRIAL URBAN REIMAGING AND PLACE BRANDING THEORY 9 1.2 THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS: HOW IS IMAGE-MAKING OCCURRING AND HOW IS IT DIFFERENT? 11 1.3 CHOICE OF CASE STUDIES: DETROIT AND NEWCASTLE 12 1.4 THE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: BRINGING TOGETHER BRANDING AND DIY URBANISM 14 1.5 THE METHOD: NARRATIVE CASE STUDIES 16 1.6 THE STRUCTURE: OUTLINE OF THE THESIS 17 1.7 THE CONTRIBUTION: THE ACADEMIC AND PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH 18
2 FROM BOOSTERS TO BRANDING: EXAMINING URBAN REIMAGING PRACTICES IN THE LITERATURE 19
2.1 REIMAGING IN CONTEXT: THE RISE OF URBAN ENTREPRENEURIAL GOVERNANCE 20 2.2 DEFINING URBAN BRANDING IN THE LITERATURE 24 2.2.1 PLACE SELLING/BOOSTERISM 26 2.2.2 CITY MARKETING 27 2.2.3 URBAN BRANDING 28 2.3 EXAMINING THE PRACTICE OF URBAN BRANDING 32 2.3.1 CATEGORIES OF BRANDING PRACTICE 32 2.3.2 PRACTITIONER MODELS 35 2.4 IDENTIFYING THE AUDIENCE FOR PLACE BRANDING 37 2.4.1 TARGETING THE CREATIVE CLASS 37 2.4.2 TARGETING LOCALS TO FACILITATE REDEVELOPMENT 39 2.5 CRITIQUES OF PLACE BRANDING 40 2.5.1 CONCERNS ABOUT EFFECTIVENESS 40 2.5.2 CONCERNS ABOUT IMPACT 43 2.6 BROADENING THE PERSPECTIVE: FROM URBAN BRANDING TO URBAN REIMAGING 46 2.7 CONCLUSION 48
3 BEYOND THE BRAND: REIMAGING INSIGHTS FROM URBAN THEORY 51
3.1 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING IN THE DIY CITY 52 Page 1 of 317
3.2 POST-INDUSTRIAL PLACE-MAKING: HOW PLACE SHAPES INFORMAL REIMAGING 59 3.2.1 FROM PLACE TO PLACE ATTACHMENT 59 3.2.2 CONSTRUCTIONS OF PLACE IN A GLOBALISING WORLD 62 3.3 ONLINE AND OFFLINE: HOW NETWORKS ENABLE INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING 66 3.3.1 ONLINE NETWORKS—THE RISE OF WEB 2.0 66 3.3.2 OFFLINE NETWORKS—NETWORKS SHAPE URBAN LIFE 68 3.4 CONCLUSION 71
4 METHODOLOGIES: CASE STUDIES AND NARRATIVE ANALYSIS 73
4.1 WHY CHOOSE A CASE-STUDY APPROACH? 73 4.2 HOW THE CASE STUDIES WERE CHOSEN AND DEVELOPED 76 4.2.1 WHY WERE DETROIT AND NEWCASTLE SELECTED? 76 4.2.2 HOW WERE THE CHOSEN INTERVIEWEES SELECTED AND INTERVIEWED? 78 4.2.3 HOW WERE MAINSTREAM AND SOCIAL MEDIA SOURCES CHOSEN? 82 4.2.4 WHAT OTHER CASE-STUDY RESOURCES WERE USED? 82 4.3 HOW WERE THE COLLECTED DATA ANALYSED? 83 4.3.1 A BRIEF BACKGROUND TO NARRATIVE ANALYSIS 84 4.3.2 NARRATIVE ANALYSIS IN PRACTICE 87 4.3.3 NARRATIVE ANALYSIS IN THIS RESEARCH 90 4.4 HOW ARE THE CASE STUDIES STRUCTURED? 91 4.5 CONCLUSION 92
5 NEWCASTLE CASE STUDY 93
5.1 WHERE: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF NEWCASTLE AND ITS IMAGE 93 5.1.1 NEWCASTLE IN A NUTSHELL: HISTORY AND KEY CHARACTERISTICS 94 5.1.2 A NEW NEWCASTLE AT LAST? 95 5.2 WHO: NEWCASTLE’S FORMAL AND INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS 97 5.2.1 OFFICIAL REIMAGING: THE BRAND NEWCASTLE CAMPAIGN 97 5.2.2 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING 100 5.3 HOW: EXPLORING STRATEGIES FOR REIMAGING NEWCASTLE 104 5.3.1 FORMAL IMAGE-MAKING: FROM THE TOP DOWN, THE BRAND INSPIRES CHANGE 104 5.3.2 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING: THROUGH NETWORKING, CHANGE SHAPES THE BRAND 110 5.4 WHAT: DISSECTING NEWCASTLE’S REIMAGING NARRATIVES 121 5.4.1 NEWCASTLE AS A POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY 121 5.4.2 NEWCASTLE AS A CITY OF OPPORTUNITY 128 5.5 WHY: DECIPHERING THE MOTIVATIONS FOR NEWCASTLE’S REIMAGING 131 5.6 REVIEWING REACTIONS TO THE REIMAGING OF NEWCASTLE 134 5.6.1 RESPONSES TO THE OFFICIAL BRAND 134 5.6.2 RESPONSES TO INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING 139 5.7 CONCLUSION 144
6 DETROIT CASE STUDY 146 Page 2 of 317
6.1 WHERE: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF DETROIT AND ITS IMAGE 146 6.1.1 THE DATA ON DETROIT: HISTORY AND KEY CHARACTERISTICS 147 6.1.2 DECONSTRUCTING DETROIT’S IMAGE 149 6.2 WHO: THE REIMAGING OF DETROIT TAKES MANY FORMS 152 6.2.1 OPPORTUNITY DETROIT 154 6.2.2 DETROIT—I’M A BELIEVER! CAMPAIGN 155 6.2.3 CHRYSLER’S IMPORTED FROM DETROIT CAMPAIGN 156 6.2.4 DETROIT METRO CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU 157 6.2.5 DOWNTOWN DETROIT PARTNERSHIP 157 6.2.6 D:HIVE 158 6.2.7 DETROIT REGIONAL NEWS HUB 159 6.2.8 MODEL D MEDIA AND THE URBAN INNOVATION EXCHANGE 159 6.2.9 DETROIT LIVES! 160 6.2.10 I AM YOUNG DETROIT 161 6.2.11 DECLARE DETROIT 162 6.2.12 DETROIT-THEMED RETAIL 163 6.2.13 BLOGS 164 6.3 HOW: EXPLORING STRATEGIES FOR REIMAGING DETROIT 165 6.3.1 CITY, SUBURBS, NATION, WORLD? LOCAL AND EXTERNAL IMAGE-MAKING IN DETROIT 166 6.3.2 LINKING LARGE AND SMALL: THE IMAGE-MAKING NETWORKS OF DETROIT 170 6.4 WHAT: DISSECTING DETROIT’S REIMAGING NARRATIVES 176 6.4.1 DETROIT AS A CITY OF OPPORTUNITY 177 6.4.2 DETROIT AS A POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY 181 6.4.3 DETROIT—DIY CITY, BUT NOT FOR EVERYBODY 189 6.5 WHY: EXPLORING MOTIVATIONS FOR DETROIT’S REIMAGING 197 6.6 REVIEWING REACTIONS TO THE REIMAGING OF DETROIT 202 6.7 CONCLUSION 209
7 ANALYSIS: EXPLORING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INFORMAL REIMAGING 211
7.1 INSIGHTS FOR INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS 212 7.1.1 INSPIRATION FOR INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS: DIY OR CIY (COPY-IT-YOURSELF)? 212 7.1.2 EXAMINING THE AUDIENCE FOR INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING 214 7.1.3 DECONSTRUCTING THE SHARED NARRATIVE THEMES OF INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING 218 7.2 INSIGHTS FOR RESIDENTS OF NEWCASTLE AND DETROIT 222 7.2.1 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING, URBAN REDEVELOPMENT AND GENTRIFICATION 223 7.2.2 TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS, FUNDERS, MEDIA-MAKERS, OR OBSERVERS? 231 7.2.3 EXPLORING THE POSSIBLE FUTURES FOR LOCAL RESIDENTS 235 7.3 INSIGHTS FOR RESEARCH: NETWORKS, NARRATIVES AND A NEW BREED OF URBAN IMAGE-MAKERS 239 7.3.1 A DIFFERENT BREED: WHY ENGAGE WITH INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING? 240 7.3.2 A DIFFERENT MODEL: HOW MIGHT NETWORK ANALYSIS BENEFIT REIMAGING RESEARCH? 243 7.3.3 A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: INSIGHTS FOR REIMAGING RESEARCH FROM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS 245
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7.4 CONCLUSION 249
8 CONCLUSION 250
8.1 HOW IS IMAGE-MAKING OCCURRING IN DETROIT AND NEWCASTLE? 251 8.2 HOW IS REIMAGING IN THESE CITIES DIFFERENT FROM THE LITERATURE? 252 8.3 BROADER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH 254 8.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH 258 8.5 AVENUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 259 8.6 A FINAL THOUGHT 260
REFERENCES 261
ACADEMIC REFERENCES 261 CASE-STUDY REFERENCES 281
APPENDIX 1: EMAIL TO POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS 306
APPENDIX 2: PROJECT INFORMATION STATEMENT 308
APPENDIX 3: PROJECT CONSENT FORM 310
APPENDIX 4: HUMAN RESEARCH ETHICS APPROVAL FORMS 312
APPENDIX 5: LIST OF INITIAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 316
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FIGURES
FIGURE 2.1: TYPOLOGY OF PLACE PROMOTION METHODS ...... 25 FIGURE 4.1: TABLE OF QUOTED RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS ...... 81 FIGURE 5.1 MAP OF NEWCASTLE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA. SOURCE: WWW.ELECTIONS.NSW.GOV.AU ...... 94 FIGURE 5.2 NEWCASTLE CBD SHOWING HUNTER STREET. SOURCE: WWW.OPENSTREETMAP.ORG ...... 95 FIGURE 5.3: NEWCASTLE BRAND WHEEL. SOURCE: HTTP://SEECHANGE.VISITNEWCASTLE.COM.AU ...... 98 FIGURE 5.4: BRAND NEWCASTLE LOGO. SOURCE: HTTP://SEECHANGE.VISITNEWCASTLE.COM.AU ...... 98 FIGURE 5.5: SIGNAGE USING THE BRAND NEWCASTLE LOGO IN WHEELER PLACE, NEWCASTLE. SOURCE: AUTHOR...... 99 FIGURE 5.6: RENEW NEWCASTLE MAP. SOURCE: WWW.RENEWNEWCASTLE.ORG ...... 100 FIGURE 5.7 STREET ART WALKING MURAL IN NEWCASTLE. SOURCE: AUTHOR ...... 102 FIGURE 5.8: NEWCASTLE NOW LOGO. SOURCE: HTTP://WWW.NEWCASTLENOW.ORG.AU/ ...... 103 FIGURE 5.9: NEWCASTLE DESTINATION MANAGEMENT PLAN 2013. SOURCE: NTIG 2013...... 108 FIGURE 5.10: SCENES FROM RENEW’S WINTER WANDER TOUR, JULY 2013. SOURCE: AUTHOR...... 117 FIGURE 5.11: NEWCASTLE NOW FLAGS, HUNTER STREET MALL. SOURCE: AUTHOR ...... 137 FIGURE 6.1 MAP OF CITY OF DETROIT’S BOUNDARIES. SOURCE: WWW.OPENSTREETMAP.ORG ...... 147 FIGURE 6.2: DEMOGRAPHIC MAP OF METRO DETROIT. SOURCE: HTTP://WWW.COOPERCENTER.ORG/DEMOGRAPHICS/RACIAL-DOT-MAP ...... 148 FIGURE 6.3 MAP OF GREATER DOWNTOWN DETROIT. SOURCE: WWW.DETROITSEVENPOINTTWO.COM ...... 149 FIGURE 6.4 LIST OF REPRESENTATIVE SELECTION OF DETROIT INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS ...... 153 FIGURE 6.5: OPPORTUNITY DETROIT BANNERS ON WOODWARD AVENUE, DETROIT. SOURCE: AUTHOR ...... 155 FIGURE 6.6: DETROIT—I’M A BELIEVER! ADVERTISEMENT WITH FORMER MAYOR DAVE BING. SOURCE: HERMANOFF 2011...... 156 FIGURE 6.7: NEIGHBORHOOD INNOVATION PANEL HOSTED BY MODEL D AND UIX, 2013. SOURCE: AUTHOR...... 160 FIGURE 6.8: DETROIT LIVES! MURAL NEAR EASTERN MARKET, DETROIT. SOURCE: AUTHOR...... 161 FIGURE 6.9: PURE DETROIT STORE, DOWNTOWN DETROIT. SOURCE: AUTHOR ...... 164 FIGURE 6.10: PART OF THE HEIDELBERG PROJECT AND D:HIVE’S ‘CONNECTING THE DOTS’ DISPLAY. SOURCE: AUTHOR...... 171
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to many people, all of whom deserve more gratitude than can be adequately expressed here. I hope a humble bullet point will suffice for now. My thanks go to:
• The Novocastrians and Detroiters who participated in this research. It’s a cliché, but this project really could not have happened without your enthusiastic involvement • The Fulbright Foundation, for funding and support during my eight months in Michigan in 2012-2013. It is an honour to be part of the Fulbright community • My supervisors, Rob Freestone and Simon Pinnegar. I first met Simon somewhat serendipitously, and feel incredibly fortunate for the positive and supportive supervision experience that has followed • Professor Robert Fishman, who played a key role in making my Michigan trip happen, enduring reams of paperwork and welcoming me to Taubman College • The many other academics in both Australia and the US who generously gave their time to meet with me over coffee and offer advice and direction • My editor, Annie Smith, who helped to iron out the lingering stylistic wrinkles and saw inconsistencies I could no longer see • Everyone in the FBE who’s helped in all sorts of ways, including my annual review panel members and Christine Steinmetz and Suzie Scandurra • The friends who have preceded and accompanied me along the PhD road and who understand all the rewards and obstacles involved, including Sabra Thorner, Rowena Braddock, the Michigan contingent and my UNSW cohort. A special mention to my PhD doppelganger, Michelle Catanzaro - thank goodness for Prague! • The many other friends who have been endlessly supportive and understanding, from organising trash-TV study breaks to just understanding when I wasn’t around (especially Penny Marshall, Melissa Quinn, Elizabeth Cage and Alice Forsyth) • My family, especially my parents, who have offered invaluable advice, and make me feel lucky in many different ways • Pedro, four-legged study buddy extraordinaire, who kept me company through long months of writing and made me laugh with his antics when I needed a break; and • Last, but far from least, Gavin Sherd—who knows more than anyone the sacrifices, challenges and ups and downs this project has involved. Throughout it all your support never wavered – thank you!
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ORIGINALITY STATEMENT
‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’
Signed ………………………………......
Date ……………………………………......
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1 INTRODUCTION
Once admired as the urban embodiment of the American Dream, it took less than thirty years for Detroit to go from being revered as the Motor City to being reviled as the murder capital of America. While Detroit’s experience has been extreme, many Western cities have struggled with similar transitional experiences over the past fifty years, including Newcastle, Australia. Major urban areas, particularly those with wealth built on industrial and manufacturing prowess, have been profoundly reshaped by the economic and social changes of the late twentieth century, including globalisation and suburbanisation. As part of the shift towards a ‘post-industrial society’ (Bell 1976), these cities have had to contend with declining populations, growing unemployment, and cuts to social services and public investment. These changes have reshaped not just the physical and social fabrics of these cities but the way people think and talk about them as well. Newcastle has been labelled a ‘problem city’ (Rofe 2000, 2004), consistently associated with crisis (Metcalfe and Bern 1994), while Detroit has been derided as everything from ‘[America’s] first major Third World city’ (Chafets 1990, p. 177) to ‘a place where the American Dream came to die’ (Owen 2004, p. 60).
In response to such shifts in fortune, many cities have adopted new governance and revitalisation strategies with the goal of improving not only their physical and social settings but also how they are perceived. Strategies designed to reshape a city’s image have become particularly popular, as ‘urban governments and elites have had to contend as never before with the fact that, in an increasingly volatile and media-linked global marketplace, the declining image of a place can accelerate its economic and political decline—i.e. that image crisis can exacerbate economic crisis’ (Greenberg 2008a, p. 19). So while ‘place selling’ is nothing new (Ward 1998), recent decades have seen an exponential growth in official efforts to project a positive image and attract new investment to the city. These efforts are part of the broader trend towards what has been labelled entrepreneurial urban governance (Harvey 1989a; Philo and Kearns 1993; Hall and Hubbard 1998; Short 1999), with city governments moving away from their traditional role as managerial service providers towards becoming more competitive, business-like entities. As these governments have adopted increasingly sophisticated marketing and branding strategies, they have also spawned a billion dollar support industry of branding and economic development consultants (Holcomb 1993).
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These developments have triggered a burgeoning academic interest in urban reimaging practices, from both a critical perspective in fields like geography and political science and a procedural perspective in the business and marketing disciplines (Short and Kim 1998; Colomb 2012a). In this procedural literature, the officially led, professional practice of what is now commonly referred to as place branding is often portrayed as an important component in significant urban transformations, including in New York City (Bendel 2011), Glasgow (Hudson and Hawkins 2006) and Barcelona (Belloso 2011). Yet, for other cities like Detroit and Newcastle, image transformations have been slower to materialise, despite attempts to implement a range of similar revitalisation and reimaging strategies. This makes these cities interesting subjects for further research exploring how their experiences have differed from the place branding success stories presented in the procedural literature.
1.1 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM: A MISMATCH BETWEEN POST-INDUSTRIAL URBAN REIMAGING AND PLACE BRANDING THEORY
While Detroit and Newcastle may not necessarily be considered examples of successful official place branding practice, there have been some indications of positive image shifts occurring in recent years, particularly in media representations. As Cooper-McCann (2011) notes, 2010 brought a noticeable jump in positive media stories suggesting that Detroit is undergoing a revitalisation, including a number of lengthy pieces in the New York Times. The following year saw a similar trend with headlines like ‘Detroit evolving into a haven for artists’ in the LA Times (Bender 2011), ‘Detroit pushes back with young muscles’ in the New York Times (Conlin 2011), and ‘Detroit: rejuvenation through urban farms, sustainable living and innovation’ in the Guardian (Kaye 2011). A similar shift is also discernible in Newcastle in recent years, with pieces labelling it ‘the New Newcastle’ (Milne 2012), ‘Australia’s most underrated city’ (Brisbane Times 2011), ‘a must see’ (Weiss 2012), and one of ‘Five global hipster meccas even cooler than Seattle’ (Barrett 2012). In both cities, many of these positive stories focus on small-scale, grassroots revitalisation efforts. While it is too early to say whether these positive representations will continue long term, they do point to the possibility that some effective efforts are now being made to reshape the image of these cities.
Yet only a quick look at the political, economic and cultural realities of Detroit and Newcastle is required to see that they do not entirely reflect the models for successful
Page 9 of 317 place branding outlined in the procedural literature. Understood primarily as a top-down process, urban branding has been both analysed and modelled as a government-led strategy involving major urban stakeholders and elites (Greenberg 2008b; Kavaratzis 2012). While Newcastle does have an official branding campaign, its external scope and budget have been limited, and it has not focused extensively on grassroots or artistic projects in the city. In Detroit, the recent municipal bankruptcy declaration reflects how severe the city’s financial situation has been for many years, leaving few resources available for city- led rebranding efforts. Given these circumstances, it seems likely that there are other factors contributing to the more positive tenor of recent public and media narratives about Newcastle and Detroit. While there may simply be some kind of organic image shift occurring, another possibility is that other reimaging participants in these cities are contributing to this process.
The aim of this research project is to explore this possibility in detail, to consider whether it offers an explanation for the apparent image shift these cities are experiencing. To do so, it contemplates how informal participants—understood here as participants acting independently of government-led place branding efforts—are contributing to the reimaging of Detroit and Newcastle, and how their efforts relate to official rebranding strategies. Hopefully, by contemplating these efforts in detail, the nature and significance of this image shift will become clearer, which may in turn shed some light on what such a shift might mean for these cities in coming years.
Before outlining how this aim shapes the current research project in more depth, it is necessary to make a brief note about language. One of the challenges confronting scholars in this field is that, as Anholt (2010b, p. 1), notes, ‘the question of terminology is a vexed one’. Terms like boosterism, selling, marketing, branding and reimaging have been used interchangeably. It is helpful, therefore, to explain how these terms will be used in this research. While the term image is used in various ways throughout the urban literature, in this work it is understood as a multifaceted concept, shaped by visual, written, oral and aural representations (Vanolo 2008). The image of the city is thus a palimpsest, reflecting everything portrayed and perceived about that particular place (Burgin 1996). It combines tangible and interpretive elements, shaped by both objective realities and subjective impressions (Neuman 1996). Every individual holds a different mental image of the city; while elements that contribute to a city’s image can be identified and analysed (e.g. Lynch 1960), there is no universal, definitive image of a city.
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For this reason, the focus in this research is on examining specific efforts to reshape the image of these cities, rather than trying to distil the images of Detroit and Newcastle in any broadly meaningful way. The terms reimaging and image-making are used interchangeably to refer to efforts made to reshape the image of the city, either internally or externally, by portraying it in a particular manner (see Colomb 2012a). While this could be broadly understood to include almost any city-related representations or projects, the focus here is on efforts which demonstrate a distinctively promotional quality, contributing to what Colomb (2012a, p. 309) calls the “promotional discourse” of these cities.
As a result, reimaging and image-making are terms which are used to refer to both government-led and non-governmental promotional practices. Underneath these broad umbrella terms sit other terms for practices that can be seen as a continuum, reflecting the historical development of reimaging strategies over recent decades: place-selling or boosterism; city marketing; and urban branding.1 These three practices are distinguished from one another by a loose chronology (Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010) as well as by increasing levels of sophistication and official oversight. So while place-selling or boosterism may refer to both official and unofficial reimaging efforts, place marketing and urban branding are used to refer only to officially-led strategies (these distinctions will be examined more in the next chapter).
1.2 THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS: HOW IS IMAGE-MAKING OCCURRING AND HOW IS IT DIFFERENT?
The broad research aim identified above has closely informed the two research questions at the heart of this project. First, how is image-making occurring in Detroit and Newcastle? And second, how does it differ from what is anticipated in the existing place branding literature? These research questions are inspired not only by the apparent shift in portrayals of Detroit and Newcastle but also by the results of Colomb’s (2012a) extensive research on the recent reimaging of Berlin, a city which reflects some of the same revitalisation and reimaging complexities, albeit for very different historical reasons. Colomb identifies a shift occurring in promotional practices in Berlin, and she explains the important questions this raises for further research (2012a, p. 309):
1 Note that the use of place/city/urban for the three categories is for clarity rather than indicating a particularly meaningful distinction.
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The grand narratives produced by city marketers and public officials in the 1990s have not managed to hide to the public eye that Berlin is a contradictory city … a palimpsest of many different times and histories, incomplete and at times uncomfortable. But it is precisely because of this that many residents and tourists have come to Berlin. And this is something which public officials and city marketers began to understand in the 2000s. The constant change and ‘incompleteness’ of Berlin, the cultural experimentation taking place in its previous ‘voids’, its juxtaposition of ‘scruffy’ and ‘gentrified’ spaces, began to be promoted and marketed in and of themselves as attraction factors … It will be interesting to investigate what the content of the future Berlin imagery produced by marketers will be in the next decades: will the trend towards integration of new, previously off-beat sites and spaces into the imagery continue? Will new layers of ‘storylines’ be added to the promotional discourse, and who will produce these storylines beyond the existing marketers and image producers?
This passage describes the same kind of image shift now occurring in Detroit and Newcastle, and Colomb’s final question offers support for the possibility that informal reimaging participants are contributing to that process. Following Colomb’s lead, this research will explore that possibility by developing detailed case studies of current reimaging practices in Detroit and Newcastle. Like Berlin, Detroit and Newcastle offer interesting sites to explore these questions in depth.
1.3 CHOICE OF CASE STUDIES: DETROIT AND NEWCASTLE
Both Detroit and Newcastle are cities where the ongoing challenges of major economic transformation have meant that a transition away from the city’s outdated industrial image has yet to fully occur. They may therefore be understood as transitional cities, with contradictory qualities much like Berlin. 2 More importantly, they are places where participants outside the realms of official branding campaigns do seem to be contributing to reimaging efforts, as formal efforts have confronted financial or cultural impediments. Yet, perhaps because they do not fit the established models, the reimaging role of unofficial
2 Importantly, this use of transitional is not intended to suggest that, by contrast, other cities are static—all cities are constantly changing in myriad ways. However, the term is useful to distinguish cities which are still heavily engaged in the process of economic and image transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, as opposed to those which have now largely negotiated that transformation. The term also has the benefit of being less loaded with negative implications than alternatives such as recovering or renewing.
Page 12 of 317 participants in these places remains under-researched in the academic literature to date. For these reasons, Detroit and Newcastle make ideal case studies for this research, potentially offering insights that will be of interest to other transitional cities around the world.
At the same time, while an examination of informal reimaging processes may prove relevant elsewhere, the choice of Detroit and Newcastle as case studies also reflects the fact that image seems to be a particularly significant issue in these places. At first blush, this may seem strange given the scope of the challenges in Detroit, and to a lesser extent in Newcastle. Does it really make sense to focus on image issues when conducting research in these cities? Is this not a distraction from the more important social, political or economic issues these cities face? There are a number of responses to these questions. First, while city image may not be the issue which most directly affects the daily lives of residents in these places, it is nonetheless of real significance to many. Debates about image and representation appear frequently in local media publications, often inspiring a flurry of comments and responses (e.g. Wattrick 2012a; Conlin 2012; McCarthy 2011; Wingate- Pearse 2012). This suggests there is something significant about the issue of urban image that goes beyond purely pragmatic concerns about how a negative image can affect industries like tourism and recruitment, making it something that residents connect with on a personal level.
Following this observation, it is important to recognise that while addressing political, social and economic issues is undoubtedly essential for these cities, reimaging practices do not occur independently of those issues. Rather, the process and outcomes of urban reimaging are shaped by on-the-ground concerns and vice versa. One way to understand urban reimaging practices is as a form of meaning-making (Paddison 1993), and many scholars have demonstrated that the processes through which meaning is constructed ‘are intrinsic to processes of social reproduction, contestation and change and are therefore actively involved in shaping economy and society’ (Hastings 1999, p. 7; see also Martin, McCann and Purcell 2003; Beauregard and Tomlinson 2007). Exploring the different ways urban participants represent what their city means—and could mean in the future—is therefore part of understanding the political, social and cultural dynamics of that city. For this reason, case studies of reimaging practices in Detroit and Newcastle may have broader relevance, not only to other cities, but also to other issues in the cities themselves.
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1.4 THE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: BRINGING TOGETHER BRANDING AND DIY URBANISM
Given the focus on government-led efforts in the place branding literature, it is helpful also to look elsewhere in the urban studies literature for additional theoretical guidance on how other non-governmental players might be participating in these case study cities. Over much the same period that Detroit and Newcastle’s images have seemingly begun to shift, a broader trend has emerged in urban practice and research that seems particularly relevant. Attracting a range of labels including do-it-yourself (DIY), tactical and guerrilla urbanism, this movement advocates small-scale, unsanctioned engagement with cities— from painting DIY bike lanes to planting community gardens to creating temporary art installations. It has been particularly prominent in post-industrial cities, with some scholars viewing the movement as a response to the influence of neoliberalism on urban life (Douglas 2014). These kinds of practices have often been a focus of recent media attention in both Detroit (Cooper-McCann 2012) and Newcastle (e.g. Barrett 2012), and may therefore be connected in some way to the image shift occurring in these cities.3
While much of the public and academic interest in this phenomenon has focused on physical interventions in urban space (e.g. Douglas 2011; Newcombe 2012; Lydon 2012), the notion of informal reimaging practices also seems to fit with the philosophy behind this trend. This philosophy has been neatly expressed by Keffer (2011):
who: you what: change where: the city when: now how: do it yourself
This philosophy is flexible enough to incorporate the idea of reimaging practices, suggesting that the emerging theoretical literature on DIY urbanism might provide valuable insights for understanding who is working to reshape Detroit and Newcastle’s images. Taking this emerging DIY urbanism literature as a starting point, this research also seeks out similar connections between informal reimaging practices and other areas of urban theory
3 It is noted that the term ‘informal’ is also used somewhat differently elsewhere in the critical urban literature. This use of the term, and the relationship between DIY urbanism and urban ‘informality’ more broadly, will be explored in more detail in Chapter 3.
Page 14 of 317 relevant to the revitalisation processes now occurring in post-industrial cities, including place theory and network analysis. This wide-ranging approach is designed to provide the case studies with a broad theoretical framework from which to examine some of the multiple ways in which informal reimaging efforts fit into the broader scope of the political, social and cultural forces reshaping Detroit and Newcastle.
While these alternative theoretical perspectives may provide a useful exploratory framework for examining the contours of informal reimaging practices, this research also points to similarities between informal reimaging efforts and official urban branding practices. This is important to note, given the significance of a broader cultural shift that is reshaping places around the world and how we interact with them. This shift is apparent in the way reimaging practices have become a major part of urban governance—particularly how they have come to be understood as urban branding. While the emergence of urban branding as a key entrepreneurial urban governance strategy has been noteworthy, it is also just one example of the ‘brandification’ of modern life. As Aronczyk and Powers (2010, p. 3) argue, the logic of the brand is now pervasive in Western society:
To apply the logic of the brand to … previously unbranded organizations, sites, and forms of subjectivity is not merely to call attention to the thorough marketization and commodification of everyday life. We suggest that the globalized, self-reflexive use of brands and branding to describe and structure these multiple and varied spheres is both symptom and cause of a series of shifts in how social relations, subject positions, and political programs are organized, governed, and articulated.
This is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in how we think about cities. Renn (2010, para. 1) neatly makes this point when he argues that ‘Detroit is one of America’s most powerful brands … Many would say it is one of America’s most tarnished brands. That might be true, but that doesn’t diminish its power’. This is a significant observation for two reasons. First, it highlights how the image of cities like Detroit and Newcastle continues to play a powerful symbolic role in the public consciousness, even during periods of decline and distress. Second, it suggests that the logic of the brand has come to influence not only how participants in official urban branding practices see the city but also how informal reimaging participants and other observers might do so.
It is this latter point that explains why this research frames the examination of informal urban reimaging practices by exploring how they relate to the way official reimaging efforts
Page 15 of 317 are understood in the urban branding literature, both critical and procedural. Examining urban reimaging in the twenty-first century requires acknowledging how the concept and the practice of branding have increasingly come to inform all aspects of the way cities are perceived and portrayed. While informal reimaging practices are not viewed here as a form of urban branding per se, there are theoretical connections that emerge just as there are between unofficial reimaging practices and DIY urbanism. And while informal reimaging participants may not see themselves as engaging in urban branding, their efforts exist in this broader context and can therefore be examined as such. It is for this reason that this project combines a somewhat unruly mix of theory related to urban branding, DIY urbanism and post-industrial urbanism to construct the underlying theoretical framework for the research. This multilayered theoretical approach sets the scene for the similarly layered empirical approach adopted in the case studies.
1.5 THE METHOD: NARRATIVE CASE STUDIES
Informed by this diverse theoretical framework, the case studies are designed to provide a preliminary – and broadly-framed – perspective on how reimaging practices were occurring in Detroit and Newcastle over the period from 2010 to 2013. Long-form interviews with reimaging participants and observers in both cities are an important data source, with supporting data drawn from personal observation during fieldwork and an examination of mainstream and social media portrayals. Identifying potential interviewees required some consideration as to exactly which urban actors might be able to offer relevant insights. As a starting point, this included anyone connected with official place branding efforts or with DIY projects that seemed to reflect the promotional qualities of place branding practice, namely an intent (explicit or implicit) to improve the city’s image by representing it in a positive light. In addition, interviews were sought with local observers focused on examining the city’s image shift through writing, art or public events. DIY projects in this context were understood as efforts not directly associated with official urban branding campaigns and which were working in a small-scale and independent way, as opposed to the large-scale companies and institutions and urban elites who have long been viewed as key stakeholders in official urban branding campaigns (Kotler, Haider and Rein 1993; Hankinson 2001). These working definitions functioned well as a starting point for an iterative process of identifying interviewees able to offer both personal and external perspectives on the image-making processes of interest in this research. The bulk of the interviews involved participants in DIY projects, complemented by a number of interviews
Page 16 of 317 with participants from Newcastle’s official urban-branding campaign and the major corporate-led rebranding efforts in Detroit. Twenty-nine interviews were completed in total, fifteen in Detroit and fourteen in Newcastle.
In order to collate and analyse this broad-ranging collection of material, the research adopts a ‘narrative lens’ as a guiding logic for constructing the multilayered case studies and the subsequent analysis. This choice reflects the powerful role stories play in urban debates and meaning-making, as well as an acknowledgement that the process of constructing case studies is an inevitably subjective exercise. The mix of informal/formal and small-scale/large-scale perspectives is designed to reflect the multilayered nature of reimaging efforts in these cities, the complexity of which inspired the phrase ‘unruly urban brands’ in the title of the research. This phrase aims to encapsulate how official and large- scale efforts to rebrand Detroit and Newcastle intersect with informal reimaging efforts in these cities, giving rise to a reimaging landscape that is both branded and unruly at the same time.
1.6 THE STRUCTURE: OUTLINE OF THE THESIS
To set the scene for the case studies, Chapter 2 begins with a short historical overview of how entrepreneurial reimaging strategies have come to play a significant part in urban governance. The chapter then examines the current state of both the critical and procedural strands of urban branding theory, highlighting some gaps in this literature and the key criticisms that have been levelled at it. Chapter 3 builds on this theoretical analysis, considering what insights additional theoretical perspectives might offer into how reimaging is occurring in places that do not fit with the conventional branding models outlined in Chapter 2. These are the alternative perspectives drawn from research on post- industrial urbanism—specifically DIY urbanism, place theory and network analysis. Chapter 4 then grapples with the question of how best to examine the reimaging landscape in Detroit and Newcastle in practice, expanding on why a case-study approach is appropriate, why these cities were chosen, and how the interview and media data were collected and analysed. This includes a more detailed explanation of why narrative analysis has been adopted as the preferred analytical approach for the case studies.
Having thus set the scene, next follow the case studies themselves—Newcastle in Chapter 5 and Detroit in Chapter 6. Each case study is structured around six key questions examining the reimaging landscape in those cities over the past three years:
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• Where is the city’s image currently positioned?
• Who is involved in reshaping this image?
• How are they participating?
• What narratives are they producing?
• Why are they participating?
• What have been some of the reactions to these efforts?
The rationale behind structuring the case studies around these questions is not to provide an empirical evaluation of the impact or success of different reimaging practices in Newcastle and Detroit. Rather, the goal is to provide an insight into the multiplicity of different ways urban reimaging is being practised, from the perspective of people at the centre of it—the participants.
Importantly, the choice of this participant-driven perspective is not to suggest that the reimaging efforts occurring in these cities are not also of interest to many others. Indeed, some alternative perspectives are considered in the analysis set out in Chapter 7, which examines what the case studies mean from three different perspectives—participants, residents and researchers. Nonetheless, the explicit focus adopted in this research on the process of reimaging means it is the participant perspective that receives the most attention throughout this thesis. While there is undoubtedly room for further research focusing more closely on other perspectives—particularly those of local residents—that is beyond the scope of the work. Other avenues for research are considered in more depth in the conclusion (Chapter 8), which also identifies some limitations of the research, summarises the answers to the key research questions and contemplates the significance of the research findings as a whole.
1.7 THE CONTRIBUTION: THE ACADEMIC AND PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH
As the two key research questions indicate, the primary significance of this research is found in the contribution it aims to make to the academic literature on urban branding and DIY urbanism, identifying connections between a how these two strands of literature conceptualise the processes reshaping transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle. Through an examination of the role informal participants are playing in the reimaging of these cities, this research seeks to offer a different perspective on urban reimaging practices. To do this, it combines an eclectic theoretical framework with a detailed
Page 18 of 317 empirical focus in a way that will hopefully be of interest to both urban researchers and practitioners. Given this perspective, the research will likely raise as many questions as it answers, opening up a range of new directions for future research.
This is not to say, however, that the research may not also be of interest beyond the academic sphere. In addition to the goal of making a meaningful academic contribution, there is a personal goal that has helped to guide this research. I find Detroit and Newcastle to be fascinating cities: complex, surprising and occasionally confounding. It was a pleasure to spend time learning about both places while conducting this research. By providing insights into the reimaging landscapes of these cities, I hope to offer something of value to the many reimaging participants, observers and residents I met who are committed to solving these cities’ challenging problems. In doing so – and reflecting the narrative qualities of this research - I have taken inspiration from the problem-solving advice of Neustadt and May (1986, p. 274), who suggest: ‘Don’t ask “What’s the problem?” Ask, “What’s the story?” That way you’ll find out what the problem really is.’ By seeking out the stories behind the unruly urban brands of Detroit and Newcastle, I hope to offer a different perspective on the complex image problems these cities confront, and maybe even provide some small assistance to those facing the real challenge of finding solutions.
2 FROM BOOSTERS TO BRANDING: EXAMINING URBAN REIMAGING PRACTICES IN THE LITERATURE
With the emergence of place branding as an entrepreneurial urban governance strategy over recent decades, there is now a large and rapidly growing body of literature examining how this practice has been implemented in cities around the world. This chapter will provide an overview of the key elements of this literature, drawing from both the critical, geography-based perspective and the procedural, marketing-based perspective. This overview will highlight how current research does—and more importantly, doesn’t— provide an explanation for the reimaging processes currently at play in Detroit and Newcastle. After a brief overview of the political and economic context in which entrepreneurial governance and urban branding have risen to prominence (Section 2.1), the chapter will examine the historical antecedents to the practice of urban branding (Section 2.2), the different ways it has been implemented (Section 2.3), some of its key political contours (Section 2.4), and the main concerns academics have identified about the practice (Section 2.5).
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2.1 REIMAGING IN CONTEXT: THE RISE OF URBAN ENTREPRENEURIAL GOVERNANCE
For many cities in the Western world, the first half of the twentieth century was a period of intense growth—in population, physical size, economic output, and cultural significance. As Scott (2006) has pointed out, during this period industrialisation and urbanisation were inextricably linked, with each feeding the growth of the other. In the latter part of the twentieth century, many of these same cities experienced what Beauregard (2003, p. 150) calls ‘a profound transformation in economic function’, with their ‘once-defining’ factories closing down and manufacturing jobs departing offshore. Exacerbated by the growing popularity of suburban living, this economic restructuring soon triggered declining levels of population, employment, and public investment in the inner city. By the 1970s and 1980s, many Western manufacturing and industrial cities were very different places than they had been thirty to forty years earlier, and the changes were often viewed in a negative light, both by the residents and by external observers. The result was a growing perception of urban crisis, and an accompanying sense that these cities may be in need of a fundamental overhaul (Beauregard 2003; Greenberg 2008b). In the absence of sufficient government funding for this kind of redevelopment, these cities came to be seen instead as ‘opportune testing grounds for experimental new forms of urban governance’ (Greenberg 2008b, p. 27). In essence, this new urban entrepreneurialism involved the incorporation of neoliberal political ideology into city governance techniques, a transformation that Harvey (1989a; 2005; 2008) and many others have explored in depth.
Central to this new philosophy of urban governance was the notion that in an increasingly interconnected world, geography alone could no longer ensure a city’s success. Whereas location and access to transport and distribution channels had been central determinants of the early industrial city’s competitive value (Ward 1998), the latter half of the twentieth century saw many of the physical barriers to international trade removed. Labelled globalisation—a somewhat amorphous term (Brugmann 2009) that is used to describe everything from advances in transport, communications and industrial technologies to the political trend towards neoliberal, free-market ideologies—this process resulted in ‘greater locational flexibility in the contemporary economy’ (Short and Kim 1998, p. 56; see also Paddison 1993). With more cities around the world gaining access to increasingly global markets, businesses could now give greater weight to factors like labour costs or regulatory climate when choosing a base. Residents and tourists also became significantly more Page 20 of 317 mobile. As Jonas and Wilson (1999, p. 3) note, ‘where once the social life and politics of cities were territorially defined, today these spheres have been situated squarely in the new globality of production and exchange’. For the first time, it mattered less where a city was than what that city could offer.
This realisation underpinned a fundamental shift in the mentality of many urban governments. In this globalised world, a city could no longer think of itself as simply a location; to survive, it also needed to become a competitive entity. This new discourse positioned the city as being in constant competition for all forms of economic input, from capital investment to government funding, tourist dollars and the residential tax base (Logan and Molotch 1987; Philo and Kearns 1993). While a sense of rivalry between cities was nothing new, in the entrepreneurial city the notion of interurban competition has increasingly guided all forms of government decision-making. The result was what Hubbard and Hall (1998, p. 2) call ‘a shift from the local provision of welfare and services to more outward-orientated policies designed to foster and encourage local growth and economic development’.
As some scholars note, globalisation provides only a partial explanation for the changes that have occurred in post-industrial cities over the past fifty years (Scott 2006). Perhaps as important as the actual effects of globalisation, however, have been popular beliefs about how globalisation might reshape the world and its cities (Harvey 1989a). As Short and Kim (1998, p. 56) perceptively observe, in this new political climate ‘the threat or potential of hypermobility of capital, as much as the actual mobility of capital, promotes entrepreneurialism in contemporary city government’. Hall and Hubbard (1998) concur, arguing that most post-industrial urban governments felt obliged to adopt entrepreneurial governance practices to avoid the risk of being left behind. Beyond this sense of insecurity, however, the discourse of globalisation and entrepreneurialism also engendered real hope for some cities. If capital was now so mobile, cities decimated by deindustrialisation and decline could dream that with the right entrepreneurial spirit, the economic base that had systematically abandoned them might finally return (Hall and Hubbard 1998). This is a powerful message, one which has helped to ensure that entrepreneurialism remains a prevailing theme in urban governance around the world, not just in the West (Golubchikov 2010).
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So what exactly does entrepreneurial governance entail in practice? Hubbard (1996, p. 1441) summarises the existing academic literature on the shift from managerial to entrepreneurial governance as follows:
According to many commentators, this shift in urban governance has been characterised by the diminishing importance of the local provision of welfare and services by city governments in favour of a more outward orientated stance designed to foster local development and economic growth … As such, the focus of much urban governmental activity is no longer the provision of services for city residents, but a concern with the prosperity of the city and its ability to attract jobs and investment. These profound changes in the way that cities operate have witnessed the public sector taking over characteristics once distinctive to the private sector—risk-taking, inventiveness, promotion and profit motivation, leading such modes of governance to be described as entrepreneurial.
As Hubbard suggests, integral to urban entrepreneurialism is an increased focus on image and promotion as a key feature of a city’s competitiveness. In other words, it has become necessary not simply to be better than one’s competition but to appear better as well. In a world where new information technologies meant representations of the city could travel faster and further than ever before, image was becoming increasingly powerful. As Greenberg (2008b, p. 28) points out, before long ‘new media and marketing tactics, and the culture workers who devised them, were understood as essential to the growth and governance of the neoliberal city’. Similarly, Jessop and Sum (2000) argue that the adoption of strategies designed to promote the city as entrepreneurial is itself one of the defining features of urban entrepreneurialism. Or as Hall and Hubbard (1998, p. 7) put it, ‘Changing the image of a locality is thus seen as a central component of entrepreneurial governance, and, as such, it is perhaps best to consider the entrepreneurial city as an imaginary city, constituted through a plethora of images and representations’.
This notion of an imaginary city was already under examination in other academic circles, where philosophers like Benjamin, Lefebvre, De Certeau and Baudrillard had been exploring what Bridge and Watson (2002, p. 7) call the ‘ill-defined, shifting and slippery’ relationship between urban representation and reality since the early twentieth century (see also Donald 1997; Rotella 1998; Blum 2003). The growing focus on image in urban governance mirrored the broader cultural trends identified by these philosophers, perhaps best captured by Debord’s (1967) analysis of ‘the society of the spectacle’. According to Debord, Page 22 of 317 in modern society all human relations are mediated by constructed images, and the key social message imparted is: ‘Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear’ (1967 [1994], p. 15). The rise of the society of the spectacle, then, reflects ‘a generalized shift from having to appearing’ (1967 [1994], p. 16) as the primary element of social power. Castells (2000, p. 507) makes a similar point, noting that in the world of globalised media, ‘image making is power-making’.
In the urban context, this shift is reflected not just in governance strategies but also in the transformation of urban economies from industrial engines of production to what Zukin (1995, p.3) labels the ‘symbolic economy’. It is this shift that lies at the heart of the transformation of cities from industrial to post-industrial, at least as this highly contested term is used here. Rather than mass-producing tangible goods, the post-industrial urban economy is shaped primarily around the intangible service and knowledge industries. It engages heavily in the commodification and packaging of urban image and culture as products to be sold to increasingly wealthy and footloose consumers, who see the city as a source of entertainment as much as employment. Selling the city in this way has required a major reconstruction of urban imagery (Broudehoux 2004), with vistas of factories and smokestacks upgraded to visions of gleaming shopping malls, dazzling entertainment options, and minimal urban annoyances (e.g. dirt, noise, poverty).
Unfortunately, for some cities decimated by industrial disinvestment, the shift from a production-based economy to a successful symbolic economy has not been easy to achieve. For these cities, the growing significance of urban imagery has become something to fear. It seems negative portrayals spread faster and further than positive ones, and many post- industrial cities began to feel the very tangible and damaging effects of rapidly worsening reputations. Particularly in America, the media played a significant role in this process, often painting post-industrial downtowns as little more than ‘crack alleys and killing zones’ (Macek 2006, p. 139). While these portrayals were often biased by political or commercial considerations, they were nonetheless extremely powerful, exacerbating the downwards trend of disinvestment and decline (Greenberg 2008b). Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is these kinds of cities that have often been the most enthusiastic adopters of entrepreneurial reimaging strategies, in the hope that such techniques may help to halt the downward spiral and break the nexus between reputational and economic decline (Hubbard 1996).
At the same time, the widespread adoption of such strategies can be seen as further evidence of how wholeheartedly post-industrial cities have adopted the doctrines of Page 23 of 317 globalisation and entrepreneurialism, as accepting the logic of global urban competition is essential to justify urban branding expenditures. Indeed, this worldview is now portrayed as unquestioned fact in the majority of urban branding literature. It has become somewhat clichéd to begin an article with a statement to the effect that ‘places compete with each other in the global marketplace for products, services, events, ideas, visitors, talent, investment and influence: this is simply the reality of globalization, and it’s inescapable’ (Anholt 2010b, p. 1; see similarly Moilanen and Rainisto 2009). This academic perspective is matched by a largely unquestioned belief in the importance of place promotion by many local, urban and national governments (Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010). While some academics do offer an alternative perspective (e.g. Philo and Kearns 1993), interurban competition remains a prevailing discourse in how urban governance is now understood and practised. For this reason, it is likely that place branding will also remain a key feature of contemporary urban governance for the foreseeable future.
2.2 DEFINING URBAN BRANDING IN THE LITERATURE
So how exactly is place branding understood as a concept in the academic literature? While Allen (2007, p. 60) describes place branding as ‘a natural extension’ of corporate promotional practices, most academics acknowledge what Ashworth and Kavaratzis (2010, p. 2) call the ‘peculiar nature of places as marketable assets’. Places are far more complex than consumer products, and unexpected challenges arise when corporate strategies like branding are applied to a place. In order to understand these challenges, it is helpful to begin with an overview of how place branding has been defined as a concept, before exploring its practical applications in more detail. As is often the case with slippery concepts like place and brand, they can be easier to define by identifying what they are not than by trying to describe exactly what they are. As such, this discussion will begin with an overview of two key historical antecedents to urban branding—place selling and city marketing— before moving on to examine urban branding’s key differences and similarities. For easy reference, the main features of the three approaches are summarised in Figure 2.1.
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Practice Key era Process Key tools Critiques
Place Pre- Messaging to attract Advertising— Simplistic; often selling/ modern tourists, residents, brochures, jingles, involves businesses—sells the and newspaper, overstating boosterism city in its current form magazine and benefits; no and highlights positive television coordination features. Used by advertisements. between different both official urban place sellers (e.g. representatives and government, real self-interested estate salespeople, entrepreneurs. business coalitions).
City 1960s Seeks to adapt the city Market research to Still often a heavy marketing onwards and city promotions understand reliance on to market customer marketing preferences; more preferences; ideally communications interactive with involves feedback techniques, with potential channels to urban questionable visitors/residents/ decision-makers to effectiveness. businesses. Has adopt research in become a more practice. centralised, official practice.
Urban 1990s Develops a holistic Usually includes Difficult to branding onwards brand ‘essence’ to strong, coordinated coordinate guide various visual presence between various stakeholders in their (e.g. logos, stakeholders and branding efforts; taglines); can ensure consistency ideally integrated with include event of brand; is it broader urban planning, flagship possible to develop planning goals; architecture. a coherent brand government-led essence across all coordination of key city sectors? stakeholders (e.g. business, tourism, creative industries).
Figure 2.1: Typology of Place Promotion Methods
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2.2.1 PLACE SELLING/BOOSTERISM
As noted above, place selling is nothing new, with roots reaching back to pre-modern times (Ward 1998). The United States has a particularly proud history of urban boosters, from fledgling frontier towns seeking residents, to beach resorts seeking tourists, to early industrial cities seeking business investment. In fact, Ward (1998, p. 5) goes so far to suggest that:
the idea of place selling and boosterism has become … an integral part of the American dream. It reflects the competitive freedom of individuals and communities to better themselves by their own efforts, untrammelled by big government or powerfully entrenched aristocrats.
American cities may have been particularly adept at such efforts, but few if any Western cities have avoided self-promotion entirely. Yet while this promotional impulse is evident throughout urban history, Ward acknowledges that identifying place selling as a specific practice is challenging. Rather than a clearly outlined government-led strategy, place selling is better understood as an ethos that could shape ‘every aspect of public policy from street cleansing to housing provision’ (Ward 1998, p. 3), but is made explicit through production of place advertising (e.g. brochures, jingles, and newspaper, magazine and television advertisements). Furthermore, place selling or boosterism is generally understood as being practised not only by city officials but also in a more ad hoc fashion by self-interested entrepreneurs like real estate developers or business coalitions (Greenberg 2008b). For these reasons, place selling is understood here as all urban promotional efforts engaged in primarily through advertising that are not explicitly linked to broader public policy.
As Smyth (1994) notes, many of the initial efforts of urban governments in the 1960s were good examples of such place selling or boosterism, involving the application of general advertising techniques to promoting urban areas. Unsurprisingly, many of these simplistic efforts floundered, quickly exposed as little more than rhetoric. Cities making inflated promises were soon discredited by the reality appearing on the nightly news. Having learned the limitations of place selling the hard way, these cities turned instead to the more advanced concept of city marketing, which sought to ensure that urban promotion was tied to specific renewal projects in a more thoughtful fashion (Hubbard 1996).
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2.2.2 CITY MARKETING
As Holcomb (1993, p. 134) explains, the essence of the shift from place selling to city marketing is the fact that ‘place marketers do not see their task as purely promoting and advertising, but also as adapting the “product” (that is, the place) to be more desirable to the “market”’. Thus city marketing involves efforts to simultaneously improve both the material city and the city’s image in an integrated way. Like place selling, these changes have been primarily motivated by a desire to make the city more appealing to economic development, particularly inward investment. While cultural variations exist, Paddison (1993, p. 340) notes that in both the United Kingdom and the United States, city marketing has been ‘closely, but not exclusively, aligned to economic objectives’.
Early place marketing proponents Kotler, Haider and Rein (1993, p. 346) argued that to achieve these objectives, ‘Places must learn to think more like businesses, developing products, markets and customers’. Many urban governments embraced this goal wholeheartedly. In doing so, they have relied on a broad promotional policy repertoire that includes ‘place logos, slogans, advertising, public relations, subsidies, tax breaks of various kinds, “flagship” development projects, flamboyant architectural and urban design statements, trade fairs, cultural and sporting spectacles, heritage, public art and much else besides’ (Ward 1998, p. 1). But despite the broadened scope, this more integrated, product-focused marketing approach has still been criticised. Smyth (1994, p. 14) argues that marketing techniques are simply not a natural fit for the city, which is neither a product nor a service, but a context in which other products and services are purchased. Paddison (1993, p. 341) identifies the mismatch involved in translating private-sphere marketing techniques into the public sphere, pointing out that many of the relevant municipal bodies ‘lack the clearly defined objective of profit making’.
Perhaps most importantly, however, the shift from place selling to city marketing involved not only a broadening of the promotional tools used but also a formalisation of the actors involved. As Kotler, Haider and Rain (1993, p. 20) note:
The fortunes of places depends in the final analysis on the collaboration of the public and private sectors—teamwork among governmental units, business firms, voluntary and civic associations, and marketing organizations. Unlike purely business or commercial product marketing, place marketing requires the active support of public and private agencies, interests groups, and citizens.
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Unlike the largely ad hoc practice of place selling, place marketing is an officially led, collaborative practice, requiring governments to work not only like a business, but with business as well. This shift has important effects in terms of the city imagery presented, who it is targeted towards, and who gets excluded. It is also a change that becomes even more pronounced in the ensuing shift from city marketing to urban branding.
2.2.3 URBAN BRANDING
As the most conceptual of the three promotional practices considered here, urban branding is challenging to define simply. Yet this complexity has not inhibited its popularity, with place branding quickly becoming a ‘global phenomenon’ (Koller 2008, p. 436) and the promotional choice for many contemporary urban governments (Hankinson 2001). Confused terminology may play a part here, as some projects labelled branding are really only marketing or even simple place selling practices (Anholt 2010b). Such confusion is not surprising given that the place branding community itself has demonstrated disagreement—or at the very least, uncertainty—about exactly what the practice involves (Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010).
Branding is a relatively new trend, having risen to prominence in the corporate world from the 1980s onwards (Freire 2005; Aronczyk and Powers 2010). Yet by the mid-1990s the notion of a brand as a valuable commodity was largely unquestioned, and marketing professionals began to see the possibilities for applying branding concepts to places (Gertner 2011). While many of the same questions about the applicability of marketing to places have been raised about branding, place branding experts argue that the practice can be a powerful tool for urban change. For example, Moilanen and Rainisto (2009, p. 3) claim that, if done strategically, branding ‘can become the most central competitive factor’ for a city. Freire (2005, p. 348) goes so far as to claim that ‘the geo-brand concept … is probably the strongest tool society will ever have to protect and maintain its identity and fight the trend of modern standardisation’.
So how best to describe what place branding involves? Distinguishing it from place marketing can be tricky, as it relies on much the same policy repertoire. Indeed, some of the same distinctions made between place marketing and place selling also apply to place branding, as Greenberg (2008b, p. 35) demonstrates:
Urban branding should be distinguished from urban boosterism in a number of essential ways. While boosters were individual entrepreneurs acting independently Page 28 of 317
of each other and outside formal institutional arrangements, urban branding campaigns are highly coordinated by public–private partnerships, and tied in to broader government restructuring and economic development efforts. As a result of this coordination, urban branding campaigns can maintain a consistency of image far beyond the eclectic urban visions crafted by boosters, using corporate brand management techniques to ensure the standardization and trademarking of logos and slogans. Urban branding campaigns operate on a larger scale both geographically and in terms of capital investment, as they must pay competitive rates to hire professional staff and to gain media exposure nationally and internationally—as compared to the regional and erratic circulation of traditional booster campaigns. And so while nineteenth-century boosterism was an ancillary form of economic development undertaken by individuals in the private sector, urban branding arose as a main engine of economic growth undertaken by partnerships between the public and private sectors, part of what might be called a marketing-led strategy of economic development.
While Greenberg’s description neatly captures the structural and procedural shifts that have occurred as urban reimaging practices have become more centralised and strategic, there is also a conceptual aspect to branding that distinguishes it from marketing. As Aronczyk and Powers (2010, p. 18) point out, brands have the added ability ‘to frame relationships both economic and social; to represent, communicate, and circulate forms of value; and to create and capture modes of attention’. This distinction is clear from the language used to describe branding, particularly the fact that brand is used as a noun, designating the concept as a holistic entity with sufficient materiality to be constructed, grown or damaged. While marketing is simply a process used to improve the worth of the chosen product, branding creates something that is conceptualised as having an independent value above and beyond that of the specific products being sold.
The same is true for a place brand, which Ashworth and Kavaratzis (2010, p. 4) describe as ‘a multidimensional construct, consisting of functional, emotional, relational and strategic elements that collectively generate a unique set of associations with the place in the public mind.’ Similarly, Pryor and Grossbart (2007, p. 294) argue:
Place brands are most usefully viewed as metaphorical entities that are largely mental representations … [this observation suggests a] definition of place brand as
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“the set of central, enduring, and distinctive characteristics that actors ascribe to a place”.
In other words, brand might be understood as a synonym for image—a holistic concept that reflects and brings together the multitude of ways a city is represented and how it is perceived. It is not surprising, therefore, that place branding academics sometimes use the term ‘brand image’ (e.g. Gertner 2007; Anholt 2010b). Yet while brand and image may be similar concepts, it is important to note one key distinction: a brand is inherently commercial. As such, the concept of a city brand necessarily commodifies the city as a product to be sold in some way (Holcomb 1993; Mommaas 2002). This shift from seeing the city as a place to seeing it as a product sits at the heart of entrepreneurial governance strategies; commercialism and entrepreneurialism should therefore be understood as fundamental elements of place branding.
Moving then from the concept of a place brand to the practice of place branding, how is this described in the literature? Mommaas (2002, p. 34) offers a neat formulation, describing urban branding as ‘a strategy to provide cities with an image, a cultural significance, which will, ideally, function as a source of added symbolic and thus economic value’. In a similar vein, Puczko, Ratz and Smith (2007, p. 29) argue that: ‘City branding is more than simply promoting and selling a place; it is about adding an emotional dimension to the place’s perception by communicating its intangible values, its milieu’. Lucarelli and Berg’s (2011, p. 21) description of branding as ‘the purposeful symbolic embodiment of all information connected to a city in order to create associations and expectations around it’ also reinforces how holistic and symbolic qualities distinguish branding from marketing. This holistic quality means urban branding must engage a broad range of participants and must do so in a more strategic fashion than city marketing, prompting the emergence of expansive models of public–private partnership. Greenberg (2000, p. 230) notes that in the branded city:
new “synergies” have formed between traditional city boosters (chambers of commerce, city halls, etc.); local and transnational corporations based in advertising, media, and culture industries; as well as high- and low-end service industries, from finance to real estate to restaurants.
Fostering these complex networks to develop and disseminate the brand in a coordinated manner is essential to the success of an urban branding campaign.
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Not surprisingly, the all-encompassing nature of this exercise has prompted concerns about the homogenising effect place branding may have on the city. This is a legitimate concern, to be addressed here in more detail in Section 2.5. It is worth noting, however, that some of the procedural literature also portrays urban branding as a benign force, its economic impact matched by its socio-cultural benefits. Mommaas (2002, p. 34) raises this prospect, suggesting that effective branding has the capacity to ‘introduce a certain order or coherence to the multiform reality around us … brands are not purely a source of differentiation, but also of identification, recognition, continuity and collectivity’. In theory, then, a well-constructed city brand could benefit residents by enabling them to better navigate the fragmented and often chaotic postmodern city (Kavaratzis 2004). Such a claim taps into the idea espoused by many branding experts that branding is not a message, as a marketing slogan is, but is rather a ‘mode of communication’ or an ‘interface’ between the place and the public (Kavaratzis and Ashworth 2005, p. 508; see also Govers and Go 2009). While arguably idealistic, this construction of branding does at least consider its role within a broader social context, identifying an important place for the public and their perceptions in these reimaging processes.
One supporter of the idea that branding can be a force for good is Simon Anholt, who is among the most prolific procedural place branding academics (Anholt and Van Gelder 2003). Interestingly, he rejects the idea of place branding as a stand-alone practice, arguing that the only way to improve a place’s brand image is to strategically and simultaneously improve both the place itself and the way it presents itself to the world (Anholt 2010b). On this view ‘communications are no substitute for policies’, and any branding campaign involving the former without the latter is simply ‘a vain and foolish waste of taxpayers’ money’ (Anholt 2008, p. 1). Instead, Anholt describes the process of improving a city’s brand as a process of improving reality, while also finding a meaningful way to communicate with and involve the public in the process. While Anholt’s approach brings a valuable pragmatism to how the process of improving a place brand is understood, Parker (2011) questions whether this kind of approach is really branding at all, or whether it is simply adopting the language of the market to describe existing place management practices.
This is arguably a largely semantic debate, but it does raise an important question: what, exactly, are the tools and strategies by which place branding is conducted in practice? As this overview has indicated, the conceptual parameters of urban branding remain
Page 31 of 317 somewhat ill-defined; not surprisingly, the same may be said for its practical parameters. While communications strategies do not in and of themselves make a branding campaign, most urban branding efforts have marketing communications at their core—slogans, logos, advertising campaigns and websites that are used to communicate the brand to the public. Where the uncertainty lies is in clearly identifying the additional steps that transform the promotional process from a simple marketing exercise to a holistic branding campaign. The next section will consider these issues in more detail, examining the different promotional tools employed and various academic attempts to categorise them within a broader framework of urban branding practice.
