Context of the CIUTAT project

“Increased competition between European cities has led to a new paradox: the more outside competition the cities confront, the smoother they must operate on the inside. Cities can no longer afford a freewheeling situation, but need to harness their internal resources. Urban policies become both the instrument itself and act as the showcase of this effort. A dynamic urban policy becomes part of the image of a city and acts as a catalyst for its symbolic economy” (Verwijnen, 2000).

Tourism and culture, two of the fastest-growing industries in Europe, both play an important role in urban image creation processes, providing a major rationale for the aesthicisation of city landscapes, as well as in shaping the urban environment to meet the needs of visitors and residents. Indeed, the growth of cultural consumption (of art, food, fashion, music, tourism) and the industries that cater to it has fuelled the ‘symbolic economy’ of cities (Zukin, 1995). In more concrete terms, a city’s image is linked to its physical assets but it is not just the sum of those assets – it is also a series of experiences, deriving from the composition of the urban environment, the living culture of the place and the limitless imagination of the person experiencing the place. City images are perpetuated both through visuals and narratives (as in marketing campaigns, promotional brochures and tourist advertising) but also by more tangible means such as physical transformation through public works, historical preservation and regeneration and redevelopment programmes; all amounting to the production of urban space (Lefebvre, 1991). Prior to their growth as urban destinations, ‘second tier’ industrial age cities such as Barcelona had possessed interesting architecture and a marketable past, but signifiers of this past had since been abandoned, left to dereliction or renewed long ago. New narratives of regeneration, urban culture and heritage and symbolism have been employed in the conversion to ‘tourist city’ status.

However, as more European cities compete in (re)producing and promoting themselves for tourism and culture using similar mechanisms, their ability to create uniqueness diminishes, often leading to the ‘serial reproduction’ of culture (Harvey, 1989) or even ‘placelessness’ (Relph, 1974). A frequent response to this increasing homogeneity or ‘serial monotony’ of urban landscapes is the staging of major events, which are seen as more flexible and distinctive carriers of the symbolic capital of the city. Such major cultural events have been termed the ‘image builders’ of [post]modern tourism (Hall, 1992) and by creating opportunities for cultural consumption and the attraction of tourists, they arguably offer not just short-term benefits in terms of visitor spending, but can also help to position a city as a desirable place to live, work and visit. Such strategies based on the production of urban space for tourism and cultural objectives generally aim to enhance (or modify) the image of the city. Additionally, the promotion of these events also conveys images of the destination and region within which the event is located for the generation of longer-term benefits; the building of social capacity and cultural capital of citizens and the physical legacy of new urban cultural space.

Surprisingly, in spite of the growing number of events being utilised for city marketing, there are relatively few studies that attempt to assess their impacts on the host city and even fewer that analyse their image effects. Therefore, assumptions made about the image-enhancement benefits of hosting a cultural event are often based on little or no evaluation of the actual presence or relative durability of any images created. As such, the complementarity between the anticipated and the actual image effects of major cultural events forms an important focus of the proposed research.

Such events typically involve the physical (re)production of urban spaces and often are embedded within major urban regeneration schemes and since major events usually occupy significant spaces within the urban fabric, they have major physical implications for residents, for visitors and for the ‘sense of place’ of the host city. This is a further point ignored in previous studies – the real physical effects of such image-based place promotion strategies. These physical changes might or might not have beneficial image effects in the longer term and therefore, it is important to understand the processes of their initiation and planning from an image evaluation perspective. As city form changes physically due to the production of space for tourism and cultural gains; the city’s image will subsequently change, having a knock-on effect on urban form and ultimately for social justice. Therefore the relationship between physical changes and image modification emerging from major cultural events is also important as an area of focus for the research proposed here.

Cities that are (re)produced for tourism and culture objectives are also socially endowed entities. In this respect, the wider societal dimensions of this research involve quality of life and social cohesion in European cities (for residents) and the subsequent quality of the urban experience (for visitors). The latter is important in terms of encouraging repeat visits and is an important area of research in the context of European cities and competitiveness in general. The potential for common images between visitors and residents does exist, through the inter-subjectivities of communally perceived spaces, but all too often policymakers assume that this is harmonious between all groups concerned.

The CIUTAT  project will pay particular attention to the degree of convergence and divergence between the city images held by visitors, residents and policymakers. More broadly, it aims to understand the ways in which images are created and projected, but also how they are received and recalled by (potential) visitors and investors. A case study of Barcelona will be used to examine these issues in detail and to allow transnationally applicable lessons to be drawn for other European cities in maintaining a competitive edge and ensuring wider social and cultural benefits when hosting major cultural events in urban areas.

Project objectives

The overall aim of the research will be to analyse the effects of major international cultural events on the image of and the urban space within European host cities, using the Catalan city of Barcelona1 as a principal case study. Empirically, the research will adopt a critical realist, multi-stakeholder perspective on the image impacts of the Universal Forum of Cultures 2004 event (UFC 2004) on Barcelona. This UNESCO-supported major international event will run from April until September 2004 and proposes to be similar in spirit and scale to the Olympic Games and International Expositions, but based on world cultures.

The objectives of the project are:

(a)    to analyse the broad European context of the production of urban space for tourism and culture objectives on city image;

(b)    to evaluate the modification of city place images over the life course of a specific cultural event (as a destination and as a place to live and work);

(c)    to examine the durability of positive image effects from cultural events long term, using a longitudinal approach (pre- and post- event);

(d)    to analyse the context and implications of policy decisions to stage major cultural events in European cities, including the importance of city image in the decision.

(e)    to draw lessons for European cities on maximising the potential of major cultural events for image enhancement and the preservation of distinctive urban place identities in the longer term.

It is anticipated that the findings will show a marked change in city image in the months around the Forum Barcelona 2004 event, but will also show how durable these impacts of cultural events can be on city images in the medium term, so the results therefore have a major practical function to fulfill. CIUTAT will also advance the field by bringing together the (hitherto demarcated) ‘tourism’ and ‘cultural’ interests in major cultural events – which have previously worked in parallel as opposed to in genuine collaboration: it is implicitly assumed that one interest is beneficial for the other but there has been no overt investigation of this.

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