Our experience in “Cultural Marketing and Communication”
In this course( Msc New Media and Journalism, Panteion University, Athens)and in our roles as “cultural managers” we had to turn Athens into a “smart city”. But beforehand we had to “explore” meanings like “smart city” and “city branding” and the best way was through different case studies and examples of cities such as, Melbourne, Berlin, Barcelona.
Today’s globalized and networked world is a competitive environment. Cities or places are just like companies: those with a strong brand find it much easier to sell their products and services and attract people and investment. However, city branding is not just for tourists. According to Ignasi de Delàs, ECM President : “Cities compete more than ever for private investments, business conferences, world sports events, talents in research and science, film productions, political summits, international students, cruise ships, international headquarters and new airline connections. Ultimately, it’s all a battle for job growth, prosperity and quality of life. The winners get a global window and a place in the sun. The losers remain in the shadows among the non-places of globalisation”.
From all the above, it is safe to tell that the purpose of Smart City Branding is to give visibility of intangible assets (Brand) of any smart city/region around the world. So after understanding those meanings we started to study examples of different cities such as the cities of Berlin, Istanbul, Barcelona and some cities in Oceania/Australia that developed numerous projects, improving their status.
In the end of our “journey” in city branding we used the citizen canvas to put our ideas into praxis. The site of citizen canvas states: “The Citizen canvas is a collaborative change tool to help various groups of stakeholders to work together to arrive at a common vision for what a smart city should be following a citizen centric design process”. Using that tool, we created our own project “Athenshood”. “Athenshood” is a data based platform/application created with the prospect to become an internet community. Its aim is to build engagement between citizens, tourists, neighborhoods and the city of Athens.
This course offered us important and up-to-date concepts. Moreover, we accumulated knowledge and developed skills. We observed modern cities with a different point of view and especially our own city. We found out that team-working, citizen engagement and collaboration is the key to liveable and smart cities.
Our team: Zarda Myrsini, Kontolatou Marianna, Kontomichis Venedictos, Tsivgeli Maria
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Other interesting Links:
http://www.citizencanvas.org
http://www.europeancitiesmarketing.com/city-branding-is-not-just-for-tourists/
http://smartcitybrand.com/about
https://ceosforcities.org/branding-your-city/
http://www.fomentosansebastian.eus/donostiainn/en/news/979-citybranding-how-do-the-most-successful-cities-in-the-world-communicate-their-brand