2.3 EXAMINING THE PRACTICE OF URBAN BRANDING
A number of scholars have attempted to describe how place branding works by categorising the different practices employed by place branding practitioners. As an example of this approach, the efforts of Ashworth and Kavaratzis are set out and discussed in Section 2.3.1. Other scholars have attempted to develop frameworks that are more conceptual, which model the strategic vision of branding practitioners and city governments engaged in urban branding. In Section 2.3.2, two of the more comprehensive of these conceptual frameworks are briefly summarised. While a clearer, more coherent approach to describing the practice of place branding may be desirable, this is something with which place branding scholars continue to grapple. As such, this overview provides a sense of the ongoing complexities in how place branding is understood and portrayed as a practice in the academic literature.
2.3.1 CATEGORIES OF BRANDING PRACTICE
Taking a more pragmatic approach to describing place branding, a number of scholars have attempted to identify categories of place branding tools and trends (Griffiths 1998; Ashworth 2009; Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010). Unsurprisingly, given the confusion around urban branding in general, these categories do not fit together neatly: some are theoretical approaches, others practical; some consider how to shift an entire city brand, others relate to a particular target market. In a 2009 article, Ashworth identified three ‘instruments’ of place branding: personality association, signature building and design, and event hallmarking. Soon after, Ashworth and Kavaratzis (2010) extended this analysis to identify five key trends associated with place branding: place of origin branding (understood as a product marketing strategy not a place branding tool, and therefore not of relevance here); nation branding (also not of relevance here); destination branding; cultural/entertainment
Page 32 of 317 branding (which incorporates signature building and event hallmarking); and integrated place branding. Combining the two lists provides a sense of the broad range of government action now seen as falling within the purview of place branding. Rather than being separate options, many place branding strategies incorporate a number of these approaches simultaneously.
Personality Association
Personality association is the process by which ‘places associate themselves with a named individual in the hope that the necessarily unique qualities of the individual are transferred by association to the place’ (Ashworth 2009, p. 11). While there are various successful examples, including Barcelona’s association with Gaudi and Salzburg’s association with Mozart, this is obviously not a strategy available to all cities. Furthermore, as Ashworth notes, there are often disputes over different cities’ right to claim a particular personality, and public attitudes to celebrities can change over time. So while this is one tool available to place branding practitioners, it seems unlikely to have a significant and lasting impact on its own.
Signature Building and Design
Investment in signature or flagship architecture and urban design has flourished since Bilbao’s striking Frank Gehry–designed Guggenheim Museum became famous globally. While often seen as part of economic development more broadly, changing perceptions of the host city is usually one goal of such projects, meaning they can be considered an urban branding tool (Crilley 1993; Ashworth 2009). These developments are particularly helpful for the visual branding of the city, often being reproduced in tourism images, on postcards and as part of city logos. Building dramatic, increasingly tall skyscrapers is one example of this practice; as Gilmore (2004, p. 173) argues, such buildings ‘are the iconography of the city, the city brand identity’. Cities like Dubai and Shanghai have invested heavily in this approach, building striking new skylines to visually support a brand that emphasises their modernity. Again, such a strategy is available only to some cities, given the exorbitant cost of such development and the ‘starchitect’ required to design it (see Evans 2005 on the challenges of flagship developments). Furthermore, while Bilbao and other early adopters may have received a valuable image boost from their flagship developments, signature development is now arguably a strategy of diminishing returns, like many branding strategies targeted towards creating distinctiveness. As Speaks (2002, p. 50) explains:
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commercial success has a way of transforming even the most singular innovation into new game board pieces that can be deployed in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, or any city in need of the economy boons provided by the famous “Bilbao effect”.
Moreover, for all the Bilbaos, there have been plenty of white elephants (Ashworth 2009), with Detroit’s ironically named Renaissance Center providing one obvious example (Longo 2006). As Ashworth (2009, p. 16) explains, ‘As with other instruments of branding, flagship building is not enough: it must be embedded in a wider set of policies’.
Destination Branding
Destination branding refers to promotional efforts designed specifically to attract tourists to a place. It is therefore closer conceptually to a target-audience based marketing strategy of the kind identified by Govers and Go (2009) than the other instrument-based approaches which Ashworth and Kavaratzis identify. However, Ashworth and Kavaratzis (2010, p. 5) make the point that because tourism promotion is a long-established function in most places, destination branding as a subset of place branding is ‘Perhaps the most developed in theory and most used in practice’. Destination branding efforts may offer place branders practical insights into the city, as well as being an element to be taken into account in any effective place branding strategy.
Event Hallmarking or Cultural/Entertainment Branding
Overlapping with the signature design strategy is the idea of event hallmarking or cultural/entertainment branding, which involves poaching or creating signature events like arts festivals or sporting competitions to attract visitors and attention. Building associated developments like exhibition buildings, stadia and cultural precincts may be viewed either as part of this strategy (Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010) or as part of signature development (Ashworth 2009). As Ashworth and Kavaratzis (2010) note, this approach acknowledges and builds on the increased significance of culture, leisure, sports and entertainment in the symbolic economy. Once again, however, the risk of diminishing returns is real, with more and more cities seeking a piece of the symbolic economy for themselves; as Harvey (1989a, p. 12) poignantly asks, ‘How many successful convention centres, sports stadia, disney- worlds, harbour places and spectacular shopping malls can there be?’ To reap long-term benefits, these kinds of events and projects must happen within a strategic framework of branding and urban development that uses the attention garnered by major events to tell Page 34 of 317 broader stories about the city and its future. As Fola (2011, p. 116) notes in a case study on the 2004 Olympics, ‘as Athens discovered rather too late, the event itself does not automatically do anything for the city’s brand. It is a media opportunity, not a branding activity itself’.
Integrated Place Branding
Integrated place branding is the term Ashworth and Kavaratzis (2010, p. 6) use to describe the growing trend towards ‘using branding as an approach to integrate, guide and focus place management’. While Ashworth and Kavaratzis do not explicitly mention Anholt’s work, this phrase seems appropriate to describe the holistic practice Anholt advocates in his model (2010a), which combines three elements:
• Strategy—an understanding of where the city is and where it wants to go • Substance—a plan and ability to make real changes to the city • Symbolic action—action designed to effectively communicate the brand.
As such, integrated place branding is perhaps best understood as a way of combining a number of the instruments outlined above into a broader strategic approach.
2.3.2 PRACTITIONER MODELS
Integrated place branding in some ways seems more like a conceptual framework than a tool of place branding, making it a bridge of sorts between the category-based approach outlined above and the conceptual models other scholars have developed. While various attempts have been made over the years to define a conceptual framework for place branding practitioners, this remains a topic of some debate in the literature. Recently, two sets of scholars have made particularly detailed attempts to address this uncertainty and to define comprehensive frameworks. In doing so, they provide useful insights into how professionals understand place branding as a practice.
Hanna and Rowley (2011) review previous attempts to outline a procedural model for place branding and combine the key elements into a single model named Strategic Place Brand Management (SPBM). This model has seven components: ‘brand evaluation, stakeholder engagement (management), infrastructure (regeneration), brand identity, brand architecture, brand articulation, marketing communications, brand experience, and word of mouth’ (Hanna and Rowley 2011, p. 462). Evidently targeted at practitioners, the model
Page 35 of 317 identifies the components involved in developing and disseminating a branding campaign based on the existing attributes of the city. While a number of these components are strategies or approaches (brand evaluation, stakeholder management, marketing communications, word of mouth), others are conceptual components of the brand itself (brand identity, brand architecture, brand articulation, brand experience). While this model offers a helpful articulation of the way place branding professionals think about developing and disseminating a place brand, it does not engage in detail with the ways governments might try to use place branding to fundamentally change both the image of the city and the city itself, simultaneously.
Govers and Go (2009) have developed a three-part model to identify gaps in existing place brands: gaps in the brand strategy, in the brand performance, and in brand satisfaction. In examining brand strategy, they recognise four main audiences that are generally the focus of place marketing (the 4Ts): tourism, trade, talent (employment opportunities) and treasury (investment opportunities). They also identify different place offerings likely to be of interest to each group: attractions are important to tourism, for example, while cultural activities are important to both tourism and talent, and tax breaks may appeal to the trade, talent and treasury markets. However, while identifying these audiences is helpful for highlighting the multifaceted nature of a place brand, elsewhere Govers (2010, para. 1) warns that ‘it is a mistake to start a branding process by looking at customer needs and wants’ in a segmented way. Instead, thinking about these different target audiences enables place branding practitioners to identify different elements of the ‘product offering of place’ (Govers 2010, para. 5). Rather than directing specific communications at different audiences, as occurs in place marketing, Govers and Go (2009) argue that place branders should use this information to shape the holistic brand essence developed in collaboration with key stakeholders, as well as to enhance the city itself.
Govers and Go’s point about the 4Ts and how they inform place branding is important, as it highlights a question that receives limited attention in the procedural place branding literature, but which is significant when contemplating place branding through a narrative lens: who is the audience for these place branding campaigns? As Govers and Go suggest, part of the reason for this limited attention might be the way a place brand is understood in the procedural literature—as a holistic, stand-alone concept, which should therefore be both broadly appealing and inspired by the intrinsic qualities of the place, not by external factors. At the same time, however, the procedural place branding literature’s broad
Page 36 of 317 acceptance of the concepts of interurban competition and economic development as the goals of place branding—without delving into who will be responsible for making such goals a reality—is arguably somewhat simplistic.
By contrast, there is a growing body of work in the critical place branding literature which argues that governments do have specific audiences in mind when conducting place branding, and that the nature of these audiences sheds light on the broader political goals of place branding. These arguments will be outlined in the next section, as a lead-in to a more detailed discussion of the political contours of place branding in Section 2.5.
2.4 IDENTIFYING THE AUDIENCE FOR PLACE BRANDING
Successful interurban competition is a widely stated goal of place branding and tends to be largely accepted in the procedural place branding literature as a positive outcome for urban residents. Critical place branding theorists have been more circumspect, however, raising important questions about why governments really engage in place branding and what this notion of successful interurban competition means in practice. More specifically, these theorists have applied a critical lens to the question of which particular audience governments are attempting to speak to when they engage in place branding, and what this tells us about what the true goals of place branding might be. This section will briefly examine two important perspectives on this question: work that explores recent efforts by urban governments to attract the so-called ‘creative class’ as a specific target audience, and work that argues the real audience for place branding is local, not external.
2.4.1 TARGETING THE CREATIVE CLASS
Recent years have seen widespread enthusiasm among local governments for economic development schemes based on Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory (2002; 2005; see similarly Landry 2006), many of which have involved what might be understood as targeted place branding strategies. In a nutshell, Florida’s theory posits that a key driver of contemporary urban growth is the creative class, a new class made up of both creative industry workers in jobs like design, media, research and entertainment, as well as creative professionals in the knowledge industries like health, law and financial services. Florida (2002, p. 223) argues that ‘regional economic growth is driven by the location choices of creative people … who prefer places that are diverse, tolerant and open to new ideas’. He identifies three key factors—technology, tolerance and talent (2002, p. 249)—that make
Page 37 of 317 cities attractive to these well-educated and highly mobile workers. Florida’s theory has been influential, with many urban governments adopting strategies designed to enhance these aspects of their city to make it more appealing to the creative class (Peck 2005; Atkinson and Easthope 2009).
There are close philosophical links between Florida’s theory and the logic of place branding (Vanolo 2008). As Peck (2005, p. 7621) explains, urban creativity strategies based on Florida’s ideas ‘work quietly with the grain of extant “neoliberal” development agendas, framed around interurban competition, gentrification, middle-class consumption and place- marketing.’ Thus, while Florida’s work may be understood as a broader theory of urban economic development, it has had the effect of making the creative class a recognised target audience for place branding efforts (Vanolo 2008; Zenker 2009; Okano and Sampson 2010; Waitt and Gibson 2009; Gibson 2012). It has also become a popular one; writing about trends in place branding, Holden (2007, p. 287) notes that ‘a new orthodoxy has emerged. Every city is now “creative”’.
Yet while it may now be part of the place branding orthodoxy, a targeted branding strategy focusing on a particular class of workers must raise concerns about whether the target class might ultimately benefit more than other urban residents. And while the goal might be to encourage overall economic development that benefits all residents, extensive academic research has identified serious doubts about the value of creative class approaches (see Comunian 2011 for a helpful overview). Key concerns include the fact that the theory is overly simplistic (Scott 2006; Krätke 2010), that it is ineffective (Long 2009), that it has become generic (Peck 2005), and that it may actually exacerbate socio-economic divides (Zimmerman 2008).
These are all critiques that have also been directed at place branding more broadly and will therefore be considered in more depth in Section 2.5. In the meantime, however, the key point is to highlight how place branding efforts associated with creative class theory do have a clearly defined audience—one that accounts for approximately 30% of the US workforce (Florida 2002). By identifying and examining this specific audience, it is possible to see both the narrative and the political contours of place branding emerge, which may otherwise not be apparent from the procedural literature alone.
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2.4.2 TARGETING LOCALS TO FACILITATE REDEVELOPMENT
Even though they are targeted to a specific audience, creative class strategies do fit neatly with the accepted place branding goals of external resource attraction and interurban competition. However, a number of other critical works raise more complex questions about these goals, by querying whether the real target audience for place branding is actually external at all. While the procedural literature identifies or assumes the primary audience for place branding to be outside the city, this critical literature sees the impact of place branding on local conditions as equally, if not more, relevant to how and why place branding is practised.
From early on, scholars like Harvey (1989a), Philo and Kearns (1993) and Hubbard (1996) have highlighted ways in which the facilitation of local redevelopment imperatives is as much a significant driver of official reimaging practices as the classic competitive/external attraction logic (see also Broudehoux 2004; Greenberg 2008b; Colomb 2012a). Instead, they contend that the true motivations behind many official campaigns are more complex, with place branding also functioning as ‘a means of popular pacification, a tool of social control, an instrument of state legitimization and a mechanism of nation building’ (Broudehoux 2004, p. 240). As Philo and Kearns (1993, p. 3) explain:
the self-promotion of places may be operating as a subtle form of socialisation designed to convince local people, many of whom will be disadvantaged and potentially disaffected, that they are important cogs in a successful community and that all sorts of ‘good things’ are really being done on their behalf.
These scholars suggest that the goal of urban branding campaigns in cities like Beijing, New York and Berlin was therefore not just to attract external investment in large-scale, profit- driven redevelopment, but also to condition local residents to accept and even welcome this neoliberal reformulation of their city. In the case of Berlin, for example, Colomb (2012a, p. 311) identifies how tools like civic pride campaigns and exhibitions highlighting the city’s reconstruction were employed to support ‘the legitimation of particular urban planning and architectural models … and the marginalization of alternative visions’.
Through claims like this, these scholars question accepted understandings of place branding as primarily an externally focused, resource attraction strategy. In the process, they also expose place branding as a far more political practice than much of the procedural literature acknowledges. This critical literature therefore not only reaffirms the importance Page 39 of 317 of thinking about audience when examining urban reimaging strategies, but adds a layer of complexity to how the goals of place branding are understood. It also highlights the importance of engaging with place branding—like all political practices—from a critical perspective as well as a procedural one, and how a narrative perspective can assist with this by directing the focus towards issues like audience. With this in mind, the next section offers an overview of some other key concerns raised about place branding in the critical literature to date.
2.5 CRITIQUES OF PLACE BRANDING
Given its association with entrepreneurial urban governance and neoliberal redevelopment, it is not surprising that place branding has been controversial among critical scholars. This section will examine the two key debates emerging from this critical literature: whether place branding is effective, including how this is evaluated; and whether the impact of place branding is unequal or otherwise unjust. These critiques are relevant to the current research in two ways. To begin with, they demonstrate some of the key failures of place branding, highlighting why developing a broader perspective on urban reimaging may be helpful, even for practitioners and academics working in the procedural strand of place branding research. In addition, they provide a critical framework that can be adopted and adapted to an examination of informal image-making. Examining informal image-making against these same concerns will help to facilitate an analysis of the potential narrative power informal reimaging practices may wield.
2.5.1 CONCERNS ABOUT EFFECTIVENESS
For a practice that is still proving its legitimacy (Freire 2005, cf. Parker 2011), there is surprisingly little guidance available on how to measure the success of place branding as a long-term, integrated practice (Anholt 2008; Zenker and Martin 2011). As Govers and Go (2009, p. 249) point out, ‘the process of place branding is much more subtle and subjective than it appears to be in much of the existing image measurement literature’. While this image measurement literature does offer some assessments of how certain places are perceived, the link between these perceptions and specific place branding practices remains unclear (e.g. Laaksonen et al. 2006, Stachow and Hart 2010). Undoubtedly, the multifaceted way in which place branding is conceived as a practice makes meaningful, quantifiable evaluation extremely challenging. Even evaluating the effect of a single facet of
Page 40 of 317 the urban branding process is fraught with difficulty; in a discussion of cultural revitalisation projects, Evans (2005, p. 965) points out:
Methodologies which bring together approaches across anthropology, cultural and urban studies/sociology and apply these to evaluation models which can measure social, economic and physical change, are yet to be developed, although in culture and regeneration this is what the phenomenon demands.
While not providing the kind of complex evaluative framework Evans proposes, Moilanen and Rainisto (2009) do attempt to define what they think success should mean in the place branding context. They set out five desired outcomes for place branding: attract businesses and investments; promote tourism; enhance public diplomacy; support export industries; and strengthen identity and self-respect. While not all of these may apply to all campaigns, this approach does at least point to some quantifiable metrics to be analysed over time, as business, investment, tourism and export levels can be tracked and measured. While public diplomacy and identity/self-respect are more difficult to quantify, they can be qualitatively examined through interviews and focus groups. Perhaps the best example of this kind of approach to tracking perceptions of a city brand longitudinally is the Anholt City Brand Index, which ranks perceptions of major cities on a yearly basis (Anholt 2006).
Such indexes may offer some insights for city officials, but the problem remains that they do not address the underlying question of whether a branding campaign should be given credit for shifts in tourism rates, investment levels or self-respect. Unlike in the corporate world, where branders can exercise a relatively high degree of control over a product and the way it is promoted, cities are extraordinarily heterogeneous entities. The ‘diffuse and amorphous nature of the place product’ (Medway and Warnaby 2008, p. 642) means that even if urban branders achieve a high level of coordination and shared vision among all key stakeholders, the brand image still has to compete with representations produced by many other independent urban actors, including the media, artists and academics (Griffiths 1998; Jansson 2003). Furthermore, as Paddison (1993, p. 342) points out, the ‘inflexible’ nature of cities makes urban change a long-run process. Even if a branding campaign did trigger a new wave of investment, it may take many years to materialise, by which time the link with the campaign may be long forgotten. Given these challenges, it is unsurprising that some observers continue to argue that there is little evidence that urban branding is effective at all, or that it is only the public policy behind it that works, rather than the image-making itself (Beauregard 2008; Colomb 2012a). Page 41 of 317
It is also hard to dispute that many urban marketing and branding campaigns have provided plenty of ammunition for such arguments. This is particularly true of early campaigns designed for post-industrial cities, many of which demonstrated two main flaws. First, they have often been unrealistically positive. In these cases, as Holcomb (2001, p. 55) notes, ‘The goal of city image makers today is to hide the real city behind rose-colored glasses, to obscure the flaws, and to highlight the presumed successes … Today’s marketers seek obfuscation’. Medway and Warnaby (2008, p. 642, 648) concur:
Indeed, it could be argued that the conventional wisdom among place marketing practitioners is that they regard their—perhaps primary—role as the creation of a positive holistic image for a locality through the selective appropriation of place product elements and their commodification in relevant media … the ‘optimism syndrome’ seems so entrenched among place marketers that where negative issues are mentioned it is almost always in terms of how the negative has been removed, or where the negative has somehow transmogrified into a positive.
While understandable, this tendency ultimately undermines the promotional effort by making it look either dishonest or disconnected. The second common flaw in early urban branding campaigns was that they often lacked distinctiveness (Holcomb 1993; Griffiths 1998; Short and Kim 1998; Warnaby and Medway 2013). Ward (1998, p. 189) catalogues how the adoption of the same cookie-cutter urban brand by almost every American Rust Belt city meant that within a few years of urban branding taking off, ‘the post-industrial city [had] already begun, unknowingly, to caricature itself’. For example, the success of the I♥NY campaign has spawned a plethora of copycats—I♥Cleveland being one particularly clunky example (Holcomb 1993). While the logic behind emulating a hugely successful existing brand is clear, this approach fails to recognise that distinctiveness is a key feature of any memorable city—and therefore of any effective city brand (Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010).
Even when city branding is more carefully conceived, there are significant challenges in developing a brand that successfully combines the distinctiveness to distinguish the city, the simplicity to engage a broad audience, and the flexibility to ensure longevity. Cities are different things to different people, and Govers and Go (2009, p. 259) argue that trying to appeal to them all may result in an entirely ineffective brand message, made up of ‘meaningless references to diversity, dynamics, heterogeneity and “finding all you might ever want in one place”’. Mommaas (2002, p. 42) makes a similar point: Page 42 of 317
But even if it is possible to bring about a meaningful connection between a ‘unique’ and broadly shared internal individuality and a cash-rich external demand, branding strategies still necessarily bring about a change in the status of the cultural feelings and tactics so reflected. In any case, they generalize them into a strategic concept, leading to possible rationalization, polishing and the creation of clichés.
Given these challenges, it is not surprising that even procedural place branding theorists acknowledge ‘there are still only a few success stories’ (Moilanen and Rainisto 2009, p. 5; also Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010).
2.5.2 CONCERNS ABOUT IMPACT
While debate continues about whether place branding is effective, it may seem somewhat incongruous that the literature also contains a significant body of work critiquing place branding’s impact. After all, what does it matter if a place branding campaign projects generic imagery if it does not translate into reality? Broadly stated, there are two key reasons for this academic concern: resources now dedicated to place branding might be directed towards other urban issues, and place branding may contribute to greater local inequality and exclusion.
While often portrayed by place branding practitioners as a broadly beneficial exercise, Paddison (1993) makes the important observation that place promotion is an inherently political process. This political nature plays out both in procedural battles—as Govers and Go (2009, p. 9) note, ‘As identity and image are linked to ideology, the risk that the decision-making process might be hijacked by power struggles is all too real’—and in the potential for place branding to serve some parts of the community better than others. Not all citizens feature in ‘imagineered’ cities (Holcomb 2001, p. 37) like the Big Apple, where ‘urban branders [have constructed] a single, hegemonic, and utopian image of the city as a safe place for the middle class to consume, play, live, and invest’ (Greenberg 2008b, p. 24). For other residents—poetically described by Philo and Kearns (1993, p. 18) as ‘the city’s human geography that squidges out from beneath the economic and social logics’ of place promotion—city branding has diverted funding from social services, leaving vulnerable communities more underserviced (Griffiths 1998). Greenberg (2008a, p. 39) points to the aftermath of New York’s 1970s I♥NY and post-9/11 Stronger than Ever campaigns as evidence of such uneven outcomes:
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New York’s image improved dramatically in the eyes of many. Tourists, corporations, and global real-estate developers all returned to the city in great numbers. Yet in both periods fundamental social indicators—like employment rates, hourly wages, housing affordability, and standards of living—continued to decline precipitously for most New Yorkers.
As Griffiths (1998) argues, many of the practical improvements made in the process of place branding—like exclusive festivals or upscale leisure complexes—may technically be available to locals and visitors alike, but are not really accessible to low-income residents. As a result, the less fortunate citizens of rebranded cities may be punished twice over: not only does the work of providing services defer to the work of promoting the city, but the place branding outcomes marginalise these citizens further, all the while telling them they will benefit in the long run.
Above and beyond the specific projects undertaken as part of urban branding, a number of scholars raise concerns that place branding may also contribute to urban inequality and exclusion in more indirect ways. To begin with, there is the symbolic impact that these campaigns can have in terms of making some residents feel more worthwhile than others. As Greenberg’s (2008a, p. 39) quotation highlighted, imagineered cities portray urban life in a way designed to appeal to a particular target market of affluent, mobile, middle-class residents, while hiding other parts of the community from view. For example, Zimmerman (2008, p. 240) argues that the creative class narratives promoted in Milwaukee:
essentially validated one comparatively small and privileged class of consumers, as well as their particular cultural practices, while making nearly invisible representations of the broader population, especially the city’s African–American and immigrant working class and working poor population.
While the latter residents may also aspire to participate in the rebranded city’s revitalised lifestyle, such campaign imagery sends the implicit message that the new city will not be for them (see also Gibson 2005).
A further concern is that if place branding does succeed in attracting a desired class to the city, this may lead to further inequality and exclusion through the process of gentrification (Gibson 2005; Peck 2005; Vanolo 2008; Atkinson and Easthope 2009). Despite being the subject of extensive study (see Lees, Slater and Wyly 2010 for an overview), gentrification
Page 44 of 317 remains a highly contested concept. Clark (2005, p. 258) has sought to overcome this with an ‘elastic yet targeted’ definition:
Gentrification is a process involving a change in the population of land-users such that the new users are of a higher socio-economic status than the previous users, together with an associated change in the built environment through a reinvestment in fixed capital.
As this definition suggests, much of the debate around gentrification has focused on its physical and economic impact, particularly housing displacement for low-income residents (e.g. Smith 1979; Marcuse 1986; Wyly and Hammel 1999). Of potentially greater interest when contemplating the possible negative effects of place branding, however, are the strands of gentrification research which focus on the social and political aspects of this process. On the one hand, socially focused research has examined the personal attributes of gentrifiers, identifying them variously as artists (Zukin 1982; Ley 2003; Lloyd 2006; Herscher 2013) and as well educated, globally networked professionals (Beauregard 1986; Rofe 2003), who actively seek out a different urban milieu to the traditional suburban ideal (Caulfield 1989; Schlichtman and Patch 2014). On the other hand, politically focused work has examined gentrification as a global process (Smith 2002; Atkinson and Bridge 2005), identifying it as an inherent feature of the same trend towards entrepreneurial governance and interurban competition that has inspired place branding.
Looking at these social and political strands of the gentrification literature, the links between place branding and gentrification become apparent. There is a significant overlap between the urban residents who are often the targets of place branding campaigns and those who become gentrifiers, and both gentrification and place branding are ultimately driven by the same global neoliberal imperatives. It is therefore not surprising that gentrification is a subject of concern for many critical place branding scholars like Vanolo (2008, p. 371), who concludes ‘that brands can operate as a “legitimate vocabulary” for justifying specific urban policies, for example, in the case of creativity, in order to justify the transformation and gentrification of particular areas’.
What is also apparent from these two strands of the literature, however, is that gentrification is a process simultaneously shaped by the structural forces of global capitalism and the personal desires of participants (see Paton 2014 for a more detailed analysis). Although the process is largely driven by broader economic and political
Page 45 of 317 imperatives, individuals also help to make gentrification a reality by choosing to become gentrifiers for personal, cultural or economic reasons. This observation prompts an interesting question: might the same prove to be true for urban reimaging practices? As this overview of the place branding literature has demonstrated, the majority of research to date has focused on place branding as a structural process, rather than examining in detail the efforts of other participants in shaping the city’s promotional discourse a broader perspective. The final section of this chapter will provide an overview of the way the existing research has looked beyond government-led place branding, to outline how this literature currently frames the role of non-government participants in urban reimaging practices.
2.6 BROADENING THE PERSPECTIVE: FROM URBAN BRANDING TO URBAN REIMAGING
While the place branding literature does acknowledge that governments and practitioners cannot fully control the image of a city, it offers only a limited perspective on how other urban participants might contribute to urban reimaging processes (Pryor and Grossbart 2007). The focus of much of the procedural literature is on the perceived success stories like New York, where place branding has become ‘a coordinated and professional strategy integral to the City’s economic development initiative’ (Beauregard 2008, p. 300). This top- down understanding is also reflected in the approaches to practising place branding outlined in section 2.3, as well as most critical debates around the evaluation and impact of place branding.
Yet, for cities like Detroit and Newcastle—where official place branding practices have been more limited—the image shift underway suggests there is value in also looking beyond this top-down perspective to understand the dynamics at play. If official place branding practices cannot be credited with image change in these cities, what or who else might be involved? The existing place branding literature does not seem to provide a clear answer to this question. This is especially true of the procedural literature, which is still coming to terms with the question of how the urban public might play a role within official place branding practices (Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2010). While a growing literature recognises that public participation is necessary for successful place branding (see Kavaratzis 2012 for an overview), such participation is generally seen as occurring within a top-down branding
Page 46 of 317 campaign (e.g. Campelo et al. 2009; Houghton and Stevens 2011; Ketter and Avraham 2012; see King and Crommelin 2013).
In the critical literature, authors like Colomb (2012a) and Greenberg (2008b) highlight the way networks and partnerships of urban elites (particularly key stakeholders like major corporations and institutions) play an integral role in place branding as a top-down strategy. While accepting Greenberg’s (2008b) argument that the term place branding should be used to refer specifically to such co-ordinated, strategic, top-down practices, this leaves open the question of how best to examine and conceptualise the role of participants beyond these government-led networks in contributing to the city’s promotional discourse.
Admittedly, there is now a small but growing interest in this issue within the literature (see King and Crommelin 2013). Braun, Kavaratzis and Zenker (2010) identify a phenomenon of ‘non-official’ branding or ‘counter branding’, referring to grassroots campaigns that explicitly challenge place brands, such as the I Amsterdamned campaign that protested against the official I Amsterdam tagline. Such campaigns have their roots in culture jamming (Klein 2000), a form of protest intended to undermine the growing power of corporate brands and denounce the broader commodification of urban life. Similarly, Medway and Warnaby (2008) adopt the phrase place demarketing to describe humorous but negative representations designed to mock a city and its branding efforts. Examples include the United Kingdom’s Crap Towns campaign (Crap Towns n.d.), parody sites like The Alternative Guide to Bracknell (Anon. n.d.) and a local comedian’s fake tourism ads for Cleveland (Polk 2009), which had over six million views at the time of this writing. While these representations do give the impression that local residents have a sense of humour, they also portray a perspective on these cities that is unlikely to match the official urban branding vision.
Looking beyond these deliberately contradictory efforts, however, it is also possible to observe other urban participants producing and disseminating representations of the city that are more promotional. While these representations may vary significantly from the official branding imagery, they are not necessarily produced to explicitly respond to or reject an official brand. Yet even if they are not directly related to official place branding efforts, such representations may help to reshape a city’s image and may potentially even do so in a positive way. Only a handful of scholars have explored these kinds of informal image-making efforts in detail, at least with regards to the recent era (see Ward 1998 and
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Greenberg 2008b for discussion of the boosters—entrepreneurs, showmen—who might be seen as the historical predecessors of today’s informal image-makers). Jessop and Sum (2000) touch on the fact that a broad range of urban participants play a role in the development of the entrepreneurial city, including (presumably) in an image-making capacity. King and Crommelin (2013) explore the possibility of place-focused parody shows like Portlandia and Pittsburgh Dad functioning as a form of ‘DIY city branding’ (although informal image-making might be a better term given the definitions adopted here). These shows poke fun at local quirks, but in a way that projects an underlying fondness for these places and their people. Broudehoux (2004), Greenberg (2008b) and Colomb (2012a) all consider non-governmental image-making efforts in their branding case studies, although each from a perspective that largely frames them as a counterpoint to official branding efforts. Colomb (2012a) also examines the promotional image-making efforts of local business and neighbourhood associations, and has more recently explored how Berlin’s independent cultural projects are increasingly being featured in official branding campaigns (Colomb 2012b). This work provides valuable insights into the reimaging potential of these kinds of projects, but is primarily interested in understanding how these independent efforts have been incorporated into official creative class policies.
Together, these works provide a starting point for exploring the possibility that informal image-makers are contributing to the reimaging processes in their cities in diverse ways. They do not, however, provide a detailed picture of who is involved, what the motivations behind such efforts might be, or what practices they might employ. It is therefore difficult to gain a sense of whether these efforts should be viewed as part of a broader trend towards informal participation in urban reimaging - part of what might be referred to as the ‘broader urban imaging landscape’ - and, if so, what the significance of such a trend might be. As such, it may be helpful to look beyond government-led urban branding and to examine in more detail the efforts of some of these informal participants and practices, in order to address some of these unanswered questions.
2.7 CONCLUSION
This chapter demonstrates that place branding has now attracted a significant amount of academic attention, which examines it both as a promotional practice and as an element of broader entrepreneurial governance strategies. While gaps remain, this literature provides an increasingly detailed overview of government-led place branding practices, particularly
Page 48 of 317 from the perspective of the participants but also from a broader critical perspective that brings the issue of audience more clearly into the frame. In the procedural strand of this research, urban branding is portrayed as a sophisticated top-down process to be guided by branding professionals, incorporating not only representational strategies but also physical urban strategies like developing flagship architecture and holding public events. The place brand is defined by its holistic nature, making integration and coordination between key stakeholders an essential element for success.
Yet, while this procedural literature presents a largely positive view of the ways urban branding can reshape the city, the critical literature has raised concerns about whether place branding can achieve its desired goals and what impact it might have on different residents in the city. In this literature, place branding is critiqued as being both a waste of valuable urban resources and a method for reshaping local attitudes to accept uneven redevelopment practices. While these may seem somewhat contradictory criticisms, overall this literature presents a convincing argument that the likely outcome of most urban branding will be greater urban inequality rather than broadly beneficial economic development. By highlighting its exclusionary imagery, its links to creative class theory, and its relationship to gentrification, this literature thus provides valuable insights into the political contours of place branding.
In both strands of this literature, however, place branding is understood as a top-down, government-led process, meaning there is less attention given to image-makers not directly involved in these processes. While a handful of scholars have identified informal projects that might contribute to reshaping a city’s image, there has been less attention given to the questions of how and why such informal reimaging might occur or what its greater significance might be. Such informal efforts may not be part of place branding per se, but they may reflect some elements of this practice or construct similar narratives. If so, it seems there might be value in bringing some of the perspectives and debates developed in the place branding literature into an examination of unofficial reimaging efforts and vice versa.
While the place branding literature is limited in its consideration of informal reimaging strategies, other strands of urban theory do offer useful insights into how such informal reimaging practices might be conceptualised. These additional theoretical perspectives
Page 49 of 317 offer an important foundation for developing in-depth case studies of urban image-making in Detroit and Newcastle, for reasons that will be explored in the next chapter.
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3 BEYOND THE BRAND: REIMAGING INSIGHTS FROM URBAN THEORY
While official place branding practices are now increasingly well documented in the academic literature, this literature offers fewer insights into the way informal participants may also be influencing urban reimaging processes. As such, it is helpful to look beyond the place branding literature to seek out some additional theoretical concepts to assist with identifying, examining and assessing how informal image-making efforts might be understood. While there are many strands of the broader urban theory literature that could contribute to this process, three strands of this literature seem particularly relevant: DIY urbanism, place theory, and network analysis. Together, these three strands of theory offer insights that may help to determine how informal image-makers might be identified, what the motivations of participants might be and what tools they are likely to employ.
Beginning with DIY urbanism, there is now a growing body of critical research examining this popular but amorphous trend, defining who the participants are and how they are engaging with the city. This research also connects DIY urbanism with existing theoretical work on other informal urban movements, including everyday urbanism and the right to the city. Informal image-making is also an amorphous concept that potentially incorporates a diverse range of practices (as indicated in Section 2.6), and which is yet to be clearly defined in the reimaging literature. The fact that informal reimaging efforts seem to fit within the broad philosophy underpinning DIY urbanism suggests there are useful practical and theoretical connections to be drawn here, which may provide a framework for defining who is participating in informal reimaging and how their efforts might be understood.
Second, the extensive body of urban theory examining the concepts of place, place attachment and glocalisation provides insights into the emotional and cultural relationships urban residents have with their cities, and may shed light on the motivations behind informal image-making. With official place branding, the structural motivations of interurban competition and economic development are well documented, while individual participants can expect a direct financial benefit as employees of the government or major stakeholder organisations. Whether such direct financial benefits are associated with informal image-making efforts is less clear, however, suggesting other place-based motivations may also be at play.
Third, there is a diverse body of work that considers the role of networks and networking in shaping urban society. While official place branders usually have dedicated advertising and Page 51 of 317
PR budgets for disseminating campaign imagery, informal image-making participants are unlikely to be able to afford similar branding methods. As such, they must rely on other freely available strategies like networking, both online and offline. The literature on urban networks offers some insights into how such strategies might enable informal image- makers to have a noticeable impact on a city’s image, despite lacking access to many of the traditional tools of urban branding.
This chapter offers an overview of the key features of these three strands of urban theory in turn, with a particular focus on how they might be relevant to understanding informal reimaging efforts in Detroit and Newcastle. In doing so, it outlines the central elements of a theoretical framework for conceptualising informal urban reimaging practices in transitional cities and potentially in other urban contexts also. This theoretical framework will, in turn, help to inform the design of an appropriate methodological approach for empirically examining informal reimaging efforts in Detroit and Newcastle.
3.1 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING IN THE DIY CITY
The practice variously described as DIY, guerrilla or tactical urbanism has attracted a growing amount of attention in recent years, both public and academic.4 While the concept of DIY can be traced back to the post–World War II era (C. Smith 2014), a renewed interest in DIY strategies has recently become apparent across a range of spheres, from home renovations to computer ‘hacktivism’ to media production. Although often positioned as a new trend (e.g. Nettler 2012), Douglas (2011, 2012) argues that DIY urbanism has its roots in twentieth century counter-culture movements such as Europe’s Situationist International movement of the 1960s and New York’s urban-gardening movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Following in these footsteps, DIY urbanism can be understood as ‘a phenomenon of the so-called neoliberal era’ (Douglas 2014, p. 10), emerging as both a response to and a reflection of neoliberal urban conditions like post-industrial economic decline, state disinvestment, and gentrification. This is a persuasive argument given that the current enthusiasm for DIY urbanism flourished at much the same time as cities began to experience the negative impacts of the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. Zeiger (2011a) has drawn a similar link between the GFC and the trend towards DIY urban interventions, as has the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). SPUR’s September
4 See Finn 2014 for an extensive list of alternative terminology.
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2010 exhibition was among the earliest examinations of the DIY urbanism trend and its broader political context. It argued:
The current economic crisis has proven to be more than a challenge to our wallets: it has tested our faith in personal agency and our optimism in the future. But this malaise has met its match in the Bay Area, where a spirit of fierce independence has always thrived. Here the bad economy has a silver lining: it has reinvigorated and mobilized the community of do-it-yourself urbanists (SPUR 2010, para. 1).
This contextualisation of DIY urbanism within a broader neoliberal framework was important, as it gave the concept a social and political significance beyond the small-scale, independent nature of the interventions.
It was also the SPUR exhibition that provided the philosophy of DIY urbanism mentioned in the introduction to this thesis (Keffer 2011), which sets out the ‘who, what, where, when and how’ of DIY urbanism. This philosophy is appealing, as it captures the hands-on, pragmatic and opportunistic nature of the concept, while arguably remaining broad enough to incorporate the various strands of informal urban practice that have flourished in recent years. In particular, using this formula, DIY urbanism might be seen as a broad umbrella term incorporating more politically motivated urban interventions (often labelled guerrilla urbanism), interventions designed to achieve long-term urban change (tactical urbanism), and entirely independent, impromptu urban practices not inspired by any political or long- term goal. This openness is useful given Iveson’s (2013, p. 941) point that, at least for the time being, ‘The search for an appropriate language to describe these practices reflects the fact that we are not quite sure what, if anything, connects them across their diversity’.
Not all commentators would agree with this broad definitional approach, however; in particular, both Lydon (2011) and Cupers (2007) categorise DIY urbanism as a counterpoint to tactical urbanism, with the latter distinguished by the potential for collaboration with authorities and the goal of achieving permanent change. While this is a useful distinction in some respects, it risks downplaying the capacity of urban interventions to metamorphose— for a non-political project to become the symbol of a particular movement or for a short- term grassroots project to be adopted and institutionalised. Keffer’s conceptualisation allows for this flexibility and makes it possible to use DIY urbanism as a framework to examine and critique a wide range of urban interventions, from urban farming to art installations, public events, food distribution systems, design ideas for public spaces, and
Page 53 of 317 projects related to information sharing, political reorganisation and urban representation. Importantly, Keffer’s approach is also broad enough to incorporate the latter, more intangible forms of intervention, which might be seen as extending DIY urbanism beyond related concepts like Douglas’s (2014) ‘DIY urban design’, Hou’s (2010) ‘insurgent public space’, or Franck and Stevens’s (2013) ‘loose space’.
As the brief historical above overview suggests, DIY urbanism is conceptualised in both the popular and academic literature as a primarily Western urban practice, most prevalent in post-industrial cities. Looking beyond this context, there is an interesting question to be asked about the relationship between DIY urbanism and the broader concept of urban informality (on the latter see Roy and AlSayyad 2004; Roy 2005; Porter 2011), a phenomenon most commonly examined in the cities of the global south but also a significant influence in the global north (Devlin 2011; Gaffikin and Perry 2012). Informality in this literature most commonly refers to “modes of human settlement and trade or exchange that occur outside of formal legal structures and processes” (Porter 2011, p.115). The term is contested (Porter 2011), however, with approaches associating the concept solely with marginality or illegality being subjected to challenge (Gaffikin and Perry 2012), and scholars like Roy (2005) arguing that informality should be seen as an equally valid mode of urbanism to formality. Interestingly, Dovey (2012) suggests that parts of the creative economy and creative clusters might also be seen as forms of urban informality, while Iveson (2013) points out that DIY urbanism projects can exist on a scale between informal and formal. These overlaps highlight some of the complexities in identifying and defining the precise nature of the DIY urbanism movement by reference to existing urban theory. 5
A similar story emerges from efforts to explore the contours of DIY urbanism by reference to other strands of urban theory, including everyday urbanism and the right to the city (e.g. Stickells 2011; Crawford 2012; Iveson 2013; Finn 2014). Described by Crawford (1999, p. 8) as ‘a new position in understanding and approaching the city’, everyday urbanism is premised on the idea that the patterns and experiences of everyday life should be a guiding force in how urban space is understood and shaped. Rather than the ‘carefully planned, officially designated and often underused’ (Crawford 1999, p. 9) spaces that attract most
5 Again, it is important to reiterate the distinction between the use of ‘informal’ in this text – as a term to describe the efforts of DIY urbanists and other non-governmental actors in place promotion – and the concept of ‘urban informality’, as it is discussed in this critical literature.
Page 54 of 317 attention from urban professionals, everyday urbanism requires a focus on the ‘in- between’ urban spaces that are often overlooked—spaces where DIY urbanism also often flourishes. Everyday urbanism itself draws on broader urban theory, particularly the French theorists Guy Debord (1967), Michel de Certeau (1984) and Henri Lefebvre (1991) who used the concept of everyday life as a framework for examining and understanding the city. As Debord (1962, para. 8) explained, central to this perspective is the conviction that:
we still have to place everyday life at the center of everything. Every project begins from it and every accomplishment returns to it to acquire its real significance. Everyday life is the measure of all things: of the (non)fulfilment of human relations; of the use of lived time; of artistic experimentation; and of revolutionary politics.
Proponents of everyday urbanism therefore advocate an informal, bottom-up approach to thinking about urban space and change, drawing inspiration from the ‘resourceful and imaginative ways’ (Kelbaugh 2008, p.107) residents respond to and reshape their urban environment to suit their needs. In this respect, it is an approach which shares many similarities with DIY urbanism.
As the last point in Debord’s quote suggests, the work of these French theorists goes beyond simply using the everyday as an analytical framework for the city, proposing more activist approaches to achieving urban change. Their work has informed DIY urbanism in this respect. Zeiger (2012a) explains how DIY urbanism draws heavily on De Certeau’s concept of tactics, which refers to the tools the weak can use to shape urban life to their own ends to counteract the totalising ‘strategies’ of the powerful (1984, p. 29) (although note the conceptual blurriness created by the use of tactical urbanism to describe sanctioned or collaborative interventions).
The same is true for Lefebvre’s (1968) phrase ‘the right to the city’, which has become a catchcry of groups seeking to reclaim public space in support of broader political goals (Purcell 2002), particularly as re-articulated by Harvey (2008) and Soja (2010). Together, these theoretical constructs have been marshalled in support of the idea that urban participants who benefit little from neoliberal redevelopment strategies can and should play a role in reshaping urban space and urban politics. One of the most high profile examples of this has been the Occupy Wall Street movement, which set up camp in New York’s Zuccotti Park to protest the entrenched financial and social inequities in American society (see Sorkin 2012).
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Whether a shared political vision or ‘imaginary’ is an integral element of DIY urbanism is a point of debate in the emerging academic literature. Iveson (2013) argues that a shared politics – such as a radical understanding of the right to the city - is necessary for DIY urbanism to demonstrate its value as a significant urban movement, rather than simply an ad-hoc collection of urban practices. Crawford (2012, para. 4) also sees the concept of the right to the city as offering a framework for theorising DIY urbanism, but in a less explicitly political way:
For [Lefebvre], rights to the city are never predetermined but are always produced by particular groups with specific demands shaped by their circumstances. This open-ended concept acknowledges the political possibilities of a multiplicity of urban imaginaries, representations, and interventions. It empowers artists, architects, cultural activists, and ordinary citizens to become key players by inventing new practices, strategies, and tactics to claim their rights to their city and to freely project alternative possibilities for urban life … Lefebvre proposed building “experimental utopias”’—imaginings given concrete form—as the first step in acquiring rights to the city. Doing exactly that are the projects featured in Spontaneous Interventions, all of which are grounded in actual cities yet are expansive in their reimagining of urban life. The projects’ divergent goals, varied methods, and multifarious participants should be seen as strengths rather than weaknesses. They are openings towards a new urban politics, still to be discovered.
This broad perspective on the scope of motivations and methods within DIY urbanism is seemingly reinforced by Douglas (2011, p. 6), who argues that many DIY urbanists ‘largely reject activist and even artist labels and [express] no great interest in promoting themselves or their work, nor in making any broader radical or “revolutionary” political statements or changes’. This supports a logic of DIY urbanism informed less by dialectic, oppositional understandings of urban change (tactic/strategy, resistance/power, bottom-up/top-down) than by what Cupers (2007, p. 5) describes as ‘an alternative vision of the city: no longer a dichotomy, but a multitude of (dis)ordering interventions that constitute and transform the urban landscape’. In this respect, DIY urbanism might even be seen as an example of what Ong (2011, p. 21) describes as ‘novel combinations of entrepreneurial and civic elements’ emerging in cities with limited government oversight, whereby ‘the symbiosis between neoliberal calculations and social activism engenders a complex urban scene of multiple motivations, coalitions and borrowings that both destabilize and form new configurations
Page 56 of 317 of urban society’. This more hybrid theoretical framework offers a helpfully open-ended perspective from which to contemplate and assess how the broader trend towards DIY urbanism might inform the process of image-making in Detroit and Newcastle.
In practice, while many planners and other urbanists have embraced DIY urbanism with enthusiasm, it is important to note that this is not always the case. Because DIY urbanism often operates outside the official regulatory system, interventions are frequently considered either illegal or illegitimate by authorities and residents (e.g. Biegelsen 2012). Assessments of DIY urbanism’s legitimacy often come down to personal taste: the intervention will be considered a clever or important contribution to urban life by those who find it aesthetically appealing or practically useful, or vandalism or an illegitimate political protest by those who view it as ugly, misguided or unnecessary (e.g. Richards 2013). By its very nature, DIY urbanism embodies a tension within the democratic system— it can be both a practical example of the democratic freedom of expression, and a contravention of the obligation to respect the rules of democratic civil society. Because of this tension, DIY urbanism may be viewed as enhancing a city more for some residents than others—particularly those who accept and even appreciate fragmentation and uncertainty in the way the city functions.
This point about who benefits from DIY urbanism also highlights another significant concern about the practice and how it shapes place: is it, like place branding, a potential precursor to gentrification? Currently, the limited academic research on DIY urbanism makes it difficult to do more than raise the question (e.g. Deslandes 2013; Finn 2014; Douglas 2014). In one of the few empirical studies on DIY urbanism to date, Douglas (2014, p. 19) identifies patterns that suggest ‘it is entirely possible … that these ostensibly counter-cultural acts of organic, positive, informal contribution may, just like official urban design improvements, ultimately help increase property values, and thus precipitate and even encourage the gentrification process’. In particular, observation does suggest that many DIY urbanists are middle-class, college-educated, and fit Florida’s notion of the creative class (Douglas 2014), prompting some to critique the trend as ‘hipster gentrification’ (Deslandes 2013, p. 221).6 In Detroit, for example, while many locals are undoubtedly involved in DIY urbanism - both
6 Like Douglas I have adopted Florida’s creative class label at points in this thesis to refer to the predominantly tertiary-educated, middle-class, creative-industry-employed demographic that is prominent in both DIY urbanism and informal image-making, as well as the primary audience for these efforts. By using this term, however, I do not mean to suggest unqualified support for Florida’s broader theory. On occasion the term ‘hipster’ is also used, which might be understood as overlapping with the ‘super-creative’ subset within the creative class, although any distinction is at best fuzzy, and many observers use these terms interchangeably.
Page 57 of 317 out of desire and necessity - there is also a noticeable influx of people from this demographic (Linebaugh 2011), who have the luxury of choosing to embrace Detroit’s DIY ethos (Walljasper 2012; Cowley 2014). On the other hand, DIY urbanism is not unique to transitional cities like Detroit or Newcastle; it is also flourishing in cities like New York and San Francisco, where gentrification has long since occurred. In these cities, DIY urbanism can instead be seen as a response to gentrification, a way of ‘taking back the city’ for those priced out of it.
Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn from the above overview is that the meaning and value of DIY urbanism is highly contextual (Douglas 2014). This contextual nature is linked to a third criticism of DIY urbanism, which is that it is ultimately too local, whimsical or experimental to have any meaningful impact. Certainly, the small changes brought about through DIY interventions do seem to pale into insignificance when juxtaposed against the significant structural challenges cities like Detroit and Newcastle face (Doerr 2011). Iveson (2013) warns against a tendency to romanticise DIY urbanism as necessarily being a force for good, without critically examining whether a particular intervention will have any broader social or political impact. For other observers, the power of DIY urbanism is inherently limited by its small-scale nature. To borrow Michael Speaks’ critique of everyday urbanism, DIY urbanism might well be viewed as simply ‘too much bottom, not enough “up”’ (quoted in Kelbaugh 2008, p. 113).
This is a legitimate criticism, and it is still too early in the lifecycle of DIY urbanism to evaluate its long-term effects in any meaningful way. Yet, while the impact of DIY urbanism remains open to debate, the enthusiasm for this trend clearly highlights a popular desire to engage with both real and representational urban space in ways that go beyond participation in official programs. Whether political, personal or pragmatic, this desire—and the theory that sits behind it—seems to be of direct relevance to defining and understanding the concept of informal image-making. As such, it is central to the additional theoretical framework being developed here to examine the broader reimaging processes reshaping Detroit and Newcastle. The same is true of place theory, which will be considered next.
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3.2 POST-INDUSTRIAL PLACE-MAKING: HOW PLACE SHAPES INFORMAL REIMAGING
For a practice with the word place in its title, the procedural place branding literature gives surprisingly limited consideration to the expansive body of academic work on place theory. As outlined in Chapter 2, there has been an ongoing discussion in this literature about the particular challenges associated with branding something as multifaceted as a place, over and above the challenges of branding a product. Beyond this, however, the theory of place—and what it tells us about how cities work—remains a topic only a handful of procedural place branding scholars have addressed in detail (Pryor and Grossbart 2007; see Mayes 2008; Campelo et al. 2009; Lindstedt 2011; Kalandides 2012 for examples). This section will provide only a brief overview of this complex and heavily theorised concept, with the primary goal of exploring whether it may prove helpful for understanding the methods and motivations of informal reimaging participants. At the same time, however, an examination of the relationship between place theory and image-making may also shed light on issues of significance to official place branding participants, particularly in transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle.
3.2.1 FROM PLACE TO PLACE ATTACHMENT
For a word so commonly used, place has proven a ‘slippery’ (Corcoran 2002, p. 203) and polysemic academic concept, given a broad array of definitions and functions across a range of disciplines (Castello 2010). Like many complex concepts, it is perhaps easiest to define through a comparison with what it is not, particularly as a counterpoint to ‘space’. While space exists only in the abstract, ‘place is space filled up by people, practices, objects, and representations’ (Gieryn 2000, p. 465), somewhere to which humans have attached significance or meaning. Yet interestingly, one of the few definitions of place that does not rely on a dualism with space is perhaps also the most poetic (Relph 2008, p. 311):
Culture, Clifford Geertz has suggested, consists of webs of significance woven by humans, in which we are all suspended. Places occur where these webs touch the earth and connect humans to the world.
While these two definitions reflect a similar understanding of place, the conceptual terrain is not always so clear, and other academics have defined the meaning of both place and space differently (Dovey 2010). This is particularly true of Lefebvre (1974 [1991]), for example, who instead uses six terms to describe space in different ways—perceived space, Page 59 of 317 conceived space, lived space, spatial practice, representations of space and representational space. The complexity of this conceptual landscape has resulted in a range of more descriptive terms emerging, designed to explain different facets and functions of the concept of place. These include place character, spirit of place, sense of place, and place attachment. Yet these additional terms have arguably just added to the confusion. As Vanclay (2008, p. 9) notes: ‘If “place” is difficult to define, “sense of place” is even more so’. Again, this is partly a result of varying terminology use by different scholars. Relph (2008, p. 314) offers some of the clearest guidance on the key distinctions, describing spirit of place as ‘an inherent quality’ which ‘gives somewhere a distinctive identity’, while sense of place is:
the faculty by which we grasp spirit of place and which allows us to appreciate the differences and similarities between places. Spirit of place exists primarily outside us (but is experienced through memory and intention) and sense of place lies primarily inside us (but is influenced by the landscapes we encounter). From a practical perspective, this means that while it is possible to design environments that enhance or diminish spirit of place, it is no more possible to design my sense of place than it is to design my memory.
In other words, spirit of place can be seen as referring to the inherent nature or qualities of the webs of significance that touch the earth in a particular place, while sense of place is a personal attribute—an ability or willingness to perceive how and understand why these particular localities are given human significance. Or, to take Vanclay’s (2008, p. 7) words, sense of place ‘properly refers to an individual’s connection with the place … [while] “spirit of place”, or genius loci, is a more appropriate term when referring to the qualities of a place that make it special’. In this reckoning, spirit of place seems more closely linked to the concept of ‘place character’, which is used most commonly in sociological literature. Paulsen (2004, p. 245) describes place character as ‘a set of patterns in meaning and action that are specific to a distinct locale’, emphasising the importance of practice and action as key aspects of place beyond static factors like geography and the built environment. This definition also brings a grounded quality to the understanding of place, highlighting the importance of understanding not just what makes up a place’s character but also ‘how a place’s character matters—how it shapes action’ (Paulsen 2004, p. 246), such as how it affects the use of power or the sharing of resources.
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On the other hand, sense of place is perhaps more closely related to another widely used concept, place attachment, a term used to describe the ‘positively experienced bonds that individuals and groups form with sociophysical environments’ (Brown, Altman and Werner 2012, p. 183). As this description suggests, place attachment can involve an emotional connection to both the physical and social qualities of places. It can be experienced either individually or in a collective way, the latter involving a connection with ‘the symbolic meanings of a place that are shared among members’ (Scannell and Gifford 2010, p. 2). While much of the literature examines a person’s attachment to a home or a neighbourhood, Hidalgo and Hernandez (2001) demonstrate that a strong level of place attachment to a city is also common, confirming Tuan’s (1975, p. 156) view of cities as ‘centers of meaning par excellence’. Furthermore, work by scholars like Fried (1963) and Corcoran (2002) suggests that place attachment can be strong even in places troubled by disinvestment or social issues. Research by Mah (2009, 2010) confirms this to be true for residents of declining post-industrial cities in the United Kingdom and the United States, offering the phrase ‘devastation but also home’ (Mah 2010) to describe this complex relationship to place.
As these findings suggest, place attachment clearly has significant power as an emotive force, even in cities that might not be viewed as objectively appealing. This suggests a possible motive for participating in urban reimaging that goes beyond the more rational political and economic conceptualisations of why key stakeholders participate in urban branding. Lewicka (2011a) notes that there is some limited evidence that people demonstrating a high level of place attachment may be more motivated to protect or improve that place, although other research rejects this connection; overall, the literature on this point is far from conclusive. Subsequent research (Lewicka 2011b) suggests that these inconsistent results may reflect different kinds of place attachment. Residents who demonstrate ‘ideological rootedness’ (i.e. an active choice to live in a particular place) may demonstrate higher levels of social engagement with the place, while those who demonstrate ‘traditional rootedness’ (i.e. place attachment arising out of a lack of mobility) may be less socially engaged. The concept of ideological rootedness may, therefore, offer a possible explanation for why participants become motivated to engage in informal image- making, depending on their personal, social and educational history and the nature of their connection with the city. Given these complexities, it seems the possible relationship between place attachment and informal image-making presents an interesting and valuable avenue for further exploration. Page 61 of 317
Yet, while place attachment may present a possible explanation for why informal image- makers become involved in informal image-making, place theory also informs broader political and social processes that may contribute to this trend. In particular, place theory sits at the heart of much academic debate about the impact of globalisation, which is relevant to the questions of who participates in informal image-making and how.
3.2.2 CONSTRUCTIONS OF PLACE IN A GLOBALISING WORLD
The idea of place is arguably as old as human society itself; human attachment to specific geographic locations is evident in every significant archaeological site uncovered. Place as an academic object of study is somewhat newer, although it too has a lengthy history. In a detailed review, Massey and Thrift (2003) note that the concept of place was at the heart of geographical academic inquiry until the 1960s and has ebbed and flowed in academic popularity and definition over the subsequent period. It is only in last few decades— coinciding with the emergence of globalisation—that place has come to be seen as ‘one of the key means by which the social sciences and humanities are attempting to lever open old ways of proceeding and tell new stories about the world’ (Massey and Thrift 2003, p. 276). A key trigger for this re-embrace of place within geography was the work of Marxist scholars, who argued that both space and place are social constructions. On this view, places are not simply ‘bounded territories with internally generated authenticities’—fixed geographical containers that simply exist—but must be seen as ‘a particular point in the wider intersections of social relations’ (Massey and Thrift 2003, p. 281). As Healey (2004, p. 47) puts it, there has been a growing acceptance among those seeking to understand place that ‘rather than searching for some inherent “natural” qualities of place … meanings of place are likely to be diverse and contested’. Wortham-Galvin (2008, p. 32) explains why place is so multilayered and contested:
Guided by various motives, people enact place for many reasons: to disseminate propaganda; to reveal the politics of context; to perpetuate tradition; to instill beliefs and values; and to rebel against these patterns. Places whose outward form may thus appear permanent and universal are founded on the experiential, associational, and ephemeral nature of dwelling and being.
As a result of these scholarly insights, place was fundamentally reconceptualised as fluid rather than static, constantly constructed and contested both from the top down and from
Page 62 of 317 the bottom up. Or as Wortham-Galvin (2008, p. 39) neatly put it, ‘Place is always a remaking process, never a product’.
In the light of this new, flexible understanding of place, one of the concerns associated with globalisation has been that places will becoming increasingly homogenised and local distinctiveness will be destroyed. Rather than enabling an appreciation of the diversity and complexity of places around the world, globalisation has been viewed by many as facilitating the rapid spread of placelessness, as copycat architecture, cultural developments and place-images are replicated internationally. Relph (2008, p. 312) describes placelessness as ‘a sort of non-place quality manifest in uniformity, standardisation and disconnection from context’. The experience of placelessness is succinctly captured by Smith (2007, p. 91), who describes it as a ‘could-be-anywhere’ feeling.
In a globalised world, places are seen as increasingly constructed and controlled by a select elite—particularly urban places—resulting in increasing levels of placelessness. Gieryn (2000, p. 463) summarises the developments that have triggered this set of concerns:
Technological revolutions in transportation and communication, it is said, have all but eliminated the drag once imposed by location and distance on human interaction and on the flow of goods, capital or information. Social life now moves through nodes in one or another network, through points of power or convergence or translation but not anchored at any place necessarily. The places we build appear as clones of places elsewhere: suburban tracts, shopping malls, freeway interchanges, office complexes, and gussied up old neighborhoods vary less and less. As places lose their distinctiveness, place loses its reality and significance, some believe.
Yet, as Gieryn goes on to explain, the response to the perceived loss of distinctive places through globalisation has not been to abandon the idea that place is important. Instead, this period has been characterised by a growing sense among urban theorists and activists that in a globalised world, perhaps more than ever, ‘place matters’ (Adams, Hoelscher and Till 2001, p. xx). There has also been a burgeoning interest in how place might be made or enhanced, even in cities where generic or placeless development has prevailed. This interest has led to what can be broadly characterised as the place-making movement, although the term is once again problematic and contested.
