Abstract
City branding is not only increasingly practiced in cities in established economies, but also among municipal governments in countries, until quite recently, rather closed off from the outside world. One country with a strong drive to engage in urban (re)development in the post-oil era through enhancing its ‘ecological modernization’ is Iran. Megacities in Iran have all begun to venture into making profiles of what they think they are or would like to be. However, some of the adopted city branding strategies lack sophistication. In this article, the authors examine what indicators can be used for evaluating the credibility of city brands and apply these to Iran’s 15 megacities. After offering brief descriptions of the generic features of each of these cities, they map their use of city brand identities and popular city labels related to ecological modernization and analyze the credibility of their city branding practices. Based on their findings, the authors distinguish five types of cities and explain what makes some types more credible in their use of brands than others. Generally speaking, compared to cities in other nations, Iranian cities pay special attention to historical, natural, cultural, and religious aspects.
Highlights
As noted at various places in the academic literature, city branding practices have grown in importance among ambitious municipal governments in recent decades [1,2,3,4]
We have examined the city branding practices among the fifteen most prominent cities in Iran, known as its 15 ‘megacities’, each having more than 500,000 inhabitants
Like cities in other nations and regions around the world, Iranian cities have increasingly engaged in city branding practices that are potentially conducive to industrial transformation and ecological modernization
Summary
As noted at various places in the academic literature, city branding practices have grown in importance among ambitious municipal governments in recent decades [1,2,3,4]. They are used as a tool to enhance a city’s image in the competitive global arena to lure investors, corporations, a talented workforce, visitors, and residents into the city. Much of the literature deals primarily with city branding strategies, practices, and experiences collected in cities located in wealthy and developed nations, but knowledge of how this works in non-Western countries is less widespread, especially in those where opening up to market influence and global capitalism is a recent phenomenon.
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