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At the heart of place-making lies the idea encapsulated by Tuan’s well-known statement that ‘undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value’ (1977, p. 6). At its broadest, then, place-making could be understood to mean any attempt to enhance the personal or cultural significance of a geographic location. Put another way, place-making could involve both practices designed to connect geographic locations to Geertz’s webs of significance and those designed to reinforce connections that already exist. Yet, partly because place itself is such a slippery concept, what place-making means in practice has been a little more difficult to pin down. Which practices can contribute to the creation or enhancement of place and which can’t? And, perhaps more importantly, who decides?
One way of responding to these issues has been to construct place and localness as closely associated concepts, with local input and inspiration seen as key elements in the creation of place, as opposed to placeless, internationally-driven major development. For example, place-making consultants Project for Public Spaces (PPS) describe place-making as a ‘process [that] capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, ultimately creating good public spaces that promote people’s health, happiness, and well being’ (PPS n.d., para. 4). Such statements might be viewed as part of a broader cultural trend towards the valorisation of localness, which Hall (1991) suggests involves a retreat to the local to escape the cultural complexities of globalisation (see also Massey 1991). Clear distinctions between local and global are not so easy to draw in practice, however. As Augé (1995, p. 107) notes, ‘In the concrete reality of today’s world, places and spaces, places and non-places intertwine and tangle together’. Furthermore, through the work of Florida (2002) and others, ‘quality of place’ has come to be seen as a key determinant of a city’s appeal, creating the somewhat ironic outcome that place-making is now being touted as contributing to a city’s global competitiveness. As such, entrepreneurial city elites are increasingly supporting and conducting place-making efforts, with official organisations like the Michigan State Housing Development Authority extolling its value (MSHDA 2012), while PPS offers place-making advice to cities around the globe. These developments raise questions about what exactly place-making efforts are likely to achieve—are they genuinely enhancing place, or could they be understood as an element of urban branding, designed primarily to make places look better from the outside?
Meanwhile, the global nature of organisations like PPS highlights how both place-making and DIY urbanism—with which place-making sometimes overlaps—might be understood as
Page 64 of 317 examples of what has been termed glocalisation (Robertson 1995; Swyngedouw 1997). Rejecting the suggestion that globalisation means local influence is being destroyed or becoming insignificant, proponents of glocalisation instead argue that ‘the local and the global are mutually constituted’ (Swyngedouw 1997, p. 137). While there is some debate over precisely how glocalisation should be defined, the key point for this research is Robertson’s (1995, p. 31) observation that ‘contemporary conceptions of locality are largely produced in something like global terms’, as the internet and international travel enable local ideas to spread far and wide. The term thus provides a fitting description for the global spread of hyper-local urban practices like place-making and DIY urbanism, seen not only in the efforts of PPS but also in internationally replicated DIY interventions like Park(ing) Day (observed by 183 cities in 2010). In fact, such interventions have become so globally popular that legitimate questions are now being asked about whether they too contribute to urban homogeneity (Zeiger 2012b).
These developments reinforce the conclusion that, in a globalised world, understandings of place are simultaneously shaped by both local and global forces. This has implications for how informal image-making might be conceptualised and examined as a practice, highlighting a need to explore both the local inspirations for informal image-making efforts and the way these efforts might also reflect globally prevalent patterns of urban representation. Place theory is therefore central to understanding informal reimaging practices, not only in terms of providing an explanation for why these informal efforts are occurring but also in shedding light on how these image-making practices fit within broader cultural processes like globalisation and glocalisation.
Meanwhile, the discussion of glocalisation above also highlights a more pragmatic factor that seems highly relevant to understanding informal image-making: the internet. The emergence of cyberspace is one of the key features of globalisation that has facilitated increasingly close interconnections between urban processes at the local and global scales, enabling each to shape the other. Networks—both online and offline—provide an obvious explanation for how this process of mutual constitution occurs. As such, they seem central to understanding both how place is shaped and contested and how all forms of urban image-making occur.
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3.3 ONLINE AND OFFLINE: HOW NETWORKS ENABLE INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING
Networks are recognised as playing a significant role in shaping both social action and urban processes by scholars from a range of disciplines, including sociology, political science and geography (see, for example, Leitner and Sheppard 2002; McCann and Ward 2010; and Pierce, Martin and Murphy 2011 for overviews). In the sociological literature, for example, Pierce, Martin and Murphy (2011, p. 56) outline how networks are understood:
[Networks are] important influences on recruitment, participation and collective action in/through social movements (Gould 1993; Klandermans and Oegema 1987; Shemtov 2003; Snow et al. 1980). In this view, networks are microstructural forms that socialise and connect activists, facilitate information flows, help to create solidarity and shared identities, influence decisionmaking processes, and that, importantly, can limit membership if they fail to create brokerage opportunities to (potentially) new participants (Heaney and Rojas 2008; Kitts 2000; Passy 2003).
Yet, as with place theory, there is room within the place branding literature for more detailed examinations of the role of networks. While a number of academics do examine the role of networks in place branding, this work tends to focus on how official branders can best manage networks of key stakeholders or ‘place ambassadors’ (Andersson and Eckman 2009; also Hankinson 2004; Hanna and Rowley 2011). The existing procedural research offers little detail on the ways unplanned networks of formal and informal participants might be shaping reimaging processes, nor does it offer a great deal of insight into how online networks (like social media) facilitate image-making. This section will consider some key literature on networks from other areas of urban theory, as a foundation for examining their role in the reimaging landscapes of Detroit and Newcastle.
3.3.1 ONLINE NETWORKS—THE RISE OF WEB 2.0
With the rise of Web 2.0 and particularly social media, individuals and small-scale organisations now have the ability to promote their projects and their preferred urban imagery in a public and potentially global forum.7 If such representations go viral, they have the capacity to contribute to reshaping a place image in ways that branding officials can do little to control. The place branding literature is still coming to terms with the possibilities
7 Web 2.0 is used here to collectively describe the websites and technology that facilitate the sharing of user- generated content on the internet, most notably, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogging technology and multimedia sharing sites like YouTube.
Page 66 of 317 and pitfalls of social media and Web 2.0. Not surprisingly, those articles that do consider these new trends primarily explore their likely impact within the framework of official branding (Florek 2011; Ketter and Avraham 2012). Web 2.0 and social media have undoubtedly reshaped official place branding practices, enabling the incorporation of user- generated content and facilitating viral campaigns which encourage social media users to spread official branding material through their online networks. At the same time, however, the examples provided in Section 2.6 highlight how social media also allows independent and informal image-makers to do precisely the same thing.
In one of the place branding pieces to acknowledge Web 2.0’s broader reimaging potential, Florek (2011, p. 85) argues:
The rapid growth of the blogosphere has resulted in a perception of blogs as one of the most credible and objective information sources. Consequently, bloggers are becoming the new leaders of opinion with strong influential power. This power may include the ability to shape perceptions of cities.
While an individual’s impression of the city as a place was once primarily personal, it can now easily be made public. Manovich (2009, p. 324) explains what the new Web 2.0 technologies offer:
What was ephemeral, transient, unmappable, and invisible [has become] permanent, mappable, and viewable. Social media platforms give users unlimited space for storage and plenty of tools to organize, promote, and broadcast their thoughts, opinions, behavior, and media.
The ease of creating content may be a key feature of these new technologies, but it is the ease of disseminating that content which is really significant, particularly in the context of urban reimaging. Social media enables what Castells (2012, p. 220) has labelled ‘mass self- communication, based on horizontal networks of interactive, multidirectional communication on the Internet.’ While some observers have raised concerns about the internet’s potential to contribute to increasing individualisation and isolation (see Castells 2000, p. 386 for an overview), the emergence of social media has counteracted this by making it easier than ever to connect through broad, person-to-person networks. To adopt Bennett’s (2012, p. 22) explanation: ‘While individuals may be at the center of their own
Page 67 of 317 universes, those universes can be very large thanks to the social networking potential of ubiquitous communication technologies’.
The growth of these online social media networks is a facet of the broader shift towards networks and flows as defining features of modern society and urban life, a transformation comprehensively examined by Castells (2000; 2012). Castells argues that in this new ‘network society’, power is exercised by networks of empowered individuals and organisations (including political, financial, security and cultural production networks), who use mass communication tools to shape the social production of meaning to their own ends. Control of communication networks therefore translates into social and political power. At the same time, however, the rise of online social networks allows new participants to engage in this process of meaning-making on a global scale for the first time. This suggests a possible power shift, with those who have greater mastery of online networks gaining in relative power through their ability to create meaning and start social movements online. While networks have always been important elements of social movements, Bennett (2012, p. 22) points out that social media has made these movements easier than ever to trigger, by ‘[enabling] individuals to become important catalysts of collective action processes as they activate their own social networks’ (see also Juris 2012).
In response to these shifts, Florek (2011, p. 90) suggests that place branding practitioners need to engage with Web 2.0 ‘to derive the benefits that can flow from a synergistic approach to city brand-building, in which city officials and members of the public collaborate in the process of city image formation.’ As Bennett’s observation suggests, however, there is also a need for further consideration of how members of the public can independently exploit the networked nature of Web 2.0, in ways that might also influence city image formation. For informal participants, these online networks provide a potentially powerful platform for engaging in urban reimaging practices, uninhibited by any control or input by official branding organisations.
3.3.2 OFFLINE NETWORKS—NETWORKS SHAPE URBAN LIFE
In addition to Castells’ pioneering work in this area, many other scholars have also explored the role of networks in shaping contemporary urbanism more broadly, including the ongoing importance of ‘real life’ networks in shaping urbanism (e.g. Malecki 2002; Storper and Venables 2004). A handful of approaches stand out as being of particular relevance in the context of exploring informal image-making. To begin with, Pierce, Martin and Murphy
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(2011) have argued in favour of a relational approach to understanding place-making, which proposes that both politics and networks are essential aspects of how places are framed and contested. They highlight the importance of applying such an analytical approach within cities at the level of “meso- and microsocial, informal and community politics” (Pierce, Martin and Murphy 2011, p. 59), as well as at the global interurban scale. This network-focused perspective therefore seems suited to examining a practice like informal image-making, which is both small-scale and globally linked.
Another interesting perspective on urban networks comes from scholars like Bender (2010) and Farias (2010), who have explored the possibility of applying the theoretical framework of actor-network theory (ANT) to urban studies. Proponents of ANT see networks actively shaping urban life; as Bender (2010, p. 304) explains, ‘The actor-network is generative; it makes things happen.’ ANT ‘allows and encourages the study of the heterogeneous connections between objects, spaces, materials, machines, bodies, subjectivities, symbols, formulas and so on that “assemble” the city in multiple ways’ (Farias 2010, p. 14). While ANT certainly has its doubters, particularly on the question of whether it can provide a legitimate basis for critical urban analysis (Brenner, Madden and Wachsmuth 2011), it does offer a thought-provoking perspective on the breadth of networks and interactions in the city, both formal and informal. Acknowledging the concerns, Bender (2010, p. 317) argues that the use of ANT in urban studies may be best understood as:
a metaphoric approach that encourages a highly developed sense of urban complexity, of the unities and disunities, of the stabilities and instabilities, and especially the complex and heterogeneous networks of connection and association out of which the city as a social and physical entity is formed and sustained.
This formulation of ANT overlaps with the work of Comunian (2011, 2012), who argues that the significance of networks is underexplored in research on urban creative communities. While much of the work on clustering in economic development considers the role of networks within this phenomenon (e.g. Gordon and McCann 2000), in the creative context ‘it can be argued that very little attention has been directed towards understanding the nature and dynamics of these networks’ (Comunian 2012, p. 145). To address this, Comunian adopts a complexity perspective in her analysis of ‘creative city’ policies, following Castells’ (2000, p. 74) identification of complexity theory and its ‘emphasis on non-linear dynamics as the most fruitful approach to understanding the behaviour of living systems’. Viewing the city as a complex system, Comunian argues that micro systems, Page 69 of 317 networks and experimentation are all central to the city’s ongoing evolution and creativity. This approach, therefore, ‘implies a critique of a “one size fits all”, top–down policy’ to drive creativity, and instead ‘encourages the use of a more agent-focused and interaction- based understanding for both researchers and policy-makers’ (2011, p. 1158). In this respect, Comunian’s perspective is similar to that offered by Lloyd (2006, p. 69), who highlights the ‘networked geography of cultural production’ as a defining feature of successful creative communities.
Comunian (2012, p. 149) has also suggested that links exist between branding and the way creative communities operate in a complex urban system, arguing that ‘In a variety of creative sectors, from design to visual art and music, creative practitioners come together to create a critical mass that facilitates the promotion of their work and the establishment of an image or a brand’. Christmann (n.d.) highlights similar links in her network-focused research on ‘spatial pioneers’ in Germany, noting how networks of new urban residents contribute to the reimaging of disadvantaged urban areas. Based on these insights, it seems likely that accepting Comunian’s recommendation to adopt a more agent- and interaction- focused approach in the current research will provide a useful perspective on how these informal reimaging processes are occurring.
As noted, the work on urban networks outlined here is also important because it suggests that even as online networks are playing an increasingly significant role in shaping modern urbanism, ‘real life’ place-based networks also remain relevant. This is an observation supported by some social media scholars (Hampton, Lee and Her 2011), who argue that the increased exposure of individuals to the globally linked online sphere has been accompanied by a trend towards increased engagement with local issues. As Hampton, Lee and Her (2011, p. 1046) put it:
Our interpretation of the trend observed suggests a duality in how ICTs [information and communication technologies] influence social relations: they support relationships globally and locally—‘glocalization.’ That is, ICTs afford social participation that is both unbounded from shared time and geography (‘global’ and not dependent on place) and tied to participation in foci of activity that are very ‘local’ (contextual and tied to place).
In other words, while social media networks are used to connect broadly, they are also used to make and strengthen in-person connections in place, and the two processes
Page 70 of 317 enhance each other. Reflecting the earlier discussion of glocalisation, this social media research highlights how global networks are being used to expand and strengthen local networks—or, as Hampton, Lee and Her (2011, p. 1046) conclude, ‘Place is not lost as a result of the affordances of new technologies, but place-based networks are reinforced and made persistent.’
Overall, despite being drawn from different disciplines and academic perspectives, the research examined here demonstrates the multiple ways both online and offline networks are increasingly being understood as central to (or even constitutive of) contemporary urbanism. This is reflected in the critical place branding case studies of scholars like Greenberg (2008b) and Colomb (2012a), who identify the networks and ‘synergies’ of urban elites engaging in top-down urban branding strategies, highlighting the kind of power networks Castells considers a key feature of the network society. As such, it seems likely that adopting a similarly network-focused perspective in this work will offer productive insights into how urban reimaging processes are functioning in Detroit and Newcastle, both in the official branding context and through the efforts of informal image-makers.
3.4 CONCLUSION
This chapter has identified a number of additional strands of urban theory that are potentially relevant to understanding informal urban reimaging—both in theory and in practice—but which have not yet been connected with the procedural urban branding literature. To begin with, the literature on DIY urbanism highlights how informal participants are reshaping the city using tactics and practices outside of official channels. The philosophy underpinning this movement is broad enough to allow for the possibility that informal image-making efforts may also be understood and critiqued as part of this emerging urban trend. Second, the theory on place and glocalisation identifies the potential for place attachment to function as a motivation for informal reimaging practices, while also exposing these practices as local manifestations of broader global trends. Third, the literature on urban networks highlights how online networks are facilitating new levels of informal participation in urban processes, while also indicating that offline networks continue to play an important role in shaping urban social and economic processes. This work suggests that networking is likely to be a key tool for informal image-makers, and a network perspective will therefore provide a useful lens for examining their reimaging efforts.
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Together, these strands of theory offer helpful perspectives for engaging with the question of how image-making processes are occurring in Detroit and Newcastle. By bringing these perspectives to the fore, this theoretical framework outlines how this research seeks to explore the practice of urban reimaging as a complex, place-based, unruly process. Having thus established the theoretical framework from which informal image-making will be examined in this work, the next section will consider how these efforts might best be explored in practice.
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4 METHODOLOGIES: CASE STUDIES AND NARRATIVE ANALYSIS
The goal of Chapter 3 was to outline additional strands of the urban studies literature that provide useful insights for identifying and examining the role of informal participants in urban reimaging. More specifically, the literature considered in Chapter 3 offered three additional theoretical perspectives for examining urban reimaging practices, which together shed light on aspects of this process currently underexplored in the place branding literature outlined in Chapter 2. By bringing these multiple theoretical perspectives together with the place branding literature - particularly the procedural strand - this research aims to examine urban image-making in Detroit and Newcastle in a way that better reflects the unruliness of the reimaging landscapes in these cities. With this theoretical framework now in place, the next challenge is methodological: what is the form of empirical research most suited to a broad, layered examination of this kind? This chapter will consider this question, providing an overview of the methodological and analytical approaches chosen and why they are appropriate to the research task at hand. It begins with an explanation of why case-study research is well suited to examining a phenomenon as complex and unruly as informal reimaging practices. This is followed by a discussion of how the case studies were designed, including how the cities, interview participants and other data sources were chosen. The chapter then examines the proposed analytical approach in some depth, explaining what narrative analysis is, how it is implemented in practice, and how it has shaped the outcomes of the research.
4.1 WHY CHOOSE A CASE-STUDY APPROACH?
As Chapter 2 demonstrated, much of the existing place branding literature does not adopt the kind of broad theoretical lens that will be applied in this research. This divergence likely reflects the research objectives of the different academic disciplines examining urban branding. Marketing and business scholars tend to be primarily interested in understanding urban branding as a practice, focusing on issues such as how a campaign should be implemented and how it can be assessed in terms of return on investment. These goals lead to research approaches that seek to model urban branding from a procedural perspective or to quantitatively evaluate the impact of a particular campaign. While there has been much work in the field on developing an underlying theory of place branding, and many case studies of specific place branding campaigns, these works tend to examine place branding in a way that is somewhat divorced from the broader context in which these
Page 73 of 317 efforts occur. By contrast, urban planning and theory scholars have taken a different interest in place branding, looking at it as a process embedded within the broader scope of urban life, with interrelated social, political, historical and economic causes and consequences. This perspective requires a research approach that seeks out the complexities, contradictions and uncertainties associated with urban branding, both as a concept and as a practice.
Looking at key works in the latter vein, one need only consider the titles—Staging the New Berlin (Colomb 2012a), Branding New York (Greenberg 2008b), The Making and Selling of Post-Mao Beijing (Broudehoux 2004)—to recognise that each one provides a detailed case study of how place branding has reshaped one particular city. The approach taken in these works has provided much of the inspiration for the current research, by demonstrating the value of exploring urban reimaging processes in a detailed, grounded and contextual way. As such, it makes sense to consider whether a case-study approach is also the most appropriate fit for this project. Having reviewed the methodological literature on case studies, it is clear there are also a number of other reasons why this approach is a good match for this research.
As Jacobs (1993) argues, despite the longstanding preference for quantitative research in urban studies, urbanism is a naturally ‘unbounded’ topic and therefore well suited to qualitative approaches, including case studies. Looking at the current research problem, there is clear alignment with the three elements Yin (2009, p. 2) identifies as making a topic amenable to case-study research: ‘(a) “how” or “why” questions are being posed; (b) the investigator has little control over events; and (c) the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within a real-life context.’ This seems a good fit, given that the project’s two key research questions are both how questions (how is urban reimaging occurring and how does this differ from the literature?). Furthermore, urban reimaging is clearly a contemporary and highly contextual process, as well as a largely uncontrollable one. Importantly, urban reimaging is also a complex process, involving both grounded and symbolic elements. It is thus full of what Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 237) describes as the ‘rich ambiguity’ required for a useful and interesting case study to emerge.
So if a case-study approach is to be adopted, this prompts the question: which methodologies should be used to collect and analyse the case-study data? Case studies do not necessarily provide the rich and layered perspectives offered by Colomb and the like;
Page 74 of 317 while the case-study approach is also adopted in place branding research from the marketing/business discipline (e.g. Dinnie 2011), this tends to offer a much narrower, more procedural focus. As Johansson (2003) suggests, triangulation of methodologies or perspectives is an important feature of detailed case-study research, an observation backed up by a number of other case-study authors. For example, Colomb (2012a, p. 26) describes her approach to examining place branding in Berlin as ‘methodologically hybrid’, combining policy analysis, discourse analysis and visual analysis. In another Berlin case study, Cooper and Mele (2002, p. 295) examine the phenomenon of urban informality using a ‘hodgepodge’ research strategy that incorporates ‘ethnographic, archival, media, and secondary data’. This strategy fits a study which seeks to ‘explore the kinds of interplay between structural forces and everyday practices in particular settings and time periods’ (2002, p. 294), much like the current research does. Taking the hybrid approach one step further, Bell and de-Shalit (2011) combine strolling, storytelling and factual data to construct case studies contemplating the identity or ‘ethos’ of nine different cities, highlighting how more interpretive approaches from the humanities can also be incorporated into case studies with interesting results. Methodological flexibility of this kind seems well-suited to the contemplation of such broad, complex urban issues and questions.
The case studies developed in this research project demonstrate a similar hybridity or ‘hodgepodge-ness’ in a number of ways:
• While a single methodology or analytical approach has been selected—narrative analysis—it is a methodology which is itself hybrid, combining textual analysis with more grounded analysis of the storyteller, the audience, the relationships between them, and the key contexts in which the narrative is told. The details and benefits of this approach will be explored further in Section 4.3.
• The case studies draw on a range of source materials including long-form interviews, mainstream media resources, social media data and personal observation, providing different perspectives to ‘triangulate’.
• The theoretical framework set out in Chapters 2 and 3 provides multiple lenses through which to consider the case-study materials.
• The twin cases enable reflection on identified issues and insights across two different contexts.
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This raises one further important issue. Often, having more than one case study involves conducting a formal comparative analysis, where like cases are selected and similarities and differences are identified in order to draw conclusions about the likely experiences of other cases. I do not intend to conduct such an analysis, as the many differences between Detroit and Newcastle do not provide a good grounding for formal comparison. Instead, having two cases in this research is designed to facilitate the kind of multilayered perspective discussed above. In other words, the approach is not formal comparative research but may fit within Ward’s (2010, p. 480) relational approach to comparative urbanism, which focuses less on ‘searching for similarities and differences between two mutually exclusive contexts and instead … uses different cities to pose questions of one another’. Robinson (2011, p. 6) also supports this approach, arguing that:
it has been particularly productive to bring the experiences of different case-study cities into careful conversation with one another in order to reflect critically on extant theory, to raise questions about one city through attending to related dynamics in other contexts, or to point to limitations or omissions in existing accounts.
It is in this vein that the two case studies in this research will be examined and used to inform each other.
4.2 HOW THE CASE STUDIES WERE CHOSEN AND DEVELOPED
Having thus established that case studies offer a fitting method for this research, the next question to consider is how the case studies should be designed in order to provide the desired insights into informal reimaging practices. Answering this question requires a more detailed explanation of what makes Detroit and Newcastle appropriate settings for exploring these practices, how the potential interviewees were identified, and which other data sources were examined.
4.2.1 WHY WERE DETROIT AND NEWCASTLE SELECTED?
Detroit and Newcastle offer the most acute examples in their respective countries of cities that have suffered from the global economic restructuring of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Detroit’s situation has been particularly severe, with current challenges including population loss of 26% since 2000 (Diehm 2013), unemployment rates at twice the national average (Eisinger 2014), and debts of over $18 billion (Diehm 2013), resulting in the largest Page 76 of 317 municipal bankruptcy in US history. Partly because of the severity of these problems, Detroit has come to symbolise broader concerns about American urbanism, being labelled America’s ‘poster child metro for urban decline’ (Renn 2009a, para. 5) and having questions raised about its ability to survive (see Adamé 2010; Eisinger 2014). The city’s extensive collection of abandoned buildings have become internationally recognised symbols of the urban challenges posed by globalisation and industrial decline, and its high crime rates have seen it adopted by Hollywood as ‘a metaphor for all that is debased and evil’ (Steinmetz 2006, p. 507).
While Newcastle’s economic woes have been far less severe, it has struggled to shed the ‘problem city’ label (Winchester, McGuirk and Dunn 2000, p. 218; Rofe 2004) gained as a result of industrial shutdowns and high unemployment, as well as the major earthquake the city suffered in 1989. Shifting the city’s image has taken some time, exacerbated by the fact that retail vacancy levels in the central business district (CBD) have remained persistently high. Even as of 2009, the Fix Our City campaign launched by a local growth coalition suggested significant concerns remained about the CBD’s condition (Wendt 2009). This situation is finally improving, however (Duncan 2013), and on prosperity metrics such as regional unemployment (4.2%) and Newcastle housing prices (up 8.4%), the city is now performing well (HVRF 2013).
This is in noticeable contrast to Detroit. While there have been positive economic developments in the broader urban region and the 7.2 square mile core known as ‘Greater Downtown’ (Hudson-Webber Foundation 2013), many residents of the city’s remaining 132 square miles face ongoing significant economic and social challenges (Alhajal 2013). Looking beyond the economic comparison, the differences between the two cities seem even greater; on issues like racial dynamics, city/suburb relations, and even physical geography, the cities are not closely comparable at all. Given these significant differences, why then does it make sense to bring together these two cities as case studies in this research?
There are two main reasons. The first is that as transitional post-industrial cities, both Detroit and Newcastle are in the process of renegotiating their current and future meanings, with 2009 onwards proving a particularly fertile era for representational practices and debates in both places. While Newcastle has engaged in official urban branding since 2011 with the Brand Newcastle campaign, the independent project Renew Newcastle launched in late 2008 has arguably been as significant in reshaping the city’s image. In Detroit, this same period has seen the GM bailout (2009) and municipal Page 77 of 317 bankruptcy (2013) attract international attention to the city, with a growing number of informal reimaging efforts flourishing at the same time. As a result of these developments, both cities are seeing questions of revitalisation and representation widely and frequently discussed in the media and in public debates (e.g. Dale 2013; Gregory 2011).
The second reason for bringing Detroit and Newcastle together here is that both cities have been portrayed as the national ‘basket case’—the city where things always go wrong, whether through mismanagement or misfortune (Metcalfe and Bern 1994; Saunders 2012). In other words, the reason for looking at these two cities isn’t because these places are quantifiably similar, but because they occupy a similar place in our cultural understandings. This reputation engenders a local sensitivity to issues of reputation and image that may shape how urban image-making is practised and received. In this respect, both cities (but particularly Detroit) might be considered what Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 229) labels ‘extreme’ cases, which demonstrate relevant characteristics to a particularly dramatic extent. While potentially problematic from a traditional comparative perspective, Flyvbjerg argues that this can be valuable in case-study research, as extreme cases often reveal the most information about the phenomenon under examination. It is in cities like Detroit and Newcastle that issues around representation and revitalisation are most apparent and most significant, and are therefore likely to be most illuminating.
So while there may be limited similarities in the economic and social qualities of present- day Detroit and Newcastle, the similarities in how these cities are perceived and portrayed should facilitate insightful analysis. Having an American and an Australian case study may also provide interesting insights into any differences in national understandings of place and post-industrialism. While this means that the research context is limited to Western cities, it does a least provide a perspective outside the prevailing American/European focus in the existing urban branding literature.
4.2.2 HOW WERE THE CHOSEN INTERVIEWEES SELECTED AND INTERVIEWED?
The goal of this research is to explore the practice of urban image-making through a broad lens, taking in both formal and informal contributions. In keeping with this goal, interviewees in Detroit and Newcastle were selected based on their association with at least one of the following broad categories of practice:
• official, government-led urban branding campaigns (i.e. Brand Newcastle)
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• large-scale urban branding efforts led by other key stakeholders (e.g. corporations, major institutions), such as Opportunity Detroit • DIY urban projects viewed as demonstrating an intent (explicit or implicit) to reshape the city’s image in a positive way. This is a broad category that includes physical revitalisation projects like Renew Newcastle, arts projects like The People of Detroit and virtual social movements like Declare Detroit • independent media publications which explicitly focus on good-news stories about the city, such as Model D and Positive Detroit • public comment or analysis with a particular interest in issues around urban representation and revitalisation, including work by bloggers, journalists, public intellectuals and urban/architecture critics.
While this is a very mixed bag of interviewees, it is appropriate given the fluid and undefined nature of the phenomenon under consideration. The common theme among all interviewees is that they have either recognised that their work is at least partly geared towards trying to shift the city’s image, or they have observed and interrogated this potential in the work of others. This defined-yet-flexible approach is well suited to the broad perspective on urban image-making that this research seeks to provide.
Within the defined categories, suitable potential interviewees were identified primarily through mainstream and social media monitoring undertaken prior to and during the study period (see the next section for additional details). The initial focus was on identifying interviewees who were involved in high profile DIY urbanism projects or official place branding, with other interviewees (observers, corporate branding participants) incorporated as the research progressed. A handful of interviewees were also identified through personal recommendations, made either by other interviewees after their interview or by other locals met during field research. Interviewees in this latter category were vetted online to ensure they were relevant to the goals of the research. To avoid any concerns about coercion, the recommendation was not mentioned when the proposed interviewee was contacted. In this regard the approach reflects the iterative strategy adopted by Gordon (2014) in identifying potential participants in the practice he identifies as ‘DIY urban design’.
Potential interviewees were initially contacted by email, an example of which can be found in Appendix 1: Email to Potential Participants. In Newcastle, almost all of the people
Page 79 of 317 contacted responded and agreed to participate. In Detroit, the response rate was not as high, perhaps reflecting ‘research fatigue’ (Clark 2008) due to the significant levels of journalistic and academic interest in the city in recent years (Morton 2009). Those who agreed to participate were provided with a Participant Information Sheet to keep (including information about how to revoke consent) and a Consent Form to be signed and returned, indicating whether the participant was willing to be quoted and identified. Copies of these documents are also provided in Appendixes 2 and 3. This recruitment strategy and paperwork was approved by the Built Environment Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel of the University of New South Wales as being of minimal ethical impact. Copies of the relevant approval letters are also provided in Appendix 4.
In total, twenty-nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted, fourteen in Newcastle and fifteen in Detroit (one via telephone). One interviewee chose not to be identified or quoted while another raised some doubts about this prospect, so while these interviews were used to enhance general comprehension of the relevant issues, the responses have not been included in the case studies. The table below shows details of the interviewees whose responses are included in this thesis.
Name Position Interview Date Newcastle
Blogger, The Novocastrian Files and Marketing and Promotions Coordinator, Siobhan Curran Renew Newcastle 5 July 2012 Former Manager Tourism and Economic Development at Newcastle City Council; Lead Simon McArthur on Brand Newcastle 6 July 2012 Marni Jackson General Manager, Renew Newcastle 6 July 2012 Stuart McBratney Filmmaker and Renew Newcastle participant 16 July 2012 Place-making coordinator, Newcastle City Susan Denholm Council 20 July 2012 Founder and Creative Director, Renew Marcus Westbury Newcastle 30 July 2012 Micky Pinkerton Writer and architecture critic 9 August 2012 Matt Endacott Blogger, this smoky untidy city 16 May 2013
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Name Position Interview Date Cultural Broker, founder of Street Art Walking, former TINA festival director and Simone Sheridan Renew Newcastle participant 3 June 2013 Project Officer for Newcastle NOW and Board Petra Hilsen Member, Renew Newcastle 25 June 2013 Ross Kerridge Founder, Newcastle Institute 9 August 2013 Former Creative Director, Peach Advertising Adam Lance (working on Brand Newcastle campaign) 3 October 2013 Rhiannon Tuntevski Founder, Newcastle 2020 visioning project 15 November 2013 Detroit John Hantz Founder of Hantz Farms 11 October 2012 Photographer and Blogger, The People of Noah Stephens Detroit 22 January 2013 Director at Detroit Corridor Initiative, Secretary General at Declare Detroit, Former Bradford Frost Detroit Revitalization Fellow 23 January 2013 Jeff Aronoff Executive Director, D:Hive 30 January 2013 Patrick Cooper- McCann Blogger, Rethink Detroit 4 February 2013 Bruce Schwartz Detroit Relocation Officer, Quicken Loans 21 February 2013 Executive Director, Detroit Regional News Marge Sorge Hub 25 February 2013 Jenenne Whitfield Executive Director, Heidelberg Project 25 February 2013 Matthew Clayson Director, Detroit Creative Corridor Center 27 February 2013 Philip Lauri Founder, Detroit Lives! Creative Agency 19 March 2013 Erin Rose Blogger, Positive Detroit 12 April 2013 Social Entrepreneur and Founder, Jay Rayford RepYourCity 10 April 2013 Margarita Barry Founder, I Am Young Detroit and Detroit Pop 14 April 2013 Sandy Hermanoff Creator, Detroit—I’m a Believer! Campaign 2 July 2014
Figure 4.1: Table of Quoted Research Participants
Interviews ranged from thirty to ninety minutes in length. A general question template was developed before the research began and was revised before each interview to reflect the participant’s experience. This template was also refined in an iterative fashion over the Page 81 of 317 course of the research, to incorporate new issues or questions that emerged. A copy of the initial template is included in Appendix 5.
4.2.3 HOW WERE MAINSTREAM AND SOCIAL MEDIA SOURCES CHOSEN?
From the time this research project began in early 2011, both mainstream media and social media resources were regularly monitored for stories on Detroit and Newcastle that dealt with issues of brand, image and revitalisation. A number of different strategies were used to collect and categorise these resources:
• Prominent newsmakers, organisations and news enthusiasts in each city were followed on Twitter and Facebook, particularly those that regularly link to relevant/interesting material. • Google Alert emails were set up for relevant search terms (such as Brand Newcastle). • Email lists were joined for organisations that regularly report on relevant Detroit or Newcastle news, such as Model D, Newcastle City Council, Next City and Places. • Factiva news searches were conducted for relevant search terms (such as Renew Newcastle).
Over the three years of this research project, these approaches have yielded hundreds of mainstream and social media articles examining relevant issues in Newcastle and Detroit. This content was stored in an Endnote database and categorised by theme (branding, DIY, Detroit, Newcastle) to facilitate subsequent analysis. This additional source material is used in a number of ways in the case studies: to broaden the perspective on relevant issues beyond the views of interviewees; to provide examples of social media use by informal image-makers; and to inform a discussion on the role the media plays in urban reimaging processes.
4.2.4 WHAT OTHER CASE-STUDY RESOURCES WERE USED?
In addition to the interviews and media resources, two other main sources of information have been used to help shape the case studies. First, many factual and fictional works about the two cities have been reviewed, including academic studies, government documents, independent data and mapping resources like Data Driven Detroit, feature films, documentaries, television shows, photography exhibitions, biographies, novels, and music. Second, I visited both cities regularly over the course of the project. Most of the visits to Detroit occurred during an eight-month period between August 2012 and April
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2013 when I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a visiting researcher at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor is located forty-five minutes from downtown Detroit). I visited Newcastle repeatedly throughout the three years of my research, but with particular regularity between April and August of 2012 and between May and October of 2013. These visits involved conducting interviews and also attending cultural events, visiting landmarks, taking photographs, and generally familiarising myself with the urban culture and landscape. On these visits I took notes of my experiences and impressions, some of which have also informed the case studies.
4.3 HOW WERE THE COLLECTED DATA ANALYSED?
The end result of these various data-collection strategies was a large and somewhat unwieldy mass of written and online material. To turn this material into meaningful case studies required the application of an appropriate analytical strategy, and the choice in this regard was once again influenced by the three key works on place branding mentioned at the beginning of this chapter (Colomb 2012a, Greenberg 2008b and Broudehoux 2004). All three of these works adopt similar analytical frameworks, combining grounded or policy research with some form of discursive analysis. As Colomb (2012a, p. 31) explains, her use of discourse analysis reflects the fact that place branding ‘involves the mobilization of public and private actors around the production of a discourse on the city in which representations of what the city is perceived to be, and invocations of what it should be, are combined.’ In other words, discourse is central to what urban branding is about and should therefore also be a focus of urban branding research.
Certainly, there are also other approaches, such as a more conceptual analytical framework, that would also offer illuminating insights into the efforts of informal image- makers. For example, an analysis could also be framed around an application of Lefebvre’s (1974 [1991]) conceptual triad of perceived/conceived/lived space to explore how the representations of space produced by the identified projects are interrelated with spatial practices and lived experiences of space, in much the way scholars like Dobers (2004) and Carp (2008) have done. But given the inspiration the current project has taken from the work of Colomb (2012a), in particular, it seemed appropriate to adopt a similar analytical strategy in this case.
While discourse analysis is an appropriate fit for urban branding research, the approach adopted here to analyse urban image-making more broadly is a closely related one known Page 83 of 317 as narrative analysis. To date narrative analysis has not been as widely used in urban research as discourse analysis, although its influence is growing. On the one hand, this makes narrative analysis an appealing analytical framework, as it should mean there are new and interesting insights to uncover. On the other hand, it makes it necessary to provide a fairly detailed overview of why narrative analysis is suited to an examination of informal image-making. This section will therefore outline the academic landscape from which narrative analysis has emerged, how this analytical approach has been applied in practice, and how it will be applied in this particular research.
4.3.1 A BRIEF BACKGROUND TO NARRATIVE ANALYSIS Narrative analysis can be considered part of a broader school known as hermeneutics, which incorporates a range of different research approaches focusing on textual interpretation. As Kaplan (1993) notes, hermeneutics has long been used in legal and literary analysis, but emerged as an organised field with application in other disciplines from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. More recently, the rise of postmodernism in cultural and social analysis has translated into an exponential increase in discursive and representational analyses of urbanism. Leading this charge was Harvey (1989b, p. 355), who argued in his influential work on postmodernity that:
the production of images and of discourses is an important facet of activity that has to be analysed as part and parcel of the reproduction and transformation of any symbolic order. Aesthetic and cultural practices matter, and the conditions of their production deserve the closest attention.
Harvey’s challenge was widely accepted, both in geography and in urban research more broadly. As Martin, McCann and Purcell (2003, p. 117) note, representational and discursive approaches came to be seen as ‘increasingly important analytical lenses for urban politics, as these concepts provide a framework for examining the role of values, stories, and ideals in shaping the social world, and reflecting change and conflict’. This shift in urban and planning studies has been variously referred to as the communicative turn (Healey 1992), the argumentative turn (Forester 1993), the discursive turn (Lees 2004), and the narrative turn (Jensen 2007; see also Sandercock (2010) who refers to the ‘story turn’).
While this burgeoning interest suggests many scholars have found great value in discursive approaches, this work has also been dogged by criticism, particularly from other fields of social science. The main critique is that discursive analysis is not relevant to the ‘real’ world,
Page 84 of 317 because it has become lost in the intricacies of linguistic design or used in support of hyper- theoretical postmodern debates of little interest outside academia (see Jacobs 1999 and 2006; Kaplan 1993; Forester 1993). While such criticisms may occasionally have merit, many scholars recognise that the relationship between discursive analysis and more positivist urban research methodologies need not be an either/or proposition; instead, both perspectives have value and can complement each other effectively. As Yanow (1996, p. 28) puts it, positivism is ‘just one more way of seeing, one more form of human endeavour’. The same can be said for discursive approaches, which shed light on different types of information—particularly the social, cultural, personal and emotional aspects of urbanism—that are generally not explored in positivist research.
Perhaps the most eloquent defence is offered by Sandercock (2003, p. 12), whose response to claims that this kind of work is not sufficiently critical or relevant to real issues is worth quoting at length:
My approach is not uncritical. Despite increasing attention to and use of story in some of the newer academic fields (feminist and cultural studies, for example), I do not see it as the new religion. We still need to question the truth of our own and others’ stories. We need to be attentive to how power shapes which stories get told, get heard, carry weight … Story and story telling are at work in conflict resolution, in community development, in participatory action research, in resource management, in policy and data analysis, in transportation planning, and so on. A better understanding of the role of stories can also be an aid to critical thinking, to deconstructing the arguments of others. Stories can often provide a far richer understanding of the human condition, and thus of the urban condition, than traditional social science, and for that reason alone, deserve more attention.
Sandercock’s statement also gives some insight into the specific focus of narrative analysis as a distinct approach within the broader scope of discursive work. As with many of the concepts relevant to this research, the distinction between discourse and narrative is blurry (see Lees 2004 and Jacobs 2006 on the confused meaning of ‘discourse analysis’ generally). The definitional terrain is complicated by the different ways various authors use the terms; Beauregard (2003, p. 67), for example, describes ‘discursive democracy’ as an approach which ‘encourages recognition of the importance of language and narrative in how we understand the city and our place in it’. Van Dijk (1997, p. 3) concludes that discourse is a
Page 85 of 317 term used differently in different contexts, opting for a broad definition that incorporates any examination of ‘talk and text in context’.
Regardless of whether narrative analysis is seen as an alternative to or a subset of discourse analysis, the more important point is to clarify where narrative analysis sits in relation to key philosophical debates about discourse analysis in urban studies. Lees (2004) and Jacobs (2006) identify two key strands of urban discourse analysis, broadly categorised as the Marxian and Foucauldian approaches. The former—exemplified most notably by Norman Fairclough (1995, 2001)—is built on the understanding that political economic structures are both reflected in and reshaped by discursive practices in a dialectical relationship. The latter, obviously associated with the theories of Michel Foucault, views language not simply as a reflection of power but as constitutive of it: language is power. As Hastings (1999, p. 10) explains, ‘it is not simply that discourse serves power in the sense that language use is motivated by power, but that discourse serves power in that it concretises or makes power real.’ While the lines between these two philosophies are fuzzy at times, this is not necessarily a problem—as Lees (2004) notes, Beauregard’s Voices of Decline (2003) is an example of combining the approaches effectively.
The use of narrative analysis in this research adopts a similarly flexible approach. On the relationship between language and power, Flyvbjerg and Richardson (2001) raise an important concern that some communicative planning theory has overly de-emphasised the role of power in shaping planning processes, focusing instead on an idealised, Habermasian vision of deliberative planning using open communication to level the playing field. Eckstein (2003, p. 15) argues instead that planning stories can be ‘wily and powerful’, and should always be subject to close analysis and challenge. Furthermore, as Throgmorton (1996) argues in the Foucauldian vein, planning stories can also be constitutive of planning outcomes. Informed by Eckstein’s and Throgmorton’s approaches, the choice of narrative analysis here to explore informal image-making acknowledges narrative as one of the most powerful techniques for communication and meaning-making. At the same time, however, while Eckstein’s and Throgmorton’s approaches recognise and examine how power shapes planning stories, they also seem broad enough to acknowledge the potential role of other influences. This makes sense in an examination of informal image-making, where the participants may not be established urban powerbrokers or seeking power in a traditional sense.
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4.3.2 NARRATIVE ANALYSIS IN PRACTICE Perhaps part of the confusion around narrative analysis stems from the fact that scholars have applied this analytical approach in a number of different ways. Much of the academic work on narrative focuses on a single text, analysing how an individual constructs an oral history or retells a culture-specific myth. By contrast, the approach used here involves identifying and analysing recurring narrative themes and techniques across a wide range of texts. In other words, the question that guides this mode of inquiry is ‘how are narrative strategies used by informal image-makers to create meaning and shape future possibilities’?
This latter approach reflects the call from Van Hulst (2012, p. 2) for ‘the application of a narrative lens in the analysis of more cases’ in planning theory, in order to understand how ‘a range of actors with diverse ideas and interests were engaged in a struggle over meaning’. Much the same approach is adopted by Colomb (2012a, p. 29), who analyses what she calls ‘policy narrative … to refer to the legitimizing arguments, rationale and framing of “public problems” used by specific actors to justify the need for public action’. This approach may also be seen as a forward-looking version of a trend Gotham and Staples (1996, p. 492) identified in historical sociology, which seeks to ‘recognize narratives as forms of representation that can provide knowledge about the past in terms of sequences of events, that include causes and effects, individual action and collective mobilization, background conditions, practical deliberations, complications and consequences, and resulting actions’.
Adopting this kind of broad approach to narrative analysis means almost any form of communication can be included for consideration—not just oral or written texts, but also materials like data and models, examining how they are presented to the world. While some urban scholars raise questions about including these kinds of materials in narrative analysis (Eckstein 2003; Finnegan 1998), others take a broader view (Throgmorton 2008), which reflects how common visual representations are in urban and planning texts (Faludi 1996). As with picture books, the prevalence of imagery in planning-related texts suggests they are seen as powerful tools in support of the broader narrative.
Perhaps the most important thing to note about this approach to narrative analysis is that it is necessarily contextual, as identifying the actors and the setting are central to understanding how and why various narrative strategies are employed. This focus on context helps to insulate narrative analysis against criticisms of lack of real-world relevance Page 87 of 317 discussed above. As Throgmorton (2007, p. 250) explains, ‘it is not merely the individual stories that count, but storytelling and the complex social networks, physical settings, and institutional processes in which those stories are told’ (see also Van Hulst 2012). As such, this research will consider not only image-making materials but also the settings in which they were produced.
So what kinds of narrative strategies are to be considered in this analysis? Eckstein (2003) offers a useful guiding framework that highlights three key features of storytelling to be identified and critically examined: author, audience, and story. Analysis of author obviously involves identification of who is telling the story—is it attributed to a group as a whole or to an individual? In addition, it may also include analysis of how a story is told—the method of transmission or the performance style for a spoken story. Similarly, analysis of audience may extend beyond identifying the targeted recipients to consider the key attributes of that audience and why the method of transmission best targets that group. Importantly, narratives are understood not as a one-way communication but as being shaped by both by the narrator and the audience. As Ochs (1997, p. 185) argues, ‘narratives are authored not only by those who introduce them but also by the many readers and interlocutors who influence the direction of the narrative’. For publicly broadcast narratives like urban image- making efforts, this perspective means it is necessary to consider the input of a multitude of other voices, including media responses, public comments on webpages, and questions asked after public presentations. This multifaceted approach reflects Throgmorton’s (2008) argument that the meaning of an event or issue is best explored by juxtaposing the multiple stories told about it against each other to elucidate the similarities and differences. The two-way nature of narrative is also particularly important to keep in mind when analysing interviews, which are shaped by both the interviewer and the interviewee. The fact that interviews are a key data source for this project is therefore another reason why narrative analysis seems an appropriate fit for this research (see Wiles, Rosenberg and Kearns 2005).
Last but not least, analysis of story is the most in-depth aspect of narrative analysis, involving primarily textual analysis. Within story, Eckstein identifies three further elements to be examined: time, voice, and space. Sandercock (2010, p. 30) offers a helpful summary:
Eckstein (2003) explains that stories do their work, make themselves compelling, by manipulating time, voice and space … Time is ‘manipulated’ through the device of duration. How much story ‘space’ is given to specific time intervals or periods of time? Which parts of a chronological story are collapsed into relatively few Page 88 of 317
sentences, pages, or minutes, compared with other parts of the story that are given extended treatment? Paying attention to the issue of duration can allow the listen/reader to hear what matters most to the teller, as can listening for repetition, which produces patterns of significance. Space ranks with time as a component of and in story, and is critically important for urban scholars and practitioners. We must be able to “‘see’ time in space” (Balzac, quoted in Eckstein, 2003, p. 28). Geographic scale is an important factor in the production of meaning. Stories operate at different geographic scales, sometimes metaphorical, and interpretation requires careful attention to those scales … Voice is also central to storytelling. Is the story being told in first person, third person, or first or third person plural (I, she/he, we, they, ‘those people’), and what does that signify about who is speaking on behalf of whom? Whose voices are given prominence, whose are repressed? As with myths of other cultures, planning and academic stories function not only as sanction and justification for the current order, but also as launching pads for counter-versions … In other words, a critical perspective on the workings of story is as important as a critical perspective on the workings of power and influence in land-use planning.
These three elements warrant a little further elucidation. On the importance of time to narrative, Kaplan (1993, p. 171) argues that a progression through time is an essential feature of stories, describing a narrative as ‘an organized form of discourse with a plot in three parts: beginning, middle, and end’. It is through this structure that stories become recognisable to us and thereby become powerful. Finnegan (1998, p. 10) concurs, albeit with a little more flexibility: ‘Some kind of temporal ordering is of the essence, but the route is not always a linear one and can also wander through byways, diversions and circularities’.
While considering scale is an important part of analysing space in narrative, it is also helpful to examine visual representations like maps, plans and images and to unpack spatial metaphors, used frequently in both urban branding literature (Colomb 2012a, p. 32) and urban narratives more generally. Healey (2004, p. 49) argues that such metaphors are powerful: ‘In developing understandings and dreams about the future of places … the imaginative content of strategic spatial planning episodes inevitably organizes the way the materialities are thought about.’
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Turning to voice, Sandercock’s description might be expanded to include style, referring to the language choices the author makes. Van Dijk (2008, p. 146) argues that style can be powerful as it ‘enables speakers to index and recipients to infer personal and social identities, intentions and situations from talk and text by implicit comparisons with the variable language use of other persons, groups or situations’. Without delving too deeply into a linguistic or rhetorical deconstruction of text, it is important to recognise that the nature of a story can be changed by the language chosen. Is it technical, convoluted, basic? Are common figures of speech, such as analogy and metaphor, used to reinforce particular meanings? Exploring voice thus involves doing what Colomb (2012a, p. 32) calls a ‘close reading’ of the text to highlight distinctive stylistic elements.
4.3.3 NARRATIVE ANALYSIS IN THIS RESEARCH
So how have all of these considerations shaped the current research? The influence of adopting a ‘narrative lens’ in this work actually began before the analysis stage, informing how the interviews were conducted. The interview questions were designed to be flexible and open-ended, so that interviewees could use them as launching points for telling their own stories rather than having a defined framework dictate their responses. Participants were also told that the aim was to have a conversational interview, rather than it being a strict information-gathering exercise. For this reason, each interview began with some personal questions: Are you from the city? Why did you come/stay? What do you love about the city? These questions provided participants with an opportunity to contextualise their answers within their own experience and to draw connections between personal experience and place. This approach seemed to put participants at ease and implicitly gave them permission to offer more personal, narrative answers rather than feeling like the goal was simply to provide facts.
Once the data were collected, the interviews were transcribed in full and reviewed. During this review recurring themes were identified, some of which had already become apparent during the interview process, and associated quotations were collated. Following this thematic review, a secondary review was conducted focusing on recurring narrative strategies. The results of these two reviews helped to dictate the shape of the case studies. Both the analysis and the writing of the case studies were highly iterative processes, involving repeated review and revision to ensure the multiple layers of meaning contained in the materials were translated into the cases.
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4.4 HOW ARE THE CASE STUDIES STRUCTURED?
The case studies are structured around an examination of six key issues: where, who, how, what, why, and reactions. These issues reflect what Neustadt and May (1986, p. 107) call ‘journalists’ questions’ and are deliberately wide-ranging, with the goal being to provide sufficient practical information to explain the context and processes of urban image-making in Newcastle and Detroit, while also facilitating an exploration of the theoretical issues raised in Chapters 2 and 3. The interview data is the material featured most prominently in the case studies, with other data sources incorporated to provide greater depth and additional context for the issues raised.
The first three issues—where, who and how—focus on more pragmatic aspects of urban reimaging processes in the two cities, helping to address the uncertainty around exactly what informal image-making involves and how it should be defined. These questions also focus attention on some of the key theoretical issues raised in Chapter 3, such as whether there are similarities between informal image-makers and DIY urbanists more broadly and how networks might be facilitating reimaging efforts. This examination of the more grounded aspects of informal image-making reflects Throgmorton’s (2007) point about the importance of understanding the settings in which planning stories are told. At the same time, examining these issues in detail helps to uncover what is variously referred to here as the ‘change logic’ or ‘change vision’ underpinning these narratives, meaning the broader goals these reimaging strategies seem designed to achieve.
Moving then from practice to content, the fourth issue—what—considers the shared narrative themes emerging from the image-making efforts, shedding further light on the narrative aspects of the image-making process. The final two questions—why and what has been the reaction—explore more ephemeral aspects of image-making in the two cities, examining the role of place attachment as a motivation and the emotional and political aspects of how reimaging efforts are received. Together, these six issues provide a multifaceted overview of current reimaging practices in the two cities. This approach reflects the challenge of trying to determine how best to define and study urban representational practices, given the way they are integrally intertwined with material and social urban practices - a challenge Colomb (2012a, p.22) calls ‘a nut hard to crack’ for urban scholars. Rather than seeking to tease out and focus solely on representational elements of participants’ efforts, then, the adopted approach seeks instead to build a
Page 91 of 317 multilayered picture of these projects, exploring how image-making qualities are integrated within broader revitalisation goals and strategies.
Last but not least, it is important to note that while this structure is clearly informed by the theoretical and methodological concerns outlined in this thesis, the narrative approach adopted in this research requires that my personal influence on the research findings be acknowledged as well. To reiterate Yanow’s (1996, p. 28) point, my research findings are not objective facts but simply ‘one more way of seeing’ the issues, and I myself am telling a story in the way I have constructed these cases (see also Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach and Zilber 1998). This does not reduce the research value of these findings, but should be taken into account when contemplating how these research findings are ultimately understood.
4.5 CONCLUSION As this chapter suggests, the process of identifying and implementing an appropriate methodological and analytical framework for this research has been an iterative one. This flexible approach reflects the theoretical and practical complexities of the phenomenon being studied, which has no fixed boundaries nor any clear institutional structure. As such, the approach to defining various aspects of the methodology—who might be considered a participant; what are the best questions to ask; which media resources are relevant; whether narrative or discursive analysis is more suitable—remained open for reconsideration throughout the development of the research.
What emerges from this process is a pair of case studies which have the flexibility to explore the multiple narratives being told about Newcastle and Detroit, as well as to examine how, why and by whom these narratives are being constructed. Of course, this is not a full picture of the reimaging landscape in these cities, as there are always other participants who could be interviewed, or other media sources that could be included. Furthermore, this is not the kind of data from which it is possible to draw unassailable conclusions. Nonetheless, this qualitative, iterative research approach has ultimately yielded some valuable insights into how image-making is occurring in these cities, as the next two chapters will show.
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5 NEWCASTLE CASE STUDY
The preceding three chapters have offered an exploration of the theory of urban branding and the ways in which it remains underdeveloped and set out theoretical and methodological frameworks for examining urban image-making more broadly. The next step is to put this research approach into practice with the case studies, first of Newcastle and then of Detroit. The case studies draw heavily on the transcripts of the interviews conducted with image-making participants and observers in each city (fourteen in Newcastle), which are the source of all quotes not otherwise referenced. The six key issues around which these cases are constructed—where, who, what, how, why and reactions— have been chosen to provide an overview of both the practical and theoretical aspects of reimaging practices in a way that is simultaneously broad-reaching and detailed.
5.1 WHERE: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF NEWCASTLE AND ITS IMAGE
Newcastle is located in the State of New South Wales, at the mouth of the Hunter Valley on Australia’s east coast. It is approximately 120 kilometres north of Sydney. As of the 2011 census, the Newcastle Local Government Area (Figure 5.1) had close to 150,000 residents (often referred to as Novocastrians), with over 300,000 in the broader urban area (ABS 2011). It is this larger population that sometimes sees Newcastle referred to as Australia’s seventh largest city (e.g. Visit Newcastle, n.d.-a).
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Figure 5.1 Map of Newcastle Local Government Area. Source: www.elections.nsw.gov.au
© State of New South Wales through the Office of New South Wales Electoral Commission
5.1.1 NEWCASTLE IN A NUTSHELL: HISTORY AND KEY CHARACTERISTICS
Built on the traditional lands of the Awabakal people, Newcastle grew from a convict prison and small settlement in the early 1800s into a booming coalmining town and port by the mid-1800s. Coal continues to form an important part of the city’s economic base today, with Newcastle Port being one of the world’s largest coal exporters (Newcastle Port Corporation 2014). Newcastle also has a proud industrial history, most notably as the home of a Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd integrated steelworks (known locally as ‘the BHP’) from 1915 to 1999. The city’s industrial character earned it a reputation as a gritty ‘brown town’, and the population’s love/hate relationship with heavy industry has formed a key part of the city’s identity (Dunn, McGuirk and Winchester 1995, p. 155, quoting poet Les Murray). For many Novocastrians, ‘Industry was a constant source of workplace antagonism, harsh work conditions and pollution, and it was the source of livelihoods, a thing of strange beauty, and a channel through which people forged a connection to “their town”’ (Winchester, McGuirk and Dunn 2000, p. 217). As with many industrial cities, however, the
Page 94 of 317 late twentieth century brought difficult economic challenges for Newcastle, resulting in population loss, elevated unemployment rates and property vacancy in the city centre. These changes also had damaging symbolic effects; as Metcalf and Bern (1994) point out, the city became associated with a narrative of crisis, which was only strengthened when an earthquake struck in 1989. This narrative reached its symbolic zenith with the BHP closure, making 1500 workers redundant in what was Australia’s largest ever industrial shutdown.
While some feared that the BHP closure would mean the demise of Australia’s ‘Steel City’, Newcastle has managed to diversify its economy with post-industrial industries like health and medical services, tourism and education (Wilkinson 2011). The Honeysuckle redevelopment and associated revitalisation projects along the city’s harbour foreshore have converted defunct industrial land into apartment complexes, retail space and tourist attractions, and many inner city areas have been reshaped by gentrification (Rofe 2000; 2004). Not all of the city’s challenges have been resolved; some building vacancies remain in the CBD, especially along the Hunter Street retail corridor (Figure 5.2). These vacancies have contributed to a lingering perception that despite its improved economic conditions, Newcastle remains somewhat ‘broken’, prompting calls for action like the Fix Our City campaign in 2009 and the current state government urban renewal strategy (Wendt 2009; see also City of Newcastle 2010; NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure 2012).
Figure 5.2 Newcastle CBD Showing Hunter Street. Source: www.openstreetmap.org
© OpenStreetMap contributors
5.1.2 A NEW NEWCASTLE AT LAST?
Yet while concerns about the city obviously remain, there are signs that perceptions of the city are changing, both internally and externally. Locally, a population known for embracing the city’s ‘battler’ reputation and being quick to point out flaws (Baker 2014) now seems to
Page 95 of 317 be exhibiting a growing sense of optimism about the city’s future (McCarthy 2011). This is perhaps best reflected in the shifting reactions to the BHP closure, which is now seen by some locals as a positive event—the symbolic crisis that ultimately facilitated the city’s post-industrial reinvention. As Novocastrian Ross Kerridge put it: ‘BHP did two great things for Newcastle. It came and it went’ (quoted in Duffy 2009, final para.). At the same time, for a city that has long been largely ignored by outsiders (Hogan 1997; City of Newcastle 2010), Newcastle now seems to be enjoying a growing and more positive external profile. Recent years have seen the city profiled in numerous enthusiastic travel features, in both national and international publications (e.g. Jameson 2011; Rhodes 2011; Hutchinson 2012; Milne 2012). Perhaps the most high-profile example was Lonely Planet’s choice of Newcastle as a Top 10 city to visit for 2011, portraying it as potentially the country’s ‘most underrated’ city and highlighting its creative community and physical assets.
One possible explanation for this shift is that in addition to economic and physical revitalisation, image revitalisation has been on Newcastle’s agenda for some time. As Rofe (2004, p. 205) notes, ‘Since being stigmatised as Australia’s problem city during the 1980s, the city of Newcastle has been actively seeking to recast itself as Australia’s promise city’. While Rofe highlights efforts to counter negative images of industrial and retail decline with images of inner-city gentrification, other reimaging attempts have redirected attention to the city’s lifestyle attributes. For example, in 1992, the Newcastle City Council (NCC) launched the ‘Best City’ campaign, inspired by Newcastle topping a magazine list of Australia’s ‘perfect places to live’ (Dunn, McGuirk and Winchester 1995). The campaign displayed a ‘concentration on beach, waterfront and vineyards [that] excludes or trivialises most other places with industrial or historical connotations’, giving the impression that ‘The typical Novocastrian … is middle-class and sips wine on the beachfront’ (Dunn, McGuirk and Winchester 1995, p. 160). Interviewee Marcus Westbury described his memories of the city’s promotional efforts during this era as making Newcastle look like ‘any other place with a beach’. More recently, Tourism Newcastle has continued to put the city’s beaches front and centre, although its tagline ‘Newcastle: beach days, harbour sights, city nights’ (City of Newcastle 2010) also highlighted the city’s working harbour and its urban lifestyle.
The past few years have seen a flurry of new reimaging efforts in Newcastle, some of which have begun to present a broader view of the city and its attributes. Coming from both government and informal sources, these projects offer some interesting insights into how various Novocastrians see the city today. They also suggest that despite all the change
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Newcastle has experienced in recent years, some concerns still linger about how the city is perceived. This case study will examine these projects in detail, to highlight not only how they have sought to shift the city’s image but also what this might mean for the city’s future.
5.2 WHO: NEWCASTLE’S FORMAL AND INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS
For reasons of space, not everyone involved in reshaping Newcastle’s image in recent years can be considered here. In particular, I have chosen to view the city’s official place branding campaign as representative of the perspective of major institutional stakeholders in the city, given the direct involvement of many of them in the campaign’s development. Furthermore, reflecting the distinction drawn between place branding and tourism promotion in the academic literature, the case study does not engage in detail with the city’s broader tourism strategies beyond some consideration of how they are connected to the official place branding project. Because informal image-making has been a less coordinated process, a number of projects are profiled briefly in addition to the most prominent player, Renew Newcastle. In keeping with the iterative and interpretive approach adopted throughout this narrative research, these additional projects were identified throughout the fieldwork period via a combination of media monitoring and recommendations from interviewees and other locals. The projects discussed here were chosen to represent a mix of different project types involving identifiable image-making qualities, including blogs, visioning campaigns and physical revitalisation projects with a strong online presence.
5.2.1 OFFICIAL REIMAGING: THE BRAND NEWCASTLE CAMPAIGN
The goal of developing a city brand was outlined in the NCC’s 2010 tourism plan, which noted, ‘A contemporary approach used at the national and city level (e.g. Sydney and Melbourne) is to brand a destination for all sectors to adopt, not just tourism’ (City of Newcastle 2010, p. 9). The NCC subsequently launched a new rebranding campaign in 2011, assisted by funding from the NSW state government. A local firm, Peach Advertising, was engaged to develop the brand, drawing inspiration from a consultative process which involved two workshops with key stakeholder groups. These included representatives from ‘education, tourism, construction, health, recruitment, communications, energy, banking and finance’ (Gregory 2011, p. 4), chosen by the NCC and Peach. The focus groups provided
Page 97 of 317 feedback on their perceptions of the city, which was then summarised in a ‘brand wheel’ diagram (Figure 5.3).
Figure 5.3: Newcastle Brand Wheel. Source: http://seechange.visitnewcastle.com.au
The brand essence which emerged—city of opportunity—brought together the four key characteristics of the city identified in these workshops (hardworking, genuine/real, world- class stories, and ever-changing). This brand essence inspired the development of a new tagline for the city—See Change—and a multi-coloured logo, designed to represent the diversity of Newcastle’s opportunities and assets (Figure 5.4).
Figure 5.4: Brand Newcastle Logo. Source: http://seechange.visitnewcastle.com.au
The brand was launched in July 2011, along with a website, sixteen branded info-kiosks around the city, and official tourism materials using the logo (e.g. visitor brochures, maps, and Newcastle’s Facebook page). The website includes short videos explaining the ‘brand story’, including how the brand was devised (Brand Newcastle n.d.). The logo was also made available for other Newcastle businesses and organisations to use on promotional material, and a competition was held to suggest places for the logo to be displayed around Page 98 of 317 the city. The winning entries recommended portraying the logo on the local bus company’s coaches, on the harbour ferry, and on wheat silos facing the city from across the harbour (Smee 2011).
Early responses to the brand were mixed, with some residents embracing the campaign and others complaining that the logo was too simplistic or that the $88,000 development cost should have been directed towards other council expenses (Wilson 2011; Newcastle Herald 2011—see comments following article). In particular, a number of online readers queried the benefits of undertaking a branding campaign when one of the city’s major symbolic challenges—retail vacancies in Hunter Street—remained unresolved. The failure to convince such residents of the brand’s value was notable, given that its initial implementation was primarily local. Yet while not all Novocastrians liked it, the campaign was recognised externally, winning the Best Brand Marketing Award at the Government Communications Australia 2012 Awards (City of Newcastle 2012).
More recently, the brand has been incorporated as an element in the city’s 2013 Destination Management Plan (NTIG 2013) and has been displayed more prominently on the city’s new tourism website. It has also appeared in external promotional features such as a recent Time Out destination guide (Fontaine 2013), as well as a conference and meeting-planners guide and a guide for relocating to Newcastle, both available on the Visit Newcastle website. The brand logo is also featured on signs around the city (Figure 5.5).
Figure 5.5: Signage Using the Brand Newcastle Logo in Wheeler Place, Newcastle. Source: Author.
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5.2.2 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING
Informal image-makers in Newcastle include DIY urbanists, business organisations, bloggers and ‘cultural brokers’. As the most prominent project, Renew Newcastle will be considered first, followed by a brief overview of other key players.
Renew Newcastle
Renew Newcastle is a not-for-profit venture which seeks to achieve ‘city revitalisation through creative use of empty space’ (Renew Newcastle n.d.) by arranging low-cost, short- term rolling leases for small businesses and cultural organisations to use vacant retail premises until permanent tenants are found. This process is designed to provide two key community benefits: it helps to address the practical and symbolic challenges posed by retail vacancy, by bringing more businesses downtown; and it allows small businesses and organisations to pilot a business idea or project with minimal risk or capital. Renew functions as the facilitator between property owners and potential tenants, providing legal documents and advice. It has received support from many local property owners since its creation in 2008, particularly the GPT Group, which owns a number of properties in the Hunter Street mall. Renew’s tenants have included jewellers, milliners, filmmakers, galleries, fashion designers, architects, and photographers, among others. The map in Figure 5.6 shows the location and type of Renew’s tenants at the time of this writing.
Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. Available online at: http://renewnewcastle.org/news/downloadable-project-map/
Figure 5.6: Renew Newcastle Map. Source: www.renewnewcastle.org
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Renew is the brainchild of Marcus Westbury, a Newcastle-born ‘writer, broadcaster, festival director and media maker’ (Renew Newcastle n.d.). Avowedly not an artist himself, Westbury is both an observer and facilitator of cultural projects, straddling the divide between artistic practice, critique and administration. Westbury was also one of the creators of Newcastle’s This Is Not Art Festival (TINA), which he claims is now ‘Newcastle’s largest annual tourism event and one of the largest media arts events in the world’ (Renew Newcastle n.d.). TINA is described by organisers as ‘a supercharged convergence of writers, performers, thinkers, independent and industry musicians, creative researchers, electronic artists, dilettantes, and DIY culture makers in a showcase featuring over 400 local, national and international artists’ (Octapod n.d.). While Westbury was primarily responsible for Renew’s creation and remains involved as part-time creative director, the organisation is run day to day by a general manager (until very recently Marni Jackson), with oversight by an advisory board. Operating costs are funded primarily by grants, including salaries for Jackson, Westbury and a small part-time staff (a media, communications and marketing coordinator and a project-support officer). Financial and other support comes from a range of organisations including the NCC, Arts NSW and the Hunter Development Corporation (key supporters are shown in Figure 5.6).
In March 2014 Renew celebrated five years of operation, ‘having brought to life 59 otherwise empty properties by supporting 138 arts, creative and community projects’ (Renew Newcastle 2014). Recent achievements include the creation of ‘The Emporium’, a small-scale shopping experience occupying part of the defunct David Jones building in Hunter Street mall. This building was a symbolic site for many Novocastrians as the centrepiece of the CBD’s formerly bustling retail hub and had been empty since 2011. Renew has won a number of awards for its achievements, including the 2010 Australian Business Arts Foundation’s Partnership of the Year (with GPT). Building on Renew’s success, in 2011 Westbury created Renew Australia, an organisation that helps other towns and cities to implement the Renew model (Renew Australia, n.d.). According to Westbury, as of May 2013 there were nineteen places in the process of starting Renew projects, fifty-three more whose representatives had visited Newcastle or been visited by Westbury and another fifty-five that asked for assistance which was beyond Renew Australia’s capacity (Westbury 2013a).
Renew promotes itself via a website, an email newsletter and a Facebook page. Westbury is prolific on Facebook and Twitter (8500+ followers), has a personal blog, writes occasionally
Page 101 of 317 for mainstream media like The Age and the Newcastle Herald, and regularly speaks at conferences and festivals. Both Jackson and Westbury have given numerous interviews in local and national press. These channels provide opportunities to promote both Renew and its physical, social and cultural impact on Newcastle.
Other Informal Reimaging Projects
There are also a range of other informal image-making projects now occurring in Newcastle, although to date none has been as prominent as Renew. Connected to both Renew and TINA is Street Art Walking, which grew out of an event held at TINA by festival coordinator Simone Sheridan, a self-described ‘cultural broker’ and former Renew participant. Sheridan’s organisation connects street artists with property owners in and around Newcastle who want a mural painted on their property’s external wall (e.g. Figure 5.7). Sheridan promotes the completed murals online using Twitter (828 followers, 2510 tweets), Facebook (2,365 likes), Instagram (now offline) and a blog, and plans to begin running regular walking tours of the art. She believes the murals have attracted more tourists and locals into Newcastle’s CBD, helping to create a more vibrant downtown area and improve the city’s ‘street cred’. Sheridan has also been employed as a social media consultant and place-making coordinator for the Hunter Development Corporation, developing place-making projects at the Honeysuckle redevelopment.
Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. Artwork can be viewed online here: http://streetartwalking.com.au/portfolio-item/keightly-street/
Figure 5.7 Street Art Walking Mural in Newcastle, by Tez. Source: Author
A number of writers and bloggers have also been active in attempting to reshape Newcastle’s image. One of the most active is Siobhan Curran, whose blog The Novocastrian Files profiles local cultural producers, fashionable events and venues around Newcastle. Page 102 of 317
Curran began the blog after moving to Newcastle in 2010, and she has since become the media, publicity and marketing coordinator for Renew. Curran was also responsible for organising the TEDxNewy conference in 2011, which featured speakers with a personal or professional connection to the city. She is well-connected on Twitter (2231 followers, 24,300 tweets), Instagram (1123 followers) and Facebook (1537 likes). Another well-known local writer is Matthew Endacott, who writes about Newcastle on his blog this untidy, smoky city. He has also had opinion pieces published in the Sydney Morning Herald (2010) and the Newcastle Herald (2012, 2013), often focusing on the efforts being made to revitalise Hunter Street and the CBD. Although less prolific on social media than some of the other interviewees, Endacott is linked into the same Twitter networks, with Marcus Westbury, Simone Sheridan, Siobhan Curran and Newcastle NOW among his 146 followers.
Not all of Newcastle’s informal image-makers are from the creative industries, however. One of the city’s prominent promoters is Newcastle NOW (New Opportunities Working), a Business Improvement Association (BIA) which advocates on behalf of CBD-based organisations. Its efforts are funded through an NCC levy on businesses in the CBD and elective business-membership fees. Notwithstanding this funding model, Newcastle NOW describes itself as an independent organisation. It promotes the CBD through festivals and events, as well as through its website and on Twitter (2017 followers, 2225 tweets), Facebook (4347 likes), Instagram (921 followers) and Vimeo. Once Brand Newcastle was launched in 2011, Newcastle NOW changed its logo to mirror the brand logo (Figure 5.8).
Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. See Figure 5.11.
Figure 5.8: Newcastle Now Logo. Source: http://www.newcastlenow.org.au/
While this is clearly only a handful of the individuals and organisations involved in Newcastle’s reimaging, it is sufficient to give an indication of the kinds of official and unofficial projects emerging across the city. Having thus identified some key participants, the next question is: what tools and strategies are these participants using to try to reshape the city’s image?
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5.3 HOW: EXPLORING STRATEGIES FOR REIMAGING NEWCASTLE
As discussed in Chapter 2, urban branding strategies have been understood by scholars to have both external and local audiences, with the goal of either attracting visitors, residents, and resources to the city or influencing local change and redevelopment processes. Of course, these goals are often intertwined, and a reimaging strategy may address both simultaneously, making it somewhat artificial to describe particular imaging strategies as internally or externally directed. Yet as Section 2.4 demonstrated, thinking about likely target audiences when reviewing reimaging strategies can be a helpful way to understand how they construct the process of urban change and to uncover the broader philosophies behind these practices. For this reason, the internal and external qualities of the strategies employed by Newcastle’s formal and informal image-makers will be examined here to shed light on how these image-makers foresee Newcastle’s revitalisation taking shape.
5.3.1 FORMAL IMAGE-MAKING: FROM THE TOP DOWN, THE BRAND INSPIRES CHANGE
Looking first at Brand Newcastle, a number of the strategies used reflect the traditional external focus of place branding, suggesting the campaign was at least partly driven by the logic of urban entrepreneurialism and interurban competition. The most obvious examples are the rebranding of the city’s tourism website, brochures and social media accounts, all of which have the potential to extend the brand’s visibility outside the city. The brand’s online presence seems to have been slowly but steadily increasing since it was launched. The branded Newcastle Facebook page has a significant following (over 40,000 likes)—although it is worth noting that posts often seem designed for local audiences (e.g. last-minute event updates)—and the majority of the page’s members identify as Novocastrians. Likewise, the creation of an online image bank of photographs inspired by Brand Newcastle for use in promotional material also seems designed primarily to reshape the external image of the city. Looking beyond the online, another external strategy has involved inviting journalists on ‘famils’, meaning expenses-paid tours of the city. Whether considered a general tourism strategy or specifically part of the brand campaign, this approach has resulted in numerous positive travel features being published in the past few years (e.g. Stubbs 2011; Blake 2012; Milsom 2013; SBS 2014). The brand also featured prominently in a recent extended city profile in national magazine Time Out, with the logo included alongside the NCC logo (Fontaine 2013).
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Meanwhile, explanatory comments made in the online launch materials seem to confirm an external focus for the branding strategy. In one of the videos, advertising executive Adam Lance describes the project as being designed to attract ‘the best talent, the best people, the best energy, the best ideas, the best investment, the best tourism’ to Newcastle. Another highlights the guiding logic of interurban competition by listing the city’s key assets and declaring that ‘when you package that all up, it really is something that can compete with some of the larger cities on a global scale’. An external focus for the brand was also suggested by Susan Denholm, the NCC’s place-making coordinator, who explained why she didn’t adopt a logo for the place-making program that mimicked the Brand Newcastle design:
I was guided to change it, because that really should be an external brand for tourism and for external agencies whereas place-making, because it’s linked with council, shouldn’t really use that.
The fact that the brand is viewed as an external promotional tool is also apparent from its inclusion in Newcastle’s recent Destination Management Plan (NTIG 2013), although this document does not spell out precisely what role the brand plays within the broader strategy for attracting visitors to the city.
Despite these external strategies, however, to date the brand seems to have been more prominent within Newcastle than it has externally. While budget limitations have likely played a role in this outcome, local engagement also seems to have been a deliberate element of the campaign’s early implementation, reflecting the growing place branding literature that sees this as an important part of successful campaign. Former Peach advertising executive Adam Lance mentioned that research on current trends in urban branding had informed the campaign design, with the Peach team reviewing case studies from New York, Amsterdam and Dublin. He stressed:
The nature of the process that Peach had decided upon made it a very internally focused campaign first of all, before it became an external thing. It was very much a committee-type arrangement: there [were] a lot of presentations, I’ve never presented to so many people, the same thing, so many times. So there was a lot of ‘stakeholder engagement’ … there was a lot of that sort of stuff going on.
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He also suggested that this internal engagement may ultimately have been more effective than the brand’s external strategy, noting that ‘there was a lot of support internally, which is good, but it should have been more about pushing the story out’.
The NCC’s former tourism and economic development manager Simon McArthur also indicated that local engagement was an important part of how the brand campaign was designed. This can be discerned from the way McArthur describes the purpose of the campaign:
There was no brand for the city, and I don’t mean a logo, but I mean a consistent way that people would describe it—so the exercise to me was as much about trying to get people to stop using terms like the steel city, or coal city, or whatever, and start using terms and descriptions which actually better reflected what this city was at the moment and where it was going to. That’s the hardest bit.
In other words, the process was not about simply attracting more external attention to the city, but about changing how people—both externally and locally—thought and talked about the city. In particular, it was important to encourage locals to adopt the new brand, even when there may be political advantages to reinforcing old, negative imagery (like the trope that equates Newcastle’s CBD with ‘the streets of Beirut’):
Most of the locals were really cooperative and really keen to make this thing work, but I also found that whenever anybody wanted to achieve another objective they were quite happy to dust off the old [imagery] and use it. And the reality with media is that it’s the old stuff, the old stereotypes, which are really really easy to use from a media sense as well.
Interestingly, one of the ways McArthur proposed to overcome such negative city imagery was through the use of brand ambassadors. This approach is relatively new to both corporate and place branding (Andersson and Ekman 2009) and aims to formalise what is known as word-of-mouth promotion (see Kozinets et al. 2010). McArthur saw potential for brand ambassadors to strengthen Newcastle’s brand from the inside out:
To get brands successful is actually about having people who are really good at expressing the brand essence and the benefits of using the brand, continuously. So having ambassadors in the environment that can speak to it and then when they hear someone misuse it or use something completely different, that can try and
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deal with that situation there and then. That’s not typically in a brand promotion strategy, it’s typically more about advertising and placement and visual props and all that sort of stuff. So that’s probably a lesson.
Such an approach would also capitalise on existing local networks, as Andersson and Eckman (2009) suggest it is primarily through such networks that brand ambassadors help to spread the brand message.
McArthur recognised that the proposed approaches to branding were not necessarily broadly understood, as ‘most people don’t know what brand is and you probably need to spend the first two years trying to help them to get that, they really do think it’s the logo on the side of the mountain’. As such, it was important to ensure the branding process and its value was clearly explained to Novocastrians. If some of the online reactions to the brand’s launch are indicative, this was a significant challenge—a point echoed by Adam Lance, who noted the pushback that occurred at community briefings held prior to the campaign’s launch. Nonetheless, both the existence of these community briefings and McArthur’s perspective on the branding process suggest that local communication and engagement were key parts of the Brand Newcastle campaign.
In addition to the local aspects McArthur identified, much of the Brand Newcastle launch was also locally executed. For example, the public competition seeking logo locations around town was clearly intended to encourage local engagement with the new brand. The branded info kiosks in the CBD may have been designed to increase the brand’s visibility to tourists, but they would only reach those already in Newcastle. Similarly, the logo’s use by local organisations would primarily raise local brand awareness unless they also used the logo online. Given that these were key features of the brand launch—Adam Lance confirmed there was no external advertising campaign conducted at that time—it seems reasonable to assume that the initial impact of the brand would have been more significant locally than externally.
So given that the Brand Newcastle campaign does seem to have had a discernible local component, what sort of brand strategy and goals were communicated to the local community through the campaign? One interpretation is to see the Brand Newcastle project as a way to communicate to the local community the value of a top-down change strategy in which coherence and coordinated participation are necessary elements of success. There are a number of aspects of the campaign that point towards this conclusion.
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To begin with, the brand itself was developed in a centralised, coordinated fashion with government funding and management, and it has been incorporated into the Newcastle Destination Management Plan as part of a suite of strategic documents governing the official management of Newcastle (Figure 5.9).
Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions. Available online at: https://www.visitnewcastle.com.au/images/FINAL_Newcastle_Destination_Management_Plan_June_1 9_2013.pdf (p.14)
Figure 5.9: Newcastle Destination Management Plan 2013. Source: NTIG 2013.8
Furthermore, while public participation was central to the brand’s development process, this participation was shaped by the brand strategists; participants were invited and appear to have come from traditional key stakeholder groups such as industry, tourism and major institutions. The informal image-makers interviewed for this research were not involved in this participation process. While there was undoubtedly disagreement within the participation sessions, the resulting brand was presented as a consensus outcome, with the participants shown in the brand videos all speaking in support.
The strategy of coordination and top-down guidance is also evident in various ways the NCC has managed the brand since its launch. On the one hand, the logo has been made available to a wide range of organisations around the city, a form of ‘crowdsourcing’ (to use Siobhan Curran’s phrase) that seems to encourage informal, grassroots engagement with the brand. On the other hand, use of the logo requires prior approval from the NCC’s
8 The highlighting here is mine.
Page 108 of 317 marketing manager and adherence to a style guide. While the guide may not have been followed in all cases, the approach indicates that central control and cohesion are seen as necessary for the brand’s success.
This conclusion gains support from the ‘Media Downloads’ section of the Brand Newcastle website which includes a description that provides perhaps the clearest example of how the Brand Newcastle campaign communicates the importance of coordinated change processes:
It’s interesting to think of a city brand like a world-class choir.
Each member of the choir must sing the same song, to the same tune, at the same time to ensure they deliver a clear, strong, powerful and uniform message. The same can be said for supporting a city brand.
That’s why we have created the Brand Newcastle media kit. The media kit helps achieve consistent and coherent application of the Newcastle brand and ensure all Newcastle businesses who wish to use the Newcastle brand are communicating the same message.
This highly coordinated vision was also communicated in the way Simon McArthur described the brand at its launch (Gregory 2011, p. 5):
McArthur said the council hoped individuals, businesses and industries would reflect brand values by improving products and services, protecting certain features of the city and considering new opportunities … “It’s not going to change the whole city centre overnight, but it’s the mortar behind the bricks. We can build things, but unless people want to work together, the bricks are simply a pile.”
This statement implies that in order for positive change to occur in the city, it is necessary for all residents to be united behind a common vision for the city, in terms of both its assets and its future. The brand is a way to express and communicate that vision, and it provides inspiration and guidance for stakeholders.
Overall then, the official branding strategy can be read as sending local residents the message that coordination and coherence are prerequisites for valuable, lasting urban change. In this sense, the logic of change underpinning Brand Newcastle is a centralised, top-down one, whereby macro ideas inspire and shape micro actions. While the nature of this change logic is not particularly surprising given urban branding’s role as a component Page 109 of 317 of entrepreneurial city governance, it differs notably from the approach taken by the city’s informal image-makers.
5.3.2 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING: THROUGH NETWORKING, CHANGE SHAPES THE BRAND
As with Brand Newcastle, there are discernible local and external aspects to the way informal image-making projects like Renew Newcastle have been implemented, although these local and external goals are often addressed through the same practices. While this is also true for Brand Newcastle, the limited budget of independent image-makers generally makes explicitly external tourism-style promotion impossible. Most of the tools relied on by informal image-makers, like social media and networking, seem to offer a more complex mix of local and external reach, as this section will show.
Looking first at the external perspective, and beginning with mainstream media appearances, Renew Newcastle stands out among Newcastle’s informal image-makers. Renew has been covered by numerous external media outlets, including ABC Radio (Colvin 2012), SBS online (Code 2012), the Sydney Morning Herald (Rhodes 2011), The Australian (Milne 2012), and even CNN online (Jameson 2011) and the Galway Advertiser (Andrews 2010). Other appearances include travel features in the Telegraph (Caplan 2011), DestinAsian (Hutchinson 2012), Broadsheet (Holberton 2012), and the Jetstar (Israel 2009) and Virgin Australia (2013) magazines. In addition, the project has been discussed in online publications targeted at urbanism and arts enthusiasts, including by bloggers from Time (Fox 2009), Reuters (Salmon 2009) and the Atlantic (McCardle 2009) discussing urban property markets, as well as Assemble Papers (Lim 2012), The Design Files (Feagins 2012), Planetizen (Halbur 2011) and Futurechallenges.org (Ricardi 2012). Last but not least, perhaps the most high-profile external attention Renew has received is being named by Lonely Planet as a reason it selected Newcastle as a top-ten city to visit in 2011. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is sufficient to demonstrate the extent of Renew’s media reach. While this interest may be attributed in part to the novelty of the Renew model, it must also reflect Marcus Westbury’s willingness and ability as an interviewee and Renew’s promotional efforts more broadly.
While none has reached Renew’s level of press exposure, other informal image-makers are also developing an external profile. In addition to the opinion writing that Matt Endacott has had published in the Sydney Morning Herald, he was also recently mentioned by another high-profile Fairfax columnist (Farrelly 2014) and featured in a National Geographic
Page 110 of 317 blog post (Intelligent Travel 2013). Siobhan Curran showed The Design Files around Newcastle and was mentioned in the site’s feature on the city (Feagins 2012). Simone Sheridan of Street Art Walking was recently invited by the Project for Public Spaces to a high-profile conference on place-making in Detroit (Courage 2013; Dybis 2013; Novara 2013), providing an opportunity to share her work with an international audience.
At the same time, many of these informal image-makers have far more extensive Web 2.0 profiles, which provide an easy and affordable way to spread their alternative narratives of Newcastle beyond city limits. Matt Endacott offers a good overview of Web 2.0’s ability to make outsiders enthusiastic about the city, noting that the recent external interest in Newcastle he’d noticed was not so much from people who’ve visited:
[It’s] probably more the people who’ve heard about the things. So people who have, they subscribe to a particular blog or they follow something on Twitter and they read or they’ll see a photograph about a new art gallery that’s opened up in a Renew project or something great that happened at a festival. And then that sort of triggers their interest in the city and then they might Google the city a little bit and come across a whole heap of articles about different things going on over the last 12 to 18 months.
Simone Sheridan makes a similar point, noting how her external online audience became an increasingly important part of her business strategy for promoting Street Art Walking, which in turn promotes Newcastle:
What I started to think is, okay, I don’t need to sell to Newcastle. I’ve actually got a bigger online audience of people in Melbourne and Sydney that follow Street Art Walking—and maybe it’s about just bringing them here. I meet people from Melbourne that are new, and they’ve come to Newcastle, and it’s like, ‘What? It was the other way around two years ago’. I think it’s going to be that the people outside of Newcastle catch on quicker than Newcastle itself.
Siobhan Curran identified the same effect from the other perspective, explaining the role Web 2.0 played when she was contemplating moving to Newcastle:
I remember when I found out about Renew starting; I was living in Sydney and … came across it on a blog or something—oh my god, this is so exciting, like somebody’s doing
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something, and it’s actually really interesting and unique and it’s going to work! Holy crap, this is so cool! People like that live in Newcastle—yay!
These comments highlight how Web 2.0 enables informal image-makers to connect easily and cheaply with external audiences. The value of social media for reimaging goes beyond simply providing new audiences, however. Social media also creates feedback loops, which Comunian (2011, p. 1162) describes as a feature of complex systems that mean ‘small events can have a large impact on the overall system.’ In social media, the networked nature of connections and the ‘Like’, ‘Share’ and ‘Retweet’ functions allow a message to be reinforced in a way that would be more difficult and expensive using more traditional media channels. A good example comes from Marcus Westbury, who recently used social media to promote his forthcoming book about the Renew experience. Westbury’s crowdfunding campaign on Pozible received 1800 Facebook likes and 350 retweets, resulting in four times the requested funding being pledged (Westbury 2013b). Marcus is undoubtedly a talented online networker, both on Facebook and with over 8500 followers on Twitter, and he used both platforms to promote the book project. His efforts were then echoed by Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia, with both organisations promoting the project through their social media accounts. In addition, other Renew participants also chose to promote the project via their social media accounts, as did at least one urban blogger. The net effect was that I heard about Marcus’s project through multiple channels while he was promoting it, none of which were any form of paid advertising. In this way, a single message can spread far beyond the local community through social networks, but can also be reinforced for each user through retweeting and reposting by others, creating a ‘feedback loop’ that amplifies the message in a potentially powerful way.
As this example also demonstrates, informal image-makers’ efforts often have both place- based and personal benefits, with the two closely intertwined. For example, Renew’s promotional efforts undoubtedly attract positive attention for Newcastle, as SGS Economics suggested in their 2011 analysis of the project (SGS Economics and Planning 2011). This report assessed Renew’s net financial impact over three years at $1,148,200, of which $202,000 was attributed to ‘improved regional brand value’.9 At the same time, Marcus’s
9 SGS defined the concept of ‘improved regional-brand value’ as follows (p.13): ‘In fostering and encouraging artists, cultural projects and community groups, renewal project locations can distinguish themselves within the region as a centre for the arts and artistic communities. This creative element, often attributed to Australia’s coastal capitals, could prove to be a strong attraction, both for tourism and in promoting investment in the region. The “Renew Newcastle” project is a case in point. The city has gained national and international
Page 112 of 317 promotion of Renew likely brings benefits for him personally, increasing his profile as a speaker, writer and festival director. In a similar vein, Matt Endacott described his blog as a valuable portfolio for future job interviews, as well as a place to promote his vision for the future of the city. Simone Sheridan benefits personally from promoting her business Street Art Walking, even as it may also change how outsiders see Newcastle. And while The Novocastrian Files presents a positive image of the city externally, Siobhan Curran described the blog as also having a pragmatic goal, albeit a non-financial one—she began it as a way to find out more about the ‘cool’ places around town.
On the one hand, these overlaps might suggest that the informal image-making identified here is really just self-promotion, and that any place-based impact is simply incidental. On the other hand, it is clear that, for Renew at least, its founders are very aware of the project’s potential to also change external narratives about Newcastle. While this external impact may not have been the primary goal of the project, it is something that they have worked to enhance, as Marni Jackson acknowledged:
we could see very quickly that it has the potential for that, once you start clustering interesting creative things in one space you’ve got a different story going on, and there’s definitely potential for that … I mean I’m sure that’s in the back of Marcus’s mind, knowing … his experience in other projects. And I don’t think we sat down at the beginning and that was number one on the agenda, but I think it became very clear that that could be part of the story, and so it was very much something that we’re thinking about when we started building it. And just seeing what the response was I think in the very early days we could see that it was going to have that impact, so we were kind of finding ways we could massage that a little bit more and more.
Marni went on to explain that Renew does what it can to promote the project and the city externally, although ‘we’ve got limited resources to [do] tourism marketing. You know, we factor some of that in to … all of the projects and programs that we have, and we want to
recognition in the mainstream media due to the project. The relatively cheap cost of living in Newcastle has attracted a large artist population. Renew Newcastle has been recognised as facilitating the influx of artists into independent “artist-run spaces and dozens of disused city-centre buildings occupied by photographers, fashion designers, digital artists and more”. Newcastle has also gained an international reputation as a tourist destination and ranked in the top ten cities to visit in 2011 from the “Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2011—the best trends, destinations, journeys and experiences for the upcoming year”. This alone could generate significant tourist value to not only Newcastle but Australia’.
Page 113 of 317 be able to do a bit of that.’ In this regard, Renew might be viewed as seeking to support interurban competition in much the same way as official branding efforts.
Turning now to look at how informal image-makers communicate locally, the significance of networks (both online and offline) in facilitating image-making becomes even more apparent. To begin with, it is clear that Newcastle has strong ‘offline’ networks, particularly in the creative industries. While this is not really surprising given the city’s size, these networks do seem to be a defining feature of the Newcastle experience. A number of interviewees stressed the value of these networks, including Renew participant and filmmaker Stuart McBratney:
Well, firstly, there is a network, because there is a good network of people. I have subcontracted various people for jobs that I need done. Other people have asked me to do things that they need, video production or music recording or something like that. But that’s just for work. There is also sort of a network of support for I guess just being a creative person, and just the simple fact that there are other people around who are doing the same thing, who are in the same boat, is encouraging—because you can compare stories, compare war stories about clients who just won’t pay and that sort of stuff. Just makes you feel like you are not the only boat floating out that particular body of water. You are amongst others, and it’s a good feeling.
Renew has undoubtedly helped to extend these networks, as local writer Micky Pinkerton explains:
That little core initial group of people, that it was just somebody knew Marni or somebody knew Marcus, and it was a fairly usual-suspects kind of group, is now this really sort of diverse group of people with shop fronts. Again, a lot of credit to Marcus for always trying to go beyond that and not just make it the clique that were benefiting from it.
Simone Sheridan reinforces this perception of a strong network associated with Renew, noting that ‘even though I’m not officially a Renew project anymore, I still identify as a Renewer. I am at every event, and I know all of those people.’ TINA also seems to offer similar networking opportunities—it is where Marcus met Marni, and it provided Simone with further opportunities to build on the connections she made through Renew.
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Yet, while Newcastle’s offline creative networks might always have been strong, Siobhan Curran suggested that social media has now become an integral part of communication within this community:
The arts and creative culture in Newcastle is so tight, like everyone knows everyone, and you know you just have to catch up with a friend at a café to know. Like I was just on Facebook this afternoon, one of the guys I’m following who’s at the Roost, which is a Newcastle project, was here having coffee and Facebooked about the name of this artist [currently painting a mural in the café where the interview was conducted] with a link to her blog, that she was being commissioned to put a mural in here. And I was like, ‘good to know!’ You know? And now everyone knows. So imagine, pre-Facebook—that’s what Newcastle I imagine would have been like anyway, just from word of mouth.
Most notably, what Web 2.0 has done is make these networks more accessible to new arrivals like Siobhan, who also found one of her first blog interviewees by searching on Flickr (a photography sharing site). Similarly, Simone Sheridan suggested that by developing an online profile she was able to gain access to different groups within the city and new opportunities, because her online presence meant she ‘became known for knowing cool things or stuff that was on’.
As well as offering professional and personal benefits, these offline and online networks are of real significance for informal image-making, as they transform it from an individual to a collective process. Marni Jackson explains:
I guess because it’s a relatively small city, you can connect with people so you feel like you’re part of something. You feel like you’re part of a movement, or you can affect the world around you, and impact the world around you, and do things that maybe you wouldn’t have a chance to do in other places. Or that’s what it feels like.
Marni’s comment is interesting, as it suggests that a network of like-minded people is almost a pre-condition to informal image-making, as this sense of being part of a network gives individuals the courage to make their vision public and to believe that it might have a worthwhile impact. Both Marni and Matt Endacott used the word ‘movement’ to describe the creative networks in the city over the past few years, while Stuart McBratney suggested that Newcastle now has a ‘scene’, a little like 1970s New York, where there was ‘an energy
Page 115 of 317 in the air’. Matt also suggested that Web 2.0 played a significant role in facilitating a local movement towards change within Newcastle:
I’m not saying that my blog did bring people together, but it was a part of a movement from about 2011 and onwards, of people coming out and talking about their views on Newcastle. And that could be as simple as Instagram, people taking photographs of beautiful buildings in Newcastle and other people commenting and saying oh what’s that, what’s going on there. I think it was this goodwill going around, and people sharing each other’s blogs. You know, Siobhan Curran with The Novocastrian Files posted something on her blog about my blog and that moved the crowd to that blog. I think perhaps by doing that, that small network of people who did know each other redirecting people, reading their material to each other created the sense, for those that were interested in the city that hey, things are happening. There is this movement, people care.
Matt’s comment gets to the heart of how these networks—both offline and online—help to facilitate informal image-making directed at shaping local perceptions about Newcastle and its possible future. Through these networks, informal image-makers can communicate their vision of change for the city in a way that is potentially very powerful, as it means the message is coming from known and trusted parties. This is effectively a form of word-of- mouth marketing, similar to the concept at the heart of the brand ambassador strategy Simon McArthur proposed. In Newcastle, however, these networks are functioning not to reinforce the official brand but rather to reinforce an alternative vision of small-scale, DIY, incremental change.
While the official branding strategy positioned urban change as a flow-on effect of Novocastrians uniting cohesively behind the top-down brand, the city’s informal image- makers present an alternative vision that sees urban change, even at the very small scale, as a precursor to shifting the city’s image. Rhiannon Tuntevski makes this point when describing the ‘creative ideas competition’ she helped create, Newcastle 2020, which solicits ideas from local artists about how to improve Hunter Street and the CBD:
I think it’s really an internal focus but knowing that that would have an external impact. What we’re hoping is that in ten, fifteen years’ time we can, because the whole team, the median age of the team is twenty-three. When we’re kind of those people in the city who are responsible for all these things happening, we can look
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back and say we’ve got a really engaged demographic. And that in turn will affect how our city’s marketed and how our city’s spoken about … We’re not going for anything outside of Newcastle, but we know that what we’re doing will, in turn, have an effect on how those decisions are made.
Marcus Westbury also makes this point even more explicitly when describing the Renew model:
The really interesting thing about this approach or this project is that it makes success at the kind of macro scale by accumulating success at the micro scale … And what I tend to see with most initiatives and plans and things that are all about branding and selling the city or building, … it’s all about the macro scale first, so you build the big advertising campaign and then you kind of backfill to find the details, or you build the big arts centre and then you kind of project that you’ve got … a vibrant arts and cultural life. And what I’ve argued all along is that it’s the kind of micro foundations of that stuff that actually build the thing … Whether it’s reputation or economic development or cultural life, it’s making the small stuff work that makes the big stuff work.
Locally, Renew promotes this vision of small-scale, incremental efforts leading to broader change through its events-based promotion strategy, which Marni Jackson identified as an important feature of how she and Marcus developed the project. As well as supporting events run by others (such as local markets and TINA), Renew promotes itself and its participants by running a monthly walking tour of current Renew spaces. Often these tours are themed (such as a ‘Winter Wander’ tour in July), and Renew participants provide food and drink to welcome visitors to their spaces (Figure 5.10).
Figure 5.10: Scenes from Renew’s Winter Wander Tour, July 2013. Source: Author.
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Using this strategy, Renew can enhance local awareness of its physical impact in Hunter Street, while also creating opportunities for Renew participants to promote their products. The result is a tour which simultaneously showcases Renew’s effect on Newcastle while highlighting the eclectic, independent and DIY nature of the participants and their projects. A similar strategy was employed for Renew’s five-year anniversary celebrations, which featured a display of before-and-after photos of Renew spaces in the Emporium (Speight 2014).
In the local context, Renew is smart to emphasise the physical impact it has had on Hunter Street, given the nostalgic attachment many Novocastrians have to the area as the city’s once-bustling heart. This physical impact is also reinforced through online image-making by Renew and others in their network. Recent examples include the use of before-and-after photos of the Hunter Street mall in a Renew Newcastle promotional video pitched at local property owners (Westbury 2013c), as well on Marcus’s Pozible crowdfunding webpage (Westbury 2013b; for earlier examples see Renew Newcastle 2010; Flickr 2009). Matt Endacott explained how showcasing the practical, pragmatic aspects of independent revitalisation projects has been essential to the movement that he has seen develop, and has supported the local shift in perceptions:
In my experiences, Facebook and blogs drove that whole movement. It drove Renew Newcastle, and if you want to sort of put it in some sort of linear fashion, Renew Newcastle is the component of that movement that you can’t do without … It was also a tangible thing that people could blog about as proof that, hey, you know, this place is coming back. Here’s a photograph of a shop in the old David Jones building. Here’s a photograph of some empty building that’s got something great in it now. We needed something tangible to demonstrate that there was a change. Because before that, it was all talk. And it’s always been talk. And that’s what created this sort of disillusionment within the city about what is taking place.
Likewise, Siobhan Curran emphasises the importance of practical change in bringing about an image shift, and the value of highlighting this change as a reimaging tool:
Just get good people doing good stuff and the word spreads, I mean, word of mouth. I mean we’ve got to know this now more than ever, with the way the media landscape’s changing so much, is word of mouth is everything, better than a logo campaign, a TVC [television campaign]. Getting influencers up here and seeing it for
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themselves and showing them around and getting them to take the time, and then they go home and they tell their friends about it. That will do a bazillion times better than a multimillion-dollar ad campaign.
Matt and Siobhan’s comments confirm how highlighting tangible evidence of change is an important element of the way informal image-makers promote their vision for Newcastle, particularly since the city has a history of failed renewal projects. Only by bringing about tangible change—and showcasing it through a range of ‘real life’ and online strategies— could these projects offer locals a powerful, alternative vision for Newcastle’s future.
Importantly, this tangible evidence is also supported by narratives that emphasise the small-scale, informal, independent quality of the changes being promoted. Again, this is particularly true for Renew, with the DIY nature of the intervention being frequently reinforced. Marcus Westbury often mentions that the project was originally funded using his credit card (Westbury 2010b, 2010d) and noted in his interview that the NCC hasn’t always been the most ‘responsive partner’ for Renew, particularly in its initial stages (it now provides funding). This narrative of Renew coming about despite official inaction is reinforced by Siobhan Curran, who described her early impressions of Renew as ‘one of the reasons why I wanted to move up here too … just knowing that there were people up here that—against the city, just tried to give something a go anyway’. Marni Jackson also adopted the DIY narrative when describing how Renew operates, explaining the project as being about ‘trying to engage people in … creating the atmosphere and the energy, and deciding how we do this thing or how we remake this city, you know? That it’s not, “someone else does it, and you watch”, it’s “you get in and do it yourself”’.
This narrative of DIY change is also contextualised by emphasising Newcastle’s inability to bring about officially planned change, at least at the CBD scale. In this more limited geographical understanding of ‘Newcastle’, the change that has occurred is attributed predominantly to small-scale, incremental, DIY change (Westbury 2010a, 2010b; 2013a). Major redevelopments like the Honeysuckle foreshore and the old hospital redevelopment do not fit within this definition of the ‘city’ and therefore do not contradict the description of it as ‘dying’ or ‘gone to seed’ (Westbury 2008; 2010b). This focus on the CBD is not something that Renew alone does—the historic significance of the CBD means it plays a strong symbolic role in local understandings of Newcastle, even though most of the services
Page 119 of 317 it once provided are now readily available elsewhere. As Ross Kerridge, founder of the Newcastle Institute, explains:
It’s interesting, the locals are so focused on how bad Hunter Street looks … And I think what they don’t appreciate is that someone coming from outside drives around the city, and most of it looks really good … If you’re a newcomer to the city … you probably won’t even drive down Hunter Street, and if you do, you won’t think of it as a main street.
Renew’s narratives capitalise on this local preoccupation with Hunter Street and the CBD as a way to strengthen its message about the project’s impact and its alternative, DIY-driven change vision.
Looking beyond Renew, the theme of DIY and small-scale projects as the catalyst for change in Newcastle also comes through in the way Simone Sheridan positions Street Art Walking as a valuable contribution. Despite street art being a temporary installation, Simone claims it has a more significant cultural impact:
I think the biggest thing I noticed about Newcastle was there’s this ‘meanwhile’ thing happening … The idea we saw was to just kind of do these quick temporary things, and it really has helped people on the ground feel safer or the community connect better with their space. I didn’t feel like we made it safer, we just put some art up, but I did some surveys where I stood in front of the works and people would say, ‘I feel safer with it there’ … I guess that’s where Renew does a similar thing; they’re like, ‘Okay, we know you want to sell your buildings, and we know that you’re going to find a tenant, but while that happens, in the meanwhile—’. That’s the biggest thing: … they all have these big plans, these master plans, and everything’s got to fit in, but what happens to the people every single day that walk past those empty spaces?
Simone’s description of these as ‘meanwhile’ strategies touches on an inherent tension in these kinds of projects, which is whether they will be able to survive in the long term or whether they will help create the conditions for the more coordinated, top-down change Brand Newcastle seems to support. Ultimately, this may come down to how well Newcastle’s informal image-makers have communicated their alternative change vision to the local community. This is a question that will be returned to in the analysis in Chapter 7.
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Overall, the strategies outlined in this section indicate some fundamental differences in how formal and informal image-makers are seeking to reimage Newcastle, even though in both cases the strategies incorporate both external and local features. Brand Newcastle is a traditional top-down branding strategy, which uses online, media and visual communication tools to promote the narrative that uniting behind a shared brand essence will lead to coordinated and therefore effective urban change. By contrast, the unofficial reimaging of Newcastle is spread and amplified through real-life and online networks and presents independent, small-scale change as a precursor to shifting perceptions of the city. These different change logics also suggest a broader divergence in how these two groups envisage the ideal future for Newcastle, something that will be considered further in the analysis in Chapter 7.
First, however, it is helpful to turn to a more detailed examination of the content presented by official and unofficial participants through these various reimaging strategies. Given the significantly different logic of change driving these efforts, it might be expected that the narrative themes promoted by official and unofficial image-makers would also be fundamentally different. Surprisingly, however, this is not entirely the case. Across both official and unofficial imaging materials, two key themes emerge, which will be examined next.
5.4 WHAT: DISSECTING NEWCASTLE’S REIMAGING NARRATIVES
Having outlined the substantive aspects of formal and informal image-making in Newcastle, it is now time to consider the thematic aspects: what narratives, exactly, are different groups adopting to portray Newcastle to itself and to the world? While the previous section considered the DIY narrative Renew uses to support its vision of incremental urban change, there are also a number of other recurring narratives that can be identified. A close examination of the materials produced by formal and informal image-makers identifies two key recurring themes: Newcastle as a post-industrial city and Newcastle as a city of opportunity. This section offers an overview of how these two themes are shaped to suit the purposes of different image-makers.
5.4.1 NEWCASTLE AS A POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY
While Newcastle’s image and identity have long been shaped by its industrial heritage, the city’s economic, social and physical transformation in recent decades means it may now be
Page 121 of 317 more accurately understood as a post-industrial city than an industrial one. The challenge of post-industrialism as a city image or brand, however, is that the concept describes a place primarily by the absence of something tangible and meaningful to residents— industry—rather than by the presence of any inherent, easily defined qualities. While post- industrial urbanism has a reasonably well-established meaning in academic circles, it is not always clear precisely what this translates into for cities like Newcastle in practice (see Endacott 2011). This leaves the meaning of ‘post-industrial’ open for redefinition, creating a space for both formal and informal participants to present competing representations of what post-industrial Newcastle is and where it might be headed.
Looking first at Brand Newcastle, it seems the city’s transition from industrial to post- industrial is a central element of the image being promoted. This emerges from the opening words on the Brand Newcastle website:
The story of Newcastle is an ever-changing one. From its blue-collar industrial past, Newcastle has evolved into a sophisticated, world-class city of opportunity.
The Newcastle Facebook page presents a similarly positive take on the city’s transition:
Discover a port city in transition and delight in a mixture of the raw and refined. Working wharves are becoming places of play; the city hums with a vibrant arts culture and an emerging food scene is evident.
There are a number of ways Brand Newcastle’s characterisation conveys the notion that the city’s transition has been both inevitable and positive. To begin with, positioning Newcastle’s story as an ‘ever-changing’ one—reinforced by the See Change tagline— implies that the shift from an industrial to post-industrial economy should be seen as just simply the latest development in a history of innovation and change, rather than a fundamentally disruptive event. This is a significant political message for a city whose identity has been shaped by heavy industry and which does not find change easy, according to some interviewees. For example, Susan Denholm described the challenges of introducing new place-making approaches into a community that could be quite ‘staid in their ways’ and ‘tough and resilient’, while Micky Pinkerton suggested that ‘we have such strong working-class roots here that it makes people resistant to change’. The use of always changing as a core brand value might be seen as an attempt to shift these kinds of
Page 122 of 317 attitudes, by suggesting that the controversial and at times painful changes which the city has experienced are actually integral to what Newcastle is about.
While the campaign’s reference to Newcastle’s ‘industrial past’ and its evolution into ‘a sophisticated, world-class city of opportunity’ may seem designed to downplay the ongoing presence of heavy industry in the city in favour of a more modern, post-industrial image, the campaign does acknowledge the city’s industry in a number of ways. Two of the core values—hard-working and real/genuine—acknowledge the cultural influence of the city’s industrial heritage, while the online brand videos include images of industrial sites around the city. The dark purple in the logo is also designed to represent heavy industry. The inclusion of these attributes is notable, given these aspects of the city have been glossed over in previous campaigns (Dunn, McGuirk and Winchester 1995). In the Brand Newcastle campaign, however, the city’s post-industrial transformation is not portrayed as having erased the city’s strong relationship with industry.
At the same time, however, the campaign presents a highly stylised vision of Newcastle’s industry, with dramatic visuals of impressive industrial infrastructure and the sun shining on the port, as well as the characterisation of Newcastle’s working-class community as ‘genuine’ and ‘real’. This is clearly a more sanitised representation of industry than that which informed Newcastle’s past reputation as a ‘brown town’ and a dangerous, hardscrabble place. This suggests that while the Brand Newcastle campaign does recognise the importance of heavy industry to Newcastle’s identity, it is nonetheless seeking to present it in ways that are not alienating to a non-working-class audience. This target audience is evident in the tagline See Change, an allusion to so-called sea changers—city dwellers seeking a lifestyle change by the beach. This is a predominantly middle-class concept (genuinely working-class people are unlikely to have such locational flexibility) and also a claim to Newcastle’s ‘livability’, both of which are attributes commonly adopted in post-industrial urban branding campaigns. Despite being somewhat generic, however, these attributes do seem to accurately reflect Newcastle’s appeal for some outsiders; interviewees frequently mentioned lifestyle factors such as housing affordability, beach access and minimal traffic as key reasons for moving or returning to Newcastle.
Some repackaging of less appealing aspects of a city’s image is obviously par for the course for place branding campaigns. Interestingly, however, Simon McArthur suggested that the campaign sought to avoid the ‘rose colored glasses’ approach that Holcomb (2001, p. 55) and others have criticised. As McArthur explained: Page 123 of 317
For us there was no other way out of the box than dealing with what was authentic about the place because it is so, it is such a patchwork quilt. So it’s not like one side of the city is all gleaming—and well, it kind of is with Honeysuckle—but, you know, there are large chunks that it’s impossible to avoid or in fact there is, you know, cool/okay/yuck/cool/okay/yuck as you go down the street. So you’ve got to deal with the authentic in the brand. You can’t be a Queensland—you know, ‘beautiful one day, perfect the next’; it just so happens that there’s a cyclone on that day, so we won’t look. So that’s the main reason why we used authenticity. But I also think that ultimately … even some of the really grungy stuff ends up turning itself into other stuff, which becomes highly sought after.
While this can be read as an implied critique of previous beach-focused campaigns, it also suggests that Brand Newcastle’s gritty, industrial imagery was included not just to ensure ‘authenticity’ but also to promote the city as an opportunity for ‘cool’ redevelopment. This message is echoed by the Facebook page’s description of ‘working wharves … becoming places of play.’ This repositioning of what might be considered negative elements of the city as sites of opportunity is a recurring theme in the rebranding of both Newcastle and Detroit, and will be explored in more detail in the next section. It also reflects a broader trend in post-industrial cities towards the rehabilitation of industrial and heritage buildings into sanitized and commodified leisure sites, a process that will be considered in more detail in Chapter 7.
At the same time, the suggestion that the city’s grittier elements will soon be redeveloped into sites of ‘cool’ reflects the broader tone of the Brand Newcastle campaign, which predominantly defines post-industrial Newcastle as a ‘sophisticated, world-class’ city that is clean, modernised, redeveloped and entrepreneurial. This vision aligns with established understandings of ‘world-class’, an increasingly generic attribute adopted by cities around the world (see Cox 2013). The companies labelled ‘world-class’ in the online brand videos are largely from fields that have come to define the post-industrial urban economy: medical research, financial services, retail and technology (Bell 1976; Harvey 1989a). While the city’s industrial and mining businesses are noted in this context, their ongoing significance to the economy is arguably downplayed. Mining technology and electrical systems business ampcontrol is mentioned as a world-class company but with the visual focus on its technology, rather than on the mine sites they serve. Similarly, the port is mentioned but as a location for ships ‘sailing the southern trade routes’ to dock for repairs, rather than as the
Page 124 of 317 world’s largest coal exporter. Interestingly, the launch videos also fail to mention the independent cultural output Newcastle has produced, including Renew and TINA, both of which are internationally-recognised examples of cultural innovation.
Overall then, the image of post-industrial Newcastle that emerges is of a city with a clean, high-tech and services-based economy and commodified lifestyle and leisure opportunities. More challenging elements of the urban landscape like heavy industry and independent cultural projects are minimised or repackaged as ‘authenticity’ and opportunities for ‘cool’ redevelopment. This overall image may work to distance the city from its past industrial reputation, but seems unlikely to distinguish it significantly from other rebranded post- industrial cities around the world (see Waitt and Gibson 2009 on the similar approach used in Wollongong, NSW; also McGuirk, Winchester and Dunn 1998).
Turning then to look at informal reimaging efforts, there is also a focus on the city’s transition, which is again largely portrayed as a positive process. As Marcus Westbury argues, the city is ‘changing very fast’—and simply trying to resist that is not necessarily helpful:
The way I think about it is in terms of driving, being a driver for changes rather than being reactive and defensive to change. So I think it’s easy to kind of hold back and say I’m really worried about anything changing because I like it how it is. And frankly, bits of what it is, I really like, and bits of what Newcastle has been in the last few decades are frankly horrible—you know, absolutely depressing and awful and horrible. I think you’ve got to own a positive agenda for what can change for the better, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do.
Similarly, Matt Endacott found the positive attitude towards change expressed by Brand Newcastle to be one of the campaign’s most appealing aspects:
I think, perhaps, in a way that marketing campaign did extend a belief to most people that, look, the city’s in a period of transition. And that’s really what that campaign was about. It wasn’t promising renewal, because Newcastle can’t promise renewal because it can’t deliver. But it can promise a city in transition and an experience of transition.
But while these informal image-makers embrace the city’s transition, they often have a different vision to official image-makers of what the post-industrial city should be and how
Page 125 of 317 it should be represented. For example, Stuart McBratney identified the creative industries as a key feature of post-industrial Newcastle, but one that has been largely ignored by official branding campaigns to date:
I always find it interesting when someone tries to brand a place when … they don’t perhaps understand the changes that are happening at the moment. When you look at the branding of Newcastle that’s trying to sell it to people outside of Newcastle, it is the things that have already been here for ages. It is like Darby Street [café strip] and the beaches and its proximity to the Hunter Valley and if you want to go four-wheel driving on Stockton beach, that sort of thing. [But] the really interesting thing about [Newcastle] is the interesting creative stuff that is coming out of it.
The creative industries are generally seen as a key part of post-industrial Newcastle by its informal image-makers, who focus on these kinds of small-scale businesses rather than the larger ‘world-class’ businesses promoted by Brand Newcastle. While this focus obviously brings benefits to their own community, it also mirrors the broader popularity of creative city discourses in post-industrial revitalisation strategies, as discussed in Chapter 2. In this respect, informal image-makers may be seen as reinforcing similar narratives to place branders elsewhere around the world, rather than presenting an independent vision for Newcastle.
It is interesting to note, however, that Marcus Westbury narrates the revitalised CBD not as a newly emerging creative city but instead as a place that has returned to its roots as a community of ‘makers’. In a TEDx talk entitled ‘Makers and Places: from creation to consumption (and back again)’, Marcus argued that Renew has helped to revitalise Hunter Street in a way that reconnects with its history as an artisan hub of boot makers, jewellery makers and the like (Westbury 2012). Showing images of Hunter Street at the turn of the twentieth century, he notes that ‘this street that I’d known all my life as a place that people sold stuff began its life as a place where people made stuff’, and that, in its revitalisation, ‘the retailers haven’t come back, what’s come back is the makers’. This narrative of former industrial cities being reborn by making things again—just different things—seems to be a powerful one. It reflects the growing international popularity of Maker Faire, a ‘festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness’ where attendees showcase DIY projects (Maker Faire, n.d.), and the so-called maker movement more broadly (Stangler and Maxwell 2012;
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Dougherty 2012). This rebirth-of-making narrative is noticeable in other post-industrial cities too, including Detroit (e.g. Rustbelt Almanac, n.d.).
It is also a message that is being reinforced by other informal image-makers in Newcastle. One of the longest-standing Renew projects was a shop called Make Space, run by a collective of artists who described their wares as ‘local, soulful, and made by hand’. More surprising, perhaps, is the promotion of a similar theme by Newcastle NOW in a television commercial from late 2012 entitled Hand Made, which highlighted the CBD businesses producing handmade products. Renew’s Marni Jackson also refers to the handmade and local aspects of Renew projects in describing the positive changes in Hunter Street mall in recent years:
What I do love and think is very valuable in it is the growth of the small-scale, handmade, locally made … They’re all things I think are really important in terms of a sustainable future for communities. And I think we’ve been able to imbue a little bit of that into this zone, which I think is nice … I don’t think what people want here is another big box mall, they want something that means something, that’s got character and means something to them and is about local products and local owners, and it satisfies social needs as a space and in terms of what the shops offer.
While Marni identifies a receptive audience for locally made products, it is important to question whether this vision of the post-industrial city speaks to a broader audience than Brand Newcastle. Like the sea-changers being lured by Brand Newcastle, the market for hand-made clothes and jewellery seems likely to be a predominantly middle-class one, especially given the added costs associated with artisanal manufacturing. Local writer Micky Pinkerton raised the question of whether Newcastle’s traditional working-class community might see this ‘making’ revival as relevant to them, noting that while she loves Renew:
There’s this tendency to forget that there’s a whole other world out there, you know, that just wouldn’t give a rat’s arse about what those hippy girls are doing in the mall, do you know what I mean?
If this observation is accurate, it seems neither the formal nor the informal vision of post- industrial Newcastle is particularly targeted towards the city’s longstanding working-class population. This possibility raises important questions about equity and representation, which will be returned to in Chapter 7. Page 127 of 317
Overall, while the image of post-industrial Newcastle in informal reimaging representations is not as clearly defined as in the official campaign, the focus on the small-scale, local and handmade economy does offer an interesting contrast to the world-class, big-business focus of Brand Newcastle. At the same time, however, this representation reflects a narrative of creative post-industrial transition that is not unique to Newcastle any more than is Brand Newcastle’s world-class positioning. Furthermore, it could be argued that both Brand Newcastle and the city’s informal image-makers are portraying Newcastle’s transition in ways that have the potential to exclude part of the local community from that shared vision.
5.4.2 NEWCASTLE AS A CITY OF OPPORTUNITY
The second recurring theme in the reimaging of Newcastle is the representation of the city as a place of opportunity. This is most obvious in the Brand Newcastle campaign, which adopted ‘city of opportunity’ as its brand essence. Like the brand attribute ‘world-class’, ‘city of opportunity’ is a popular place branding narrative; a Google search finds a number of other cities of opportunity around Australia (the City of Greater Dandenong in Victoria, the City of Belmont in WA, and the City of Playford in SA) and the world (the City of London in Ontario, Canada). While this popularity suggests the concept of opportunity is perceived as a powerful urban branding narrative, it also means it is not particularly distinctive. Interestingly, this was a concern identified by Adam Lance (formerly of Peach):
Any city is the city of opportunity. New York could say they’re a city of opportunity, and Quito, Ecuador, could say they’re a city of opportunity for completely different reasons. So I think that’s quite general.
For this reason, it was the concept of surprise—be surprised by Newcastle—that Peach adopted as the inspiration for the brand’s design brief, rather than opportunity. Nonetheless, opportunity is a recurring theme in the brand materials, particularly the online videos, the last of which is entitled ‘the opportunity’.
The Brand Newcastle approach builds on previous efforts to position Newcastle as a city of opportunity, particularly in connection with the BHP steelworks shutdown. As then-Mayor John Tate told the media in 2009, many residents feared the closure would mean the demise of Newcastle, ‘But we decided it was an opportunity, a challenge … and as it turned out, that was a real turning point’ (Duffy 2009, para. 10). This connection between the closure and opportunity was reiterated by Micky Pinkerton: Page 128 of 317
The BHP closing down was an opportunity, it was more a psychological opportunity, I think, for Newcastle because obviously they’re still making steel here. I mean, that’s the irony, [people say] “Oh BHP’s gone,” but OneSteel’s just over there, you know; it’s a bit silly. But it was that mental thing.
This is a perceptive comment, as it captures how the BHP closure was characterised as an opportunity for broad-scale urban change, even though it did not actually mean the end for Newcastle-based manufacturing and heavy industry. While the closure was undoubtedly personally and economically challenging for many Novocastrians, it also provided a political opportunity to present the city in a new light, ripe for post-industrial revitalisation (Stevenson 1999). With the Honeysuckle industrial redevelopment now regularly portrayed as a success story (Jones 2010; HDC 2012), Brand Newcastle’s use of the ‘opportunity’ narrative might be seen as an attempt to tap into cultural memories of this experience to legitimise the campaign’s vision. In other words, the choice of ‘opportunity’ as the brand essence implies that the rebranding exercise will ultimately work out as well as the closure did and should therefore be supported by Novocastrians.
It is interesting, however, that Newcastle’s official branders are not the only ones using ‘opportunity’ in their reimaging efforts. To begin with, the phrase has been adopted by the Regional Hunter Chapter of the Property Council of Australia (PCA) as the title of their Facebook page, which promotes the possibilities for large-scale redevelopment in the CBD (PCA n.d.). This is not overly surprisingly, given that the PCA is the kind of pro-growth organisation traditionally aligned with official rebranding strategies as a ‘key stakeholder’. More unexpected is that the narrative of opportunity is also a recurring theme in the way that many informal image-makers talk about the city and their projects. For example, Marcus Westbury identifies opportunity as a key feature of Renew, which he describes ‘a broker of opportunity for spaces that are otherwise being underutilised’. Marni Jackson echoes this message, talking about how one of Renew’s greatest achievements is how it has changed young peoples’ perceptions of the city:
Lots of younger people I’m meeting are kind of saying things like ‘well, so I finished uni, and I’m a designer’, and there might not be huge agencies for them to join, but they feel like they can try things or work for themselves for a little bit and that there are communities of like-minded people that they can get in touch with and bounce ideas off or feel supported by. So there’s more opportunity here for them. That is great, that is one of those really important outcomes. Page 129 of 317
While these comments refer specifically to the way Renew creates opportunity, the concept is also used by a number of independent image-makers to describe Newcastle’s condition more broadly. Matt Endacott provided an example of how opportunity can be a powerful narrative which neutralises negative associations:
In the eyes of many people, and still to this day, there is something absolutely wrong about the city. I sometimes see the negatives that people talk about, the empty buildings or a very parochial outlook at times. But I think I’ve become, well, I’ve changed in a way that I see that all as potential. You know, having a main street full of empty, gorgeous buildings I see as brilliant, because it means that we can start again, and we can completely reshape what this city will look like. You’re never going to have an opportunity to put … an art gallery in the [Sydney CBD] post office. It’s always going to have some sort of commercial tenant in it. Newcastle became so bad, in a real-estate and economic sense, that anything was possible.
Siobhan Curran used similar language when talking about the future prospects for the CBD:
I don’t see a big development happening in the CBD, and I don’t think that’s the future. I think everyone needs to forget that there’s a magic bullet that’s going to shoot dead the old Newcastle and rebirth a new one. It’s just not going to happen, and I don’t think it should, at all. Oh my god, like that’s one of the biggest gifts Newcastle has, is this opportunity—like all the [decline] that everyone complains about is opportunity, and the best kind.
This repositioning of Newcastle’s challenges as opportunities highlights why it can be helpful to explore the connections between informal image-making and official urban branding. Whether knowingly or not, these informal image-makers are adopting a narrative often used in classic entrepreneurial rebranding and redevelopment strategies. In Newcastle’s case the narrative of opportunity may even be more popular with informal image-makers than with official branders, who have not made it an overly prominent feature of the campaign to date. For example, it is the tagline See Change that is normally used in conjunction with the Brand Newcastle logo, rather than the brand essence City of Opportunity.
Of course, the realities of how informal and official image-makers would like to see Newcastle’s opportunities realised differ quite significantly, as the change visions examined in the previous section demonstrated. Nonetheless, the shared language is notable and Page 130 of 317 highlights how the same branding narratives often recur across different communities, cities and countries—something that will be considered further in the context of Detroit. Yet while the thematic overlap between formal and informal image-makers in this case is striking, does it mean that informal image-makers should be viewed as simply another category of pro-growth urban booster, no different from official rebranding participants except in the kind of development they desire? To explore this question more fully, it is helpful to examine the personal motivations of Newcastle’s formal and informal image- makers in some detail, as the next section will do.
5.5 WHY: DECIPHERING THE MOTIVATIONS FOR NEWCASTLE’S REIMAGING
One of the notable aspects of talking to image-makers in both Newcastle and Detroit is the extent to which they narrate their motivations in personal terms, connecting their efforts with how they feel about the city as a place. While the development goals behind reimaging practices are often examined in the literature, this personal element of image- making is underexplored, likely because participants are assumed to be involved as official employees or key stakeholders. However, the language used by image-makers in Newcastle, particularly informal participants, suggests other motivations may also be relevant and deserving of further examination.
Looking first at the formal rebranding context, two interviewees identified personal experiences that overlapped with and enhanced their experience working on the Brand Newcastle campaign. Advertising executive Adam Lance noted that he began working on Brand Newcastle just after he moved to Newcastle from Sydney. While he was excited about the brief from a career-development perspective, as he had never developed a place brand before, he also drew inspiration from his personal experience:
It was a great opportunity for this to be a great instrument of change for Newcastle. And a great thing for me to arrive with at the time, because … the idea that we arrived at, at the end, was about the surprise—be surprised by Newcastle—which, I was already being surprised by Newcastle, so it was just a great timing for me.
Simon McArthur identified a similar overlap between the work he was doing on Brand Newcastle and his personal experience as a new arrival to Newcastle:
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I probably was the ideal; I think the ideal people to do rebranding are sea-changers that have come to the place because they have the benefit of seeing the place for the first time, as the very target market that they’re trying to reach … And yeah I definitely came with the traditional ‘steel city’ [image]. I knew that it had gone, but I didn’t know how much it had evolved.
Even more personal explanations were provided by many of the informal image-makers, who contextualised their efforts with broader statements about how their attachment to Newcastle informs and motivates their work. For example, Siobhan Curran described her motivation for creating and promoting The Novocastrian Files and TEDxNewy as a function of her personal response to discovering Newcastle’s strengths:
When I started The Novocastrian Files and I was featuring all these people … it wasn’t even creative people, just people who worked at the university who are doing their PhDs and really interesting research. And there’s the CSIRO, there’s John Hunter Hospital, and like, people doing crazy-ass stuff, just business in general up here … I’d never heard of them before, and so I kind of got my ‘promote Newcastle’ hat on and just was like: “Friends in Sydney, you need to know that regional cities are important incubators … not even incubators, like there is stuff happening here, it doesn’t actually all just happen down there, thank you very much!” … And I’d hate anyone to think that I’m doing it because I need to feel justified that I’ve made the right decision about moving to Newcastle, because that’s not it at all. I know I’ve made the right decision for my family and for me to be here … It was just like this epiphany, like, oh my god, you know, there’s cool people living in country towns, and they’re doing awesome stuff!
Marcus Westbury similarly identified the desire to share his understanding of Newcastle as a motivating factor behind much of his work in the city:
I mean I’ve always been—you can trace in everything I’ve ever done—I’ve always been an advocate for Newcastle; I’ve always been an advocate for a different way of looking at Newcastle and its potential and what it is. I’ve always been of the view that it was the city in Australia where there was the biggest gap between the perception and the reality, like people just misunderstood what Newcastle was.
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Micky Pinkerton, another native Novocastrian, describes a similar drive to shift perceptions of her hometown:
I’ve always been a terribly boring, painful Newcastle ambassador … I think in my college yearbook at ANU it said, “Don’t ask her about Newcastle!” or something like that. You know because, [the] obvious thing at colleges [is to be asked] “Where are you from?” [and I’d say] “Newcastle”, and they’d go “Oh you poor thing”, and I’d just be like “Don’t you—!”
Newcastle-born Matt Endacott also expressed frustration at the way Newcastle is described by outsiders, particularly Sydney-siders, although local perceptions were ultimately as much an inspiration for his blog. His choice of language in describing his motivation highlights his personal connection with the city:
I’m sort of optimistic in that I no longer really see a need for my blog for Newcastle. There was a time, as I said, that I was writing opinion pieces because I was frustrated that no one was saying what I wanted to hear, that there were opportunities to revitalise the city centre, that arts and culture was one of the city’s assets … All of that sort of stuff I wasn’t hearing, so I created a blog.
While these native Novocastrians identified place attachment as a motivation for working to shift the city’s image, a recent arrival described the reverse experience, whereby working to improve and promote the city was a precursor to developing place attachment. For Petra Hilsen, working with Newcastle NOW provided a way to connect with a city whose problems literally brought her to tears when she arrived six years earlier:
I remember clearly saying, at that stage, if I have to stay here, I have to be part of the revitalisation process. So that was very clear, very strong, within me even though I had not worked in urban planning or I hadn’t worked for a business improvement association.
Either way, these comments highlight the central role of place attachment in the way many informal participants narrate their decision to become involved with image-making.
Yet this observation is not intended to suggest that their actions are entirely altruistic or that they are more passionate about the city than official rebranding participants. As noted, most of Newcastle’s informal image-makers also have the potential to benefit personally and financially from their projects. Claims of place attachment by both formal and informal
Page 133 of 317 image-makers can certainly be read with scepticism, as calculated statements designed to give their work more emotional (and therefore financial) impact. But even if the stated personal motivations of image-makers are viewed as self-serving, the fact that participants feel it beneficial or necessary to attribute a personal quality to their projects is interesting. It suggests that the competitive, predominantly economic rationales offered for official place branding efforts might not be viewed as affording as much legitimacy or value to a project as something motivated by more personal concerns. If this is the case, it raises questions about what makes an image-making project legitimate, as well as what makes it powerful.
In this way, the personal motivations narrated by informal participants once again highlight the ideological complexities of urban image-making considered in Chapter 2. At the same time, these narratives also raise the question of what makes an image-making project effective, be it formal or informal. This question of impact will be briefly explored in the next section, before the case study is brought to a close with an overview of the key lessons learned from image-making in Newcastle.
5.6 REVIEWING REACTIONS TO THE REIMAGING OF NEWCASTLE
The challenges associated with measuring the value and impact of place branding were outlined in Chapter 2, and it is not the intention of this section to try to overcome these concerns to offer a definitive evaluation of either formal or informal image-making in Newcastle. In any case, such an assessment is not feasible given the scope of this research, which was focused within Newcastle and did not involve any systematic attempt to determine how these projects have been received or whether they have provided any financial benefit. Instead, in keeping with the participant-focused perspective adopted throughout this project, this section will outline how the interviewees here responded to the various reimaging projects, as well as insights they offered about others’ reactions more broadly. While not in any way conclusive, these responses highlight some concerns but also some positives related to these projects and the reimaging strategies they have employed.
5.6.1 RESPONSES TO THE OFFICIAL BRAND
Among the informal image-makers interviewed for this research, the near-unanimous reaction was that the rebranding of Newcastle was a good idea. The Brand Newcastle logo and tagline were also well-liked by many, including Matt Endacott, who explained:
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Visually, I love it. I think it’s great. I think it’s striking. I see it. I only need to see the colours now and I think of Newcastle … because, as a brand, it doesn’t resemble any other Australian city’s brand. It’s very … like Newcastle, mishmash. This is jumping out at you, and that’s jumping out at you. And it’s all coming together as Newcastle. I think it did capture ‘city in transition’.
Despite this enthusiasm for the concept and design, however, a number of informal image- makers raised concerns about the campaign’s implementation. Again, as Matt put it:
Good idea. Execution was clumsy and a wasted opportunity. The biggest issue I have with that whole branding strategy is the fact that council didn’t retain ownership of it. You can’t communicate a consistent message if you just provide the logo to anyone who wants to use it. So you have everyone from a BMX dirt bike event putting that Newcastle See Change logo on their literature to Renew Newcastle, to the Civic Theatre, to everyone. For that reason, it means nothing.
Siobhan Curran raised similar concerns about the way the logo was made available to the general public:
The only way they could get the logo out there was to ask businesses to use it, which is not a strategy, not a strategy at all; I think it’s actually a really bad strategy, because you’ve got really bad brain confusion there. You’ve got groups of people— which is great, they’ve got enthusiasm and they want to be doing stuff in Newcastle—but they’re using that logo, and it’s confusing for people, because they don’t know if it’s a council-related event. I just think it’s a really bad idea to crowd- source the use of a logo.
These are potentially surprising criticisms coming from informal image-makers, given that local networks and grassroots engagement and experimentation are an important part of Newcastle’s informal reimaging landscape. Yet Marcus Westbury also criticised the implementation of the brand, describing the predominantly local launch as ‘kind of weird and unstrategic’, while Marni Jackson saw missed external opportunities:
Individuals who write blogs or who have other different projects going on have got that sense that they want to reach out and try to convince people that it’s a good idea to come and check out what’s going on … The Brand Newcastle stuff, the stuff
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that’s coming out from Tourism Newcastle, I don’t think has got there at all. I don’t even know what their strategy is for that kind of stuff.
These perspectives may reflect the marketing-savvy expectations of these informal image- makers, all of whom have lived outside Newcastle and thought a lot about the city’s external image (Siobhan also has a background in marketing). They may also reflect a bias of informal image-makers towards their own way of promoting the city, although it is notable that all of these respondents did embrace the concept of an official rebranding campaign. But either way, these criticisms highlight an interesting challenge for official branding campaigns, particularly if they lack the budget to engage locally and externally at the same time. While local impact may well have been a deliberate strategy for Brand Newcastle, the campaign’s limited external implementation appears to have undermined its legitimacy with some key Novocastrians, prompting them to largely dismiss it. Brand Newcastle, therefore, seems to have missed an opportunity to attract the buy-in of informal image-makers. Engaging more closely with these informal participants may have resulted in valuable synergies.
At the same time, however, it is important to note that not all informal image-makers criticised the official brand’s implementation. For example, Rhiannon Tuntevski appreciated that her Newcastle 2020 visioning project was allowed to adapt the Brand Newcastle design for the launch logo:
That was great. My thoughts around that are we only got as much traction as we did because we made that initial decision. Because even people who didn’t know what that coloured Newcastle actually stood for, when I would show them something relating to Newcastle 2020, they’d be like, “Oh, that’s on those flags all down Hunter Street. Okay, there’s something legitimate about this”.
This comment suggests that the Brand Newcastle campaign has attained a degree of recognition and legitimacy within Newcastle, even if the flags Rhiannon is likely referring to were actually erected by Newcastle NOW (Figure 5.11).
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Figure 5.11: Newcastle Now Flags, Hunter Street Mall. Source: Author
Another challenge for Brand Newcastle was the fact that, despite Simon McArthur’s efforts, many interviewees did seem to see the campaign as consisting primarily of the colourful logo. When asked what they thought about Brand Newcastle, most offered their opinion on the logo, rather than interpreting the question as referring to a broader rebranding strategy. One exception was Marcus Westbury, who identified that the branding process had also involved the NCC inviting more external journalists on ‘famils’ and that this had been beneficial to Renew. Otherwise, interviewees did not seem overly aware that the branding strategy extended beyond the widespread use of the logo. Simone Sheridan even suggested that the campaign’s focus on the logo came at the expense of more tangible ways of improving Newcastle and its image:
I was really offended that so much money was spent on something like that. I was actually applying for some funding, and I got told, “Oh no, we don’t have any more community-arts funding, but here, pop our logo on your branding material".
Marcus also suggested the campaign’s focus on the logo was misguided:
Some of the first things they did were just really kind of naff … like “We’ve got a new logo; let’s just show off the new logo” … Maybe it’s necessary to build a constituency of support around the approach, but I’m pretty cynical, and I actually think it makes most people pretty cynical.
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While Marni Jackson was pleased to see funds directed towards city branding, she too was concerned about the focus on the logo and its development in the initial media strategy:
There hasn’t been any kind of tourism or branding strategy for many years for Newcastle, and so I appreciate that there’s effort going into something. But … when the Newcastle brand thing, the logo, was all delivered, it was like, all the media was about the brand thing, and I think that was a really weird approach, for it to be about the branding exercise. That the media is about the branding exercise, rather than actually having all the stories behind that ready to be the thing that says, “Oh yeah, that’s right, of course, Newcastle is that thing”.
Marni’s identification of stories as the missing element of the media strategy is perceptive. While the role of Novocastrian stories in developing the brand was well explained on the launch website, Marni’s criticism of the media coverage does not seem unreasonable (e.g. ABC Newcastle 2011; cf. Gregory 2011), suggesting a missed opportunity for the campaign to connect with locals on a personal level. This seems particularly significant in a city like Newcastle, where a history of failed redevelopment initiatives has left many residents wary of council-led action. Adam Lance confirmed that there was a degree of local scepticism about the concept of rebranding, noting that while he felt the media was supportive and a significant proportion of the local public liked the brand, others were doubtful:
So was the community supportive of it? Of the whole idea? I think, in reality, they would go “Oh, why don’t you fix the roads? Why don’t you do that? Or fix the football stadium?” … But it needs someone to have the vision to go, “We’ll have a better road/a better hospital/a better football stadium if we can bring these sort people here, with these sort of ideas and these sort of opportunities; because this city’s got to change from its background of steel and coal to something else”.
In this context, a stronger media focus on how individuals’ stories inspired the brand might have helped dispel local concerns that this was another boondoggle, created by the NCC for the public—not with the public’s input.
Yet despite all of these criticisms and concerns, it is interesting to note that, overall, these reactions suggest a general degree of comfort with the concept of official place branding among informal image-makers at least, perhaps more so than might be expected from members of an independent, creative community. That such entrepreneurial urban governance strategies seem to enjoy support among both formal and informal image- Page 138 of 317 makers in Newcastle is notable and is relevant to how informal image-making might ultimately be understood as a social and political practice. This issue will be returned to in more detail in Chapter 7.
5.6.2 RESPONSES TO INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING
Responses to informal image-making efforts in Newcastle seem to be similarly mixed but, once again, do provide some indication of the different ways informal image-making may be effective. As the most high-profile independent project, Renew has been the most critiqued. Unsurprisingly, those interviewees associated with the project were uniformly very supportive. Yet the same can also be said for the other image-makers interviewed here, who generally expressed enthusiasm for the project and its innovative approach. For example, Adam Lance explained:
Personally, I don’t know those people. But I see the enthusiasm they create, and I think it’s fantastic. They’ve done a brilliant job … You’ve seen the downtown … They’re doing a fantastic job to bring energy into that place.
But, at the same time, Renew undoubtedly has some detractors locally, with Newcastle Herald articles about the project often attracting negative comments criticising its impact, its government funding, and even Marcus Westbury’s media profile (e.g. Smee 2012; Green 2013). Matt Endacott also identified these local concerns, noting:
When Renew found itself in trouble when the state government, Liberal government, was cutting their funds, a lot of people in Newcastle were calling them freeloaders, saying, “Well, fair enough, if you’re not going to pay rent, why should government pay for them?”
These criticisms may well come from a small but vocal minority; the critical comments online generally receive a strong rebuttal from other readers, but do indicate that not all locals appreciate the impact Renew has had, both on Hunter Street and on Newcastle’s image.
Some ambivalence can also be discerned in the responses of some interviewees when asked about local reactions to Renew. Micky Pinkerton noted that she was a fan of the project:
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It’s had some good press, and now it’s Renew Townsville, Renew Adelaide … You know, I read an article in the SMH [Sydney Morning Herald] at the start of the year … so it has got this sort of national recognition. And the ABAF [Australian Business Arts Foundation] award, you know, really helped that, and Marcus is just a mover and a shaker, and people notice what he does … So I think externally it’s been really good. I think internally in Newcastle … it would vary depending on the age groups of people.
While Micky draws an age distinction, Rhiannon Tuntevski noted similarly mixed responses among the young people she knows:
I can definitely see how, as an individual, it’s reshaped my perception of Hunter Street mall especially. Prior to having these friends that had a shop, had a Renew project in Hunter Street Mall, [I] would never have gone near Hunter Street Mall, just because I didn’t think there was anything there. Whereas, it’s made it a lot more enticing. I know that that’s not the case [across] the board. I know that not every young person in Newcastle would say that, but I can see and I can express, as an individual, the difference that that’s made, so hopefully that can be replicated.
Interestingly, Simone Sheridan suggested that the local concerns about Renew she encounters are often driven not by doubts about its impact, but by concerns that its impact may not last long enough:
The local perception of Renew sometimes isn't always positive because they're like, “Well, they’re not here forever, are they?” They have these people, even though we’re doing ‘meanwhile’ stuff, “Ah, but it’s not permanent!” You know? People want permanency.
Of course, some lack of interest or approval is inevitable for any change-based project, particularly an independent and innovative one like Renew. Marni Jackson claims that many other locals do recognise and appreciate what Renew has achieved:
There’s really good support from just people who live in town, or ‘I used to live in Newcastle and I was so sad to see it declining, and now I’m really happy that interesting things are happening, good on you’ … The majority of sort of commentary we get is that flavour, which is great.
This generally positive response also seems to extend to how image-makers and other locals feel about Renew’s reimaging effects. In particular, the Lonely Planet feature that Page 140 of 317 highlighted Renew seems to have been influential in Newcastle and was mentioned by half of the interviewees when asked about the city’s changing image. It is also mentioned on the Visit Newcastle homepage and in the opening lines of the Brand Newcastle launch videos, which claimed that ‘it feels like all eyes are on us with the sports teams, the development, and Lonely Planet naming us among the top cities in the world’. These references suggest a local appreciation—at least among some image-makers—of the profile boost Renew helped Newcastle to achieve with its unexpected Lonely Planet feature. Even Marcus Westbury claims to have been shocked to discover the city had been included and that Renew was listed as a reason (Westbury 2010c).
Growing local recognition of Renew’s imaging impact can also be seen in the way official image-makers are beginning to feature the project in official promotional materials, having initially given it little coverage. For example, a photo of Marni Jackson is included in the Brand Newcastle image bank, and former campaign manager Simon McArthur explicitly acknowledged Renew’s branding and tourism value (Renew Australia n.d.):
[Renew] not only performs critical property and economic development roles, it also plays a key role in positioning and thus marketing a competitive brand for Newcastle. The galleries, shopfronts and events offer an authentic approach to arts that continually captures the attention of our travel media.
Even more notable is the way the new Newcastle tourism website (Visit Newcastle n.d.) lists Renew as a ‘must do’ activity:
You might have noticed that in our city centre we have a few buildings that are vacant, disused, or awaiting redevelopment. This creates a short term opportunity to find short and medium term uses for these buildings until they become commercially viable or are redeveloped. The local organisation Renew Newcastle is finding uses that are often so interesting they are becoming tourist attractions.
This positive assessment is backed up by the recently released Destination Management Plan (NTIG 2013), which somewhat surprisingly lists Hunter Street Mall as the second most visited tourist attraction in the city after Nobby’s Beach. The mainstream recognition of Renew’s reimaging value was also apparent in a recent Newcastle Herald opinion piece (2013, para. 1), which argued that ‘Newcastle’s reputation as a creative city represents an opportunity that savvy marketers could do well to harness’, noting how Renew had helped shape this reputation. Taken together, these developments indicate that while some Page 141 of 317 ambivalence may remain in how locals see Renew and Hunter Street more broadly, official image-makers and key stakeholders are increasingly recognising Renew’s imaging potential for the city.
A number of interviewees also offered some further anecdotal evidence for the claim that informal image-making efforts are having a positive impact, noting a shift in the way people outside the city were thinking and talking about Newcastle. For example, Siobhan Curran claimed:
Yes, definitely [people’s perceptions are changing]. I mean there’s a long way to go … In my circle of friends, of people that have never been here before, yes, I think their perceptions have changed. I think anyone that’s read The Design Files, perceptions have changed … I think people’s perceptions are changing, and I don’t think it’s owed to anything or anyone more than the sum of everything that’s happening.
Likewise, Marni Jackson suggested she had seen a shift in terms of how frequently Newcastle is talked about as an interesting place or possible destination:
I’m hearing a lot … and when I worked on This Is Not Art festival it was the same … You know, when you live somewhere else and you hear a person say, “Oh this is happening in Newcastle and this is happening in Newcastle”, once you hear a few of those, you think, “Yeah, okay, it sounds like there’s really cool things going on up there”. And that’s happening more and more.
Like Siobhan, however, Marni suggested this shift may be limited to a particular subculture or network:
People in the suburbs in Melbourne may not necessarily know about Renew Newcastle, but those media makers and other kinds of creative professionals who are in Sydney or Melbourne will definitely be hearing things. But they’re the people that we want to come up and go “Yeah, it is a cool place”—super cool place to come for a long weekend, or a holiday, to check it out.
While Siobhan and Marni’s comments suggest they have seen a shift within certain circles, Marcus Westbury made a broader claim about the way perceptions of Newcastle have changed in recent years:
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I think, increasingly, the vision or the observations that I articulated of Newcastle five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, are becoming a more dominant way in which people at large talk about Newcastle. So yeah, that gap has closed a fair bit, you know. I mean there’s a perception that it’s a cool place with lots of interesting things going on, by the beach, where you can find lots of great stuff that you can’t find anywhere else, and that would have been what I would have argued ten or fifteen years ago, but no-one was talking about it like that.
Marcus did not suggest Renew alone was responsible for this shift, but rather that Newcastle’s creative networks as a whole were the catalyst for these shifting external perceptions of the city.
In addition to these changing responses to Newcastle as a whole, a number of interviewees recounted narratives about how visitors respond when they experience Renew in person. Each interviewee told a similar story, which pointed to a potentially significant external reimaging impact. Marcus explained:
Where it always gets a bit challenging is when your mythology gets ahead of your actions. So we have developed this mythology, which I think is like 95% true, and often what happens is that people coming at that without much context or knowledge don’t necessarily appreciate what has been happening. So the classic one is that no-one remembers what it was like before where we’ve been working, so everyone looks at the ‘after’ and says “I thought there was meant to be more here than this!”
Marni Jackson made a similar point:
We’ve had it when people have come up and go, “Oh I thought they’d fixed everything. It’s a bit shit, it’s a bit shit still really”, or that the things that people are selling in their shops, “Well, I thought they’d be a bit more imaginative”. It’s like, oh, okay, you don’t like the things. But these people come from Melbourne, where every second shop is handmade, and people are doing all sorts of amazing things. Not that those amazing things can’t go on here, or haven’t been going on here, but maybe they’re saturated or they’ve got spoiled—spoiled for choice—and then it’s like “Oh, didn’t live up to expectations”.
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This feeling of not always being able to meet expectations was also mentioned by Petra Hilsen, who is on the board of Renew:
When it all first started, we definitely had quite a few tourists, and we’ve heard it in the street, who would come because they’ve read it. I mean, Marcus was successful: they had it in the Jetstar magazine, you know, people would come after it was in the Lonely Planet. And the Lonely Planet was due to Renew Newcastle. So yes, there definitely was tourism; people wanted to come. Whether we’ve always been able to deliver, that might be different.
One explanation for Renew’s powerful mythology might be the feedback-loop concept mentioned earlier, with the project’s strong social media presence constantly reinforcing positive messages for the external audience to the point that they create unrealistic expectations. Whatever the cause, the similarities in the way these responses are narrated suggests a desire by informal image-makers to promote Renew and its image-making impact, while still managing expectations about what this kind of small, independent project can achieve on the ground.
This mixed message reflects the fact that Renew now finds itself in a somewhat complicated position with regards to its imaging efforts. As its profile continues to grow through its incorporation into official image-making efforts, Renew potentially risks becoming a victim of its own imaging success, either by proving to sceptical locals that it no longer requires funding or by damaging its reputation by failing to meet the overinflated expectations of visitors. This highlights a fundamental challenge for all informal image- making projects, which by succeeding may ultimately make themselves obsolete. This is a tension that Renew explicitly acknowledges, but it nonetheless raises difficult questions about what the longer-term impact of these efforts might ultimately be.
5.7 CONCLUSION As this case has shown, the reimaging landscape in Newcastle is currently dominated by two key players—Brand Newcastle and Renew Newcastle—which offer fundamentally different examples of how reimaging strategies can encourage urban change. While the official Brand Newcastle campaign portrays urban change as a top-down, coordinated process, Renew Newcastle encourages an experimental, DIY approach whereby many small things have a major impact over time. To spread this message Renew has developed and capitalised on strong real-life and online networks. In particular, it has used the latter to
Page 144 of 317 disseminate visual examples of small-scale improvements as evidence of the benefits of its proposed approach. While a similarly networked approach was a goal of the Brand Newcastle campaign, much of its early implementation revolved instead around media messaging and visual communications. This approach to place branding has been criticised by Anholt (2008) as lacking effectiveness, a criticism that was echoed by some of the informal image-makers interviewed here. Yet at the same time many of these informal image-makers seemed largely comfortable with the notion of an official branding campaign, a response that may not have been expected of creatives who are offering an alternative to this approach.
The ultimate goal of this case study is not to try to assess which image-making practices have been most successful, however, but to explore how and why different participants are engaging in image-making practices. Looking back over the case, it is particularly notable that the informal image-making efforts considered here actually share key characteristics with official image-making projects: they seem to have both external and internal reimaging goals; they have adopted similar themes and language; and they appear to have had a degree of influence on perceptions of the city and its future—perhaps an even greater influence than the official projects to date. At the same time, a number of features do distinguish informal image-making in Newcastle from official branding. In addition to the extensive use of well-developed networks to disseminate project and place images, there is a more noticeable overlap between personal and place promotion, and place attachment emerges as a key motivation for informal image-making.
Based on these insights, it seems reasonable to conclude that informal participants like Renew can play a meaningful reimaging role in transitional cities like Newcastle. This raises interesting and potentially challenging questions about the meaning and impact of informal image-making in the long term. For example, does Renew’s imaging power suggest that DIY urbanism’s most significant impact will ultimately be its capacity to shift perceptions of a place, and if so, should it be seen primarily as a reimaging strategy? If so, does this undermine the legitimacy of DIY urbanism as a social movement? And most importantly, what effect might such informal image-making have on who uses, shapes and has access to the city in coming years? These broader questions will be considered further in the final analysis in Chapter 7, with the benefit of having first explored how these same processes are working in the very different transitional city of Detroit.
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6 DETROIT CASE STUDY
It is clear from the preceding case study that in Newcastle, two key participants—Renew Newcastle and Brand Newcastle—are now playing the most significant roles in the city’s reimaging landscape. As this chapter will demonstrate, the image-making landscape in Detroit is far more complex. Because of the city government’s limited financial capacity to participate in image-making, a broad range of other informal participants have now emerged, both large and small. While it is only possible to consider a selection of these participants here, this should be sufficient to highlight the different dynamics at play in Detroit, while also pointing to a number of similarities in how image-making occurs in the two cities.
Once again, interview responses make up a large part of this case study, and are the source of all quotes not otherwise referenced (fifteen interviews were conducted in Detroit). As with the Newcastle case study, this chapter will examine the efforts of Detroit’s informal participants through the lens of six key questions: where is Detroit’s image positioned at present; who is participating in the city’s reimaging; how are they engaging in reimaging; what narratives are they disseminating; why are they choosing to participate; and what has been the reaction to these efforts? Together, the answers to these questions provide a detailed overview of the unruly yet highly active nature of Detroit’s reimaging landscape.
6.1 WHERE: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF DETROIT AND ITS IMAGE
Detroit, Michigan, is located on the Detroit River, which links two of the Great Lakes and forms part of the international border between the United States and Canada. The City of Detroit (Figure 6.1) sits within the broader Wayne County jurisdiction and is bordered by two other predominantly suburban counties, Macomb and Oakland. There are also two independent cities—Hamtramck and Highland Park—which are completely enclosed within the City of Detroit’s boundaries. Together the tri-county area is commonly referred to as Metro Detroit and had a population of just over 3.85 million as of the 2010 census, of which just under 714,000 were residents of the city proper (U.S. Census Bureau 2010).
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Figure 6.1 Map of City of Detroit’s boundaries. Source: www.openstreetmap.org
© OpenStreetMap contributors
6.1.1 THE DATA ON DETROIT: HISTORY AND KEY CHARACTERISTICS
Detroit’s location has provided the city with many economic benefits, particularly as a shipping and transportation hub and an international border crossing. Yet Detroit is undoubtedly best known as the home of the American automotive industry, which in the twentieth century ‘determined the city’s fate and defined its character’ (Hyde 2001, p. 57). Detroit was already a growing industrial city by the early twentieth century (Zunz 1982), but the emergence of the auto industry triggered rapid population growth, particularly through immigration and migration from southern US states. Detroit jumped from being the nation’s ninth largest city in 1910 to the fourth largest in 1920 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1998), and by mid-century the auto industry had become the city’s biggest employer, providing a level of prosperity previously unimaginable for many (Sugrue 2005). The City of Detroit’s population peaked at this time, reaching almost two million residents in the 1950s (Seelye 2011). The city’s economic golden era was not to last, however, and subsequent decades saw the closure or relocation of many auto-making facilities, brought about in part by the pressures of globalisation and suburbanisation. While some plants moved overseas or to southern ‘Sunbelt’ states, others simply moved out to the suburbs, contributing to job, tax and population loss in the city proper.
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The City of Detroit’s shrinking population is spread over 139 square miles, resulting in widespread property vacancy, with a 2010 survey identifying approximately 100,000 vacant residential lots (Gallagher 2012a). Debates continue as to how much empty land this constitutes, with estimates ranging between 20 and 40 square miles (Davidson 2012). This depopulation has meant less tax income for the city, triggering reductions in public services and exacerbating the city’s challenging economic and social conditions. The population shift to the suburbs has also contributed to racial and political divisions in the region, as so- called white flight has resulted in significant racial segregation between predominantly black Detroit and the predominantly white suburbs (Figure 6.2). While this pattern is now shifting, regional housing patterns continue to reflect ongoing racial inequalities (Sugrue 2011).
Figure 6.2: Demographic Map of Metro Detroit. Source: http://www.coopercenter.org/demographics/Racial-Dot-Map 10
As a majority-black city, Detroit has at times been a symbol of pride for the African American community, but has also had a long history of injustice and troubled race relations. As Sugrue (2005) convincingly argues, this difficult racial history has played a
10 Image Copyright, 2013, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (Dustin A. Cable, creator).
Page 148 of 317 significant role in many of the city’s ongoing social challenges, from high poverty rates to inadequate public services. Today the percentage of residents living below the poverty line sits at 38% (US Bureau of Statistics 2014). The official unemployment rate sits around 16% (Tanner 2013), although some reports estimate real unemployment levels are much higher, possibly as high as 50% in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (Huffpost Business 2010). These social issues have fed Detroit’s high crime rates, putting it near the top of annual ‘Most Dangerous City’ lists (Fisher 2013), while corruption and political mismanagement have also compounded the city’s economic woes (Baldas 2013; LeDuff 2013a).
Detroit’s ongoing financial challenges have recently come to a head with the state governor acting to install an emergency financial manager to oversee the city’s affairs, who in turn began bankruptcy proceedings in July 2013. It is the biggest municipal bankruptcy in US history and has been characterised as both a low point and a turning point for the city (Helms, Kaffer and Henderson 2013). While the details of the bankruptcy continue to be worked through, recent years have seen some positive economic changes occurring in the city, most notably a spurt of redevelopment in the Greater Downtown area (Gallagher 2012b) (Figure 6.3).
Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.
Available online at: http://detroitsevenpointtwo.com/resources/2013-Full-Report.pdf (p.14)
Figure 6.3 Map of Greater Downtown Detroit. Source: www.detroitsevenpointtwo.com
At the same time, however, depopulation and blight continue to be serious problems, particularly in many of the surrounding ring of middle-class, predominantly black, residential areas commonly referred to as ‘the neighborhoods’ (e.g. Gallagher, Montemurri and Reindl 2014, para. 35). Given these ongoing challenges, it is not surprising that Detroit has also long struggled with a negative image—quite possibly the worst of any US city.
6.1.2 DECONSTRUCTING DETROIT’S IMAGE
While the auto industry looms large in Detroit’s past and present, cars are not the only thing for which Detroit is famous. Detroit has long been a high-profile American city for a
Page 149 of 317 range of historical, economic, political and cultural reasons. For example, in the nineteenth century Detroit became a key port of exit on the ‘Underground Railroad’ to Canada, the network of secret routes and safe houses designed to help escaped slaves to freedom. Subsequently, it became notorious as an entry point for smugglers during Prohibition. During the Second World War it became known as the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’, its factories churning out military machinery that helped the Allied cause to prevail. In the 1960s, the city was the birthplace of the Motown sound, followed by a number of other significant musical trends, including Techno in the 1990s. The city is also home to a number of well- known sports teams, in Major League Baseball (Tigers), the National Football League (Lions), the National Basketball League (Pistons), and the National Hockey League (Red Wings). It is not unusual to hear the city referred to as Hockeytown or Tigertown when these teams are playing locally.
Yet while this cultural output continues to inform the city’s image, in recent decades Detroit has increasingly been defined by its economic and physical decline, becoming the nation’s ‘poster child’ for urban dysfunction (Leeb 2012). In part, the ascendancy of this Detroit as urban dystopia narrative reflects the vacuum left by the collapse of the Detroit as Motor City narrative. More than any other American city, Detroit has always been defined by what it produces, as Ferry (1980, p. 9) explains:
Detroit is known throughout the world chiefly as an industrial city … As old industries died out, new ones were rapidly developed. The fur trade, the principal means of livelihood during the 18th century, was supplanted by the lumber, iron and steel industries in the 19th, and in the 20th century the automobile industry came to the fore.
The automotive industry’s role in shaping Detroit’s image is such that Detroit remains a metonym for the American auto industry, even though the ‘Big Three’ companies (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) have been decentralising and globalising their operations for decades. The final straw for the powerful ‘Detroit as Motor City’ narrative came with GM’s bankruptcy in 2009, prompting a flurry of national and international press coverage offering requiems to commemorate a once-great city’s rise and fall (Adamé 2010).
While the political, social and economic realities of Detroit’s current situation are undoubtedly challenging, these issues have been exacerbated by public portrayals that mischaracterise what life in the city is like. One reason for this is that the city has
Page 150 of 317 increasingly found itself in the difficult position of having become a symbol for broader narratives about American or even Western urbanism. It is positioned as the worst-case scenario against which other American cities compare themselves, a trend highlighted in a mock tourism video for Cleveland that proclaims, ‘at least we’re not Detroit!’ (Polk 2009). On the big screen, the city has functioned as ‘an easy Hollywood cliché for murder and gang violence’ (Bowles 2002, para. 6), tapping into long-standing American cultural fears about cities as a cause of social and moral decay (see Thompson 2009). The city’s issues have been similarly exploited on the small screen, with current-affairs exposés capitalising on shocking images of poverty and violence taken out of context (e.g. Hansen 2010). Recent years have also seen a number of documentaries made which cast the city’s abandoned skyscrapers and factories as the backdrop for narratives that construct Detroit as ‘a broader allegory for the decline of the manufacturing base in the United States’ (Chapman 2012, para. 4). Of course, race also informs many narratives about Detroit, with Detroit’s majority-black status shaping both how it is perceived and how it perceives itself. The American city ‘remains both a primal and strategic scene for representations of blackness in the white imagination and representations of whiteness in the black imagination’ (Kennedy 2000, p. 173), and the image of Detroit is therefore often shaped by attitudes about race. Overall, as Renn (2013, para. 4) perceptively argues, Detroit has ‘become America’s movie screen, onto which outsiders project their own pre-conceived identities and fears’. Or in the succinct words of Clemens (2013, para. 1), ‘the entire city signifies. It can get tiring’.
Yet while dystopian portrayals continue, there are signs Detroit is also becoming the screen for a new, more hopeful narrative about urban life in America. Increasingly, media and artistic portrayals of the city are exploring the possibility of a renaissance, particularly through small scale, independent, entrepreneurial and community projects. While the urban-farming movement has been a key feature of these stories (Lepetic 2012), it encompasses everything from the artist community (Bender 2011) to entrepreneurial efforts (Mitchell 2010) to civic action projects like Declare Detroit (El Nasser 2010). These profiles of ‘Another Detroit’ (Warren 2012) are frequently shaped by a number of related narrative themes: that Detroit is a ‘blank slate’ or an ‘urban frontier’ where a new form of urbanism can be brought to life (Hughes 2011; Renn 2009b); that it offers an ‘enormous canvas’ for artists (Barlow 2009); that it is the cool new place-to-be for hipsters and tech entrepreneurs (Conlin 2011; Donnelly 2012); and that it is a ‘do-it-yourself (DIY) city’, which allows an independent, experimental and hands-on approach to urban living (Ryzik 2010; Palladium Boots 2011). Indeed, the narrative association between DIY and Detroit is now Page 151 of 317 such that Deslandes (2013, p. 221) suggests the city has ‘become iconic in the discourse of DIY urbanism’. As a result, Detroit now finds itself in the dissonant position of being portrayed as both ‘worse off than New Orleans after Katrina and, simultaneously, the next Brooklyn’ (McEwan 2011, para. 4) or as a striking mix of ‘Decayed Buildings & DIY Paradise’ (Urban 2011). While more positive than the dystopian representations discussed earlier, these new narratives can also be problematic, particularly in the way they often underrepresent the contribution of Detroit’s long-standing, predominantly African American communities (Walljasper 2012; Bartlett 2010). Nonetheless, this apparent image shift is notable and worthy of further investigation.
6.2 WHO: THE REIMAGING OF DETROIT TAKES MANY FORMS
Given Detroit’s financial situation, the city government has not been engaged in the kind of official rebranding strategy Newcastle has adopted with Brand Newcastle. As such, any shift in Detroit’s image must seemingly be the result of other forces. In Newcastle, the existence of a government-funded branding campaign made it possible to draw a relatively clear distinction between official and unofficial imaging efforts, even if muddied somewhat by the fact that some independent organisations in the city also receive government funding. In Detroit, the reimaging landscape is less clearly defined. While image-making efforts are predominantly informal, there is some official involvement: for example, city officials have shown support for campaigns run by non-profits and corporations, and the state government’s Pure Michigan campaign covers Detroit, albeit in a way predominantly targeted at tourists (Pure Michigan n.d.). In addition, major planning projects like the recently developed Detroit Future City (DFC) strategic framework offer visually arresting representations of the city’s possible futures, potentially reshaping how its problems and prospects are perceived. DFC is a collaborative effort involving the City of Detroit, philanthropic foundations and local organisations (DFC, n.d.).
Reflecting the complexity of Detroit’s reimaging landscape, this case study will not seek to compare official and unofficial efforts in the mode of the Newcastle case study. Instead, it will provide an overview of the image-making efforts of a select range of participants covering the spectrum of organisation size, access to government, financial resources and visibility. As in Newcastle, these additional projects were identified in an iterative and interpretive manner throughout the fieldwork period via a combination of media monitoring and recommendations from interviewees and other locals. Again, the projects
Page 152 of 317 outlined here are intended to represent a cross-section of different projects with identifiable image-making qualities including online media efforts, visioning campaigns and pro-Detroit retail and advertising campaigns. They are:
Representative Selection of Detroit Image-makers
6.2.1 The Opportunity Detroit campaign by Quicken Loans/Dan Gilbert
6.2.2 Detroit—I’m a Believer!
6.2.3 Imported from Detroit—Chrysler’s Super Bowl advertisement
6.2.4 Detroit Metro Convention and Visitor’s Bureau
6.2.5 Downtown Detroit Partnership
6.2.6 D:Hive
6.2.7 Detroit Regional News Hub
6.2.8 Model D Media
6.2.9 Detroit Lives! Creative Agency
6.2.10 I Am Young Detroit online portal
6.2.11 Declare Detroit online democracy movement
6.2.12 Detroit-themed retail—stores and online
6.2.13 Detroit blogs
Figure 6.4 List of Representative Selection of Detroit Informal Image-Makers
While a number of the participants considered here are undoubtedly high-profile players in Detroit’s reimaging landscape, it is important to note that this list is far from comprehensive. There are many other organisations that may be seen as contributing to the reimaging of Detroit to varying degrees, from economic development organisations like Midtown Inc. and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (which works closely with the city government), to philanthropic organisations like the Kresge Foundation and the Knight Foundation, to mapping and data-crunching non-profits like Data Driven Detroit and Why Don’t We Own This?, to creative organisations like MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Arts Detroit) or the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts). The goal of this list is to give a sense of the range of different image-making projects currently happening in Detroit, with a particular
Page 153 of 317 focus on those that explicitly seek to shift perceptions of the city. Importantly, not all of these projects are what might be described as Detroit ‘boosters’; in a number of cases the goal is to provide a more balanced picture of the city, rather than to simply promote it.
6.2.1 OPPORTUNITY DETROIT
One of the most significant drivers of downtown Detroit’s recent redevelopment has been the investment of Michigan-born billionaire businessman Dan Gilbert. Gilbert’s business interests include companies involved in mortgage lending (Quicken Loans), real estate (Bedrock Real Estate Services) and venture capital funding (Detroit Venture Partners), grouped together under the umbrella company Rock Ventures LLC (often collectively referred to as the ‘Quicken family’ of companies). Gilbert and the Quicken family of companies have been involved with the revitalisation of downtown Detroit in a range of ways, including the relocation of over one thousand employees to downtown offices, the purchase and rehabilitation of numerous downtown properties, the development with Project for Public Spaces of a significant place-making strategy to redesign public spaces, and the creation of a reimaging campaign called Opportunity Detroit. The campaign was officially launched in October 2012 with a 60-second commercial (Opportunity Detroit 2012) screened during the World Series baseball playoffs. Other elements of the campaign include a website with information about where to ‘Live, Work and Play’ in Detroit, a weekly podcast, banners displayed in prominent locations around the city (Figure 6.5), and a social media presence on Facebook (7609 likes), Twitter (17,100 followers, 5,597 tweets) and Instagram (1741 followers). The Opportunity Detroit tagline was also used on a full- page advertisement in major national newspapers responding to Detroit’s bankruptcy filing, which highlighted twenty-eight major Michigan-based companies involved in the city’s revitalisation (Opportunity Detroit 2013).
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Figure 6.5: Opportunity Detroit Banners on Woodward Avenue, Detroit. Source: Author
Through these investments, Gilbert is undoubtedly playing a significant part in reshaping downtown Detroit physically, economically and socially. Quicken’s efforts are also clearly designed to reshape downtown Detroit’s image, and Gilbert himself is highly visible in mainstream media narratives about the city (e.g. Randolph 2011; Shactman 2012; Segal 2013; Austen 2014). To date, Gilbert seems to have encountered little political opposition to his efforts; at the time of the place-making strategy launch, then-mayor Dave Bing claimed, ‘My job … is to knock down as many barriers as possible and get out of the way’ (Segal 2013, para. 20), while current mayor Mike Duggan ‘[has] no problem with the private sector doing so much to shape his city’ (Austen 2014, para. 9). Thus while Opportunity Detroit is not an official branding campaign, it can arguably be seen as an officially supported reimaging effort, an extension of the key stakeholder role played by major corporations in established place branding models.
6.2.2 DETROIT—I’M A BELIEVER! CAMPAIGN
The Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign was launched in 2011 through the voluntary efforts of two Metro Detroit advertising and PR professionals, Paige Curtis and Sandy Hermanoff. The campaign—valued at $10 million in pro bono contributions—included billboards in the Metro Detroit area (Figure 6.6), video statements by high-profile Detroiters, a theme song, media messaging strategies and online communications through Facebook and Twitter (PRNewswire 2011). Organisers claim the video statements were aired on TV over eighty thousand times during the course of the campaign (Hermanoff 2011).
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Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.
Available online at: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/believerpowerpoint-110323111132-phpapp01/95/detroit- im-a-believer-presentation-4-728.jpg?cb=1300878812
Figure 6.6: Detroit—I’m a Believer! Advertisement with Former Mayor Dave Bing. Source: Hermanoff 2011
The campaign was both a drive to encourage Metro Detroiters to engage in volunteering efforts to help the city and a booster campaign seeking to shift regional perceptions of Detroit (Wattrick 2011a). It involved a partnership with the City of Detroit’s Cities of Service volunteerism campaign (PRNewswire 2011) and was supported by Mayor Bing and the Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county executives, who attended the campaign launch event (Oosting 2011). In 2012 it won the ‘Best of Show’ title at the Mercury Awards for Professional Communication. The campaign is now on hiatus; while the Facebook page remains live and has 3000+ ‘likes’, it has not been updated since January 2013, and the website and Twitter accounts are offline.
6.2.3 CHRYSLER’S IMPORTED FROM DETROIT CAMPAIGN Chrysler also launched its multi-million dollar, two-minute-long Detroit-themed advertisement in 2011 during the NFL Super Bowl, using the tagline ‘Imported from Detroit’ (Chrysler 2011). Filmed in Detroit and featuring Detroit rapper Eminem, the commercial offers a rallying cry for the city and its most famous products. The advertisement claims that although Detroit is a town that’s ‘been to hell and back’, it is also a place where luxury is born, thanks to ‘hard work and conviction, and the know-how that runs generations deep in every last one of us’. The ad expressly challenges negative perceptions of the city, noting that this gritty-yet-positive story is ‘probably not the one you’ve been reading in the papers, the one being written by folks who’ve never even been here and don’t know what we’re capable of’. The ad appeared to resonate strongly with many Americans, receiving extensive praise online and winning the 2012 ‘Grand Effie’ award for the nation’s best ad (Burgess 2012). It also attracted some controversy, with critics pointing out that Chrysler is actually headquartered in the Detroit suburbs and should be held responsible for contributing to the city’s economic hardships (Weinstein 2011).
Chrysler has since continued using the ‘Imported from Detroit’ campaign, producing a number of additional television commercials and a website, as well as selling branded
Page 156 of 317 merchandise to raise funds for Detroit charities. The company used the tagline again in its 2012 Super Bowl ad, featuring a Clint Eastwood monologue that compared the nation’s economic challenges and Detroit’s experience (bestsuperbowlads 2012). As Eastwood put it, ‘the people of Detroit know a little something about this—they almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again’. Chrysler has said that the city’s bankruptcy filing would not affect its plans to continue with the campaign (Welsh 2013), although it did shift gears in its 2013 Super Bowl ad, which focused on the American farming community.
6.2.4 DETROIT METRO CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU
The Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau (DMCVB) ‘promotes metro Detroit regionally, nationally and internationally as a convention, business meeting and tourism destination’ (DMCVB 2014). It describes itself as ‘an independent, nonprofit economic development organization’, with various funding sources including a 2% assessment on large tri-county area hotels and paid memberships for business, trade and service organisations. In addition to traditional print and television advertising campaigns, the DMCVB’s tourism promotion tools include the Visit Detroit website, a physical welcome centre in downtown Detroit, a blog, social media (Facebook (10,882 likes), Google Plus (380 followers), Twitter (27,500 followers, 13,200 tweets) and Instagram (9536 followers)), and the Visit Detroit print magazine, published three times a year. The DMCVB also provides targeted services and training for members, media, travel agents and meeting planners, and collaborates with the Cobo Center (Detroit’s major convention centre) and the State’s Pure Michigan campaign.
In 2013, the DMCVB began promoting Detroit in trade promotions using the tagline ‘America’s Great Comeback City’ (see Walsh 2013 for reproductions), which is also used on the Pure Michigan website (Pure Michigan n.d.). A previous campaign used ‘the D’ as the tagline, focusing on ‘Cars, Culture, Gaming, Music, Sports’ as the city’s defining features.
6.2.5 DOWNTOWN DETROIT PARTNERSHIP
Dating back to 1922, the Downtown Detroit Partnership (DDP) describes itself as ‘a private/public partnership of corporate and civic leaders that supports, advocates and develops programs and initiatives designed to create a clean, safe, beautiful, inviting, vibrant and economically viable Downtown Detroit community’ (DDP 2014). DDP lists over one hundred corporate members and partners including the city, county and state Page 157 of 317 governments, economic development organisations like the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) and Midtown Inc., press partners like the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News and Model D Media, and charitable foundations like Kresge and Hudson-Webber. DDP’s website claims that it is ‘creating opportunities’, ‘connecting partners’ and ‘delivering results’, and lists one of its major goals as being to ‘market Downtown Detroit as the premier destination to live, work, play, visit, invest and do business’. Two DDP projects which contribute to these goals are D:Hive and the Detroit Regional News Hub, which will be discussed next. DDP is active on social media, including Facebook (7973 likes), Twitter (14,400 followers, 6460 tweets) and Instagram (349 followers).
6.2.6 D:HIVE
D:Hive was a non-profit economic development and talent attraction agency run from 2012 - 2015 by the DDP, with support from a range of organisations including the Hudson- Webber Foundation, the Quicken family, Model D Media and the DEGC (see Rouch 2012). Operating from a storefront in downtown Detroit, D:Hive provided:
• tourist information and tours of local attractions • housing and accommodation assistance for new and prospective residents • networking events, such as the Open City networking series and support for the Urban Innovation Exchange project • support for entrepreneurs and new businesses, including the Build entrepreneurs short-course and BizGrid, an online resource identifying Detroit organisations that provide business assistance to start-ups • retail space for pop-up stores such as D:Pop, which sold Detroit-themed clothes, jewellery and books.
While D:Hive was not specifically focused on reimaging Detroit, its Executive Director Jeff Aronoff acknowledges its contribution to this process, noting that ‘we are stuck in there somewhere … our brand is sort of your entrée to the city’. D:Hive disseminated a positive image of Detroit through its tours, which offered a realistic but undeniably upbeat perspective on the city,11 as well as publications like 7.2 SQ MI, a report collating data on the current state of downtown (Hudson-Webber Foundation 2013, p. 4):
11 This description is based on my personal experience of taking two different D:Hive tours.
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7.2 SQ MI is the data story of a physically and economically changing place … While a celebration of progress, it also acknowledges continued challenges and reveals potential opportunity. We believe after reading 7.2 SQ MI you will see the momentum of today in Greater Downtown Detroit and the promise of tomorrow.
6.2.7 DETROIT REGIONAL NEWS HUB
The Detroit Regional News Hub was created in 2008 as an outcome of Roads to Renaissance, a strategic economic growth initiative conducted by Business Leaders for Michigan (previously Detroit Renaissance). Initially funded with $600,000 in corporate contributions collected by Detroit Renaissance, more recent funding sources have included the DDP and the DMCVB (Kramer 2013). Run by a former journalist, Marge Sorge, the Hub ‘connects journalists to stories, people and organizations that are transforming Metro Detroit [and] shares the stories of the doers who are actively re-imagining and rebuilding the Detroit region’ (Detroit Regional News Hub 2014). Sorge claims the goal is to encourage more balanced reporting on the city, not boosterism: ‘I see my job as connecting reporters to sources and data that they might not otherwise find. But it would never occur to me to try and influence what they report’ (Conlin 2013, para. 16). To do this, the Hub provides information and assistance to journalists using a network of PR contacts across Metro Detroit businesses and organisations, as well as a blog (DetroitUnspun), an email newsletter (the Bulldog) and social media (10,000+ Facebook ‘likes’, 21,000+ Twitter followers). The Hub has also run annual Transformation Detroit media briefing tours, taking reporters and bloggers on a bus tour of the city.
6.2.8 MODEL D MEDIA AND THE URBAN INNOVATION EXCHANGE
Model D describes itself as a ‘weekly online magazine covering stories of creativity [and] innovation moving Detroit forward’ (Model D 2014). A focus on positive developments in Detroit has been a deliberate and defining feature of Model D since its launch in 2005. As the current managing editor explains (Lewis 2014, para. 4):
Instead of denouncing Detroit as a crime capital, Model D affirmed its status as a cultural capital. Instead of fixating on imagery of disinvestment, Model D showcased the city as a place worthy of and ready for new investment. Instead of decrying Detroit's hollowness, Model D shined light on its liveliness … In short, Model D offered alternative narratives about what Detroit was [and] what it could be. Page 159 of 317
While dismissed by some as boosterism, Model D’s strategy seems to have been successful, with its Detroit-based publishing company Issue Media Group now producing 21 similar publications across North America (Lewis 2014). Model D is on Facebook (9456 likes), Twitter (18,900 followers, 4118 tweets) and Instagram (828 followers). Model D also helps host a range of events in Detroit, including Idea Lab, a workshop which profiles local entrepreneurs, and the Model D Speaker Series, a series of public debates and panel discussions on topical local issues (Figure 6.7).
From 2011 to 2013, the publisher of Model D was Claire Nelson, a prominent Detroit advocate who is also a key figure in the Declare Detroit movement. Nelson is now the director of the Urban Innovation Exchange (UIX), an online initiative designed to showcase local entrepreneurs and social innovators. Model D is the lead partner in UIX, which also works with ‘a coalition of media and community partners’ including Declare Detroit, the People of Detroit, Detroit Lives!, I Am Young Detroit, D:Hive and the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, with funding provided by the Knight Foundation (UIX n.d.).
Figure 6.7: Neighborhood Innovation Panel Hosted by Model D and UIX, 2013. Source: Author.
6.2.9 DETROIT LIVES!
Detroit Lives! is a creative agency and ‘social brand’ created by Metro Detroit native Philip Lauri in 2009 (Detroit Lives! 2014). The Detroit Lives! website explains the initial motivation for the agency as follows:
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Philip Lauri moved to Detroit in 2008 after working stints in Chicago and Portland. Just about everyone under the sun thought that was crazy. ‘Detroit is so bad though!’ Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And so DETROIT LIVES! was born. The idea was kind of simple: create work that shifted the perception of the city.
Examples of this work include:
• a 2012 documentary After the Factory, which compared revitalisation efforts in Detroit and Lodz, Poland, another post-industrial city • an online clothing store which sells items bearing a range of ‘Detroit Lives!’ logos • inspirational murals painted around Detroit (Figure 6.8).
Figure 6.8: Detroit Lives! Mural Near Eastern Market, Detroit. Source: Author.
Today Detroit Lives! also does for-profit video and media work, predominantly for Detroit- based organisations such as United Way, the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, the Urban Innovation Exchange, and the Quicken family (Detroit Lives! provided footage for the Opportunity Detroit advertisement). The agency has been covered by a range of press and online sources, including Time’s Detroit blog, the Huffington Post, I Am Young Detroit and the Detroit Regional News Hub (see Detroit Lives! 2014 for a full list). Detroit Lives! is on Facebook (5167 likes), Instagram (269 followers) and Twitter (7255 followers, 961 tweets).
6.2.10 I AM YOUNG DETROIT
I Am Young Detroit (IAYD, now expanding to become I Am Young America) is an online resource and showcase for young Detroit-based entrepreneurs. Described as ‘more than a
Page 161 of 317 blog, we’re a movement’, IAYD aims ‘to help revitalize American cities by empowering young entrepreneurs to launch businesses, and mobilize citizens everywhere to champion them’ (IAYD 2014). To do this, IAYD provides profiles of successful young Detroit entrepreneurs as well as start-up advice, networking assistance, job advertisements and a ‘cityspotters’ portal, where readers can submit details of inspiring events and people around Detroit. IAYD’s creator Margarita Barry describes the goal of the site as ‘showing people in general the opportunity that Detroit has … especially for young professionals, young creatives and young innovators to stay here’. Barry is also involved with a number of other ventures including D:Pop (the pop-up retail store previously in D:Hive), and has written occasional op-eds for the Huffington Post (Barry 2011, 2012). She has been the focus of numerous press profiles, including Business Insider’s ‘Small Business, Big Ideas’ series (Mondalek 2013), a PBS Newshour feature on Detroit’s art scene (PBS 2012), and New York Times and FastCompany features on Detroit’s entrepreneurial scene (Conlin 2011; Salter 2013). IAYA’s social media profile includes Twitter (14,500 followers, 4961 tweets) and Facebook (5261 followers).
6.2.11 DECLARE DETROIT
The Detroit Declaration is both an online manifesto and a political and advocacy movement. The Declaration is described as ‘an organizing document for people who love Detroit’ (Declare Detroit 2014), and explains its philosophy in the opening paragraph of its preamble:
Cities are the greatest expression of civilization. Great cities are filled with people who exercise their talent and creativity as the catalytic risk-takers, doers, and leaders who forge the dynamic marketplace of ideas that grow places into prosperity. We are the people who believe in cities and pledge to align our energies for the benefit of Michigan’s largest and most storied city, Detroit.
The Declaration was drafted in 2010 by the steering team—forty people who meet monthly and who describe themselves as ‘a diverse coalition of individuals who share a common vision for the city’s future’. The movement is entirely volunteer-based, with no fundraising, budget or staff. The steering team has identified three avenues through which the Declare Detroit movement puts its ideas into action: advocacy, political action and personal action. The Declaration can be signed by anyone who is willing to make the following commitment (Declare Detroit 2014):
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By signing the Declaration, you are making a personal commitment to promote these principles in your daily life and work. Furthermore, you are agreeing to help elect leaders who support them and advocate for policies that uphold them.
This statement suggests that the Declaration’s primary target audience is Metro Detroiters, rather than an external reimaging audience. Nonetheless, the movement has received some national coverage (El Nasser 2010), as well as local write-ups in Time’s Detroit Blog and Model D Media (see Declare Detroit 2014 for a list). Declare Detroit also has 18,225 likes on Facebook.
6.2.12 DETROIT-THEMED RETAIL
Recent years have seen the launch of a number of independent retailers selling Detroit- themed products. An early example was Pure Detroit, which opened in 1998 and now has three stores in the Greater Downtown area. Pure Detroit describes itself as ‘the original local culture shop’ and ‘a lifestyle brand that has come to represent the city itself’ (Pure Detroit 2014), which has grown through community support and contributes back to Detroit through local investments, events and tours. Another example is City Bird, a store and gallery in Midtown stocking local, handmade products, opened by Detroit locals Andy and Emily Linn in 2005. More recently, the Linns independently produced Belle Isle to 8 Mile: An Insider’s Guide to Detroit, the first comprehensive Detroit guide book ‘in a generation’ (Belle Isle to 8 Mile 2014). Other examples of independent Detroit-focused retailing include the Detroit Mercantile Company in Eastern Market and online enterprises like Down with Detroit. These small businesses fill a gap in the city’s tourism infrastructure and stock products that present a predominantly positive image of the city; as Down with Detroit explains, its mission is ‘To create cool Detroit shirts, nothing negative or stereotypical’ (Down with Detroit n.d.).
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Figure 6.9: Pure Detroit Store, Downtown Detroit. Source: Author
6.2.13 BLOGS
Last but not least, the past five years have seen the emergence of numerous blogs that address issues of image and revitalisation in Detroit. Some key examples are:
• Positive Detroit (www.positivedetroit.net), which was created by Erin Rose in 2008 ‘out of 1 part irritation and 2 parts necessity’. Describing the local media as ‘a pack of well coifed negative nellies’, Rose uses the blog to ‘beat them at their own game: by churning out positive, important, and newsworthy happenings in and around “The D”’. Rose is also a board member for Hatch Detroit, a local entrepreneur incubation contest. Rose has 25,800 followers on Twitter (13,200 tweets), as well as 1599 followers on Instagram
• RepYourCity, which was an online platform for collating positive news stories and events listings for Detroit. It was created by Detroit local Jay Rayford, who describes himself as ‘Detroit’s Chief Promoter of Good’ (Rayford 2014). Rayford sees RepYourCity as ‘more of a movement than just a website’ (Zemke 2012a, para. 5), and developed the site using skills learned in D:Hive’s Build training program for emerging entrepreneurs. While RepYourCity is currently offline, Rayford is busy with other social entrepreneurship projects like Social Sushi (http://www.socialsushidetroit.com/)
• The People of Detroit (http://www.thepeopleofdetroit.com/), a photoblog described by its creator Noah Stephens as ‘a curated tour of life in the automotive
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capital of the world’. Using the tagline ‘because not everyone in Detroit is an abandoned building’, the blog features Stephens’ photo portraits of Detroit residents, accompanied by short essays about the participants, his experiences taking the photos, and current issues in Detroit. Stephens claims the goal is ‘to reform the popular notion of what it means to live in Detroit’ and ‘to stimulate Detroit-directed investment, retain and attract residency, and serve as a counterbalance to national and global media coverage fixated on despair and disrepair in the storied city’. Most recently, the blog has featured photos of Detroit grocery stores, as part of Stephens’s exploration of the oft-repeated claim that Detroit is a ‘food desert’. Stephens has received grants from CEOS for Cities, the Knight Foundation and the Awesome News Task Force to support his work. Stephens’ Facebook page has 1275 likes, as well as 3804 followers on Twitter (1501 tweets).
• Rethink Detroit (http://www.rethinkdetroit.org/); a news-focused blog and twitter account run by University of Michigan PhD student Patrick Cooper-McCann, designed to ‘tell the city’s story in full, sharing both its challenges and its progress’. Cooper-McCann began the blog as ‘an ongoing dialogue on Detroit’s future’, aiming to offer a more balanced perspective on Detroit than explicitly positive sites like Model D and Positive Detroit, while also advocating for the city’s revitalisation. Due to time constraints Cooper-McCann is currently more active on the twitter account than the blog; the former has 5100+ followers (6026 tweets), while the latter has received over 30,000 visits.
6.3 HOW: EXPLORING STRATEGIES FOR REIMAGING DETROIT
Looking over this list, it is noticeable that the broad scope of participants outlined here is dwarfed by the even broader scope of different reimaging strategies being employed. Following on from the approach adopted in the Newcastle case study, this section will first examine these strategies from the perspective of audience, exploring whether they are primarily directed locally or externally. Applying this somewhat artificial distinction helps to shed some light on some of the unique complexities of the reimaging audience in Detroit, laying the groundwork for a subsequent examination of the broader goals underpinning these strategies. In addition, given that all of these reimaging participants are to some degree informal, closer attention will be directed to the role of networking in Detroit. Even the brief overview provided above indicated that informal image-makers in Detroit are Page 165 of 317 closely networked with each other, suggesting this is also a significant aspect of how Detroit’s reimaging participants are operating, as it proved to be in Newcastle.
6.3.1 CITY, SUBURBS, NATION, WORLD? LOCAL AND EXTERNAL IMAGE-MAKING IN DETROIT
Distinguishing between local and external strategies is more complex in Detroit than in Newcastle, as the Detroit suburbs might be understood as a distinct audience for reimaging efforts and one which may be more difficult to convince than local, national or international audiences. The relationship between the City of Detroit and its surrounding suburbs has not always been positive, and some suburban residents only rarely venture into the city, mainly to attend sporting or other major events (see Williams 2014 for a recent example of this mentality). This has been a long-standing problem. For example, Sandy Hermanoff explained the introduction to Detroit she received when she arrived in 1975:
I heard that there were a lot of people who would say, “Oh, I’m not going downtown. I don’t go downtown. I don’t go to restaurants in the city of Detroit. I don’t participate in events in the city of Detroit.” I heard a lot of that. That there was a lot of crime in the city, and you just didn’t want to go down there and spend time.
The same can be said for some Detroiters spending time in the suburbs, although the lack of jobs and services in parts of Detroit often makes trips out more necessary (Austen 2014). The division between city and suburbs is compounded by historical, political, racial and economic factors, prompting Detroit artist Mitch Cope to describe the broader metropolitan area as being ‘like a dysfunctional family whose members refuse to talk to each other, sharing the same toilet, the same lights, the same house, while each individual lives in his or her own isolated world’ (Cope 2004, p. 11). It is therefore open for debate whether suburban residents should be considered a local or external audience for Detroit’s reimaging efforts.
Despite these challenges—or rather because of them—the suburbs are clearly a target audience for many of Detroit’s image-making projects. For example, Metro Detroiters were the primary focus of the Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign, which exclaimed on its Twitter page: ‘Metro Detroit, unite! Stop bashing & start bragging. Stop complaining & start volunteering’. Founder Sandy Hermanoff confirmed the regional focus of the campaign:
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[We didn’t just] need the mayor; we needed Oakland County, Macomb County and Wayne County to the right. That’s the whole area. I went to all of the heads of those counties, and I got their commitment … Basically, it was to put a guilt trip on people who were living in the Detroit area, saying, “You know what? If you don’t have anything good to say, then at least you can get off your duff and go do something for somebody else. Quit talking about how horrible things are and look at this very positively, and come and do something!”
Similarly, the Opportunity Detroit strategy involved both getting press coverage in the suburbs and encouraging suburbanites to visit the city, as Quicken’s Bruce Schwarz explained:
Here’s the thing; they can see it on the news, especially the local news. We get a lot of PR and press on that. They can hear it on the radio and read about it. They are like, “Wow! This is cool. I hear Detroit”. But they don’t come down here … There is this perception of “I’m not going to Detroit, even though I hear some cool stuff is going on. I’ll go to go to a game or to go to The Lion King or go to some event, but then I’m going home.” You know? And we want people to stay. So the more we can build up this vision and the more businesses we can get down here and the more stuff to do, then the more people will stay.
Yet while the Opportunity Detroit team is working to shift perceptions in the suburbs, it is also clearly targeting a broader audience. Some of its most prominent efforts have been nationally-focused; for example, the advertisement used to launch the campaign was nationally televised during the 2012 World Series baseball final (Lacy 2012). The full-page print ad ran after the city’s bankruptcy filing, appearing in both regional and national newspapers including the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Politico online (Wile 2013). This combination of suburban and national audiences supports the conclusion that Opportunity Detroit is primarily designed as an externally facing campaign, following the resource-attraction logic of traditional place branding models. At the same time, this combined suburban/national focus might also be read as support for the argument that, as a generalisation, the suburban audience’s interest in and perspective on Detroit is more closely aligned with that of the national audience, than with the way local Detroiters think about their city.
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Similarly layered audiences are also apparent in the efforts of smaller independent image- makers. As Noah Stephens explains, his People of Detroit photo blog was initially inspired by his frustration at how the city was being portrayed nationally:
So Dateline NBC … did a news article or show, a documentary about Detroit, and they had a guy who sold raccoon meat. I mean, I get it. There’s a lot about Detroit that is peculiar and messed up and unappetising and backwards, but raccoon meat really isn’t one of them. You know what I mean? That’s not really representative of how most Detroiters live their life, so I just thought it was a little bit of sensationalisation. I started doing the People of Detroit to kind of add an insider’s perspective on life in the city and maybe focus on people and aspects of life in the city that you don’t normally see in national media just because it’s not sensational.
Stephens reinforces this external focus on the blog, describing its goal as being ‘to stimulate Detroit-directed investment, retain and attract residency, and serve as a counterbalance to national and global media coverage fixated on despair and disrepair in the storied city’. Yet while external perceptions triggered the blog’s creation, Stephens acknowledges that his aims have now broadened to include local perceptions as well:
I think it’s important for not only people who aren’t from here but also people who are from here but maybe grew up in the neighbourhoods and never lived in Midtown or some of the surrounding [Greater Downtown] neighbourhoods, because it’s a completely different type of life. For someone who was interested in culture and arts, if your only experience with Detroit was the neighbourhoods, you would think that that wasn’t a place where you could have those experiences … There is a vibrant art scene with the DIA, with the museums and the galleries downtown … My audience is both internal for people in Detroit and external for people outside of the city.
This comment suggests that Detroit’s imaging landscape is even more complicated than the city/suburb divide, as there is also a distinction between how residents of the Greater Downtown area and residents of the surrounding neighbourhoods see the city.
Like Noah Stephens, Philip Lauri was also driven by his frustration at external perceptions of Detroit when he began his social branding agency Detroit Lives! As he explains, the goal for the branded T-shirt line he first developed was to promote a hopeful message and contradict the negativity he regularly encountered: Page 168 of 317
I guess it was just kind of like a ‘fuck you’, sort of. Because it was frustrating, it was really frustrating, I mean, being on airplanes with people and they’re telling you like, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry that you live [there]”. It’s like, shut-up! Don’t be sorry for me, I’m not asking for your pity.
Yet while the city’s external image provided the trigger for the agency’s creation, Lauri also suggested that a local audience had since emerged:
Well, there’s been a lot more outsiders interested in it than I expected, for sure. And I think insiders around here are into it, just because it’s a pretty honest and fun brand. I think … we stay pretty true to who and what we are, and we keep it realistic, which I think is an important quality to have in a place that is so fucked up. Because, if you claim that you’re going to fix everything, people are going to be like, “you’re out of your mind”.
Beyond confirming the multilayered nature of the audience for image-making efforts in Detroit, Lauri’s concern about being ‘realistic’ highlights a key challenge associated with this complex audience. While local Detroiters are undoubtedly keen to see positive stories about their city promoted, Lauri’s comment indicates the pitfalls of pitching an overly ambitious vision of change to a city that has endured a multitude of broken promises. This is a lesson new Detroiter Jason Lorimer recently discovered the hard way when he wrote an idealistic, somewhat naïve op-ed for Model D, which was criticised for perpetuating the entrepreneurial myth ‘about how everything in Detroit can be solved with a think-tank here and a coffee shop/microbrewery/T-shirt maker there’ (Foley 2013a, para. 13). The clichéd photo of Lorimer in front of the abandoned Michigan Central Station quickly became an online meme, circulated with a range of comments highlighting local frustrations about outsiders thinking they can ‘fix’ or ‘save’ the city (Woods 2013).
As this episode suggests, there are real challenges in trying to speak to multiple audiences in Detroit simultaneously, as imagery that might seem inspiring or eye-opening for external audiences are often perceived as simplistic, condescending or unrepresentative by locals. Taking into account this complexity is therefore a key part of designing an effective image- making effort for the city. Beyond this, however, these examples highlight why examining the audience or audiences for image-making in Detroit is an essential element of understanding and evaluating the different visions of change being proposed for the city. These visions will be considered in detail in Section 6.4, as they are most easily identified
Page 169 of 317 through an examination of the narratives being told by Detroit’s image-makers. First, however, it is helpful to explore the highly networked quality of image-making in Detroit, as this is also a distinctive feature of the city’s reimaging landscape.
6.3.2 LINKING LARGE AND SMALL: THE IMAGE-MAKING NETWORKS OF DETROIT
Networking emerged as a key feature of how informal image-makers function in Newcastle, and the same trend is apparent in Detroit. Interestingly, perhaps because all Detroit reimaging participants are to a degree informal, this networking seems to extend beyond small-scale organisations to link image-makers of all sizes, both online and offline. As in Newcastle, one of the reasons for this highly networked landscape is likely pragmatic; while Detroit was a large city not so long ago, it is now an increasingly small one, and the image- making community is even smaller. Sandy Hermanoff described Detroit as ‘large but … still very small’, while Noah Stephens explained that ‘it kind of feels more like a small town so you do … have the opportunity to build relationships with people that you otherwise might not in more congested cities’. This is particularly true of the main image-making participants, who blogger Patrick Cooper-McCann described as ‘a core group of people who mostly know each other and are promoting the city and writing about it’. Entrepreneur Jay Rayford saw this tight-knit quality of the reimaging and revitalisation community as a great, if temporary, opportunity:
You’re one degree from meeting anybody that you want to know in Detroit right now. That’s why I say it’s an exciting time right now to be involved in some stuff. The people that are here doing the work, even some of the wealthier individuals, are real down to earth people. You can just see them walking down the street; you just never know. And that is something that a lot of places can’t necessarily say, because the elite are only in the elite places.
In addition to this relatively flat hierarchy, another distinctive feature is the unusually collaborative nature of Detroit’s networks, even amongst would-be competitors. As Marge Sorge of the Detroit Regional News Hub explained:
What I find fascinating among the young entrepreneurs that are here, is that they work together … It’s competitive, but it’s not. They will work together to try to make one succeed, which I think is really important.
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Detroit Declaration steering team member Bradford Frost made a similar point, labelling the approach ‘co-opertition’, which means that ‘there are other groups that want to share information, align resources, and ensure that, given that we have enough overlap of interests, we’re able to leverage and build off of each other’. This same spirit is also reflected in the numerous networking events designed to facilitate exactly these kinds of collaboration, including D:Hive’s monthly ‘Open City’ speaker series and the Detroit Creative Corridor Center’s Creative Mornings event.
Interviewees offered various explanations for this strong networking trend. A primary reason was necessity, with cooperation seen as a way to overcome the challenges created by Detroit’s lack of resources. This was emphasised by Jenenne Whitfield, the executive director of the Heidelberg Project, a high-profile open-air art environment and non-profit community development and arts education organisation (Figure 6.10). As Whitfield explained:
Well, you know we’re the kings and queens of collaboration. I could teach a class on collaboration, because we had to be. We’re twenty-seven years old, and we received our first significant grant in 2009 … So, we always, always reached out to other organisations.
One of the Heidelberg Project’s many collaborations has been with D:Hive, which recently hosted a show in its downtown storefront called ‘Connecting the Dots’, featuring works by Heidelberg artists (the dot is the Heidelberg Project’s motif) (Figure 6.10).
Figure 6.10: Part of the Heidelberg Project (by Tyree Guyton) and D:Hive’s ‘Connecting the Dots’ Display. Source: Author. Page 171 of 317
This notion of co-opertition resulting from Detroit’s particular challenges is also suggested by local restaurateur Dave Mancini, who noted that a cooperative approach ‘especially plays well in Detroit, because we’re underserved’ (quoted in Abrams 2012, para. 13).
Interestingly, however, Whitfield suggests that such collaboration has not always been the norm in the Detroit arts world, given the challenges of being an arts organisation in a working-class city:
I think that in this city, in particular, being a blue-collar, post-industrial city, a lot of the arts organisations, believe it or not, the larger ones like the DIA, they saw us as competition. I just thought, “Oh my gosh” [laughs]. So their help was limited and, sometimes, I think kind of cautious … There’s a lot more cooperation now because after 2008, what happened with the automobile industry, what happened with Wall Street and all those other things, we had no choice really. We all needed to start thinking about how we could work together.
Whether or not this perceived shift applies to other segments of the Detroit community, it is clear that many in revitalisation and reimaging circles now see networking and collaboration as a key—and enjoyable—part of their strategy. For I Am Young Detroit’s Margarita Barry, the appeal of her work is that ‘I love helping people and talking to people, connecting with people, putting people together’. Fellow entrepreneur Jay Rayford shows similar enthusiasm:
I feel like I kind of have a foot in the door, so if anybody really wants to get involved in Detroit right now, that does live here, I’m trying to be the conduit for everybody. Come on; get in now while you can. I can connect you to different people that are doing some amazing things.
The same impulse also seems to drive bigger players in Detroit’s reimaging; Quicken’s Bruce Schwartz, notes that ‘My thing is connecting people. We call that “pulling threads”. Pulling a thread and connecting it to another thread’. Schwartz stressed the value of such efforts in facilitating reimaging and revitalisation, mentioning the introduction he had made between a Detroit manufacturing company looking for a cool branding opportunity and a local gallery looking to grow its profile, as well as between the young organisers of Detroit’s X- Games bid and representatives of the DMCVB.
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While such ‘offline’ networking may come naturally to many informal image-makers, most also rely on social media, both to connect outside the city and to enhance their links within Detroit’s reimaging community. For example, Marge Sorge identified social media as a more valuable tool for disseminating information and connecting with journalists than she had expected, noting that she had ‘been pleasantly surprised as to what … social media has been able to do. A lot of reporters follow us on Twitter … so that’s very helpful’. For Jay Rayford, social media was an entrée into Detroit’s ‘offline’ networks after working out of state for a few years:
So when I came back, I wasn’t connected to a lot of people. Some of the people that I instantly connected with were people that I was sharing their information on my Facebook page, and they were like, “Hey, thanks”. Even though they didn’t know me and I didn’t know them, I was sharing their stuff, and they would see that. So once I came back home and they actually saw me, it was like, “Oh man, you’re the one that’s helping us push our stuff and everything?” So I connected with those people first.12
This openness is one of the great strengths of social media, and it works in both directions. As Jay also noted, the public nature of social networks allows the easy dissemination of material beyond one’s personal circle, because ‘you put something out there and then people share it and share it and share it and it gets out there. You can touch so many people with just the push of a button, it’s interesting’. Noah Stephens made a similar point, noting that social media offers a way to reach new audiences and markets:
Probably one of the articles that I did or one of the photographs I took that had the most views was just spread just on social media, Facebook and Twitter. I had like 3,000 hits in the first week. So the great thing about the internet is it really gives you a way to get your product out or get what you’re doing out to people directly. So you can kind of circumvent traditional media in that way.
Social media may also be particularly powerful in the Detroit context because it facilitates connections with a distinctive feature of Detroit’s networks: the ‘diaspora’ of ex-Detroiters who maintain an interest in and connection to the city. Because of Detroit’s dramatic
12 As an aside, I can relate to this experience from my time in Detroit, when I found Facebook and Twitter to be invaluable research tools, particularly for discovering Detroit-based events and contacting informal image- makers. These online tools gave me access to this local network, even though I had no personal connection to the community.
Page 173 of 317 population loss over the past 50 years, this external network is now significant enough to inform how informal image-makers operate, as Margarita Barry explained:
We get a lot of people who are expats, people who used to live in the city and moved elsewhere [who] want to find a way to get involved. So, for me, everything I build has to have an exponent of helping people outside of the city who want to support [to] do so and still get that experience without actually being there.
Erin Rose made a similar point when describing her audience for the Positive Detroit blog:
[My web] traffic is very interesting because you—granted, the bulk of it is here— but you look at it where it’s happening; it’s global. It’s a lot of people like that, that grew up here and moved away and still have that tie here. I was very proud. People—that’s the thing here. People are really proud of this area, very proud to be from Detroit.
Sandy Hermanoff made a similar point about expats’ desire to remain connected with the city, noting how the TV-industry experts who volunteered to produce Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign advertisements were ‘all Detroit people’ now living across the country. As this suggests, as well as being plentiful, many of Detroit’s expats are also passionate. Jay Rayford explained how this creates opportunities for both revitalisation and reimaging using online tools like Detroit Nation (Detroit Nation n.d.), which finds ways for ex- Detroiters to assist current Detroiters:
I think we have a strong—I like to call them alumni—that live everywhere else and still have a strong passion for Detroit … They can tap into [Detroit Nation] and say, “Okay, yeah, sure. We will offer our skills and stuff like that to help that entrepreneur in Detroit”. Stuff like that I think is just amazing. It helps spread the story about all the great stuff that is happening here. So the expat Detroiters … now they cannot just say, “I am from Detroit, and there is great stuff happening here” but “Look. I helped this guy and check out this”. Now, they have a sense of ownership still in their city that they love so much.
These expats are often both a willing audience for positive stories about Detroit and a connection through which these stories can be disseminated further. Social media provides a simple and cheap connection to this community, which would otherwise be lost to the city as a resource.
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Yet while cultivating a strong expat community is undoubtedly valuable, the existence of that community is also a reminder of why Detroit’s image-making community is so close- knit—the city is now small, and it is continuing to shrink. And while this closeness may facilitate networking and create opportunities for informal image-makers, some worry it also breeds an insularity that excludes Detroiters from different backgrounds. The use of social media may only exacerbate the problem; as Margarita Barry points out, image- makers’ efforts to change perceptions locally may be well-intentioned, but the tools are not always appropriate:
If your social circle are just the same old folks—social innovators and change makers and game changers, you know—if it’s the same people and you’re advertising these roundtables using the same channels—social media, Twitter and Facebook and this newsletter and this website—and everybody is kind of exchanging the same information, it’s not really reaching outside of that bubble.
This comment highlights a key concern associated with the revitalisation and reimaging of Detroit—that it is a process primarily driven by and benefiting Greater Downtown residents, while the neighbourhoods are excluded and left behind (Hackman 2014a). While social media networks might be open, they are not necessarily accessible to all. This is particularly true in a city like Detroit, where poverty and disadvantage mean reduced rates of online access and literacy (Martinez and Patel 2012). As Margarita added:
There’s people who aren’t on Twitter, aren’t on Facebook, who maybe don’t have access to it or just don’t know about it. [Some informal image-makers] don’t really reach outside of those, so until we figure out a way to actually get on the ground and reach some of these people to have access to some of this news, it will be hard to kind of get them to join the table and be a part of the discussion.
While also recognising the perceived disconnect between downtown and the neighbourhoods as a challenge, Jay Rayford claims some success in using his online networks to spread a positive Detroit message locally:
Some of the people I’m friends with, old high school friends … that are still here, they see the stuff I’m putting out there. And even some of them have actually come out. I would say, “We are volunteering to do this” or “There is this event going on”, and they will come and just be like, “Man, thanks for telling me about that. I had a great time. I never knew this was happening in Detroit, in my back yard”. Page 175 of 317
Ultimately, however, while the need to foster inclusivity remains a significant concern for many of Detroit’s informal image-makers, it hasn’t completely dampened the enthusiasm many feel for the environment that Detroit’s close networks creates. While lamenting the inequality of the fact that ‘it’s like a tale of two cities, where we are, down here, relative to pretty much everything else’, Philip Lauri pointed out that the city’s close networks contribute to a great atmosphere for those involved:
There’s a really cool energy. It’s sort of homogenous in its identity. It’s largely all white, new people, which is unfortunate, but maybe we’re just perpetuating that by talking about it, I don’t know. But it is what it is. It still feels good … You’ve got people here that are so supportive—in a good way, you know, in a wholesome, honest way.
It is this energy that seemingly buoys the enthusiasm of many informal image-makers and provides a positive counterpoint to some of the more challenging aspects of life in Detroit. As such, networks in Detroit can be seen not just as a practical and effective way of engaging in informal image-making, but as a significant part of what makes informal image- makers want to promote the city in the first place. Strong networks might therefore be seen not just as a feature of informal image-making in Detroit but as potentially constitutive of it.
Having thus identified the complexities of the audience and the significance of networking as distinctive features of reimaging strategies in Detroit, the question remains as to what light this sheds on the broader goals of these reimaging efforts. In the Newcastle case study, the examination of audience and networks provided a lens through which to examine the underlying vision of change driving formal and informal image-making efforts. In Detroit, however, while an understanding of audience and networking is essential to understanding the change visions at play, these broader goals are more easily identified in the recurring narratives running through these image-making efforts. In particular, three recurring narratives—Detroit as a place of opportunity, as a post-industrial city, and as a DIY city—speak to the kind of change visions different informal image-makers hold for the City of Detroit.
6.4 WHAT: DISSECTING DETROIT’S REIMAGING NARRATIVES
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, there are signs of a new, more positive image emerging for Detroit, which positions the city as undergoing a renaissance and becoming Page 176 of 317
‘Another Detroit’. While already seen as a simplistic cliché by some (Dwyer 2012; Foley 2013a), there are actually a number of different narratives that make up the ‘Another Detroit’ image, each of which reflects a slightly different vision of change for the city. Three of these narratives will be explored in more detail here: Detroit as a city of opportunity, Detroit as a post-industrial city, and Detroit as a DIY city (albeit one that’s not for everybody).
6.4.1 DETROIT AS A CITY OF OPPORTUNITY
While Detroit has not been officially branded a ‘City of Opportunity’ like Newcastle, opportunity is a narrative theme adopted by a number of different image-makers. For example, the Downtown Detroit Partnership claims on its website to be ‘Creating Opportunities’ (DDP 2014), and Declare Detroit member Bradford Frost called his personal blog ‘The Detroit Opportunity Project’ (Frost 2014). The highest-profile example is obviously the Opportunity Detroit campaign, which Quicken wants to develop ‘not just as a Quicken family thing, but as a Detroit thing in general’, according to Bruce Schwartz. This strategy to ‘plug [Opportunity Detroit] in to as many of the initiatives that happen in the city’ as possible suggests that Quicken sees the meaning of ‘opportunity’ as flexible, to be shaped by the organisations and projects that adopt it.
Looking closely at the Opportunity Detroit television advertisement, however, it seems to offer a fairly clear representation of how Quicken understands opportunity. While the commercial includes some images of creative arts and community projects, much of the footage features industry, both low and high tech, suggesting opportunity is primarily understood as an economic concept. This focus on industry is reinforced in the gravelly voice-over by musician Kid Rock, who explains that opportunity is ‘moulded, it’s built, it’s created’, is ‘as much about grit as intellect’, and might mean ‘an explosive high-tech corridor located at the intersection of muscle and brains’ (Opportunity Detroit 2012). While Quicken itself is primarily a financial services company, this visual focus on industry and work-oriented language taps into Detroit’s powerful self-perception as a place that makes things, a theme that will be discussed more in the next section. At the same time, the ad sends a broader message that opportunity is primarily about work and business opportunities.
Also notable is the line ‘opportunity only comes to those already in the game’, which suggests that it is the responsibility of individuals to seek out opportunity, rather than to
Page 177 of 317 have it provided. This is reminiscent of the notion of personal improvement through ‘pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps’, a central tenet of the American Dream mythology (Hochschild 1996). Underpinning this mythology is an individualistic, free-market world view that runs counter to more communitarian visions of urban change promoted by Detroit social activists like Grace Lee Boggs (Boggs and Kurshige 2012). This ideological distinction is also indirectly reinforced by the Opportunity Detroit commercial’s focus on images of downtown, rather than the neighbourhoods that tend to be the focus of social and community development efforts. In these ways, the commercial can be read as tying the concept of opportunity to a vision of business-oriented, private investment-driven revitalisation that aligns with Quicken’s broader activities. In this respect, both the ad and the broader campaign mirror the centralised focus of Detroit’s pro-growth regimes of previous eras (Digaetano and Lawless 1999).
Yet while Quicken’s vision of opportunity appears to be primarily economic, it is also sometimes linked with a broader vision of ‘doing good’, as Rock Ventures CEO Matt Cullen noted during a 2013 keynote (Detroit Regional Chamber 2013):
A number of people are starting to see Detroit as we do—a place that is full of opportunity, a place where you can do good by being part of the renaissance of a great American city, and do well by being on the ground floor of economic opportunity.
This statement promotes the idea that seizing opportunity in Detroit comes with the added benefit of helping the city, while still emphasising that personal economic benefit is central to the opportunity Detroit provides. This notion that Detroit provides both personal opportunity and the opportunity to ‘do good’ is echoed by a number of other informal image-makers. For example, as Marge Sorge explained:
There is opportunity in Detroit—and that opportunity is not buying a house for a dollar or buying a house for $500 … Yes, you can do some of those things. But the opportunity is actually being able to come here and make a difference.
This is an interpretation echoed by Bradford Frost, who noted how Detroit provided him with the opportunity to do good and be personally satisfied, by fulfilling his life’s goal of working to address social issues:
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One of the opportunities of being American and being in Detroit is that you can kind of integrate all those goals around work you love to do, people you are a part of, in a place that offers a lot of amenities that you really enjoy.
In other words, in Detroit the true opportunity comes from the fact that altruism needn’t necessitate sacrifice in the way it might in many other parts of the world; this is a place where you can do good and do well for yourself, at the same time.
While such appeals to altruism are one way of positioning Detroit as a place of opportunity for those less driven by economic goals, another is by highlighting how Detroit caters for people or projects that might be shut out from bigger, more expensive cities. Jay Rayford— one of the strongest proponents of the narrative of opportunity—emphasised how Detroit enables creativity and experimentation, because ‘it’s cheaper to fail here than it is in a lot of other cities’. While the city’s flourishing art scene was one example of this, he also identified urban agriculture as an unusual but ‘amazing’ opportunity presented by Detroit’s economic decline. In doing so, Rayford adopted similar language to Newcastle’s Matt Endacott, reframing the city’s challenges as opportunities:
[Some outsiders] just come here and … they go “Where are the worst places here?” and that’s where they want to go. And then you have people that take them there. Me, I refuse to take anybody there. We might drive by and say, “Let’s look at the opportunity.” It’s massive land. Detroit is 143 square miles and, to me, that represents opportunity. There’s opportunity to do things that have just never been done before.
A related perspective was offered by Matt Clayson of the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, who linked the idea of opportunity in Detroit to unusual political possibilities, pointing out that a legacy of poor government decisions at least meant ‘there’s a lot of opportunity here for big thinking, and you never know where that will go’. Interestingly, Rayford suggests this kind of repositioning is effective not only with outsiders but also with local school kids:
They acknowledge that there are so many problems, and I even have them talk about some of those problems. And I was like, “You can be the ones that create solutions for all these problems; which means it’s mass opportunity. You got mass problems, it means mass opportunity” … Even if I don’t touch all of them, I know quite a few of them are just like, “I didn’t think about it like that”.
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In a detailed report on the city’s current state, Austen (2014, para. 19) noted an example of this mentality being promoted at a business development meeting by local entrepreneur Rufus Bartell:
A retired civil engineer … complained about the failure of city government to properly educate anyone. Bartell cut her short: “That sounds like an opportunity. Pose it in the form of an opportunity”.
With these kinds of comments, dysfunctional aspects of Detroit’s situation are neatly repositioned as the source of opportunity in the city. In this respect, the construction of what opportunity means is somewhat different from the version promoted through Opportunity Detroit, which focuses on opportunity emerging from new businesses and new redevelopments. While the repositioning of negatives in this way is a clever promotional strategy, it also raises some difficult issues.
To begin with, such repositioning risks shifting attention—and ultimately responsibility— away from the structural causes of problems like abandonment and failing public services, redirecting it towards the community. If every problem is really an opportunity, then it is the community to blame if they fail to seize it. This framing therefore reflects a predominantly community-driven vision of change, albeit one that divests the government of much responsibility in favour of encouraging private engagement. In this respect it overlaps with the pro-DIY narrative (to be discussed further shortly). At the same time, however, this repositioning also creates a dilemma should it prove to be successful. By reframing challenging or unusual aspects of Detroit as opportunities, these informal image- makers promote a vision of the city that may disappear as more people arrive in the hope of capitalising on them. In other words, the ‘negatives as opportunities’ narrative risks being an inherently short-term one. It is also one which may ultimately provide support for the more explicitly pro-growth vision of change the Opportunity Detroit campaign represents, even if those initially seizing these opportunities are doing so to develop arts or urban-farming projects.
For the time being, however, the meaning of opportunity in Detroit remains open to competing interpretations, and reflects the complexity of debates over the city’s future direction. The same can be said for the narrative of Detroit as a ‘post-industrial’ city, considered next.
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6.4.2 DETROIT AS A POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY
It is hard to overstate the ways the automotive industry has shaped Detroit, not only economically but also physically, politically and symbolically. Many Detroiters’ entire lives have been intricately intertwined with the fate of the Big Three, to the point that GM’s bankruptcy in 2009 felt like ‘a death in the family’, in the words of one local I met. Despite the city’s current challenges, the historical and cultural significance of the Motor City remains a drawcard for some residents, as Matt Clayson explains:
The reason why we have highways and automobiles and even the middle class, it’s because of the mass-production processes invented and perfected here … The other reason why my wife and I stayed here is it’s a relevant city. It’s a city with a strong history, a strong identity, and I like being somewhere like that.
As this quotation suggests, Detroit is viewed as not only having dominated car manufacturing but also having pioneered industrialisation and facilitated the American way of life (see also LeDuff 2013b). It is not surprising that a city so strongly defined by its industrial heritage has found the process of reimagining itself as ‘post-industrial’ challenging and contentious. A key part of the ongoing debate relates to the economic future of the city and questions whether it should embrace new tech and service-based businesses or seek to remain a place that makes things, even if those things are not cars.
The former vision has a range of supporters in the city, including the Quicken family. While heavy industry did feature in the Opportunity Detroit television advertisement, Quicken’s key financial investments suggest a primary interest in developing post-industrial Detroit as a tech and services hub. This is evidenced by the rehabilitation of the Madison (now rebranded the M@dison) and surrounding buildings as a high-tech start-up district downtown, as well as funding opportunities for tech start-ups and entrepreneurs (Conlin 2011, para. 15):
Detroit Venture Partners is offering start-up financing to early-stage technology companies … Bizdom U, an ‘entrepreneurial boot camp’ started by Dan Gilbert, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, is offering graduates of its four-month- long course financing opportunities of up to $100,000 if they base their start-up in Detroit.
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At the same time, the narrative of Detroit as a high-tech hub is also being reinforced through promotion and positioning. In addition to the M@dison, Quicken has proposed rebranding key downtown landmarks, Woodward Avenue and Grand Circus Park, as Webward Ave and Grand Circuit Park (Beshouri 2013). Other proponents are adopting a narrative strategy that presents Detroit as emulating or even bettering Silicon Valley at the start-up game. Examples include a local tech entrepreneur’s interview titled ‘Silicon Valley? No, Thanks. I Prefer Detroit’ (Fenzi 2013), as well as the Detroit Regional Chamber’s conference panel entitled ‘Outpacing Silicon Valley: How Detroit is Revolutionizing the IT Industry’ (CBS Detroit 2013). These repositioning efforts appear to be striking a chord, with the narrative of Detroit as a future tech hub gaining national and international media attention (e.g. Bischke 2011; Conlin 2012; Donnelly 2012; Harris 2013; Shactman 2012).
While not explicitly competing with this tech-based vision, an alternative post-industrial narrative draws a stronger connection with Detroit’s past, positioning small-scale manufacturing as a key to the city’s revival. An example comes from Philip Lauri, who makes the connection between Detroit’s manufacturing history and its new independent manufacturing scene:
So we need to see the whole slate of change as many things: DIY, whatever, urban gardening, top down solutions like what Gilbert and the boys are doing. But then again, we have a core of more manual, labour-driven sorts of things. We can still have this; we can still nurture our manufacturing growth. I mean, the notion of craft manufacturing is on the rise. And suddenly consumer tastes are shifting to value that, you know, as disposable incomes in the US are starting to recover from the recession. Suddenly people are willing to spend eight dollars on a little thing of jam, but the jam is very good, and it came from a garden down the street. So we have got to factor all that in, and our slate, our economic identity, therefore is made up of many different small pieces.
A narrative of Detroit as ‘still making things, just differently’ is also evident in the promotional strategy of a high-profile new business called Shinola, which set up its watchmaking factory in Midtown in 2011. Using the tagline ‘Where America is Made’, the company describes its story as follows (Shinola n.d.):
Why not accept that manufacturing is gone from this country? Why not let the rust and weeds finish what they started? Why not just embrace the era of disposability? Page 182 of 317
And why didn’t we buy a warmer coat before we moved here? Through three Detroit winters, we’ve asked ourselves these questions. And worked not to find our answer, but to build it … We’re starting with the reinvigoration of a storied American brand, and a storied American city. Because we believe in the beauty of industry. The glory of manufacturing. We know there’s not just history in Detroit, there is a future.
This somewhat glorified representation of Shinola’s quest to revitalise American manufacturing—and Detroit, as its spiritual home—is reflected in a number of press profiles of Shinola, with headlines like ‘In Bankrupt Detroit, Shinola Puts Its Faith In American Manufacturing’ (J. Muller 2013), ‘Inside Shinola, The Detroit Company That’s Building Gadgets Made In The USA (Yes, Really)’ (Taylor 2012), and ‘Detroit store opening is Shinola’s latest move in quest to reverse globalization’ (D. Muller 2013).
For some observers, this aspect of the company’s branding is so laboured (pun intended) that ‘its loving portraits of workers in its new factory, and its flowery odes to local artisanship’, invite critique rather than congratulations (Caramanica 2013, para. 2). Entitled ‘The Next Branding of Detroit’, Caramanica’s New York Times profile of Shinola characterised the company’s marketing pitch as equating Detroit manufacturing with other social justice causes (2013, para. 3): ‘Buying something made in Detroit, in this calculus, is not much different than buying a fair trade Andean sweater’.
While Shinola’s strategy may seem heavy-handed to some, the company’s rapid expansion suggests there is real value in positioning the company as a key player in a Detroit-based manufacturing renaissance (Hackman 2014b). Shinola is not alone in recognising this brand value, and it now finds itself ‘one of several companies betting on manufacturing in Detroit’ (Abbey-Lambertz 2013, para. 9). Interestingly, Shinola itself seems happy to acknowledge this as a key reason for setting up in Detroit, telling the story of how focus groups suggested a Detroit connection would be a value-add for the company (Lewis 2013). This same story was also recounted by Quicken’s Bruce Schwartz:
These guys did a bunch of surveys and focus groups on their new watch, ‘Shinola: Made in the U.S.A’. They did ‘Made in Detroit’ and it was through the roof.
A critical observer may read this as an admission that profit really drove Shinola’s Detroit move, not concern for the city’s welfare. The company’s willingness to acknowledge this,
Page 183 of 317 however, is another example of how narratives about Detroit’s revitalisation often position personal or business benefit and the city’s benefit as symbiotic. This tendency was noted earlier in the examination of how narratives of opportunity often suggest that personal and altruistic goals can be achieved simultaneously in Detroit. In the context of Shinola’s positioning, it becomes more apparent that this narrative strategy also reflects a broader trickle-down philosophy of urban revitalisation, which assumes that a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’, with more businesses meaning more tax revenue and better services for all.
Although widely critiqued in academia (e.g. Levine 1987; Thomas and Hill 1990; Peck 2005; Murray 2008; Greenberg 2008b), this tenet of neoliberal redevelopment philosophy is a recurring theme in discussions of Detroit’s revitalisation (Eisinger 2014), espoused by large and small image-makers:
• Jeff Aronoff: If we can bring in much more activity, we can uplift the tax base a little bit, which improves services—which, I mean, the butterfly flaps, the butterfly effect kind of a thing. It’s a little bit attenuated but … if there is a connection between D:Hive and … direct assistance to neighbourhoods, that’s it.
• Jay Rayford: It’s like, “Dan Gilbert’s buying all this stuff downtown, but he should start investing in the neighbourhoods”. I’m like, “Well, the more work he does here, increases the tax base that actually allows the city to be able to pay for the basic services in the neighbourhoods”. It kind of all goes hand in hand.
• Noah Stephens: [Midtown] is really kind of like a catalyst for revitalisation that’s kind of spreading out. As this area becomes fully occupied, other adjacent neighbourhoods are getting a lot of interest, so hopefully that can continue.
At the same time, however, the effectiveness of this strategy is questioned by some image- makers, including Bradford Frost:
I think that there’s a theory of change operating that is led by the foundation community, led by the … Convention and Visitor Bureau, led by economic- development schools of thought, that if you turn the corner in particular neighbourhoods and attract talent, over time they will develop an economic base Page 184 of 317
that helps balance the books … And arguably, the activation and transition and what’s happening and people moving in means it’s working, in terms of the first part analysis. Is it working for the whole city is what remains to be seen.
Of course, such debates over the best way to bring about the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial city are hardly unique to Detroit. What is notable in Detroit, however, is the way the city’s history of ‘making things’ informs these debates, not only by lending emotional power to branding campaigns like Shinola’s, but also by shaping local responses to the growth of alternative post-industrial industries. This is a point that comes through in the way Philip Lauri describes some reactions to Detroit’s growing creative industries sector:
[Some locals say] “Here’s this town. We made shit. Now you’re claiming that artists are coming into the city and they’re going to fix it. But how am I going to work behind a computer and design a typeface?” Which I think is a very narrow minded perception, because it’s not that the creative sector is going to provide all the answers; that’s not the point at all. The point is, we leverage what we can get, and as the water level rises the boats go up. So, let’s just say, hypothetically, like what is happening right now: three large [creative] agencies are moving downtown. Are they employing everyone in the city? No. But do they need cleaning services? Do they need lunches? Do they need managerial support services? Do they need admin support? Do they need all these things that require a variety of different companies to support them? So the point isn’t that we’re going to throw an agency downtown and, you know, the retired auto-worker is going to suddenly have a job that he can respond to—that’s not the point. The point is that, if there’s opportunity, if there’s a demand we can meet here by providing a service, let’s fucking do it. I mean, come on, people, are we going to stop because it doesn’t employ everyone? Come on, what is going to do that? Those days are over; it’s just frustrating.
Such reactions highlight the challenge of promoting post-industrial transition in a city like Detroit, where industry has played such a significant role in both the city’s economy and its identity. As such, Quicken may have their work cut out for them if the goal is to convert the broader Detroit community to their tech-based change vision. At the same time, this insight also explains the press appeal of stories like Shinola hiring former auto workers in their
Page 185 of 317 high-tech workshop (e.g. J. Muller 2013; Yang 2013). Such narratives suggest the working class will not be left out of Detroit’s post-industrial revival entirely, even if they are now working in non-unionised jobs making luxury items few could afford to buy themselves (Hackman 2014b).
Lauri’s observation is not simply about which industry should be the catalyst for Detroit’s revitalisation, however, but actually asks a broader structural question: should a single industry even be the focus of Detroit’s efforts? Behind this question lies a narrative that constructs Detroit’s earlier failed revitalisation attempts as the result of a flawed ‘silver bullet’ mentality, inspired by the city’s history as a single-industry town. As a recent press profile put it (Salter 2013, para. 8):
Detroit has often sought salvation in big solutions: a car company comeback; the Renaissance Center, a cluster of seven towers downtown; casinos; the 2006 Super Bowl; the 2009 election of Bing, a Detroit Piston star turned steel magnate. Nothing has worked.
Meanwhile, a counter-narrative is now emerging which suggests the better strategy is not to seek a silver bullet but to foster a multitude of ‘small things’. As local ‘invention laboratory’ Little Things Lab tweeted, this new narrative is built on the belief that ‘remaking a #city is no longer the result of big visions meeting big money’ (Little Things Lab 2013). There are many parallels between this narrative of small-scale change and the ideology of the DIY urbanism and place-making movements. Lauri is a proponent of this approach, echoing the idea that Detroit needs to learn from its history:
There’s room for a lot of stuff. It doesn’t need to be one silver bullet. We were a town that fell victim to the silver bullet when we lived off of that one entity, or one industry. I think those days are over, and there’s room for a very wide swathe of solutions.
Perhaps surprisingly, another apparent supporter of this narrative is millionaire businessman and financier John Hantz, whose for-profit urban-farming project in Detroit has been high profile and highly controversial (Gallagher, Wisely and Helms 2012). Describing his vision for Detroit’s future, Hantz adopts almost identical language to Lauri:
I’m not a silver-bullet, big-bang-theory guy. I don’t think it works in business … If you set out some basic rules and then let people go … [we] couldn’t save the city, Page 186 of 317
but we could save our little section. Then you start adding these little sections together; next thing you know, you’ve got momentum and then some more ideas … We have so many opportunities with the issues we face that we could try every idea.
The message is also echoed by Jenenne Whitfield of the Heidelberg Project, using different terminology:
The thing is, we’ve got to fill in these holes. The city looks desolate. But what they’re ignoring and what I find most exciting … it’s almost like this old cliché. There was a song out called ‘Power to the People’. We’ve seen the corporate world, the capitalistic society, be kind of—come full circle … Now we’re going back to some very basic things, which is the individual people taking ownership for the place that they live, on an individual basis, in small businesses, new ideas, new sparks. But it looks chaotic, and it looks disconnected.
Blogger Patrick Cooper-McCann also argues in favour of a multifaceted approach to revitalisation, calling for ‘all hands on deck—big people, little people’. Like Lauri, Whitfield and Hantz, however, he worries that the idea ‘that we need a saviour’ continues to inform some of Detroit’s reimaging and revitalisation efforts and that ‘a lot of people still think that way’.
This comment was made during a discussion of Dan Gilbert’s role in reshaping downtown, reflecting some broader concerns that the enthusiasm for Quicken’s renaissance vision may be the latest example of Detroit’s ‘silver bullet’ mentality. Margarita Barry also raised this concern, noting that while she sees Gilbert’s efforts as positive, his high profile means ‘it just feels like Dan Gilbert is doing everything’. For Barry, the alternative ‘little things’ narrative is not yet getting enough traction:
You know, Dan Gilbert’s all about tech businesses and innovation and bringing big retail here. So I would love to see more efforts to spotlight, you know, not just Eminem and influencers like that, just all those people here on the ground floor, people who have been here for a while … Me, personally, I would love to see stuff like that.
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Dan Gilbert’s growing influence was also mentioned by Jeff Aronoff, although he offered a different perspective on this debate, suggesting the ‘little things’ narrative may actually have gained too much traction:
I do worry that [the ‘little things’ theory], if it’s just a million little things, it’s almost like it has to actually be like a million little things … all at once, and if it's not all at once, are people going to have patience? Like, are they going to stick with it enough? … The Dan Gilbert stuff, it’s a shock. You need something that’s not a little thing from time to time. You need to someone to plop down the seven-figure kinds of investments from time to time to sort of bump the system a little bit.
While Aronoff’s view may prove pessimistic, his comments do highlight an important point—that Detroit is a particularly challenging case for the ‘little things’ theory, thanks both to its established one-industry mentality and the enormity of the physical, social and economic gaps the little things have to fill. For example, while crowd-funding individual solar streetlights might be a great idea, how much of a meaningful impact can they really have in a city with approximately 40,000 broken streetlights (Zemke 2012b; Dolan 2013)? In this context it does seem a real risk that the little-things approach will prove to be ‘too much bottom, not enough “up”’, to borrow Michael Speaks’ perceptive phrase once again (quoted in Kelbaugh 2008, p. 113).
Overall, the range of different visions for Detroit’s future that is canvassed here—tech hub or niche manufacturing centre, silver bullet or many little things—reaffirms the ongoing uncertainty associated with what it means to become a post-industrial city, even in the twenty-first century. The complexity of this transition is undoubtedly amplified in Detroit, however, not only because of the magnitude of the challenges the city faces but also the lingering emotional effects of the city’s history. The ongoing connection many residents feel to the city’s past achievements means any vision of change is likely to be interpreted through the lens of wanting to do justice to that historical legacy in some way, thus further raising the stakes of the debate. So while it remains unclear what Detroit’s version of post- industrialism will ultimately turn out to be, what does seem certain is that this particular reimaging debate is likely to continue for some time, as Detroit’s economic transition will require many years to complete. In the meantime, however, another reimaging narrative is also playing out, focusing less on what Detroit will become than on what it is right now: a DIY city, but one that is ‘not for everyone’.
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6.4.3 DETROIT—DIY CITY, BUT NOT FOR EVERYBODY
A third element of the broader ‘Another Detroit’ image involves Detroit being portrayed as a DIY city, where a lack of regulation allows for creative and personal freedom to flourish. This narrative was neatly summarised in the synopsis for an online short-film series made to advertise Palladium Boots (2011):
Once the fourth-largest metropolis in America – some have called it the Death of the American Dream. Today, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. They are creating the new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity.
While there are clearly similarities between this DIY narrative, the ideology of DIY urbanism, and the DIY change vision promoted by Renew Newcastle, the narrative takes on a special quality in the context of Detroit, given the scale of the city’s spatial and regulatory challenges. Whereas DIY is seen as a gap-filler or ‘meanwhile’ strategy elsewhere, Detroit as a whole is labelled a DIY city (Cooper-McCann 2011; see examples in Ryzik 2010; Binelli 2012; Price 2013). Such portrayals give the DIY narrative much greater significance.
In this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that Detroiters would have mixed responses to the DIY narrative. Concerns are increasingly being raised in public debates about the value of the DIY narrative for Detroit, particularly among local observers (Cooper-McCann 2011; Keenan 2012; Grunow quoted in Dale 2013). While many of the informal image-makers interviewed acknowledged the narrative and saw some benefit in it, they also raised questions about its meaning and impact. For example, Bradford Frost offered one of the more enthusiastic assessments of the DIY narrative, seeing it as an accurate reflection of what Detroit could offer new arrivals:
There’s no doubt in my mind that Detroit’s one of the few places, urban places in America, where if you come here with commitment and talent and ingenuity and creativity and then a collaborative or community sort of disposition, you can be effective here. So the do-it-yourself modality and the idea that there are low barriers to entry, is real.
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Yet, even he had some concerns about what the narrative might mean for the city:
What I see is something of a coming of age happening, that says unless we engage the public arena, unless we tackle a macro infrastructure/political scale, then we can be charmed and fulfilled in our little sub-niches, but it will be too narrow a victory, too finite a set of results.
This point is echoed by another Detroit Declaration steering team member, Francis Grunow, who posed the question in an online interview: ‘Is [DIY] something that is a real answer for a place like Detroit, or is it something that is a convenient poster child (and whipping boy) for the future of the city?’ (Dale 2013, para. 28). Grunow’s question highlights the potential for the DIY narrative to be set up to fail, by positioning it as the city’s saviour only to later point to its inability to address important structural issues. In this respect, there are similarities with the concerns raised earlier about narrative strategies that reposition the city’s challenges as opportunities. This is the argument Keenan (2012, para. 5) also makes forcefully, explaining that ‘DIY self-reliance that solves problems day-to- day with innovative practical solutions is one thing, but to make the leap to intergenerational solutions we’re going to need reliable government’.
Overall, however, Bradford Frost expressed support for the benefits the DIY narrative could bring, even if limited:
But I think Detroit really benefits by having outsiders believe that, in the scope of their choices, if you come to Detroit you can be an effective entrepreneur; you can be an effective do-it-yourselfer; you can really carve out a great experience. I think that’s real … My experience says that’s real, a lot of other people’s experience says
that’s real.
While not wishing to assume that the DIY narrative now had widespread appeal, he noted its significance as a positive narrative, given Detroit’s longstanding negative image:
But I just think, if it’s real—the brand of Detroit contains some threat or some anxiety, but it’s superseded at this juncture by potential and opportunity and affordability and creativity and ingenuity and do-it-yourself—that’s an extraordinary shift.
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Patrick Cooper-McCann also saw an upside to the DIY narrative in the way it highlights opportunities for individuals to give back to the community in meaningful ways. Discussing the revitalisation and community projects worked on by Detroit Declaration drafter Sean Mann, he explained:
That is the sort of DIY thing that I think has … fantastic potential. If you are an organised, connected person—he knows a lot of people and is able to pull things together. That is pretty exciting, that you can make a serious contribution of transforming your neighbourhood … He would not matter in the same degree in another city.
Overall, however, Cooper-McCann’s enthusiasm for the DIY narrative was limited:
It does create opportunities, this almost-lawlessness. But getting to that point took incredible pain and cut backs and creates a completely unequal distribution of services, and so I’m like “one cheer for DIY”.
In particular, his frustration was triggered by the media’s tendency to celebrate Detroit’s DIY spirit without adequately exploring the fundamental breakdowns that have forced that spirit to emerge:
I laugh every time there is another story, glowing story about the Detroit Mower Gang, for example [e.g. Stables 2013]. Now I think they are great guys, right … they come in on a Saturday, and they kind of make a party of it … And they go and they mow some parks, and that is great. I am not against that at all. However, they are mowing one or two parks, and we closed fifty, and if we hadn’t closed fifty, their organisation probably wouldn’t exist, because there would be no need and they wouldn’t have thought of it.
Like Cooper-McCann, Noah Stephens also points out how enthusiasm for the DIY narrative can obscure the fact that Detroit really needs to focus on restoring public services:
I think there’s a significant enough of number of people who are like, “No, we don’t want to do things for ourselves. We want to have city services that are functional” … Because it’s all fine when you’re young, you’re single, you’re an artist, and living in a loft. But if you want to have a kid, you’re going to need street lights
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and you’re going to need police … It’s not going to be a playground anymore. It’s going to have to be a functional city.
This tension is also explored by Binelli (2012, p. 77), who notes that Detroit has undoubtedly ‘become a DIY city unlike any other, the kind of place where regular civilians [take] it upon themselves to tauten the civic slack’. The city’s open space and limited regulation may offer creative opportunities, but it also creates yawning gaps in civic services that residents are forced to fill themselves, from neighbourhood safety patrols to DIY park maintenance to private shared transport. While undertaking these shared responsibilities may build a sense of community not found in other cities, it also places a significant strain on residents. As C. Williams (2013, para. 4) puts it, ‘Detroit’s Department of D.I.Y. is either the most heartwarming or humiliating reflection of its distress’. Describing Detroit as a ‘DIY paradise’ (Palladium Boots 2011; Urban 2011) fails to acknowledge this contradictory aspect of the DIY city. In doing so it negates the importance of locals’ needs and creates an unrealistic image of what life in the city is really like.
For Noah Stephens, the narrative of Detroit as a DIY city also engenders other tensions, due to the kinds of activities it encourages:
It’s kind of bad in some ways, because then it draws people who just want to come here and just use the city as like their playground, with no purpose in mind besides self-aggrandisation; you know what I mean? They just want to call attention to themselves … There’s some guy who uses a fire extinguisher to do these giant horrible letters on buildings … It’s just vandalism. It’s not even graffiti … So you have that, but then you also have people who come to the city with the idea in mind of trying to improve quality of life in the city, and they’ll do a really audacious project like … Hopscotch Detroit. [The organiser’s] super enthusiastic, genuinely enthusiastic about trying to improve quality of life and make people more interconnected … And if you were in a city like New York or Chicago and it was like, “Ah, we want to put chalk down on four miles of your sidewalks”, you might run into some problems, but in Detroit … they’re so busy just trying to keep the lights on, literally, they don’t have time to worry about some recent graduates of U of M putting hopscotch chalk marks down the sidewalk. So I guess the fact that there is a certain lack of governmental oversight can either be a good or a bad thing depending on the intentions of the people who are coming here to take advantage of that, you know? Page 192 of 317
This tension was also raised by Cooper-McCann, who pointed out the DIY narrative’s connection with the trope of Detroit being a ‘blank canvas’:
It is almost like some people, if you read between the lines of it, they are like “Detroit is going to be the next libertarian paradise; you know, there is no government so we can do what we want”. Sometimes it leads people to do really stupid things … Like one person’s art project is another person’s graffiti. You feel like you can freely paint on walls and trespass into abandoned buildings and it makes people feel like you are treating the neighbourhood as sort of a playground or the blank canvas idea.
This link to the controversial ‘blank canvas’ analogy is important, as it highlights a further issue with the DIY narrative: that related media coverage often focuses on young, predominantly white creative-class members, many of whom are new to Detroit. This focus gives the impression that prior to their arrival, no-one was working creatively and consistently to improve Detroit, as Walljasper (2012, para. 3) explains:
While a new, more positive narrative about Detroit is welcome, there are problems in focusing entirely on idealistic young adventurers swooping in to save the city—it reinforces the stereotype of native Detroiters as hapless, helpless, and hopeless.
This is clearly not true and has been effectively rebutted by scholars like Bartlett (2010) and Herscher (2012). Detroit has a long history of civic engagement, and some of its most famous DIY projects have been operating for decades: for example, Tyree Guyton began constructing the Heidelberg Project in 1986; Motor City Blight Busters has been in operation since 1988; and Earthworks urban farm was founded in 1997.
While the above concerns relate to the way the DIY narrative might affect Detroit and Detroiters, some interviewees also raised a concern about how the DIY narrative might influence new arrivals to the city. This perspective is most commonly expressed through a tendency to qualify enthusiasm for Detroit with a disclaimer that it is ‘not for everybody’. A particularly poetic example can be found in a blog post by local artists Mitch Cope and Gina Reinhardt (reproduced in Keesling 2010). Following positive press coverage of their work converting abandoned houses into artist residences, they received an influx of inquiries from people interested in moving to Detroit. While encouraging people to come, they stressed caution:
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To those who are not familiar with this fine city it must be noted that Detroit is a particular kind of place that demands utmost respect and attention, sort of like lion taming: it is not for everyone and it is not easy. Detroit is a beautiful, strong and passionate city, but it is also unpredictable and aggressive and therefore must be handled with the proper tools and caution.
This hard-is-good version of the ‘not for everyone’ narrative also has an ugly-is-beautiful parallel (Jamie 2011, para. 6):
So many people—especially those obsessed with Chicago—don’t have the vision to see the beauty in something that isn’t obviously beautiful … Last week, I traveled back to Chicago, and after my realizations, I no longer felt the need to defend you, Detroit. When someone called you a cesspool, I just nodded and, at the risk of sounding like a hipster, said, “You just don’t get it.” You’re not for everyone, but the people that you do attract are the ones I want to befriend.
While the latter example highlights how hubris can be part of the ‘Detroit is not for everybody’ narrative—making it a way to declare one’s superior vision or toughness—the former suggests this narrative can also be a genuine attempt to warn newcomers about Detroit’s unusual qualities. Other examples reflect both goals simultaneously, such as this press interview with a Detroit musician (Morris 2012, para. 14):
Royce acknowledges that Detroit is not for everyone.
“The people who live here usually have something going on,” he says. “They’re artistic, they’re handy, they’re self-starters. People who are finicky don’t come to Detroit. There’s a filter at work here. You’ve got to have self-sufficiency.”
Among interviewees, however, it was the cautionary version of the narrative which came through more clearly:
• Noah Stephens: I think it takes a certain type of personality to live in Detroit. You have to be a bit of a frontiersman I think. It kind of is like a frontier in some ways. Because you know, city services aren’t what they should be.
• Philip Lauri: I would advise people to just come and exist for a while before you get straightaway into things you want to do. It’s not for everybody. You can’t just show up, sign on the line, and lead a fulfilling life. It’s hard to make a living.
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There’s no jobs. You have to do something yourself (quoted in ?What if! n.d., para. 6).
• Patrick Cooper-McCann: I like that people are getting more interested in Detroit, and I’m willing to kind of embrace whatever brings them here … As long they become grounded. I feel bad for people who come with utopian ideas and leave kind of broken. That happens. I mean lots of people will move to Woodbridge or something, thinking like “this is going to be an amazing experience”, and their laptop gets stolen and their bike gets stolen and they get mugged and they don’t take responsibility. They don’t have the proper level of fear, almost, and they end up kind of bruised by Detroit, and they leave with terrible feelings. But I don’t want people to be turned away too, optimism is good. We need a lot of money.
While these comments highlight general concerns about the unrealistic perceptions of newcomers to Detroit, Matt Clayson linked his concerns with the popularity of the DIY narrative specifically, rather than with Detroit, which he described as ‘as good as anywhere else to live—it’s a good place to live’:
I think for certain people it is a DIY city. I don’t think it’s for everyone, I think you really have to be committed towards challenging adversity … and really have to have a strong kind of strategic framework behind whatever DIY activity that is, because it’s easy to get distracted here. Whether it be distracted with the fact that there’s drug dealing going on behind you, distracted by all the different initiatives going on here, all the needs going on here—you have to find a way to balance all that. I’ve seen some people really balance that well. I’ve seen others who’ve been just consumed by everything and then they get burn-out. Because they want to fix everything … and then when people tell them, “Focus, focus on one piece”, and then they think that people are telling them no: “I came here because nobody’s going to tell me what to do, and you’re telling me no”. And then they get burnt out and then Detroit sucks and “it’s a hellhole and I want to move” and all that. It’s DIY for the right type of mindset, [type of] person. Definitely not for everyone.
Clayson’s comment suggests that despite the problematic aspects of the DIY narrative, it has been a drawcard for the city, at least with a certain demographic. Jeff Aronoff seems to
Page 195 of 317 confirm this, noting that although the DIY narrative is clearly attractive to some people, he does not see it as a long-term option for the city:
I mean grit is fine, but if the extreme grit is what makes us interesting? If the pioneering spirit is what makes us interesting, by definition, pioneering spirit is not sustainable because it’s meant to be the front. If all that’s interesting is the front, that means there’s no middle and no finish … Detroit can’t be a city version of a starving artist that actually just starves.
While there are clearly a number of different issues with the DIY narrative, Aronoff’s comment captures the concern that might prove most difficult to resolve. As with the narrative of Detroit as a place of opportunity, the DIY narrative may ultimately prove self- defeating, as any population growth it triggers should mean more money to re-establish public services and government oversight.
Ultimately, however, this tension may be inherent in any reimaging narrative that promotes an alternative vision to the development and commerce-driven vision encompassed in the Opportunity Detroit campaign. The long-term impact of these alternative narratives will likely depend on whether they are seen as overarching change visions for the city, or whether they act more as a filter on established neoliberal redevelopment strategies. Philip Lauri outlines one example of a hybrid strategy that might achieve the latter outcome, by betting big on one of the city’s more alternative features:
If we own it, if we own that like ‘yeah we’re going to have urban farms and we’re going to have a whole district of our city devoted to urban agriculture, and we’re going to create a laboratory that begins to look at the value of urban agriculture.’ Students of Michigan State have studied that—but the university proposed that a year and a half ago and we said no. You own it and you want it, then yes. The powers that be are like, they’re all swarming, they’re all hovering around Detroit. Everybody’s looking for an opportunity, it just comes down to—are we going to let them in, are we going to own it? Time will tell.
If Detroit ultimately ends up picking a side, however, Jeff Aronoff suspects the neoliberal vision will prevail:
Maybe there’s some noble kind of narrative in there, but we don’t want the city to become one big martyr because the great DIY thing was what we stuck with, even
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though at some point we realised you can’t actually sustain an entire, major, historically significant city—one of the most significant cities in the country—you can’t sustain it on “Come with your pick axe.” I’m not as concerned about us losing our special identity. I think we would turn that in for success, we’d sell out in a way—I mean that’s overstating it. But if you want a million people to be here, you can’t—it’s not going to work that way.
Whether or not Aronoff’s suspicions are correct, his comment reaffirms the significance of Detroit’s history in shaping responses to the different visions for Detroit’s future outlined here. On the one hand, the fundamental philosophical differences between the DIY narrative and the city’s former image as the birthplace of mass production may well make it appealing for parts of the audience, as of the three recurring narratives it is the most extreme embodiment of the idea of ‘Another Detroit’. On the other hand, however, the concerns raised by almost all of the image-makers interviewed present a challenge for the supporters of the DIY narrative. Without the city’s image-makers promoting and providing unqualified support for the DIY narrative, it is questionable whether it will be able to prevail in the long term, particularly given the crowded nature of Detroit’s reimaging landscape.
While the many variations of reimaging narratives examined here make it difficult to speculate as to which underlying change vision might ultimately prevail, the final two quotations included above do at least give a sense that informal image-makers see this outcome as something within Detroit’s control. The language chosen by both Lauri and Aronoff indicates that they envisage a role for Detroiters in shaping this process, a perception that aligns with the fact that image-making efforts in the city are so plentiful. Of course, whether all Detroiters can engage in these debates on equal footing is another question, to be returned to in Chapter 7. First, however, this question of engagement will be explored in more detail by examining the motivations informal image-makers offer to explain their involvement in reshaping Detroit’s reimaging landscape.
6.5 WHY: EXPLORING MOTIVATIONS FOR DETROIT’S REIMAGING
If there is a shared quality that ties together the diverse group of reimaging participants considered here, it is the fact that they engage in their efforts with a near-indefatigable passion. This passion is particularly notable in a difficult city like Detroit and prompts the question: what is it that drives these Detroiters to participate? By answering this question,
Page 197 of 317 it may be possible to see with more clarity whether Aronoff’s suspicion about ‘selling out’ will prove accurate or whether an alternative vision for Detroit might prevail.
Informal image-making efforts may seem particularly incongruous in a bankrupt city like Detroit, which despite its purported renaissance still has problems so severe that 40% of the population expects to leave within five years (McDonald 2012). Yet the city also has a long history of responding positively to terrible circumstances, from adopting the motto devised after a city-wide fire in 1805—we hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes—to local shopkeeper Emily Gail developing the ‘Say nice things about Detroit’ reimaging effort in the 1970s. While many Detroiters are still giving up the fight and leaving, those who remain often express a strong sense of place attachment. Among the informal image-makers interviewed, the explanations offered for this place attachment included the city’s storied history, its impressive architecture, its lively music scene, and its distinctive food culture. These factors contributed to the decision participants made to direct their energies into image-making projects that were predominantly a ‘labour of love’, as Sandy Hermanoff put it.
Most interesting, however, was the way Detroiters’ somewhat counterintuitive enthusiasm for their troubled city—what Austen (2014, para. 16) labels ‘an outsize underdog pride’— was itself one of the reasons some informal image-makers loved Detroit and was therefore a factor in their decision to stay and promote the city. As Philip Lauri explained:
I mean, I think on the whole, all across, Detroiters are very full of pride. They still stand by their city and they’re still very proud of the place that they’ve come from. Which is a really endearing quality, and it’s something that I love about people here.
Jay Rayford made a similar point about the sense of pride and community in Detroit, describing the event that convinced him to return to the city:
There was one particular event that happened. It was a parade that happened in one of the neighbourhoods. It was just the children, a lot of neighbourhood organisations, there were a few politicians out there as well. But it was just a strong sense of community. Something about it made me cry. I was filming it and everything, and I just started, I was in tears. I was like, “This is what I want to be a part of. This is it”.
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The strong sense of community was also identified by Patrick Cooper-McCann as an appealing feature of Detroit, although he acknowledged it was partly brought about by the city’s challenges:
If you ask a lot of Detroiters “Why did you stay?", they will say it is that it’s the community … It is definitely driven by need, but it is also [that] you have a connection with your neighbours and a commitment to the place that you simply don’t have elsewhere. People like their neighbours in other places, but you just don’t, you are not pulled together in the same way. You don’t have to work together in the same respects, and that is something that I like about Detroit, even though it is a two-sided sort of thing.
Cooper-McCann also mentioned Detroiters as a reason he loves Detroit, explaining that he was drawn not just to their passion but also their engagement with the city’s issues:
I like the people, even though there is all of this sort of racial animosity and tension and sort of a small-town-mindedness you often get. Just on a one-on-one basis, people in Detroit are extremely friendly. They are open, they love to talk about their city, they like to talk about things we normally don’t talk about because they are glaringly out in the open and you have to—like racial issues, class issues.
Noah Stephens made a similar point about the appeal of Detroit for those with an interest in urban issues:
I know a lot of really great people … I really started to meet people who share my interests and were interested in similar things in the world and were asking similar questions about the world around them … creative people, involved with urban renewal. People who think about life in cities and how to improve it and stuff like that.
These comments give an indication of why Detroiters often express frustration at so-called ruin porn becoming a prominent part of how the city is represented (Leary 2011). Ruin porn is photography that focuses exclusively on the city’s empty buildings in a way that excludes the people that make Detroit special for many locals (Herron 2012). Jenenne Whitfield neatly summarised this frustration:
You see all this talk about the ruin porn, and you see all these abandoned buildings. Blah blah blah. Okay, we know the city was built for two million. We never really Page 199 of 317
peaked to two million. So of course we have a lot of space and a lot of sprawl. So if people come here and they define the City of Detroit by its buildings and its
landscape, that’s the first mistake they make.
As this comment suggests, it is the city’s population more than its physical state that is front-and-centre in the way many Detroiters express place attachment, yet this is not well reflected in external representations (e.g. O’Hagan 2011; Daily Mail 2012). It is for this reason that the potentially lucrative external audience of ruin porn enthusiasts is often dismissed by locals, disparaged as beyond-the-pale hipsters (Detropia 2012) and ‘Dutch assholes’ (Palladium Boots 2011).13 This is not to say the city’s physical landscape doesn’t appeal to some locals. Noah Stephens, for example, noted that he liked ‘the open spaces, the open space of it all and the lack of congestion’. But the emphasis on Detroit’s human side, in the way informal image-makers narrate their attachment to the city, suggests that this common misrepresentation remains a motivating factor behind many efforts to reshape perceptions of Detroit.
At the same time, it is important to note that these comments about Detroiters’ strong interest in urban issues also point to personally rewarding motivations for informal image- makers. Because of the city’s challenges and its active community, there are many opportunities to become involved in important urban projects. As Cooper-McCann explained:
I like the fact that it feels like you matter to some extent … I went to San Francisco for the first time this summer and I was like, “Wow, this is a really nice place I don’t want to be in”. I found it totally off-putting. It was beautiful, like uncannily beautiful, and everyone seemed happy. No, it had problems too, I don’t want to understate that. But it just felt like whether or not I was there is of completely no significance.
This aspect of Detroit’s appeal was echoed by Jeff Aronoff, who suggested that it was the reason many Detroiters stay:
People ask me about why—why Detroit?—and I always say, you can go somewhere else, Chicago, New York, LA, and everything you have is sort of right there. It hits you over the head, and it’s very, very easy, right? After a while that can get a little
13 The latter is a stereotype reflecting the apparent popularity of Detroit and its ruins to European tourists.
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old, and there’s not the same sense of stake-holding. You can be part of Detroit’s [revitalisation]—and this is kind of a line you hear from everybody; it’s probably the same reason most people that are sticking around by choice are staying in the city or near the city or involved in the city. They want to see it work and be able to say, “I was part of the movement”.
As in Newcastle, these responses highlight the complex interplay between personal and place-based motivations in the way informal participants narrate their reasons for participating in Detroit’s reimaging and revitalisation. This mix of motivations also comes through in press reports on Detroit’s revitalisation, such as this profile of entrepreneurs at Corktown’s collaborative workspace, Ponyride (O’Leary 2013, para. 17):
Like many of the people working at Ponyride, [Craig] grew up in the Detroit area, and he sees being here as something that could help the city’s rebirth. After all, he could have put his company out in the suburbs or somewhere else entirely.
“I think that’s why we live here,” Craig says. “I feel like we can make a difference with what we’re doing here, whereas if we lived in Portland or Brooklyn we’d just be another face in the crowd.”
While life in Detroit inevitably means accepting hardships that do not exist in other cities, this downside is balanced out by the sense of achievement and motivation that comes from engaging in work felt to be truly valuable. Yet as the Ponyride quotation implies, there may well also be business benefits that come from being a rarity in Detroit, rather than just another hipster in Portland or Brooklyn. The same logic may also inform bigger corporate decisions, such as Whole Foods’ recently opened Midtown supermarket, which comes decorated with a ‘Say nice things about Detroit’ mural and other boosterish paraphernalia (Rupersberg 2013). In much the same way, informal image-making efforts in Detroit may bring potential financial benefits, from Quicken capitalising on rising downtown property values to Philip Lauri’s film After the Factory creating exposure for his for-profit creative agency work. A number of respondents also mentioned the low living costs and low barriers to entry as part of Detroit’s appeal. For all of these reasons, informal image-makers did not intimate that they were making a sacrifice by staying in Detroit, but rather that it was a personally rewarding option. Even though the desire to reshape perceptions of Detroit is clearly a strong motivator for many informal image-makers, their actions should not be understood as entirely altruistic. Instead, the desire to help the city is one part of an
Page 201 of 317 amalgamation of personal, place-based and financial motivations for informal image- making in Detroit.
Nonetheless, it is notable that Detroit’s informal image-makers narrate place attachment as a motivation in ways that reflect the narrative patterns used by informal image-makers in Newcastle. This supports the conclusion that place attachment and the complex interplay between personal and public benefits are distinctive features of informal image-making, at least in transitional cities. The latter feature also serves as a reminder of the ideological complexity of informal image-making, which requires some unpacking to determine what the impact of these projects might be long term. The next section will begin this unpacking process, exploring how Detroit’s informal image-making projects have been received by other participants.
6.6 REVIEWING REACTIONS TO THE REIMAGING OF DETROIT
As noted in Newcastle, it is not the goal of this research to try to draw definitive conclusions about the impact of Detroit’s informal image-making efforts. Doing so is well beyond the scope of this work, if it is achievable at all. Looking at local responses to these efforts is helpful, however, as it offers an interesting glimpse into how well different participants are communicating their vision of change within the city. Of course, the responses outlined here do not represent the full range of residents’ reactions, given that the interviewees were all participants in informal image-making in some capacity, or close observers of these processes. But because these participants are generally well-connected and media savvy, there is a real likelihood that their responses will contribute to the public debate about these projects to some degree. It is therefore valuable to examine these responses as another layer of the ongoing public conversation about Detroit’s future.
Perhaps the most distinctive thing about interviewees’ responses was how many advanced a ‘more is more’ philosophy, welcoming almost any reimaging effort even if they questioned the ideology or strategy behind it. In Newcastle, informal image-makers tended to be somewhat critical of official rebranding efforts; while some appreciated the concept and design, almost all critiqued the implementation. In Detroit, the closest thing to an official rebranding effort—Quicken’s Opportunity Detroit campaign—received predominantly positive reviews from the other informal image-makers interviewed. While some qualifications were noted, these were generally couched in overall positive terms. As photographer Noah Stephens put it:
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I think it’s really good to see that companies that are locating here are taking it upon themselves to change the way Detroit is represented nationally. I think there definitely is a purpose for that and there’s a place, a role that that can play. I think it’s also important to have people who are kind of like unaffiliated and unencumbered by corporate interests or at least not as encumbered by them who can kind of speak authentically and in a more candid way about life in the city. I think both of those things play an important role in changing how people think about the city.
Not surprisingly, Marge Sorge of Detroit Regional News Hub was also an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign and promoted the more-is-more philosophy:
I thought [Opportunity Detroit] was terrific, I thought it was terrific. The more we can get out there, whether it’s Dan’s group doing it or Compuware doing it or a bunch of people doing it together.
Philip Lauri offered a slightly more muted reaction, while still reiterating the idea that there is room for everybody in Detroit’s reimaging:
I mean, yeah, they have their place. One of the things that really inhibits our growth here is the distrust and the overly negative perception that folks ten miles north of us have on the city. Efforts like Opportunity Detroit, where it’s in the mainstream, it’s on the TV, suburban dwellers are able to access that very easily, and I think it plays a part in shifting their perception of what this place isn’t but, more importantly, what it can be, because that’s half of the battle. And I still maintain that as soon as we flip that switch in enough people—them seeing what this place can be and how they can be a part of that solution—suddenly, you have a drastically different energy and movement on the ground. So I think that Gilbert’s ads and everything are good; I don’t think they’re the total answer, of course, but I think they can play a part.
A similar perspective was offered by Matt Clayson, who saw value in the Opportunity Detroit campaign so long as it didn’t dominate:
I don’t think it’s counterproductive. It reaches an audience that I think maybe need to be engaged, they need to be reached … But it is one small piece, it can’t be an overarching brand. I told the Opportunity Detroit people too … I said “Don’t expect
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this to be an overarching brand; it’s not going to work like that”, and Detroit doesn’t need an overarching brand. But it’s one small piece of the larger dialogue that informs—that can shape this for a certain audience.
Blogger Erin Rose was also enthusiastic about Gilbert’s efforts, while noting that they should not be viewed as altruism:
I think he’s a brilliant man. He’s not doing this out of the kindness of his heart. I mean this is, you know, he’s going to make some cash, big time. I think it’s great that someone comes in and does that …I like what Dan Gilbert is doing here, but I know he’s a businessman and there’s a reason he’s doing it.
Margarita Barry also offered a qualified but ultimately positive response:
I think [the big branding efforts are] positive and helpful. I do think … it’s easy for them to put those brands out because they have money and the resources … I don’t think they bring any kind of negative branding around Detroit. I think all of that is positive but … you know, it just feels like Dan Gilbert is doing everything … And I don’t really see any bad in it except that that’s all we kind of hear about.
In addition to these reactions, a number of other interviewees were approving of the tone and content of both Opportunity Detroit and the Chrysler Super Bowl advertisement. While raising concerns about which Detroiters ultimately benefit from reimaging campaigns like these, Patrick Cooper-McCann did appreciate how they represented the city:
I’m glad that people, that businesses, are willing to embrace Detroit in a somewhat stylised but somewhat realistic version. They are not trying to bill it as something that is not. So that is good.
Erin Rose made a similar point about the Chrysler ad’s tone, noting that she ‘[loved] the flavour of the stuff; it was a good mix’. Bradford Frost also had a similar reaction, suggesting these campaigns offered a more powerful image of the city than the highly positive Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign, with its star logo and cloud backgrounds:
And if you look at the texture of the imagery that they used for Opportunity Detroit, it focuses on entrepreneurs—it focuses on the gritty side. So I think what was refreshing about those Chrysler and Quicken campaigns was … it wasn’t lying
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to you … I mean it was painting a very polished image of what all that was, but yet it still reflected more reality than clouds and rainbows and stuff like that.
Like Philip Lauri, Bradford also highlighted the value of these campaigns for a regional audience:
So there are severe limits to how important Chrysler’s ad is or was, but the fact that it injected a dose of pride across the region and the city/suburb divide was probably more important than anything else.
Both Frost and Lauri’s comments reinforce how audience is a complex issue in Detroit. While the suburbs are clearly a target audience for Opportunity Detroit, the Chrysler campaign presumably had broader ambitions, and might even have expected a frosty local reception given the company’s association with Detroit’s decline. While both Bradford and Patrick acknowledged the possibility of backlash, their comments suggest that the locals they know generally responded positively to the commercial. This positive reaction can be read as a reflection of just how bad Detroit’s image has been in recent decades, both externally and with some locals. In this context, almost any positive representation is likely to be well received. Bradford Frost is again helpful in explaining the dynamics of this regional audience:
People have been leaving Detroit for generations. This is, I think, an often-glossed dynamic … when you talk about branding. So if you talk about branding—if your family grew up here, and your parents left here—there’s a fair assumption that they concluded this place wasn’t offering sufficient economic opportunity, safety, educational opportunity for their children or for themselves or whatever. And if you make that fair assumption, you ripple that across over a million people that left over a couple of generations.
For a city that is still struggling with the effects of such powerful and negative intergenerational narratives, any reimaging effort that is smart, strategic and somewhat realistic is likely to be viewed as a significant and positive development.
Having said that, one campaign does seem to have received a negative reaction from a number of the informal image-makers interviewed. The goals of the Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign were laudable, and the campaign’s organiser Sandy Hermanoff claimed that it was successful on a number of fronts: Page 205 of 317
It was amazing … One organisation brought 100,000 volunteers in. I think our campaign by itself probably brought 150,000 volunteers. It turned out that the campaign was worth about $10 million. With everything that we did, the commercials, the people in the PSAs, the people in them, if we put all of the cost together it would have been about $10 million … I think that the campaign really started a lot of people thinking about what they could do, and we had a lot of positive stories; like we heard about retired people who all of a sudden were donating their time to a non-profit. I think it really set the stage for a lot of things to happen, now that the turnaround is really going on in Detroit; so I think it was a very positive thing.
Yet despite these results, the campaign’s design and implementation were criticised by a number of different interviewees, including Bradford Frost:
So, a perfect thing for you to contrast [the Chrysler and Quicken campaigns] with would be the Believe campaign that was put up last year, which showed Mayor Bing in some clouds-and-star sort of motif on billboards … There was ample chatter among Detroiters in my network, so people that I respect, that took exception to that campaign. I raise that to illustrate a broader point. We live in an era of branding and marketing, but we also, we can smell disingenuousness and fluff and nonsense really fast, you know? … And the thing is, a ‘Believe’ campaign that integrates local assets could be really effective. But if you’re in the clouds, you’re in the clouds.
One of those people in Bradford’s network may have been fellow Declare Detroit steering team member Matt Clayson, who explained:
You know what I did hate was the Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign. I thought that thing was the dumbest, most poorly executed waste of time. It wasn’t a waste of money because no one invested anything, but it was big fat collective time waste for a lot of people who have more important things to do than to say, “Oh I believe in Detroit, whoopty-doo”. There are 740,000 people who believe in Detroit, who have been here, and tens of thousands of businesses that also believe in Detroit. Or they’re stuck here by [circumstance], but they have to believe … That’s just demeaning, so I didn’t like that.
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Margarita Barry also suggested that this negative reaction amongst independent image- makers was reasonably widespread:
I remember when that first started and they’d reach out to certain people. And some of the locals—who were, you know, the social innovators—hated it. They were like, “This sucks. This is really horrible. And why did you guys feature him on
the commercial?”
The difference in tone between these negative reactions and the reasonably positive responses to Opportunity Detroit is notable. On one level, it might have been anticipated that informal image-makers would appreciate the Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign, given its self-funded DIY ethos, its goal of encouraging volunteerism, and the fact that it clearly targeted the problematic city–suburb divide. Yet if these reactions are representative, it seems both the campaign’s design and its message missed the mark, at least with this particular segment of the community (see also Wattrick 2011b). In this respect, there are parallels with the reaction of Newcastle’s media-savvy informal image-makers to the implementation of Brand Newcastle.
But while the design of the Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign was not as slick as Quicken and Chrysler’s efforts, Matt Clayson’s comment suggests it was the message of the campaign that was most problematic. This is understandable if the concept is read as implying that Detroiters don’t already believe in their city, or that Detroit demands some degree of blind faith. In this respect, the responses seem to highlight once again the challenges associated with multiple audiences in Detroit, with an effort that apparently struck a chord in the suburbs falling flat among some Detroit image-makers.
By contrast, Opportunity Detroit has largely avoided this kind of criticism by presenting the city as an objectively good place to be right now—not just in the future. It is this aspect of the campaign which seems to be one of its greatest strengths in the local context, as it enables Detroiters to take pride in their city. Patrick Cooper-McCann noted there was a strong local desire for this kind of positive image of the city, which helped drive the growth in entrepreneurial and informal image-making efforts:
There’s like a hunger for it too. If you open up shop tomorrow—some new web venture or a pop-up storefront or whatever you want to do—the desire to promote
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Detroit and to be part of this thing is so strong that even if your idea is sort of half- baked or whatever, people want it.
At the same time, however, it is not just Opportunity Detroit’s realistic yet positive tone which has found local supporters but also the fact that it is backed up by real physical change. This seems to be an important aspect of the campaign in a city that has weathered years of boosterism without the promised renaissance. As Bradford Frost explained:
Quicken and what’s happening there is really interesting, because he’s walking the walk too. I mean, he’s investing in buildings; he’s bringing jobs down … I think that the Chrysler campaign could get more of a black eye, because their corporate headquarters is in the suburbs, they do less … Gilbert—people will quarrel with his aesthetic or quarrel with the investment choices, but … he’s walking the walk too.
These comments echo the way Matt Endacott talked about Renew Newcastle, noting how the project’s promotional efforts and vision helped inspire a movement because they reflected real change in Hunter Street. Quicken’s campaign is perhaps tolerated by some who would otherwise object because it is tied to quantifiable, on-the-ground change in much the same way. Interestingly, Noah Stephens was less certain of the benefits of corporate campaigns like Quicken’s but made a similar point about the importance of image-makers demonstrating a genuine commitment, be it personal or financial:
I think all of those efforts probably help explain the city to people who don’t know about it otherwise. I think they all have their role to play. [But] … Detroit Lives!, which I know Phil Lauri started just because it’s something he was passionate about—that says a lot. It’s just somebody who doesn’t necessarily know where that’s going to go or if it’s going to be about money. It’s just like “this is something that I feel passionately about, and I’m going to talk about it regardless of whether or not it’s going to be in my financial interest or not”. I think maybe that’s something that people take a little more seriously than campaigns by large corporations.
Detroit Lives! may not be able to demonstrate the same physical impact as Renew or Quicken, although its projects do include painting positive murals around Detroit (Figure 6.8) and building a toy race-car track for local kids. In Noah’s eyes, however, Lauri’s personal commitment and financial risk gives his work as much, if not more, legitimacy than
Page 208 of 317 the investments of bigger players. If these comments are indicative, it seems there is real potential for informal image-makers to reshape local perceptions over the longer term as long as they are committed and grounded in how they go about communicating their vision of change.
6.7 CONCLUSION
Despite only covering a handful of the participants involved, this overview of informal image-making in Detroit has provided an insight into the complexity of reimaging efforts in the city. The range of participants is somewhat dizzying, stretching from multibillion dollar corporations to independent, self-funded bloggers. This complexity reflects a number of factors: the void left by the lack of city government involvement in place branding; the still- significant size of the Detroit region (meaning there are millions of current and former Metro Detroiters who retain an interest in the city’s future); the multilayered nature of the audience for reimaging Detroit, given the distinctions between local, suburban and external interests; and the historic role Detroit plays in American mythology, which gives the city’s revival a greater cultural importance than that of most other cities. These place-specific characteristics of Detroit combine to create a particularly fertile landscape for informal reimaging efforts, one which is unlikely to be replicated in any other city.
Another reason for the diversity of Detroit’s reimaging landscape is its strong networks and relatively flat hierarchy, at least for the time being, thus enabling a broad range of participants to get involved. While the significant budget and media access of a large corporation like Quicken means its message will inevitably be heard by a broader audience, the fact that it still recognises and engages with many smaller participants is notable. This approach may be viewed either as an attempt to support these smaller players, or as an attempt to subsume them into the Quicken strategy. Either way, however, this approach differs from that adopted by Newcastle’s official image-makers, who have been slow to incorporate informal reimaging projects into the city’s brand. This highly networked landscape again may possibly be a distinctive feature of Detroit, reflecting the need for cooperation or ‘co-opertition’ in a city with so few resources.
Looking beyond these distinctive features, however, the case study does highlight some aspects of image-making in Detroit that are similar to those observed in Newcastle. These include the interrelationship between place promotion and personal or business promotion, and the way place attachment is narrated as a key motivation for informal Page 209 of 317 image-making. There were also noticeable similarities in the narratives adopted, albeit with some refinement to suit place-specific realities in Detroit, such as the perceived need to qualify that the DIY city is not for everyone. So while the case studies demonstrate how the specific urban context will always shape image-making in unique ways, they also point to patterns in informal image-making across transitional cities that deserve further research. The nature of such research is one of the main questions to be considered in the final analysis chapter of this thesis, which also examines the similarities and differences between image-making practices in Detroit and Newcastle in more detail.
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7 ANALYSIS: EXPLORING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INFORMAL REIMAGING
The two preceding case-study chapters have explored six key issues about informal image- making (where, who, how, what, why and reactions) in an extended and descriptive fashion, highlighting some similarities and differences between Newcastle and Detroit. This detailed approach was deliberate, for the beauty of case-study research is that its narrative form allows for the complexity of reality to be represented in a research context, rather than trying to simplify it into testable metrics or variables (Flyvbjerg 2006). Yet as Flyvbjerg points out, there is also an interpretive question—so what?—that all good case-study research must answer, by offering insights into the significance of the case in a broad, open-ended way. The purpose of this chapter is to engage with this question of significance by shifting from a descriptive to an analytical frame, examining some of the key observations and tensions from the case studies in more depth.
Of course, the significance of an event or issue often depends on the perspective of the observer, who in the context of case-study research can be categorised into one of three broad groups: ‘participants, researchers, and others’ (Flyvbjerg 2006, p. 240). Looking back over the previous chapters, it becomes apparent that all three of these perspectives have informed this research: Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examined the theoretical frameworks currently being used by researchers to explain reimaging processes; Chapters 5 and 6 examined the motivations and reactions of reimaging participants; and the project as a whole is driven by a desire to explore what informal image-making may mean for residents and others who care about Newcastle and Detroit. As such, it makes sense to engage with the question of significance from each of these perspectives, by asking what insights the case studies offer:
• for informal image-makers in transitional post-industrial cities, particularly with regard to the inspiration and audience for reimaging efforts, as well as the shared nature of the themes being adopted • for residents, about how Detroit and Newcastle might ultimately be redefined through revitalisation and gentrification, and who should bear responsibility for such outcomes • for researchers, with regards to other possible approaches to investigating the complex dynamics of reimaging in post-industrial cities, including network analysis and narrative analysis.
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Analysing image-making in Detroit and Newcastle from these three perspectives ensures its complex and contested nature is not oversimplified in search of clear-cut findings, while still allowing conclusions and avenues for further study to emerge. The issues of significance for informal image-makers will be considered in section 7.1, followed by the examination of what informal image-making might mean for residents in section 7.2, and finishing with the discussion of what insights this research offers place branding researchers in section 7.3.
7.1 INSIGHTS FOR INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS
Interviewing informal image-makers for this research, it was hard not to emerge from the process feeling inspired. The participants interviewed were uniformly enthusiastic, hard- working, imaginative people who appeared to genuinely believe their efforts were contributing to improving a city they love. Yet when reviewing these interviews afterwards through a more critical lens, it is clear that many of these projects raise some difficult intellectual and ethical questions for participants to consider, including:
• Where are they getting their ideas from and why? • Who is the real audience for their projects? • What are their chosen narratives really saying?
These are questions many of the interviewees have engaged with themselves to varying degrees. This section will explore these questions in more detail, both to highlight the complex tensions that confront reimaging participants and to contemplate how informal image-makers can ensure they are participating in this process in a productive, thoughtful way.
7.1.1 INSPIRATION FOR INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS: DIY OR CIY (COPY-IT-YOURSELF)?
A notable aspect of the case studies was the way place attachment and a desire for local engagement emerged as key motivations for many informal image-makers, yet at the same time similar narratives were being promoted in both Newcastle and Detroit. An obvious explanation for the narrative similarities is that almost by definition, informal image-makers are switched-on social media users, as is the case for DIY urbanists generally (Deslandes 2013). This means they are highly networked online, and frequently engaging with other informal image-makers on a global scale as much as a local one. Because of this, both informal image-makers and DIY urbanism more broadly might be seen as examples of glocalisation in practice. As Douglas (2014, p. 15) observes, ‘DIY urban design responses are
Page 212 of 317 often inspired by [participants’] own skills, interests, and backgrounds, or in many cases by hearing (usually via the internet) about something similar that others have created; frequently both’. So while informal image-makers’ motivations might be intensely local—a renewed focus on the local is itself inspired by globalisation processes, as Broudehoux (2004) notes—their material is increasingly global. Today an informal urbanist or image- maker can design a local intervention, share it on Twitter, and soon see it replicated in cities across the world. From Parking Day pop-up parks (162 cities/35 countries/6 continents in 2011) to Critical Mass bike rides (hundreds of cities around the world), local projects become international movements through social media. In doing so, they celebrate localness in a highly globalised way.
It is this global ‘copy it yourself’ process that has prompted Zeiger (2012b)—an early champion of DIY urbanism—to declare a moratorium on informal urban design and its now- homogenous aesthetics of shipping pallets and milk-crate chairs. Yet it is not just DIY urbanism that reflects this glocalisation process; one reason these projects find such a broad audience is a wider phenomenon of globalised culture. Whether labelled the creative class, hipsters, Gen Y or Millennials, this increasingly global class of young(ish), educated, mobile, internet-savvy urban residents—even in places like China (Tan 2012)—is providing an enthusiastic audience for urban issues. As Rofe (2003) notes, these are the kinds of residents flourishing in the network of gentrified global cities that scholars like Sassen (1991; 2006) and Short (2004) have analysed, who help spread local styles and projects on a global scale.
Given that many of the informal image-makers interviewed here fit this socio-demographic profile, it is unsurprising that they are plugged into these same global networks, sharing and reinforcing similar reimaging narratives from opposite sides of the world. These informal image-makers might even be seen as a new class of media makers in accordance with Castells’ (2000) theory of the network society, using social media networks to shape the social production of meaning to their own ends. Yet the fact that these informal image- makers are engaging with these global networks from not-so-global cities like Newcastle and Detroit raises some interesting questions. To what extent is it appropriate that these participants might play a highly visible role in reimaging these cities, given they are mostly not representative of the demographic majority? While informal image-makers do not generally claim to speak for the city as a whole, it is not always as easy for external observers to access alternative narratives from other social groups in the city. This is
Page 213 of 317 particularly true in Detroit, where there is no official branding campaign that might be held accountable for presenting a more representative image of the city, and poverty and disadvantage leave some residents largely disconnected from public revitalisation and reimaging debates.
Yet the reality is that place branding has never been particularly representative, as the intention is to present an aspirational image of what the city is becoming, not its current reality (Murray 2008). As such, perhaps the more relevant questions raised by globally networked informal image-makers operating in not-so-global cities are about audience: who are informal image-makers really targeting with such local-yet-global reimaging, and to what extent should informal reimaging be considered a success if it plays well globally but not locally, or vice versa?
7.1.2 EXAMINING THE AUDIENCE FOR INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING
The question of audience is one that should concern any media-maker and was certainly raised by interviewees in both cities, particularly Detroit. It is also a question that goes to the heart of defining how informal image-making and urban reimaging more broadly should be assessed. As the case studies have demonstrated, defining the goals of urban image- making is, in large part, about defining the audience. Is the goal to engender local support for physical, social or economic changes, or is it to attract new tourists, residents and investment? Are such goals necessarily intertwined? The need for further engagement with these questions in the procedural urban branding literature is one reason assessment of the practice has proven challenging.
As pointed out in Section 2.3, the models presented in the urban branding literature have tended to portray this question of audience as a relatively straightforward one, with a primary focus on attracting external resources in the context of fierce interurban competition. In both of the case studies, however, there were clear indications that the question of audience was more complex, with image-makers recognising that they connected both with local audiences and external ones. This reflects the perspective offered in the emerging procedural literature on how effective place branding requires an engagement with local residents as an audience to reinforce the brand ‘on the ground’ (see Kavaratzis 2012 for an overview). More importantly, however, it also reflects the critical literature examined in Section 2.4, which identifies influencing local development debates as an underlying political goal of urban branding strategies (e.g. Broudehoux 2004;
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Greenberg 2008b; Colomb 2012a). Given that informal image-makers are connecting with local audiences, this literature demonstrates the importance of critically analysing the nature of this local engagement to determine its broader implications. In particular, this means considering what the audiences identified for informal image-making projects tell us about the underlying goals of these efforts, as well as about their likely long term impact.
Beginning in Newcastle with Renew, the project is presented primarily as a physical revitalisation strategy, designed to ‘fill empty buildings’. The pragmatic nature of this description points to the conclusion that Renew is predominantly focused on a local audience, with the goal of rebuilding the faith of Novocastrians in their city. This perception is reinforced by the nostalgic connections Renew occasionally draws with the CBD’s history as the former social hub of Newcastle. Yet both Marcus Westbury and Marni Jackson also acknowledge that communicating with external audiences has always been an important part of Renew’s strategy, a conclusion supported by Marcus’s extensive press profile and public-speaking schedule (see Westbury n.d. for an indication). While this may also reflect pragmatic considerations—speaking gigs provide an income that a non-profit like Renew cannot—this dual audience creates challenges in terms of identifying the project’s long- term impact.
While Renew undoubtedly seeks to communicate across this spectrum of internal and external audiences, it is questionable whether such a project can satisfy everyone: at one extreme, working-class Novocastrians who couldn’t care less what ‘those hippy girls’ do in the mall; and at the other, the hipster tourists who come expecting ‘every second shop’ to be selling unique, hand-made curiosities. While many working-class Novocastrians are undoubtedly happy to see something happening in the mall, this doesn’t mean they necessarily feel it is designed for them; as one online Newcastle Herald reader colourfully put it, ‘Arty Farty junk [shops] do not give the CBD life’ (Desknight500 in Harris 2012). Meanwhile, the number of national and international media pieces featuring Renew, particularly in design-oriented publications like The Design Files, Assemble Papers and Broadsheet, suggests that the external creative class is an enthusiastic audience for the project. Looking at the imagery Renew produces as a whole, it seems reasonable to conclude that the image of the city it portrays is more trendy than traditional. This leads to another question for participants to consider: is it incumbent on informal image-makers like Renew to acknowledge that they may appeal more to one audience more than others, just as official branding campaigns are often critiqued for doing (e.g. Philo and Kearns 1993)?
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Yet to suggest that a trendy overall image means Renew only appeals to an external audience is to oversimplify matters, as the trendy/traditional distinction in a transitioning city like Newcastle is as much a temporal divide as a class one. As the older generation of industrial workers raises the next generation of creative industry workers, the nature of the local audience is shifting rapidly. This shift is reflected in Marni’s comment that the audience she gains the most satisfaction from serving is a local one, made up of young, creative-industry aspirants who now feel Newcastle has something to offer. So while the external aspect of Renew’s image-making has clearly been both deliberate and effective, Renew’s trendy image does also speak directly to some locals (interviewees Matt Endacott and Rhiannon Tuntevski seem like cases in point). This suggests that even if Renew is speaking primarily to a creative class audience, it is an audience with both an external and internal presence, meaning Renew may well be playing a role in reshaping local understandings of development imperatives. The possible impact of this local element of Renew’s image-making will be considered in the next section; first, however, it is necessary to see if the same internal/external audience dynamics can be observed in Detroit or whether they are city-specific.
Turning to Detroit, the question of audience becomes more complex. In many respects, the larger-scale urban branding efforts—Opportunity Detroit in particular, as well as smaller foundation-funded efforts like D:Hive—do seem to have adopted the predominantly external focus suggested by traditional branding models. Of course, this assumes that the Detroit suburbs are also seen as an external audience, as many of the challenges these projects seek to address could be solved by attracting resources from the suburbs rather than outside the city. While many Metro Detroiters are genuinely concerned about seeing the city improve, the perceived need for efforts like the Detroit—I’m a Believer! campaign indicates some suburbanites still doubt the value of investing financially or emotionally in the city. Although this suggests the suburbs should logically be viewed as an external audience, the traditional model of presenting rose-coloured, idealised representations of the city seems even less likely to work in this context. The suburbs may therefore present the most difficult target audience of all for Detroit reimaging efforts, being both less passionate than locals about achieving change and more antipathetic towards the city than most external audiences. Somewhat perversely, other external audiences which are generally more actively supportive of Detroit—including the Detroit Nation diaspora and so-called ruin porn enthusiasts—have less capacity for on-the-ground impact than the suburban audience, making them a less valuable target for reimaging efforts. Page 216 of 317
So if the image-makers who are promoting the clearest image of large-scale, corporate-led redevelopment in downtown Detroit are doing so with the primary goal of shifting suburban attitudes towards the possibility of redevelopment rather than influencing local redevelopment debates, what does this tell us about the underlying philosophy of these efforts? Looking at the Opportunity Detroit campaign, the benefits of redevelopment to the local community seem almost to be assumed, with the focus placed instead on proving that redevelopment is actually occurring, rather than engaging in debate about what that redevelopment should be. This seems to indicate that Quicken views the local political conditions to be already conducive to redevelopment, a conclusion that is supported by the enthusiastic responses to Quicken’s efforts from the former and current mayors. In these circumstances, the approach of Opportunity Detroit campaign largely matches the traditional urban branding model—i.e. predominantly externally focused—suggesting that there is little perceived need to reshape the local political landscape in favour of change.
Meanwhile, it is smaller-scale informal image-makers making the clearest effort to engage with locals about the possibilities for Detroit’s reimaging and redevelopment, often in settings like the issue forums hosted by Model D or Declare Detroit. Indeed, the local audience seems to be an important target for many of these smaller participants; some, like Noah Stephens and Jay Rayford, explicitly identified locals as a key audience for their efforts, with engagement of younger Detroiters as the goal. While many undoubtedly hoped or realised that their image-making efforts would reach beyond Detroit, they often expressed surprise at the external interest their projects received (see, for example, Philip Lauri’s comments at 6.3.1). This suggests that local Detroit audiences are more front-of- mind for these smaller players than for larger efforts.
This brief overview suggests a possible pattern in informal image-making in Detroit, whereby the scale of the operations indicates the likely target audience. There is also another interpretation worth contemplating, however, which reflects the highly networked nature of the informal image-making community in Detroit. Given that Detroit’s smaller image-makers engage with larger players like Quicken in various ways, they might be viewed as filling the shifting-local-perceptions gap to the big players’ benefit, whether consciously or unconsciously. If this interpretation is accepted, Detroit’s informal image- making networks could be best understood as a complex ecosystem that functions to simultaneously attract external resources and prepare local conditions for redevelopment. These networks of informal image-makers are arguably satisfying both the external and
Page 217 of 317 internal roles Colomb and the like have attributed to official urban branding campaigns, suggesting that Detroit’s unruly reimaging landscape is better viewed as a replacement for official branding efforts, than as an alternative approach to reimaging the city.
This interpretation also gains support from the notable overlaps in narrative themes adopted by both small- and large-scale image-makers in the city. To shed more light on this possible interpretation, it is necessary to examine these shared themes in more detail.
7.1.3 DECONSTRUCTING THE SHARED NARRATIVE THEMES OF INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING
Post-industrialism, opportunity and DIY are not the only narrative themes touched on by image-makers in Detroit and Newcastle, but they stood out in this research because of the way all three could be clearly discerned in reimaging efforts in both cities. The fact that this combination of themes is apparent in both Detroit and Newcastle is notable, suggesting that these narratives work together in some capacity, beyond their individual significance. In other words, when viewed as a whole, what kind of vision are informal image-makers presenting for the future of these cities through the use of these narratives? From this broader perspective, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the vision that emerges of both Detroit and Newcastle is of a city that increasingly caters to a particular urban resident: well-educated, not looking for work in traditional industries, requiring few social services, and keen to engage with the city or its lifestyle in an active capacity. On one level this is unsurprising; this is the creative class that has been the focus of many urban branding efforts in recent years, as Section 2.4.1 demonstrated. Yet it is interesting that even in the hands of informal image-makers, these narratives still coalesce in a way that seems to offer only limited relevance for those who don’t fit this target audience.
To begin with, the portrayal of Detroit and Newcastle as cities of opportunity is skewed towards those with the resources and desire to begin their own entrepreneurial or experimental venture and those with skills in the creative, tech and professional-services industries. While the growth in these areas may also create associated work in support services, this generally means accepting the reduced pay and amenities that have characterised the service industry, particularly in the United States. For anyone who doesn’t fit these categories, there is little in these narratives to counter the conclusion that the best opportunity remains steering clear of the CBD (Newcastle) or getting out of the city (Detroit), as many existing residents continue to do. At the same time, the opportunity narrative can also function as a mechanism for shifting the perception of responsibility for
Page 218 of 317 the city’s ongoing challenges onto the community, blaming residents for failing to find entrepreneurial solutions to structural issues. In this way, this opportunity narrative provides support for what Murray (2008, p. 27) calls the shift towards ‘entrepreneurial citizenship’. This refers to a transformed understanding of citizenship as measured not simply in terms of having rights, but in terms of having the ‘capacity to act in relation to the particular circumstances in which individuals find themselves’. This shift supports broader entrepreneurial governance strategies by reducing the expectation on government to resolve urban problems.
Meanwhile, portraying post-industrialism in these places as the rebirth of ‘making things’ in a new century obscures the fact that while the art of ‘making’ may be returning in an ad- hoc, artisanal way, the accessible and lucrative employment opportunities that characterised industrialism—and the widespread social and economic security that came with them—are not coming back any time soon. In Detroit’s case, Herron (2013) convincingly argues that the once-great manufacturing city is now actually being methodically ‘unmade’ at a rapid rate. In this context, the emergence of a high-end, niche- market watchmaker like Shinola has little if anything to do with a rebirth of Detroit’s manufacturing legacy. Instead, it is primarily a savvy effort to capitalise financially on the lingering emotional connections with the city’s history that many of the interviewees here demonstrated. Such branding strategies might therefore be viewed as the commodification of what Galster (2012, p. 250) labels the ‘hypernostalgia’ of many Metro Detroiters for the city’s industrial past. While the post-industrial ‘making’ narrative may provide an emotionally satisfying connection with this history for some, there is also the risk that it entrenches this nostalgia and conceals the fact that cities like Detroit and Newcastle have fundamentally changed. Meanwhile, it is hard to miss the irony that the things being made in the post-industrial city are almost always out of reach of the residents to whom ‘making’ might bear the most emotional significance.
Last, but not least, the portrayal of DIY engagement in the city as a form of opportunity or freedom again risks obscuring the fact that the need for DIY in these places has arisen due to some degree of failure on the government’s behalf. As Finn (2014, p. 12) puts it, such needs-based DIY practices ‘could be read as inspirational examples of DIY urbanism writ large … Or conversely, as an abdication of public responsibility for, and control over, decisions that affect the citizenry at large’. While the situation in Newcastle might be seen as falling closer to the first of Finn’s assessments, in Detroit the applicability of the latter
Page 219 of 317 assessment is hard to deny. Of course, the DIY narrative plays out somewhat differently in the two cities. In Detroit, it is focused on different ways of responding to both physical and political abandonment (DIY as an alternative approach) while in Newcastle it is more about finding ways to keep things moving when official processes stall (DIY as a meanwhile approach). Nonetheless, in both cases the DIY narrative presents a positive scenario only for residents with the desire and resources to engage with the city on an experimental level, rather than relying on it for basic services. For others, the DIY city may primarily be characterised not by freedom but by failure and, in Detroit’s case, often by fear.
Considered together in this way, the future city vision communicated by these themes reinforces the conclusion that informal image-making is speaking primarily to an educated, creative, self-sufficient audience, both within and outside of Detroit and Newcastle, rather than the broader populations of these cities. In the Detroit context, this might also be viewed as confirmation that informal image-makers are effectively reinforcing the same overall vision as large-scale image-makers in a more locally engaged way, thus filling the shifting-local-perceptions gap left by the large-scale focus on the suburban audience. On this interpretation, many of the critiques that Peck (2005) and others have directed at official creative class discourses also seem applicable to the narratives now adopted by informal image-makers in Detroit and Newcastle. If so, informal image-making might even be viewed as a voluntary broadening of participation in what Harvey (1989a, p. 14) critiques as the ‘orchestrated production of an urban image’ for broader political purposes, ultimately designed to facilitate further entrepreneurial, neoliberal redevelopment.
Yet while these are legitimate concerns, looking at the efforts of informal image-makers more closely suggests that such assessments of these key narrative themes are somewhat unfair. To begin with, not all informal image-makers in Detroit or Newcastle present the DIY aspect of these cities as a uniformly good thing; many offer a more nuanced picture of it as a necessity in the absence of government support (Detroit) or calling for this ethos to be combined effectively with government oversight (Newcastle). As noted, in Detroit, local observers have also explicitly questioned or problematised the DIY narrative to highlight its potentially negative effects (Cooper-McCann 2011; Keenan 2012; Dale 2013). Many informal image-makers in Detroit also make an explicit effort to showcase the city’s diversity. For example, the Urban Innovation Exchange has clearly sought to cover an increasingly diverse range of projects, while even the explicitly development-focused Model D newsletter has been running features on community development in less high-profile
Page 220 of 317 neighbourhoods (e.g. a recent series of articles on the Osborn neighbourhood—see Lewis and Shaouni 2013). Detroit Lives! may present a very creative-class–friendly vision in their movie After the Factory (2012), but has also produced work on innovative education initiatives in the city’s neighbourhoods for the charity United Way. And while aspects of Noah Stephens’ photoblog may read like classic neoliberal redevelopment strategy, the Detroiters he photographs are far more representative of the city’s diversity than most branding images targeting the creative class. In these ways, the efforts of informal image- makers do at times reflect more complex and positive understandings of what DIY and opportunity might mean in a city like Detroit. In doing so they might be seen to have some connection to the views of scholars like Herscher (2012, final para.), who see the DIY narrative not just as a call to the creative class, but as the conceptual building block of ‘alternative ways of imagining, building and inhabiting the city’.
In Newcastle, efforts by informal image-makers to represent the city’s complexities and inequalities were not as obvious, which may reflect the fact that the city’s transition has been less socially and economically challenging. Yet while Newcastle’s informal image- makers generally did not engage with the possibility that some community members may suffer in this transition, a number did recognise that different parts of the community want different outcomes. Furthermore, both Marcus Westbury and Marni Jackson noted the tensions inherent in the possibility that Renew will ultimately help to create the conditions for large-scale, corporate redevelopment in the city rather than their preferred small-scale, local model. The fact that Marcus engages regularly with critics and commentators in locally focused online forums (e.g. Harris 2012) might also be read as a willingness to acknowledge that not all Novocastrians feel Renew represents their interests.
This is not to suggest that these reimaging narratives are not sometimes employed in overly simplistic ways; rather, it tends to be external observers who present the most boosterish versions of these narratives. This can be seen in glowing press profiles of Newcastle’s transition to a post-industrial creative mecca (e.g. Jameson 2011; Barrett 2012), or the way Detroit is romanticised as a DIY paradise (e.g. Urban 2011; Palladium Boots 2011). This point highlights the role of the media in perpetuating these kinds of oversimplified representations, which will be considered further in the next section. At the same time, however, it also raises important questions for informal image-makers to consider: To what extent is it helpful to continue propagating these narratives, given the problematic way they may be repackaged by outside observers? To phrase it another way, to what extent do
Page 221 of 317 informal image-makers need to own the fact that their narratives may ultimately contribute to a broader image of these cities as places best suited for a mobile, educated, networked, entrepreneurial resident, irrespective of their attempts to present a more inclusive image of the city’s trajectory? Or alternatively, do informal image-makers bear a responsibility to continue presenting these narratives in a nuanced way, in the hope that over time local complexities will become visible to outside audiences?
These are complex questions, and the answers may well shift as the revitalisation processes continue over the coming years in Detroit and Newcastle. In the meantime, the best outcome may be that informal image-makers continue to ask themselves the key questions outlined in this section: Where is my inspiration coming from? Who am I really speaking to? What stories do I really want to emphasise about where this city is headed? A desire to engage with such questions indicates an acknowledgement that informal image-making efforts have the potential to affect other local residents as much, if not more, than the participants themselves. The possible impact on locals in Detroit and Newcastle of such reimaging efforts will be considered next.
7.2 INSIGHTS FOR RESIDENTS OF NEWCASTLE AND DETROIT
In both Detroit and Newcastle the kinds of informal image-makers considered here make up a small proportion of the community, yet the images they create may well be viewed by outsiders as representative of the city as a whole. Add to this the fact that informal image- makers tend not to be representative of broader demographics—particularly in Detroit— and it is easy to see why concerns about representation and equity arise. For this reason, it is important to consider informal image-making not only from the perspective of the participants, as this research has largely done, but also from the perspective of other residents. Defining the ‘others’ in Flyvbjerg’s tripartite categorisation as residents of Detroit and Newcastle, as well as those who maintain an emotional connection to these cities in some way, allows for these alternative perspectives to be considered.
While the focus on participants in this research meant other residents were not interviewed, there are a number of ways local concerns can be considered here. To begin with, the links between image-making in these cities and established patterns of neoliberal redevelopment and gentrification will be examined. This will be followed by a consideration of who should bear responsibility for the cities’ imaging trajectory—is it image-makers
Page 222 of 317 alone, or are the media and other organisations also involved? And finally, an attempt will be made to explore the question of what this all may mean for these cities in the future.
7.2.1 INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING, URBAN REDEVELOPMENT AND GENTRIFICATION
Drawing a direct connection between image-making efforts and on-the-ground outcomes is always problematic, as the forces that shape urban development outcomes are multifaceted (Beauregard 2008). At the same time, attempting to ground the examination of reimaging practices in some way is essential if this research is to have value beyond the place branding community. To examine reimaging in isolation of broader urban processes is to focus on what Beauregard (2008, p. 300) categorises as ‘mere gloss on the underlying and ostensibly more influential relations of political economy’. Yet while recognising Beauregard’s concerns about the challenges of drawing causal connections between imaging strategies and urban change, there is still value in highlighting connections between symbolic, economic and physical processes in the city (Colomb 2012a). In this context, reimaging efforts can be seen as offering an insight into the future goals and desires of the players involved in the political economy processes Beauregard identifies. While reimaging practices may not cause the outcomes these players desire to occur, similarities between the images produced and patterns of on-the-ground change are worth noting, as they may give an indication of which players have the power—be it political, social or economic—to convert their visions into reality in some way. As such, these kinds of connections are of interest to residents seeking to understand the likely impact of informal image-making over the longer term.
Beginning again in Newcastle, there are similarities between the primary audience Renew appeals to locally and externally, and the protagonists in both the creative class discourses examined in Section 2.4.1 and the patterns of gentrification explored in Section 2.5.2. Both Renew’s participants and Newcastle’s informal image-makers more generally fit the mould of artists and creatives associated with the early stages of gentrification, to be followed by increasingly affluent buyers driving prices up. In addition, whether consciously or not, Renew and other informal image-makers promote a narrative of Newcastle as an industrial city turning creative hub, which overlaps in many respects with creative city strategies. These image-making efforts therefore offer narrative support for the gentrification process, by seeking to attract more creative industries and gentrifiers to the CBD.
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What is notable about Newcastle’s case is not that a narrative designed to attract this artistic/creative community is being promoted, however, but that it has been this community itself rather than the government that has done most of the promotional work. While Marcus Westbury does not consider himself an artist, he is evidently more closely connected with the artistic community than with local government. Yet the efforts of Marcus and other ‘creative brokers’ like Simone Sheridan have provided practical and promotional opportunities for this artistic community in ways that mirror what has been a predominantly government-driven strategy in other cities, designed to grow the creative industries and facilitate the gentrification process (Peck 2005; Zimmerman 2008; Colomb 2012b). This goes beyond what Colomb (2012b) has identified as the (often resisted) co- optation of alternative urban cultures into place branding narratives. Instead, these informal image-makers might be viewed as stepping into the role Herscher (2013, p. 65) assigns to civic boosters in the gentrification process, which is to ‘outsource urban redevelopment to its lowest-cost producers’, the creative class. In the (somewhat surprising) absence of government capacity or willingness to do so, Renew and other informal image-makers are promoting Newcastle’s creative community in ways that tie in with recognised place branding and gentrification processes.
In these circumstances, it seems a real possibility that these informal image-making efforts could play a part in further gentrification in the city, which may ultimately see the participants themselves displaced by large-scale, corporate-led redevelopment. If this proves to be the case, Renew’s DIY, incremental change vision may offer less of an alternative for Newcastle’s future than an alternative route to achieving much the same outcome. This is a possibility Marcus seems to recognise, noting ‘I think we’re creating a layer of value there … but also acknowledging a value there that wasn’t there before, and I’m hoping that that inevitably has to be acknowledged in what happens next’.
To leave the analysis here, however, is to fail to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of the gentrification process (Erbacher 2012), particularly as these patterns repeat themselves and those involved become increasingly savvy to the causes and effects. As Atkinson and Bridge (2005, p. 17) suggest, gentrification today might be understood not simply as a physical displacement process but as ‘a nexus within which tensions between the destination and welfare of global middle-class social fractions and an embedded urban poor are increasingly connected’. In Renew’s case, it is important to note that the project’s immediate impact is in a part of town where gentrification—at least in the traditional sense
Page 224 of 317 of housing displacement—is not a significant risk, as it is a primarily commercial area. Instead Renew might better be seen as linked to what Zukin et al. (2009) call ‘commercial gentrification’, which can still contribute to a sense of displacement for some locals, but may also provide needed new services. At the same time, Rofe (2000, 2004) demonstrates that gentrification has been an identifiable pattern in residential areas of Newcastle for some time, long before Renew and most other informal image-makers interviewed here came on the scene. Furthermore, even if Renew does facilitate the process of gentrification, it at least establishes a more explicit and collective role in this process for the artistic community, which may previously have benefited little over the long term. Thus, Marcus describes the Renew approach as a win-win strategy (Renew Australia 2012), referring to those directly involved: the creatives who benefit from the use of space and the added exposure Renew provides, and the property owners who benefit from improvements to their shops and the CBD more broadly. Of course, this applies only to artists willing to function within the limits of what might be considered appropriate by the broader community; but for these participants, programs and informal imaging efforts like Renew provide a formalised space for participation that may prove more secure than previous options.
Furthermore, compared to the government-promoted creative city narratives Peck (2005) and others have critiqued, some of Newcastle’s informal image-makers do acknowledge concerns about the impact of the city’s post-industrial redevelopment. This is not something that is particularly apparent in the official Brand Newcastle campaign. For example, the official Facebook page’s exclamation that ‘working wharves are becoming places of play’ suggests little recognition of the concerns raised by Zukin (1995) and others about the social effects of a shift from a production to a consumption culture. On the other hand, Marcus Westbury—who identifies himself as being ‘from a very activist, kind of lefty background’—does seem to at least recognise these tensions. To begin with, when asked his opinion on branding, Marcus questioned the value of the practice, instead characterising Renew’s promotional impact as part of a more grounded, community-driven process. Perhaps even more telling, however, is the way Marcus has sought to present projects like Renew as part of the broader revival of ‘maker’ culture in post-industrial cities.
The appeal of this narrative to progressive, creative image-makers like Marcus is interesting, prompting a number of potential critical responses. As already noted above, it can be viewed as a commodification of the lingering nostalgia for mid-twentieth-century
Page 225 of 317 urbanism for branding purposes. In a related way, it may be critiqued as the ultimate creative commodification of working-class culture—an example of what Potts (2007, p. 14) labels ‘class tourism’, the appropriation of lower-class culture by creative producers as part of the capitalist production of ‘cool’. Alternatively, this narrative may also be seen as a reflection of the broader tendency towards recycling and repackaging the difficult and dirty aspects of urban history as ‘heritage’, a commercial urban product designed to enhance a city’s ‘authenticity’ and attract tourism (Holcomb 1993; Herron 1993; Freestone 1993; Boyer 1996).
On the other hand, however, a more generous interpretation of the appeal of this remaking narrative is that it reflects a genuine desire to retain a connection with the city’s industrial past, and with it, the working-class audience that continues to embody it—even an attempt of sorts at ‘belonging’ (see Tomaney 2013). While arguably superficial, such a vision nonetheless seems more nuanced than what Short (1999, p. 45) labels the ‘Look No More Factories!’ whitewash approach of earlier post-industrial rebranding narratives. Even if the artisanal making that occurs holds little interest for a genuinely working-class audience, the desire of informal image-makers to engage with this narrative might also be read as a discomfort—conscious or subconscious—with the neoliberal trajectory of large-scale redevelopment and gentrification occurring in parallel with their efforts.
This latter interpretation gains support from the way Marcus acknowledged some concerns about the potential impact of Renew’s promotional efforts on Newcastle, noting that ‘I don’t ever want to see it become the Gold Coast and get trampled by fifty billion tourists a year.’ At the same time, however, he ultimately concludes that Renew is playing a positive role in the promotion and redevelopment of Newcastle, even if there are associated risks:
I think there are people and things I value in Newcastle that would benefit from people knowing more about them. I think the sort of people that we work with benefit from having people knowing about them and supporting what they do … One of the things I found really interesting all along is the things I valued about Newcastle weren’t the things that anyone else valued about Newcastle or were promoting about Newcastle. So debates about development or future possibilities, whatever Newcastle should become, often involved kind of mindlessly obliterating the things that I actually thought were actually interesting and important, you know, the character and the scale … By drawing attention to those things and putting them front and centre in what others value about Newcastle, it gets harder Page 226 of 317
and harder to make them just disappear, you know. And I think that’s the trade-off, and there’s a trade-off in that, but I think that’s it’s a key value, and I’m comfortable with the role in promoting and drawing attention to that.
As this suggests, Marcus’s concern about the longer-term impact of Renew on Newcastle predominantly relates to how it will affect the city’s creative community, although he is clearly aware of the potential for impacts on the broader community as well. In the end, he adopts a proactive, DIY narrative:
I think you’ve got to own a positive agenda for what can change for the better, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do. Invest in whatever happens next a layer of possibility and activity that wouldn’t be there otherwise … Whilst that may inevitably involve some loss of something that was there before, anything will involve some loss of something that was there before, and you may as well own a piece of what can change, than just be defensive against it.
On the one hand, aspects of this statement echo neoliberal narratives of individual responsibility and entrepreneurialism, sounding somewhat reminiscent of the Opportunity Detroit claim that ‘opportunity only comes to those already in the game’. On the other hand, this statement at least acknowledges the difficult realities of the city’s transition and the fact that such processes inevitably produce winners and losers, rather than trying to suggest that all Novocastrians benefit equally from developments like the conversion of working wharves to ‘places of play’.
Meanwhile, Marni Jackson also acknowledged some of the tensions inherent in the longer- term impact Renew was having in Hunter Street:
Trying to get the mall as a retail precinct up and running, it’s kind of odd to me. Like I would have never thought I’d be this advocate for it, because I’m not necessarily about the idea that we should be building more temples to consumerism … That’s kind of the opposite of my philosophies. But what I do love and think is very valuable in it is the growth of the small scale, handmade, locally made … they’re all things I think are really important in terms of a sustainable future for communities, and I think we’ve been able to imbue a little bit of that into this zone.
In recognising these tensions, both Marcus and Marni seem to implicitly acknowledge the fundamentally entrepreneurial nature of Renew as a project (Iveson 2009), albeit an Page 227 of 317 entrepreneurialism that supports a market segment (independent creatives) which may not previously have been the big winners from urban redevelopment strategies. While this means Renew’s efforts may ultimately contribute to further gentrification or facilitate more large-scale redevelopment, it is doing so in a way that at least raises questions and tensions around who has access to urban space in Newcastle and on what terms. The project therefore highlights the value of both Crawford’s (2012) broad conceptualisation of the relationship between DIY urbanism and right to the city theory, and Iveson’s (2013) argument that this relationship should always be subjected to close critical examination.
While the Renew founders are somewhat the exception in acknowledging these tensions, the complexity of the reimaging and redevelopment landscape is much more obvious in Detroit. For this reason, Detroit’s informal image-makers tend to engage with it more openly, as the discussion in Sections 6.4 and 6.6 demonstrated. In particular, a number of interviewees expressed concerns about how Detroit could find a balance between bringing in the new residents and resources the city requires and supporting those already in the city. While it might seem irrelevant given Detroit’s sparse physical landscape, gentrification is actually a hot-button issue in the city, and clearly a topic of discussion for many informal image-makers. The issue is less about gentrification in the traditional physical displacement sense, although there are claims of this happening in Greater Downtown (e.g. Jeffries 2013; McGraw 2013). For example, at the time of this writing, artists were reportedly being evicted from a Dan Gilbert–purchased apartment block, triggering a new round of debate (Brovold and Roberts 2014; Felton 2014).
Instead, the most controversial aspect of gentrification in Detroit is what Elliot (2012, para. 4) describes as ‘cultural displacement’, where long-standing Detroiters ‘feel like their community is less their own than it used to be’ (see also M. Williams 2013, and Colomb 2012a, 2012b on ‘symbolic gentrification’). The debate focuses in particular on revitalising Greater Downtown neighbourhoods like Corktown and Midtown, the latter of which is in part a rebranding of the dive bar strip known as Cass Corridor. While these areas are undoubtedly undergoing physical redevelopment, it is their cultural transformations that are perhaps most noticeable—a phenomenon neatly exemplified by Corktown’s recent appearance on Martha Stewart’s travel blog (McEwan n.d.). Some long-standing residents feel that new development consisting of fashionable restaurants, cafes and bars reminiscent of San Francisco or New York does little to serve their needs, and it transforms these neighbourhoods into places that no longer feel like home (Deadline Detroit 2013; M.
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Williams 2013). There is also an intense media focus on these new businesses which further exacerbates some existing locals’ perceptions that they are no longer a valued part of the neighbourhood culture (Foley 2013; Jackman 2014; Abbey-Lambertz 2014).
As Elliot (2011) identifies, there is also an undeniable racial element to this gentrification debate, as a disproportionate number of the owners and patrons of these new businesses are white when compared to the existing Detroit population. The racial tension is exacerbated by media reports adopting the historically insensitive narrative of Manifest Destiny and ‘pioneers’ re-occupying the abandoned landscape (Smith 1996). Not surprisingly, the informal image-makers interviewed here were generally careful to avoid this narrative, although Noah Stephens did refer to the need to be a ‘frontiersman’ in order to enjoy living in Detroit. This is interesting given that Stephens is a black Detroiter, born and bred, who might be expected to take offense. Stephens’s comment thus supports Erbacher’s (2012) point about the complexities and ambiguities of gentrification processes. Stephens himself raised concerns about oversimplified gentrification debates in Detroit, noting in a panel conversation at the 2012 Detroit Design Festival that they can reinforce stereotypes about white people being the only ones who like cool bars and fancy coffee (see also Zukin et al. 2009 on this point).14 As Hartigan (1999) explains in his research on Detroit’s working-class white community, there is a tendency to conflate race and class in the American urban context, which can obscure the more complex racial realities of cities like Detroit. Nonetheless, it is clear that the city’s racial history plays a significant part in the tensions surrounding the gentrification debate, and it makes informal image-making efforts even more likely to be seen as unrepresentative and exclusionary.
Looking past these complexities, however, it is clear that much of the material produced by Detroit’s informal image-makers is likely to appeal to the same creative, young, economically mobile audience Renew speaks to in Newcastle and which is the focus of the tension in these arguably gentrifying neighbourhoods. This may be pragmatic; as the 2010 census documented, the young professional and artist communities are among the few within Detroit that are actually growing (Linebaugh 2011), suggesting a receptive target audience. Of course, this description also fits many of the image-makers themselves; it is hardly surprising that they are promoting the city in ways that reflect what they themselves like about it. Yet this also points to what Zeiger (2012b, para. 3) calls ‘the hallmark of most
14 I was present at this event.
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DIY subcultures—that the producer and the audience are one and the same’, making such efforts seem less about providing alternative perspectives than about reflecting global urban trends, or reinforcing processes occurring anyway.
Furthermore, as demonstrated, the themes and images adopted by these image-makers overlap in many ways with creative class narratives that are explicitly designed to encourage gentrification. Many of the informal image-makers interviewed actually saw potential benefits for Detroit in gentrification, even though they were also conscious of the problems associated with this redevelopment process. Jay Rayford captured this mixed perspective well:
So now, these property values are starting to go up and they’re like, “Ah, I’ve got to raise the rent” … And it’s like, “I’ve been here forever, and now I can’t afford to stay here anymore”. That’s the tragic part of it … It’s a double-edged sword in a sense, because it’s like you want the progress to happen, but at the same time, you don’t want to be priced out of it. So it sucks. And I definitely think, I’m hoping, that we can kind of flip that into a great thing by the people that lived here downtown—if they get priced out of it, it makes sense for them to move to one of the neighbourhoods. But of course, we have to make sure that investments are happening in the neighbourhoods as well, so it can be conducive to doing that.
While Noah Stephens also seemed to accept that gentrification was an inevitable outcome, he acknowledged the challenge this would pose for many Detroiters:
Some of the things that people like about Detroit—if revitalisation was to really happen—they would actually go away. If there’s increased demand for real estate, real estate prices are going to go up … People in Detroit are kind of torn between wanting to see the city be successful, but not necessarily be willing to deal with the change that success would bring. So it’s almost like a schizophrenic outlook … People are having conversations about gentrification and complaining about it being hard to find rental properties. It’s like, “Yeah, that’s what’s supposed to happen”.
Bradford Frost also had doubts. While he questioned whether gentrification in the traditional housing-displacement sense was happening in Detroit, he also noted that it ‘remains to be seen’ whether the trickle-down approach to redevelopment would actually
Page 230 of 317 help a broader segment of the population in the long run (see Eisinger 2014 for a similarly pessimistic assessment). Even Jeff Aronoff, who spoke of gentrification as a seemingly inevitable part of the city’s redevelopment, suggested the process needed limits:
There should always be a place, you know, all these fringe things. We talked about Brooklyn—sure, the artists and this sort of fringe element that makes it seem so interesting will always be shifted around as gentrification and economic shifts occur. There’s always going to be space for that happening in our city. It’ll always accommodate it. It just maybe shouldn’t be in the middle. It should be the frame, not the picture.
The fact that informal image-makers express such concerns is noteworthy, as it highlights a distinction between these image-makers and some of the more aggressively pro-growth voices in the city, which will be returned to in Section 6.2.3. But at the same time, the qualified-yet-supportive responses of many informal image-makers to the prospect of gentrification are still significant. Whether or not such narrative reinforcement by informal image-makers actually contributes to on-the-ground gentrification is not really the point, given the primarily symbolic nature of gentrification in Detroit. If symbolic gentrification is all about perceived exclusion on the part of existing residents, it seems reasonable to conclude that the reiteration of creative city and pro-gentrification narratives may play a part in reinforcing this perception. While not all observers see cultural gentrification as a serious issue (Wattrick 2012b), the complex and contested nature of Detroit’s cultural landscape suggests that, if unresolved, it may affect the city’s revitalisation efforts in real and long-lasting ways.
7.2.2 TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKERS, FUNDERS, MEDIA-MAKERS, OR OBSERVERS?
While the analysis so far has focused on the relationship of informal image-making to the process of gentrification—be it physical or cultural—it is also important to step back and question who else is helping to reinforce these potentially problematic narratives. Informal image-making does not occur in a vacuum; behind these efforts sit funding bodies that support them and a media that reports them. To ignore the role of these organisations in informal image-making would be to present an oversimplified picture of the way reimaging processes work in cities like Detroit and Newcastle. Particularly in Detroit, the role played by philanthropic foundations and the media seems to be an increasingly contentious issue,
Page 231 of 317 as observers question both the impact and the equity of these organizations’ involvement in the city’s redevelopment (e.g. Herscher 2012; C. Williams 2013; Schambra 2014).
Looking first at philanthropic organisations, this growing contentiousness likely reflects the increasingly significant role these organisations are now playing in the way Detroit is redeveloped. Some high-profile examples include interventions like the proposed post- bankruptcy bailout of the Detroit Institute of Arts (Schambra 2014) and the Kresge Foundation’s $150 million contribution to the creation and implementation of the Detroit Future City strategic-planning initiative (Gallagher 2013a). At the same time, philanthropic foundations are also engaged in smaller funding initiatives which relate more directly to informal image-making efforts, such as the Knight Arts Challenge Detroit, which funds art initiatives (Knight Arts 2014), and the Awesome Foundation’s micro-grant initiative for media projects (Abbey-Lambertz 2012). A number of interviewees received funding from these foundations, demonstrating their connection with informal image-making practices in Detroit. While few would argue that Detroit is better off without this financial input, these are nonetheless private organisations making decisions about which projects in the city get financial support and PR exposure. There is also lack of clarity about who is providing and receiving this funding (Detroit Ledger n.d.), which raises difficult questions ‘about access, influence, and accountability’ (Roudman 2013, para. 1). For example, to what extent is it appropriate to be funding image-related projects like the Detroit Journal (Abbey-Lambertz 2012), rather than critical services like schools? And given the importance of the city’s image to local residents, should these foundations engage in more open or interactive processes to determine funding outcomes?
In Newcastle, similar questions surround the funding of Renew, which receives both public and private support. Comments on news articles about Renew regularly question the justification of Renew participants benefiting from this public funding, while other nearby businesses pay full-market rate (e.g. Harris 2012). Less debated is the question of the appropriateness of providing public funding to an organisation involved in reimaging the city in a way that arguably benefits some parts of the community more than others. The counter-argument is that urban reimaging has never been an entirely inclusive process; for example, while the official brand strategy in Newcastle did involve public consultation, it was an invitation-based process. At least in the case of public funding or branding decisions like these, however, Newcastle residents can protest if they feel sufficiently concerned. The lack of such transparency and recourse for Detroit residents regarding the foundation
Page 232 of 317 funding decisions now reshaping their city is a real concern (Roudman 2013). Interestingly, this issue seems to have been downplayed in the local media to date, drowned out by the (understandable) excitement about a long-overdue influx of funding into the city.
This leads to another important question about responsibility: to what extent is the media also contributing to way the reimaging is occurring in Detroit and Newcastle? As Colomb (2012a) notes, the mainstream media has long been understood to play a key supporting role in boosterism and branding. For some observers, the frustration with Detroit’s image relates less to the informal image-makers seeking to present welcome positive images of the city, than to the media that recycles stories about the same image-makers rather than seeking out a more diverse perspective (Walljasper 2012). There may arguably be a pragmatic element to this process; Margarita Barry suggested that the image-makers featured do tend to be the most accessible (particularly through social media activity):
I will say that it has been a little bit difficult because I reach out to people, even people that I grew up with that I know who are doing really cool things, and they don’t get back to me. I’ve been emailing them like crazy, like, “Man you opened up this really cool store and I think what you’re doing is amazing. I want to feature you on the website”. Never gets back to me. Never gets back to me, and I don’t know what it is … maybe they’re just too busy, but a lot of the other folks would be like, “Yeah, yeah!” and they email me right back. That obviously plays a role in it.
It seems unreasonable to blame the latter category of informal image-makers for taking free publicity for their projects when offered. Yet while Margarita runs the sort of small- scale operation that has limited resources to chase unresponsive leads, other media organisations arguably have both the ability and a responsibility to provide more balanced coverage (see Sullivan 2014 on this question). So is it the media that should be held responsible for the disproportionate coverage that some of these informal image-makers have received?
While this is an important question, it also points to another one, which is whether the media is producing these stories in response to audience appetites. Such a question seems increasingly relevant in an age of declining media resources and a growing reliance on online advertising and so-called click-bait to attract web traffic (Akin 2005). There are certainly some powerful emotive elements to the media narratives associated with informal image-makers that make for compelling reading. In the case of Newcastle, the Page 233 of 317 most obvious example is the nostalgia evoked over the lost heyday of tram rides into the CBD’s once-bustling main shopping strip (Jameson 2009; Colvin 2012). Renew’s ability to tap into this nostalgia by positioning itself as returning Hunter Street to something closer to its former glory gives their message emotive power. In the case of Detroit, narratives of pioneers taming the Wild West are built into the broader mythology of Manifest Destiny and therefore hold significance for some Americans. For example, this mythology provides the poignant back-story to the recent Levi’s advertisements entreating young Americans to ‘go forth’ and rebuild declining Midwestern towns like Braddock, PA (Freshness’ YouTube 2010). Positioning informal image-makers in Detroit as ‘urban pioneers’ taps into this narrative in a similarly emotive way. Of course, there are also racial dynamics at play, as a certain segment of the audience wants to hear—or subconsciously puts greater faith in—a narrative that can be read as white Americans finally ‘saving’ Detroit from decades of black- led mismanagement and decline. It is for this reason that the idea of gentrification ‘picks at the abscesses of racial segregation in [Detroit]’ (Elliot 2011, para. 3) and works to bolster unhelpful racial divisions in the city.
Even for less-biased readers, however, the narrative of youth-led urban recovery has particular potency given its broader setting. In the post-GFC era, Detroit has repeatedly been portrayed as the canary in the coalmine, foretelling the rest of urban America’s decline (e.g. Detropia 2012; LeDuff 2013b). In this context, it is not surprising that there is an audience for media narratives which not only identify a more positive future for Detroit but also an identifiable shift that makes that future seem achievable. It is far less encouraging to hear that Detroit is still struggling with its recovery, although this remains the story told by census figures, as well as recent reporting on long-term resident sentiment and property values (McDonald 2012; Myler 2013; Alhajal 2013). Even more nuanced narratives suggesting that Detroit is slowly recovering thanks in large part to tireless, below-the-radar community resilience, with locals accepting challenging living conditions to preserve their neighbourhoods, do not offer great hope for other cities fearing the same fate. So as Detroit became the focus of both the nation and the world in the wake of the GFC and the GM bankruptcy, it made sense that a more hopeful narrative prevailed in many media reports, particularly in national publications like the New York Times. Even better is the fact that it’s a familiar and easily branded urban narrative (see Stern 2010), so all that is required to capture audience attention is to ponder ‘is Detroit the new Brooklyn?’ (e.g. Hughes 2011). While media business models may contribute to the proliferation of simplistic or unrepresentative stories about Detroit, audiences may also Page 234 of 317 bear some responsibility for uncritically consuming these narratives rather than seeking out more complex analysis.
Of course, it is also important to recognise that it is not only outsiders consuming positive stories. As local media projects like Model D and Positive Detroit demonstrate, some locals see these positive narratives as restoring much-needed balance to the long history of reporting focused on Detroit’s crime, corruption and physical decay. At the same time, however, local enthusiasm for boosterish narratives prompts a challenging question about whether more complex dynamics may also lie behind some criticism of media reporting on the city’s new arrivals. To what extent might it be possible to see the media as a convenient whipping boy in this scenario, providing a way for others to maintain a broadly neoliberal stance of supporting new arrivals and businesses, while still demonstrating sensitivity to the cultural and racial tensions they create by criticising media reporting on them?
As these questions suggest, there is only so much value in singling out the media’s role in image-making processes in these cities, without considering its interplay with local residents, external audiences, and image-makers themselves. While it is necessary to identify the various parts and players involved, the interconnectedness of these processes means a big-picture perspective is ultimately the most useful way to determine what reimaging might achieve for residents. So, adopting this big-picture approach, are there better options for Detroit and Newcastle than being reimaged through informal image- making? Or are the narratives and strategies of informal image-making more broadly beneficial for residents than the likely alternatives?
7.2.3 EXPLORING THE POSSIBLE FUTURES FOR LOCAL RESIDENTS
The analysis so far has highlighted a number of narrative and philosophical similarities between informal image-making and broader place branding and gentrification patterns, suggesting that informal image-making may ultimately be reinforcing these processes in Newcastle and Detroit. Yet while the narratives which informal image-makers are producing may offer symbolic support for neoliberal redevelopment processes, many of the interviewees at least acknowledged this possibility and its potentially problematic impact. This was particularly the case in Detroit but also true to an extent in Newcastle. This observation points to an arguably significant distinction between informal image-making efforts and the broader redevelopment forces now reshaping Detroit and Newcastle. It is
Page 235 of 317 worth examining this distinction further before making a final evaluation of informal image- making or predicting what it might mean for Detroit and Newcastle in coming years.
Beginning in Newcastle, both Renew founders recognised the potential for the city’s redevelopment to cause negative impacts for some residents, and they acknowledged the tensions inherent in Renew’s role in this process. This nuanced perspective stands out in the broader context of Newcastle’s development debate, which often seems to focus on the narrower question of which kind of major redevelopment is best. Gentrification is not necessarily seen as a negative in this broader debate, with excited headlines like ‘Gentrification of rundown Newcastle starts up’ adorning the local paper (Jones 2009). Enthusiastic responses to gentrification are certainly not limited to Newcastle, however. Pro-gentrification perspectives are also apparent in Detroit, with high-profile people like George Jackson Jr. of the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation stating ‘bring it on’ (Neavling 2013) and Detroit Free Press editor Stephen Henderson tweeting ‘Sorry … as a Detroit native who has seen this place rot from the inside out, I’d kill for a little gentrification’ (Henderson 2011). According to Jackson, gentrification is ‘one of the costs of progress’ (Neavling 2013, para. 2) and therefore a necessary part of Detroit’s recovery. While this perspective may sound harsh, it does communicate an important point, which is that gentrification is a known quantity and its relationship to ‘successful’ neoliberal redevelopment well-established. From Brooklyn to Brixton, gentrification may have negatively affected lower-income residents, but it has occurred hand-in-hand with what others would see as the positive transformation of these neighbourhoods from threatening to trendy.
It is in the context of such pro-gentrification perspectives that the responses of Detroit’s informal image-makers need to be considered. The qualified responses offered by informal image-makers suggest a greater degree of concern with the social impact of revitalisation, even if they remain broadly accepting of the prevailing neoliberal, trickle-down redevelopment paradigm. Yet, at the same time, these informal image-maker narratives also need to be viewed in relation to the position taken by a third group of participants in the redevelopment debate, those who seek to stress the social impact of gentrification and propose an alternative, community-driven approach to reshaping Detroit’s future. This position is presented by groups like the Boggs Center and Allied Media Projects, both of which have proven savvy communicators of revitalisation visions based around bottom-up community engagement and empowerment rather than top-down resource attraction and
Page 236 of 317 redevelopment. These organisations have received a noticeable amount of coverage (e.g. Sands 2012; Herscher 2012; Detropia 2012; Hartman 2014; G. Smith 2014) and build on what is a long and impressive history of community development and grassroots organising in Detroit (Mast 1994; Shaw 2009). Nonetheless, their more revolutionary or open-ended perspectives on Detroit’s future tend to take a back seat in the mainstream media to the established creative city and gentrification narratives explored here.
It is in the context of such divergent viewpoints on redevelopment—community-driven versus pro-gentrification—that a positive role for informal image-making might be discerned. Even though the informal image-makers interviewed here often reinforced neoliberal redevelopment narratives, they did at least incorporate some awareness of the impact of these processes on the city’s less fortunate. Of course, some may see this as the reimaging equivalent of ‘green-washing’ in consumer marketing—adding an appearance of social responsibility into the narrative because it appeals to middle-class gentrifiers, not because it is a genuine concern. And undoubtedly, even if such concerns are acknowledged, the on-the-ground outcome may still be the same cycle of neoliberal redevelopment, gentrification and disenfranchisement that cities around the world have experienced (e.g. Greenberg 2008b; Murray 2008).
A more positive interpretation, however, is that the growing influence of informal image- makers in these cities might result in broader participation in these processes than has occurred in the past. If a more diverse group of urban entrepreneurs has ‘a foot in the door’ of revitalisation processes in Detroit and Newcastle, as Jay Rayford put it, or must be ‘acknowledged in what happens next’, to use Marcus Westbury’s phrase, could this give them a greater say in the long term outcomes of revitalisation? If so, these individuals may find themselves in a position to work towards enacting their seemingly genuine desire to improve the city in a more equitable fashion. While this may not create a huge shift in the redevelopment dynamics of these cities, it may still be preferable to having official or large- scale urban branding participants dominate.
Of course, the above conclusion lumps large-scale and official branding efforts together in a way that might also be overly simplistic. While both Detroit’s corporate branding participants and Newcastle’s officials present a predominantly entrepreneurial vision of the future, there is an important difference. Newcastle’s official brand ticks many neoliberal redevelopment boxes: the desire to attract economically secure, middle-class residents is
Page 237 of 317 clearly communicated in the welcome to ‘sea changers’; the consumption-focused nature of post-industrial Newcastle is captured in the recognition that these residents want ‘places of play’ over wharves and other industrial workplaces; and statements about ‘selling Newcastle to the world’ leave little to the imagination regarding the aspiration to become a globally-networked, entrepreneurial city. Yet, at the same time, the vision also reaffirms the council’s role in the city’s transformation, thereby asserting a central role for government in major urban transformation processes. While this role undoubtedly reflects the entrepreneurial governance strategies Harvey (1989a) and others have critiqued, the fact that government remains a significant player can be seen as a positive when compared with the official disengagement that currently defines Detroit’s reimaging landscape.
Interestingly, the question of democracy was not raised directly by the informal image- makers interviewed, perhaps because most conceptualised their efforts in ways that made it seem less relevant: small scale, project-focused, or just one of many such contributions. But while it may be argued that informal image-making’s low barriers to participation allow a diversification or democratisation of urban reimaging narratives and processes (Crommelin 2013; see Douglas 2012 re DIY urbanism more broadly), it can also be argued that informal image-making is less democratic than official rebranding. To begin with, not all urban residents have equal access to the online tools needed for informal image-making, particularly in Detroit. Furthermore, at least where government remains involved, the public has electoral power if it is unhappy with the outcome, whereas informal image- makers may only be subject to indirect, commercially-driven forms of activism. As such, there is an argument to be made that like some forms of DIY urbanism, informal image- making may be seen as a further step towards neoliberal marketisation of all public responsibilities and resources (Finn 2014). This somewhat paradoxical conclusion may indicate that the value of government involvement in urban reimaging is ultimately relative; while it is not ideal for governments to use public funds in this way, having a government that can do so may nonetheless be preferable to no government involvement at all.
Finally, it is important to note that similar complexities emerge from local responses to the various image-making narratives examined here. Much of this analysis has considered whether informal image-makers’ narratives might ultimately contribute to neoliberal redevelopment outcomes, with the underlying assumption that this is not in the best interests of existing residents. Yet it should be noted that in both cities, some residents express enthusiasm for precisely this kind of large-scale, corporate redevelopment (e.g.
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Helms 2013). Even informal image-maker Noah Stephens noted semi-jokingly, ‘I just want a Trader Joe and a Target downtown; then I’ll be happy. Jesus Christ, why don’t we have a Target in the city?!’ As such, the fact that informal image-making might ultimately contribute to large-scale redevelopment may not always be seen as an entirely negative outcome, even though it raises difficult issues of equality and social justice (Zukin et al. 2009).
In this context, Erbacher’s (2012, p. 122) description of gentrifying places as ‘complex contact zones’ again seems fitting, capturing the way these places are shaped by constantly shifting interactions between different community groups and their preferred change visions. The direct impact of reimaging narratives on the redevelopment of transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle may ultimately be unclear, but the complex and layered ways in which different participants respond to these narratives do shed light on the nature of the ‘real life’ gentrification and revitalisation processes reshaping these places. Given that a research focus on informal image-making has been shown here to provide insights into these complex processes, further research on this phenomenon may be of value to residents of transitional cities in negotiating these challenging landscapes. The next (and final) section of this analysis will therefore consider some of the possible directions for such research.
7.3 INSIGHTS FOR RESEARCH: NETWORKS, NARRATIVES AND A NEW BREED OF URBAN IMAGE-MAKERS
By adopting a broad theoretical framework as the basis for an examination of urban reimaging in Detroit and Newcastle, it has been possible to observe how many of the storylines and strategies of official urban branding are now being adopted and adapted by a diverse range of informal image-makers. This observation has three key implications for research on urban reimaging:
• It suggests that the branding literature would benefit from researchers and practitioners taking a broader view of who is involved in urban reimaging and why they become involved
• It suggests there may be value in analysing and modelling urban branding and reimaging from a network perspective, as well as the traditional hierarchical approach
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• It highlights the benefits of adopting a narrative lens as an approach to analysing urban reimaging.
This final section will consider each of these implications in turn.
7.3.1 A DIFFERENT BREED: WHY ENGAGE WITH INFORMAL IMAGE-MAKING?
While this thesis has suggested that the existing urban branding literature has not engaged closely with informal image-making, it is also true that many of the informal image-makers interviewed here did not necessarily view urban reimaging as the primary goal of their efforts. Place attachment is a motivating factor in many cases, but so are more pragmatic concerns like addressing blight, or more personal concerns like financial or career benefits. So given that participants on both sides might question the connection between formal and informal image-making, why does it make sense to bring informal image-making more explicitly into the frame of the urban branding literature, as this research has sought to do? And what benefit might there be for urban branding researchers in doing so?
There are a couple of answers to these questions. To begin with, the previous sections have highlighted how closely networked image-making participants of different sizes are, how their chosen narratives overlap, and how the lines between formal and informal participants are sometimes blurred. Given these complexities, formal and informal image- making might best be viewed as interconnected processes, exemplifying Ong’s (2011, p. 5) description of transitional cities as places where ‘the proliferation of neoliberal techniques … contributes to the blossoming of an urban terrain of unanticipated borrowings, appropriations and alliances that cut across class, ideological and national lines’. This observation brings us full circle, back to Aroncyzk and Powers’ (2010, p. 3) observation (noted in the thesis introduction) that ‘the globalized, self-reflexive use of brands and branding to describe and structure [multiple aspects of modern life] is both symptom and cause of a series of shifts in how social relations, subject positions, and political programs are organized, governed, and articulated’. In other words, the concept of the brand has become nearly ubiquitous as a structuring principle in how both individuals and organisations engage with the modern world. If this perspective is accepted, it is hard to argue the logic of examining the relationship between informal image-making and official rebranding in cities like Detroit and Newcastle, in order to understand how both are simultaneously shaping the broader reimaging landscape in these cities.
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Viewing informal image-making as interrelated with urban branding in this way creates both challenges and opportunities for researchers. The challenge is to conceive of ways to examine informal image-making that identify and explore its links with place branding, while recognising that it cannot necessarily be evaluated using the research approaches normally applied to official campaigns. By focusing on issues like modelling and quantitative measurement, the procedural place branding literature has shifted the research focus away from the complexities and contradictions of how reimaging strategies relate to urban life. As a result, the branding literature does at times seem somewhat divorced from broader urban research—theory, political economy and sociology in particular—that engages more closely with the complexities of these shifting urban dynamics. This is not the case for the critical, case-study-based literature considered in Section 2.4.2, however, and the current research suggests this kind of broad perspective offers a useful way to examine informal image-making also. Informal image-making is necessarily a layered and messy phenomenon, and it requires research approaches suited to capturing and analysing this unruly landscape.
There may also be opportunities associated with this broader perspective, however. To begin with, as seen in the case studies, informal image-makers are using tools like networking and social media in powerful ways. While the urban branding literature is starting to reflect the game-changing impact of Web 2.0 on urban image-making (Ketter and Avraham 2012; King and Crommelin 2013), there remains much to consider on this front. Research that examines the strategies used by informal image-makers could offer valuable lessons for practitioners looking to harness these important and fast-changing tools for urban branding practice. Similarly, there seem to be useful insights for official image-makers in the way participants like Quicken and Renew have gained local respect for their reimaging efforts by accompanying them with practical change. This approach seems a necessary part of effective reimaging efforts in transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle, where a grounded element may help convince residents repeatedly let down by revitalisation plans that never materialise. This presents a challenge for official projects in such cities, however, as governments face more obstacles to implementing practical change quickly, meaning their reimaging efforts may be viewed as more empty promises. Cultivating informal image-making efforts in transitional cities may therefore prove to be a more effective approach for government, rather than taking on the reimaging role itself.
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Doing so would also capitalise on the fact that while the experience of transition can make residents sceptical of ungrounded imaging efforts, it also seems to nurture a strong culture of informal image-making. As Noah Stephens argued:
Detroit city government doesn’t really have the funds to do anything like [branding]. I think without that vacuum and without Detroit being so beleaguered in the national imagination, you probably wouldn’t have people feeling like, “Hey wait. That’s not my experience in Detroit. Here’s my experience in Detroit. Let me share that with you”. You kind of have this group of circumstances that conspire to lead independent, small organizations to talk about life in the city.
This raises an interesting question about whether transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle should engage in official branding, even if they can find the budget to do so. If such efforts undermine the public enthusiasm for informal image-making, is there a net gain to be made? It would be useful to see further urban branding research that explores the possible alternatives for governments in this position, such as grant schemes or other forms of official support for informal image-making efforts.
And what of the informal image-makers—how might they benefit from additional research on their work? For some, seeing connections drawn between their efforts and urban branding strategies may prompt more critical analysis of the relationship between their work and broader city redevelopment and gentrification patterns. While the tendency of many informal image-makers to emphasise place attachment as a motivation for their efforts is admirable and undoubtedly genuine, this framing arguably puts a somewhat romantic spin on a process that often seems to be supporting major urban change. And while most of the informal image-makers interviewed here were thoughtful and critical about the potential impact of their efforts, this is not always the case.
Of course, having the similarities between their efforts and urban branding highlighted may not necessarily be a bad thing in the eyes of all informal image-makers. Some may decide that if their imaging efforts are of real economic value to the city—a conclusion supported by Comunian’s (2011) research on creative industries in Newcastle UK, as well as the SGS analysis of Renew (SGS Economics and Planning 2011)—this value might be leveraged to negotiate better outcomes for their community. This possibility adds an additional perspective to Colomb’s (2012b) research on the incorporation of local creative projects into top-down creative city branding discourses. While some of Colomb’s projects explicitly
Page 242 of 317 reject the incorporation of their image by official branders, this research highlights the potential for informal image-makers to also adopt alternative approaches like strategic participation or even explicit competition with official rebranding campaigns (see also Novy and Colomb 2013 on similar debates among cultural producers in Germany).
Of course, leveraging this image-making power necessarily requires informal participants to accept that such strategic approaches mean becoming part of the prevailing entrepreneurial governance paradigm. Yet at the same time, it may also mean the public conversation about the city’s image is ultimately diversified, both in terms of the range of participants and the airtime given to alternatives to the large-scale, corporate redevelopment change vision. This double-sided dynamic is at the heart of why Iveson (2009, p. 215) categorises Renew not as a radical alternative to entrepreneurial governance but as ‘progressive entrepreneurialism’—a hybrid approach which highlights problems in the existing system without fundamentally challenging it. This hybridity may in fact help to explain the imaging impact Renew has had, its appeal a result of being alternative but not too alternative. Such hybrid approaches do not fit easily into many of the existing urban political economy paradigms, suggesting there is room for more ways of thinking about entrepreneurialism in the neoliberal city. Paying closer attention to hybrid cases like this would help to bring the procedural urban branding research into closer conversation with the complex contours of the contemporary post-industrial city, in ways that may be of value to both branding practitioners and urban theorists more broadly.
In short, both researchers and participants may ultimately benefit from broader reimaging research that explores the role informal participants are playing and how these efforts relate to official urban branding campaigns. Yet if the models currently adopted in the place branding literature are not suitable for examining informal image-making, what other models might be appropriate? Based on the highly networked nature of the informal image-making observed in this research, the next section will consider the benefits that network analysis might offer for future research on urban image-making.
7.3.2 A DIFFERENT MODEL: HOW MIGHT NETWORK ANALYSIS BENEFIT REIMAGING RESEARCH?
The use of networking and Web 2.0 are key features of the informal image-making efforts examined in Detroit and Newcastle and appear to have played a significant part in enabling informal image-makers to play a noticeable role with a small budget. Beyond the practical
Page 243 of 317 lessons in this for official urban branders looking to utilise online and so-called word-of- mouth techniques, there may also be broader conceptual insights for urban branding researchers emerging from this observation.
As explored in Chapter 3, network approaches have attracted significant interest across a number of different areas of urban research. The case studies indicate a range of different ways such network perspectives might be connected to the branding literature. In Newcastle, for example, Simon McArthur identified a key lesson from the Brand Newcastle experience as the need to recruit local ‘ambassadors’, to reinforce the brand narrative in the face of local resistance. He felt this strategy was not well canvassed in the current procedural branding literature, indicating that further work on networking as both an information gathering system and a communications tool would be valuable for official reimaging participants. In Detroit, multiple connections were identified between informal image-makers that reached across financial and philosophical divides, including:
• Detroit Lives! providing footage for Quicken Loans’ World Series commercial • D:Hive using its foundation funding for everything from featuring artwork by Heidelberg Project–sponsored artists to hosting Margarita Barry’s pop-up store and having staff contribute to an ‘Idea Lab’ conference with the Urban Innovation Exchange • Model D being a media partner of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, which is in turn responsible for the creation of D:Hive and the Detroit Regional News Hub.
While the urban branding literature has always emphasised engagement with key urban stakeholders (e.g. Stone 2005; Virgo and de Chernatony 2006), its primarily top-down perspective leaves space to explore the breadth and diversity of these networks in more detail.
Given this breadth and diversity, another interesting research path would be to explore whether informal image-making processes are bringing together previously unconnected urban actors in significant ways. Taking on board Castells’ (2000) observation that in the network society power resides primarily with the networks of individuals and organisations that control communication channels, these connections between large and small image- makers may reflect a shift in urban power dynamics. As such, further analysis of the networks behind informal reimaging practices may shed further light on the fluid power structures of transitional cities, including some negative aspects—as in Detroit, where the Page 244 of 317 insularity of online networking strategies highlighted broader social and economic divides across the city.
So what might more network-focused urban branding and reimaging research look like in practice? The approaches examined in Section 3.3 offer some initial ideas. For example, mapping of urban reimaging participants could provide a clearer picture of the range of informal reimaging participants and the ways they are interacting with each other and with official practitioners, both online and offline. Actor-Network Theory could be employed to investigate how human and non-human agents interact to shape how urban reimaging occurs (with iconic buildings like Detroit’s Michigan Central and Newcastle’s David Jones store making interesting points of study). Other urban research on institutionalism (e.g. Neuman 1996), agglomeration (e.g. Gordon and McCann 2000) and policy mobility (e.g. McCann and Ward 2010) might also provide useful perspectives. Ultimately, however, the key thing is that the chosen research strategy focuses on what Comunian (2011, pp. 1158; 1160) calls the ‘agent-focused and interaction-based’ aspects and ‘non-linear dynamics’ of urban processes. A greater focus on these qualities of urban reimaging may add further layers of insight to the existing critical urban branding literature, which adopts a predominantly political economy-based perspective (e.g. Harvey 1989a; Short 1996; Greenberg 2008b). As globalisation, urbanisation and the development of online networks continue apace, it seems hard to imagine that a greater focus on networks—both local and global—will not yield helpful observations.
Meanwhile, the outcomes of this project are hopefully of sufficient interest to demonstrate the benefits of adopting the particular network-focused methodology used here: case- study research that draws on narrative analysis. As Throgmorton (2007, p. 250) argues, in narrative analysis ‘it is not merely the individual stories that count, but storytelling and the complex social networks, physical settings, and institutional processes in which those stories are told’. Given this connection between networks and narratives, it seems useful to complete this chapter with a more detailed examination of how narrative analysis shaped the case studies here, and how it might inform future research on urban reimaging.
7.3.3 A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: INSIGHTS FOR REIMAGING RESEARCH FROM NARRATIVE ANALYSIS
The explanation of methodology in Chapter 4 identified Eckstein’s (2003) three key elements of narrative—author, audience and story—as essential points of consideration in
Page 245 of 317 narrative analysis. Looking back over the case studies, all three elements are discernible in the reimaging efforts examined here; identifying them helps to unmask some of the challenging debates surrounding image-making. Adopting a narrative analysis framework for this research has thus helped to direct attention to these key points of tension in the reimaging of Detroit and Newcastle. For example, thinking about author and audience helped to highlight some important issues for informal image-makers to consider (Section 7.1)—who is really authoring the shared narratives they are telling, and is their true audience local or global? Thinking about author and audience also helped to highlight how reimaging narratives are picked up, portrayed, and responded to in mainstream and social media, reflecting Ochs’ (1997) observation about readers and interlocutors shaping narrative and yielding insights on responsibility (Section 7.2.2).
In a similar way, the detailed elements of story outlined by Eckstein (2003) and explained by Sandercock (2010) helped direct the research focus towards important aspects of informal reimaging in Newcastle and Detroit that might otherwise have been overlooked. These three elements—time, space and voice—are worth considering in a little more detail, to explain how they informed the case studies and analysis above. This brief examination offers further insights into the many different ways narrative analysis provides a useful analytical approach for research that explores how urban reimaging narratives reflect broader social and political issues.
Time
Time is a common framing device in many of the reimaging narratives identified here, particularly in the way history is used as a setting and justification for image-making and other revitalisation efforts. As noted in Section 7.2.2, narratives about the future of Newcastle’s CBD frequently hark back to nostalgic images of the mall’s glory days, with tram rides to town to shop and lunch at David Jones. Interestingly, a similar nostalgic device is often used in Detroit, with the good old days evoked through memories of streetcar rides downtown to Hudson’s department store (Herron 2012; see e.g. Gallagher 2013b). Meanwhile, time was also used as a more specific framing device by some of the Detroit informal image-makers interviewed here, including:
• Matt Clayson presented his decision to stay in Detroit as having been informed by the city’s role in reshaping American history, providing a more personal example of
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how a broad temporal frame can be used to present positive narratives about the city • Jenenne Whitfield emphasised the Heidelberg Project’s influence by framing it as the result of dogged persistence over multiple decades, over which time funders and other supporters have slowly come to recognise its value • Philip Lauri used a broad temporal/historical lens to support his argument for developing Detroit’s creative industries, instead of hoping for a major manufacturing revival when ‘those days are over’.
This last example reflects a broader pattern of framing the opportunity narrative temporally; while both Detroit and Newcastle are positioned as cities of opportunity, it is clearly indicated in these narratives that this window of opportunity will be short-lived. This is more explicit in Detroit, where comments like Jay Rayford’s exhortation to ‘get in now, while you can’ or Quicken’s suggestion that now is the time to be ‘on the ground floor of economic opportunity’ stress the opportunity’s short-term nature. Framing opportunity as temporary is obviously designed to encourage an immediate response, which may reflect Detroit’s repeated history of failed ‘rebirths’ (see Longo 2006). Yet it can also be read as suggesting that the goal for individuals is less about being involved in the city’s revitalisation over the long term, and more about being a winner in the revitalisation process. Paying attention to the role of time in the opportunity narrative thus reinforces how it offers support for established patterns of gentrification and neoliberal redevelopment. Focusing on time in this way also highlights the differences between this short-term-opportunity narrative and the alternative narrative of ‘lots of small things, over time’.
Space
Not surprisingly, spatial framing plays a part in the way urban reimaging narratives create meaning, reflecting Healey’s (2004) observation about planning narratives more broadly. As noted in Section 5.3.2, Renew and others employ spatial framing to redefine ‘Newcastle’ as ‘the CBD’ in order to portray the city as having been failed by large-scale, official redevelopment processes. This framing refocuses attention on the parts of the city that remain undeveloped, creating a narrative justification for Renew’s alternative redevelopment strategy. In Detroit, Quicken’s Opportunity Detroit commercial used spatial framing in a similar way, visually equating Detroit and downtown in a way that implied downtown is where opportunity exists in the city (see Section 6.4.1). This spatial framing Page 247 of 317 helps reinforce the idea that opportunities in Detroit are primarily market-based—i.e. for tech businesses and start-ups—rather than in alternative approaches to urban living, as promoted by neighbourhood-based advocates like Grace Lee Boggs.
Voice
As Sandercock (2010) explains, the question of voice considers who is doing the storytelling and on whose behalf they speak. A consideration of voice informed the discussion in Sections 7.1 and 7.2, which examined the ways informal image-makers speak to and on behalf of different parts of the community. This is an issue that goes to the heart of questions about the legitimacy and value of informal image-making. In the context of this research, the importance of this issue became particularly apparent during the interview process. In both Detroit and Newcastle, I began by briefly asking the interviewee about their background—whether they grew up in the city or why they moved there and how they became involved in their current work. For the most part, the Novocastrian interviewees provided a brief background but did not engage with these questions too deeply.15 In Detroit, by contrast, the tone and detail of the responses from a number of interviewees suggested these questions were taken more seriously. My interpretation was that these questions were seen as an opportunity to demonstrate a strong connection to the city, in order to contextualise or legitimise the opinions that would follow. On one occasion, a Detroit interviewee even offered a personal history as the starting point for the interview, before I had a chance to ask the question.
This is a somewhat subjective observation, which reflects my perception of the interview experience rather than any direct comments made by participants. Yet it does seem to reflect a broader distinction in how the issue of voice shapes informal image-making in the two cities. Reflecting the city’s past experiences of disinvestment and disempowerment of certain social groups, the question of who is entitled to speak on Detroiters’ behalf is a sensitive one. By contrast, in Newcastle an expression of personal connection with the city seems less important than an expression of genuine place attachment for the city as it is now, whether recently acquired or not. As such, these distinctions seem to reflect the significant social, racial, historical and cultural differences between the two cities. A focus
15 There was one notable exception, Micky Pinkerton, who provided a detailed overview of her childhood in Newcastle, framing her history with the city as central to her strong sense of place attachment.
Page 248 of 317 on voice as an element of narrative analysis facilitates an exploration of such differences as key aspects of the debate about informal image-making’s legitimacy.
7.4 CONCLUSION Looking across the three evaluative perspectives explored in this chapter, it is clear that the idea of informal image-making is intertwined in various ways with many of the key challenges associated with the urban transition from industrialism to post-industrialism, including glocalisation, gentrification, shifting power dynamics, social justice issues, and balancing democracy versus privatisation. For participants, informal image-making provides the opportunity to become a link between global and local imaging processes, bringing with it both the possibility and the responsibility of gaining a greater degree of leverage in key urban debates. For residents of transitional cities, informal image-making offers the prospect of more diverse imagery and narratives emerging about their city, but also the risk of more voices than ever supporting uneven and exclusionary redevelopment processes. For researchers, informal image-making functions as a different lens through which to explore the representational dynamics of cities in transition, adding another layer of insight to the existing body of work more focused on official urban branding efforts in such cities.
But if this analysis chapter ultimately raises more questions than it provides answers, this is not entirely unintentional. Again Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 238) is helpful, explaining the preferred approach to wrapping up case-study research:
I try to leave scope for readers of different backgrounds to make different interpretations and draw diverse conclusions regarding the question of what the case is a case of. The goal is not to make the case study be all things to all people. The goal is to allow the study to be different things to different people.
As this analysis chapter has demonstrated, informal image-makers, residents and researchers all have important questions to ask about what the practice of informal image- making will mean for them and for the city in the longer term. Without wanting to foreclose the possible answers to these questions, the conclusion to this thesis will recapitulate the key observations emerging from this research as an aid to those grappling with these questions in practice and in academia.
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8 CONCLUSION
After more than two decades of academic research on entrepreneurial urban reimaging processes, many aspects of this phenomenon are now well-documented, from the methods by which governments and practitioners conduct reimaging campaigns to the way these efforts relate to broader political and economic processes. Within this literature, however, the focus on reimaging efforts by officials and key stakeholders means only occasional consideration has been given to the role that other urban residents and organisations may play in reshaping the image of the city. This research perspective offers useful insights for cities like New York or Glasgow, where urban branding strategies seem to have had the desired effect. It offers fewer insights into the reimaging landscape of transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle, however, where official branding efforts have been limited in scope and impact. With the goal of better understanding recent efforts to reshape the image of these transitional cities, this research has adopted a broader perspective on urban reimaging processes, looking not just at official place branding efforts but also the role of informal participants.
To achieve this broader perspective, the research has brought together different strands of urban theory, including work on DIY urbanism, place theory and network analysis, to construct a theoretical framework for examining informal reimaging as a practice. This broad theoretical framework has informed the development of the two detailed case studies of Detroit and Newcastle, which document a wide range of reimaging practices in these cities. These case studies contain a number of observations that help to answer the two key research questions at the heart of this project: how is image-making occurring in Detroit and Newcastle, and how is this different from what is currently found in the literature?
This final chapter will provide an overview of the answers to each of these questions before turning to consider the broader significance of these findings. It will subsequently identify some limitations of the current work and outline some specific ideas for future research projects, building on and refining the general research directions contemplated in the previous chapter. Last but not least, it will offer a final thought on what this research tells us about the state of post-industrial urbanism today.
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8.1 HOW IS IMAGE-MAKING OCCURRING IN DETROIT AND NEWCASTLE?
Turning to the first research question, the case studies have demonstrated that reimaging is occurring in Detroit and Newcastle through a mix of formal and informal projects of varying sizes and styles. In both cities, the reimaging landscape has been characterised by the absence of a centralised, coordinated urban branding strategy that effectively integrates the broad swathe of different reimaging efforts occurring. Both Brand Newcastle and Opportunity Detroit seek to play this role, however, and are increasingly connecting with and incorporating the efforts of informal image-makers. Yet, for the time being at least, there remains an unruly quality to the way reimaging is occurring in these cities, making them interesting case studies of how informal participants can participate in reimaging processes.
As well as identifying the role being played by informal image-makers, the case studies highlight some key features of informal reimaging practices. To begin with, they point to a number of shared characteristics of informal image-making and DIY urbanism more broadly. While rarely viewed as a form of DIY urbanism in the academic literature to date, the informal image-making observed here reflects the broader philosophies of this movement: participants are self-selected, their efforts are designed to change the city for the better, and they work around and with official processes as necessary to achieve their desired outcomes. Many of the reimaging projects identified are small-scale and self- funded and promote an incremental, independent vision of urban change, for a mix of pragmatic and philosophical reasons. There are also a number of socio-demographic similarities, with both informal image-making and DIY urbanism dominated by so-called creative class members. These similarities suggest that informal image-making might best be understood as a subset of the broader DIY urbanism trend. As such, the documentation of these projects provides valuable data for further debates about exactly how DIY urbanism should be defined, including the possible nature of a shared urban imaginary underpinning DIY urbanism.
Second, the case studies demonstrate how informal image-makers are using both online and offline networks to great effect, particularly the smaller scale participants. At times, these networks reach across size and philosophical divides, resulting in unexpected alliances. These networks allow the dissemination of urban imagery and narratives locally and externally, while also enabling image-makers to draw inspiration from the growing flow of globally circulating ideas for DIY urban interventions. They provide access to inspiration Page 251 of 317 and an international community of similarly motivated informal image-makers, highlighting how informal reimaging—like both place branding and DIY urbanism—is simultaneously a highly localised and an ever more globalised practice.
A third key feature of the observed reimaging practices is that informal image-makers often suggest place attachment is an important factor in their decision to participate. Participants claimed to be motivated not only by financial or career goals but also by a genuine desire to improve their city and contribute to a better future for its residents. In many cases, informal image-making participants designed their projects to serve both personal and place-based goals concurrently. This approach may be viewed as altruism, on the one hand, or as a savvy way to tap into the current ‘cool factor’ of DIY urbanism for personal gain on the other. Either way, this interrelationship between personal and place-based motivations helps provide an explanation for why informal image-makers are re-engaging with practices that for some decades have largely been perceived as the government’s domain.
Together, these key findings demonstrate that reimaging is occurring in Detroit and Newcastle not only through official and large-scale corporate efforts but also through a network of small-scale, globally-connected participants, driven by both personal and place- based motivations. In this respect, the reimaging landscape in these cities differs from what one might expect from reading the place branding literature, for the reasons outlined in the next section.
8.2 HOW IS REIMAGING IN THESE CITIES DIFFERENT FROM THE LITERATURE?
The answer to this second research question emerges organically from the answer to the first. Given that informal image-making is largely unexamined in the existing place branding literature, the reimaging landscapes observed in Detroit and Newcastle differ from current academic understandings in a number of ways. Most importantly, Chapter 2 examined how the majority of the existing literature on urban branding conceives of the practice as a top- down process, not something that incorporates the broader scope of urban reimaging practices. While it may be useful to limit the meaning of ‘urban branding’ to officially-led processes, this research demonstrates that informal image-making efforts are also relevant to both academics and practitioners. As such, it would be beneficial to complement the existing urban branding literature with a broader literature on urban reimaging, which
Page 252 of 317 explores the contours of informal reimaging practices examined above as well as the connections and similarities between official and unofficial urban reimaging efforts.
Chapter 3 identified three additional theoretical perspectives that would potentially provide a useful framework for developing a new literature on informal reimaging practices, and the relevance of these additional perspectives was subsequently demonstrated in the case studies. Continuing to explore the connections between image- making practices and current and emerging work on DIY urbanism, urban networks and place attachment should provide further valuable insights into the nature of the informal image-making landscape. For example, an examination of the relationship between informal image-making and DIY urbanism raises a number of shared questions to be examined in more depth, including whether the primary audience is ultimately local residents or the global creative class, whether these informal practices lead to increased urban homogenisation, and whether such practices do actually encourage gentrification. In these ways, it will be possible to develop a new literature on informal image-making that complements the existing reimaging literature, extending its applicability beyond successfully rebranded cities like New York to transitional and emerging cities as well.
At the same time, the informal image-making practices documented here point to ways in which official branding itself is a more complex and shifting practice than is often depicted in the procedural branding literature. The analysis in Chapter 7 identifies a handful of key ways. To begin with, the glocalised quality of informal image-making identified here also seems an apt description of formal image-making, highlighting the interrelationship between how reimaging efforts function at different audience scales. This local/global symbiosis is something that the critical urban branding literature has explored but which would be a valuable point of further consideration in the procedural branding literature. Similarly, the fact that informal image-making is shown here to be part of broader image- making networks that reach across traditional urban divisions, such as top-down/bottom- up or large-scale/small-scale, points to a heavy reliance on networks across all forms of reimaging practice, including official efforts. The process of identifying more informal image-making participants will likely provide insights into whether image-making networks—particularly online—are enabling broader participation in governance and/or development processes than is generally envisioned in the urban branding literature. Furthermore, thinking about place attachment as a motivation for informal reimaging points to new ways of thinking about the impact of place branding campaigns. This provides
Page 253 of 317 another possible explanation for why some campaigns are more effective than others, connecting with the growing place branding research on how to engage the local community as ambassadors for official place branding efforts. And finally, adopting a narrative analytical lens here sheds light on the fact that place branding is also a narrative practice and therefore a form of urban meaning-making. This points to the need for practitioners to think seriously about place branding as a form of storytelling conducted on the city’s behalf and as a practice that therefore has broader significance beyond the standard competitive goals. Such an approach may help to address some of the concerns about legitimacy and equity that have long dogged place branding as an urban governance strategy.
Overall, these observations about the contours of informal image-making as a practice are likely to be of interest primarily to urban branding scholars and practitioners. Looking beyond the key research questions underpinning this research, however, the case studies also provide insights that are relevant to broader urban debates, particularly around the way transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle are functioning in the twenty-first century. This additional contribution will be examined in the next section.
8.3 BROADER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH
Looking back over this research as a whole, perhaps its most striking feature is the picture it paints of Detroit and Newcastle as sites of interesting, innovative and sometimes- controversial reimaging practices. While the post-industrial city setting was a clear point of focus in early urban branding research, this has become less pronounced as the literature has expanded to consider cities facing a range of different image-based challenges. In the meantime, still-transitioning post-industrial cities like Detroit and Newcastle have at times been portrayed as relics of a past era, unable to adapt to modern conditions and implement established reimaging lessons. Yet, the case studies presented here demonstrate that these cities continue to offer a useful setting for examining urban reimaging practices, as they are now providing a space for inventive new reimaging and revitalisation practices to emerge.
At the same time, while the culture of innovation and experimentation in these transitional cities has prompted some excited descriptions of them as ‘urban laboratories’ (e.g. Renn 2009b), the observations collected here indicate that such enthusiasm should be tempered. The image-making practices occurring in these cities are undoubtedly innovative, but there is much to suggest they represent another permutation of the continuing influence of Page 254 of 317 entrepreneurialism over the contemporary urban landscape rather than a genuinely new direction. As such, there is a real possibility that these practices will ultimately contribute to many of the same outcomes associated with official place branding, including zero-sum interurban competition, urban homogenisation, gentrification, and increasing urban inequality. So while enthusiasm about the informal image-making practices occurring in these cities is understandable, it is as important as ever to examine these practices from a critical perspective and to question whether they are likely to prove a positive force in shaping the future of transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle over the long term.
One reason for hesitance is that while informal image-making may be a new phenomenon—or at least a new iteration of an old practice—the governance debates it taps into are nothing new. In this respect, informal image-making simply provides a new lens on the same fundamental tensions that have long shaped many aspects of urban life. What is the right balance between formal and informal influences reshaping the city? Should public or private forces have greater input into driving urban change? Are growth and inequality necessarily two sides of the same coin? Does large-scale or small-scale redevelopment ultimately bring the most benefits? These are questions that have different answers, largely informed by one’s political perspective. Yet the two case studies also point to the unsurprising conclusion that these answers also need to be heavily informed by context. For example, while in Newcastle the existence of an influential informal image- maker like Renew provides a useful counterbalance to the official branding campaign, in Detroit the ever-expanding reimaging influence of Quicken raises concerns, given the lack of any equally powerful alternative perspective. As this suggests, the ultimate assessment of informal image-making may depend on whether it is functioning as an alternative to or as a replacement for official branding strategies.
Similarly, looking beyond the structural qualities of informal image-making to the thematic, both the opportunity and DIY narratives identified here highlight the persistent challenge of finding the right balance between public and private responsibility in urban governance. If seen as justifications for an increasing reduction in public services, in favour of individuals ‘seizing opportunity’ and having DIY input into their city’s development, these reimaging narratives may help to shift this balance in a way that has pernicious effects for many urban residents. And even in cases where informal image-makers are promoting undeniably alternative and proactive change visions—Detroit as a place for many small things or Newcastle as the site of successful incremental redevelopment—it seems highly likely that
Page 255 of 317 these visions will prove to be ‘meanwhile’ solutions. They may prevail for the immediate future, but if they succeed, is it possible to prevent large-scale, corporate redevelopment interests from coming in and taking over? The only way is likely to be through government regulation, which itself runs counter to the notion of these being informal or alternative approaches to redevelopment. Much the same assessment can be made of DIY urbanism more broadly, raising questions about its alignment with more radical political ideas like the right to the city.
Given these inherent tensions, how then might informal image-making practices ultimately be judged from a social-justice perspective? On the positive side, it is possible to see this new wave of informal engagement with image-making practices as a limited yet significant step towards greater public participation in the processes of urban change. It may be unclear whether this largely online engagement will ultimately prove purely symbolic or will actually translate into any significant degree of power for informal image-makers in the long run. Nonetheless, it is at least a sign of a potential shift in urban power dynamics in the network society, with a new group of participants having the chance to get a foot in the door. On the pessimistic side, it is equally possible to see informal image-making as a sign of the creeping brandification and commodification of urban life, an indication that even more residents have now been convinced to see the city as something to be repackaged and sold. Greater public participation in informal image-making might therefore be viewed as a step backwards, a worrying sign of the ongoing decline of democratic processes as a defining feature of urban life.
A further possibility, taking a longer view, is to see the emergence of informal image- making in Detroit and Newcastle as something more cyclical, a sign of the return to pre- industrial conditions, with the creative class taking over the role of the boosters who promoted land and opportunities for personal profit, unencumbered by government regulation. On this view, there is an air of inevitability to such cycles of regulation versus privatisation, and informal image-making will eventually be reined in by regulation when the balance tips too far in favour of informal participants. For my part, I lean towards this third interpretation, seeing informal image-making more as a sign and symptom of underlying structural problems in these cities than a long-term solution or evidence of a new urban paradigm. Yet a small part of me also remains a little more optimistic, swayed from my big-picture assessment by my emotional response to the genuine enthusiasm of the informal image-making participants interviewed here.
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This ambivalent response may in fact point to the most intriguing aspect of informal image- making. While in many practical respects informal image-making is just place branding by different people, it is also distinguished from most official efforts by its role as an outlet for a seemingly genuine and powerful sense of place attachment, both for the image-makers and for local observers. It seems unlikely to prove an effective long-term economic development strategy, any more than place branding has. Yet it is a mechanism for expressing the human significance of urbanism, even if this expression is filtered through an increasingly commodified neoliberal conceptualisation of the city. While both official and unofficial reimaging strategies may simply be a ‘gloss’ on more grounded economic development programs, they nonetheless hold varying degrees of symbolic value for urban residents. This emotional value is evident in the informal image-maker motivations described here, which constitute arguably the most significant empirical contribution of this research. This observation also helps to explain why place branding remains popular despite limited evidence of success.
By looking at image-making as narrative-making, as this research has sought to do, it becomes easier to uncover the emotional, cultural and entirely human elements of this practice, which the procedural urban branding literature often serves to minimise. It is these human aspects of image-making that are ultimately the most engaging, and it is in informal image-making that such human aspects are most readily apparent. As a researcher, I have learned at least as much about Detroit and Newcastle from informal imagery and narratives as official ones; certainly it is only by seeing both that one can begin to grasp the full scope of these places. If this project is to be boiled down to one key academic contribution, then, it lies in its demonstration of the potential of such a research approach, which grapples with the complex interplay between formal and informal image practices and which sees informal image-making as equally significant and meaningful as formal image-making for understanding the dynamics of the contemporary city. As such, it is my hope that the long-term impact of this research is to encourage similar work on informal image-making in other cities around the world. While the reimaging landscapes in other places may not be as unruly as in Detroit and Newcastle, all are likely to have informal reimaging participants working to reshape the city’s image in innovative ways.
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8.4 LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH
While I believe this research makes some helpful contributions, it is also important to note that it has a number of limitations. The most significant limitation is that the focus on image-making participants in this study means it provides an incomplete perspective on urban image-making as a practice. Most notably, the research does not explore the views of uninvolved residents or outside observers, meaning the broader reaction to and impact of informal image-making practices remains unclear. The limited attention these alternative perspectives receive is not meant to suggest they lack interest or importance, however. Rather, because the goal of this project was to understand how image-making is occurring in cities like Detroit and Newcastle, the focus is on voices and stories directly involved in those processes. It would be both interesting and valuable to undertake a complementary study of how formal and informal image-making is interpreted by residents who are not involved in these processes—particularly those disenfranchised urban residents whose voices are not often heard in public debate.
At the same time, given the diversity of the image-making landscape, particularly in Detroit, there is undoubtedly room for further research that showcases the perspectives of an even broader range of local participants in informal image-making, as the number of interviewees here was reasonably small. Furthermore, the need to define and focus primarily on exploring informal image-making meant there was a degree of artificial line- drawing that occurred in terms of selecting participants, leaving associated participants like tourism officials outside the frame. While this ring-fencing seems inevitable when researching something as amorphous as image-making practices, it nonetheless reinforces the need for further research that reconsiders these choices and adds new layers of perspectives.
Turning to consider the substance of the research, there is also the limitation that interviewees were not asked more explicitly about the relationship between their projects and issues of legitimacy, democracy, and representation. These issues emerged as an increasingly important aspect of the research as the interviews progressed. This was particularly the case in Detroit, where they were often raised in connection with broader debates over redevelopment and gentrification. Reflecting the iterative research design, these issues were incorporated into the list of interview questions over the course of the project. However, given the importance of these issues, it would be valuable to make them
Page 258 of 317 a central part of future research efforts in this area, to gain clearer insights into how informal image-makers perceive the social and political impact of their efforts.
8.5 AVENUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
A number of broad avenues for further academic inquiry have already been outlined in the analysis in Chapter 7, which identified key elements of informal image-making that require further definition and exploration. These have been supplemented by a number of further observations throughout this conclusion, both in the summation of how informal image- making differs from the existing literature and in the overview of key limitations of the research. While these broad areas of inquiry could be translated into any number of different research projects, a few obvious possibilities present themselves. These include conducting survey-based research documenting the particular types of place attachment shaping informal image-making; undertaking more sophisticated mapping of social media’s role in reimaging processes; theoretical work connecting the narratives of informal image- making with broader debates about the nature of a shared ‘imaginary’ underpinning DIY urbanism; more targeted work applying established conceptual frameworks like Lefebvre’s conceptual triad in the analysis of particular images and representations; and media analysis that traces the use of shared narratives like opportunity and the DIY city in other cities around the world.
At the same time, the findings here also raise a number of issues that are likely to be of particular concern to urban planners and other urban professionals, relating to how the planning profession should best respond to the growing trend towards informal urban participation. Self-selected participants like informal image-makers present a potentially valuable yet unwieldy resource for planning departments struggling with diminished resources. Should planners seek to develop programs which facilitate such informal forms of urban participation, or does this distract from the role of government in providing fundamental, broadly targeted urban resources? Can the visions of DIY or incremental development promoted by informal image-makers be implemented in an official capacity, or are such futures only possible if planners step back completely? And what might it mean for the planning profession if informal approaches come to be seen as more achievable and effective than implementing official urban change processes, including urban branding campaigns? These are questions with which planners everywhere are grappling but which
Page 259 of 317 are of particular relevance in transitional cities like Detroit and Newcastle, and which will likely shape post-industrial urban informal practice for some years to come.
8.6 A FINAL THOUGHT
While this research project has provided some important observations and contributions, ultimately it has raised more questions than it provides answers. As noted in Chapter 7, this is a deliberate analytical approach, reflecting the broad and non-directive goals of case- study research and the relatively undefined quality of the phenomenon under examination. At the same time, it also reflects the nature of the cities being studied, which despite many years of research on post-industrial urbanism continue to present new and thought- provoking questions for urban researchers and practitioners to resolve. Both Detroit and Newcastle are complex, challenging and sometimes confronting places, deserving of ongoing analysis not just in public debates but also in academic research.
In keeping with the personal goal outlined in the introduction to this thesis, I hope this research proves to be a useful contribution to this broader debate, not only for researchers but also for the people on the ground working to make these places better. The contribution offered is a detailed telling of the story behind the unruly urban brands of these cities: how they have developed and what they might mean for these cities. It is only a small contribution, but it is nonetheless a tale in which I have found more insights and intrigue than I might have hoped almost four years ago, when I first considered the image of these places and asked—‘So, what’s the story?’
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APPENDIX 1: EMAIL TO POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS
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Example email sent to potential research participants
Dear [insert]
I am a PhD student in the Faculty of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales, and am conducting research about the role of practices like urban branding and place-making in reshaping image and identity in post-industrial cities. [Newcastle/Detroit] is one of the case studies for my project, and part of my research involves conducting interviews with Novocastrians/Detroiters who are involved with reshaping the image and identity of the city. I would be very keen to interview you for my research, if you would be willing to participate. The interview would take approximately 30-45 minutes. If you are interested, more information about the project is available in the attached Project Information Statement and Consent Form.
Please do not hesitate to contact me by return email if you have any questions about the project.
Kind regards,
Laura Crommelin
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APPENDIX 2: PROJECT INFORMATION STATEMENT
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APPENDIX 3: PROJECT CONSENT FORM
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APPENDIX 4: HUMAN RESEARCH ETHICS APPROVAL FORMS
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APPENDIX 5: LIST OF INITIAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
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Interview questions: Reshaping image and identity in post-industrial cities
1. I’d like to start by asking you about your background – did you grow up in [Detroit/Newcastle], and if not, when did you move here and why?
2. Can you please give me a brief overview of your involvement with [relevant urban organisation/project]?
3. Please tell me a little about the history of the [organisation/project]. What made [you/the council etc.] think this was the best way to help change [Detroit/Newcastle]?
4. What have been the key successes of the [organisation/project]?
5. What are the key areas for improvement?
6. How does the [organisation/project] measure success or failure?
7. What has been the local response? Has there been any criticism?
8. How do you think the [organisation/project] has changed internal and external perceptions of the city?
9. [Where relevant] What do you think about [other key projects/organisations]? How have they contributed to [reshaping the image/identity] of [Detroit/Newcastle]?
10. What are the things you love most about [Detroit/Newcastle]?
11. What are the main challenges you think [Detroit/Newcastle] faces?
12. As a local, do you think your perception of [Detroit/Newcastle] differs from the perception of visitors or outsiders? If so, how/why?
13. Which other cities, if any, do you think [Detroit/Newcastle] should look to for inspiration?
14. If you had to use one sentence to describe the sort of city you would like [Detroit/Newcastle] to become in the future, what would it be?
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