Editorial

Citation

Medway, D., Roberts, G. and Steadman, C. (2018), "Editorial", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 2-5. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMD-01-2018-0009

Taking stock

The first issue of the year is always a good opportunity to take stock of a journal’s progress. At the beginning of each January, the editorial team for the Journal of Place Management and Development (JPMD) always receives a Journal Performance Report for the past 12 months of activity. The figures relating to 2017 look encouraging. In terms of downloads of JPMD articles, we acquired 33,723 hits in 2017; up 8 per cent on the previous year. It is also interesting to see where these downloads are being made. UK institutions account for slightly less than half the 2017 download total, but there also appears to be a steady stream of interest in the journal from a diverse range of countries across the globe, including Malaysia, Australia, China, Indonesia, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and the USA. This is a testament to the truly international readership of JPMD, something which we will continue to nurture and support.

The number of citations to articles published within JPMD also reached 464 in 2017, a 70 per cent increase on 2016. Just over half of these were self-citations made in other articles published within the journal, but JPMD is also getting cited in other good journals in the field on a regular basis. These kinds of metrics are very important for developing the journal’s profile and esteem into the future, particularly in journal performance databases like Scimago. It will be interesting to see whether the previous year’s uplift in citations to papers published in the JPMD has a positive effect on the journal’s positioning in Scimago subject categories like Urban Studies and Geography, and Planning and Development. One thing that we will know shortly is whether the JPMD has managed to gain entry into the Chartered Association of Business Schools’ Academic Journal Guide; a revision of the guide is expected to come in spring of this year and our journal applied for entry into this at the 2* level. If we manage to obtain this rating, it will be a significant achievement for a publication that has been around for just over a decade. If we do not obtain 2* status, it is something we will continue to strive towards.

In terms of the editorial team of the JPMD, there are some recent minor changes to note. Dominic Medway has moved from the role of Academic Editor to simply Editor, and essentially is in charge of the day-to-day running of the journal. However, Cathy Parker will continue in the Editor-in-Chief role, as she is able to provide an invaluable overview of how the JPMD’s direction of travel in intellectual and academic terms aligns with the mission of the wider Institute of Place Management (IPM). This is important, as one of the journal’s unique selling points and qualities is the fact it is directly linked with a professional body that is implementing place management on the ground. Such a relationship should give authors publishing in the journal a degree of confidence that their work is being read by IPM members and place management practitioners who have open access to the journal’s content. This increases the likelihood that research published within the journal can have real-world impact.

In terms of the rest of the editorial team, Sebastian Zenker and Cecilia Pasquinelli will continue in their roles as Associate Editors (AEs), where they undertake invaluable review work for the journal, and Heather Skinner has now also agreed to take on an AE role, to help cover papers with a more tourism-based focus. Ares Kalandides continues to make a major contribution to the journal through editing special issues on topics of current interest in the field, but we continue to welcome special issue proposals from others. Last but not least, the editorial team would not be complete without the outstanding work of Gareth Roberts, who takes an active role in helping authors tighten their work at the minor revisions stage.

With the growing success of a journal, there are challenges to be faced. Most significant of these is the fact that the JPMD is receiving an increasing number of submissions. This means that the bar for the standard and quality of manuscripts that might be published in the journal is steadily rising. It is therefore more important than ever that authors take time to craft their paper submissions, so that they fit with the journal’s aims and scope, and have the best possible chance of getting past the Editor’s desk and through peer review successfully. If there are four simple things that help towards a paper submission’s chance of achieving these ends, they are as follows:

1. It makes and articulates a clear contribution to the field of place management and development, both practically and theoretically. In other words, the paper demonstrates relevance.

2. It is underpinned with appropriate academic theory, unless it is a pure practitioner paper.

3. Where relevant, the paper is methodologically sound and shows rigour in the collection and analysis of empirical data.

4. The work is logically structured and written in coherent English.

Unfortunately, papers that do not meet these simple criteria are increasingly likely to be desk rejected, as there is a pressure on space within the journal, and many submissions competing for published slots. One thing we are trying to do, however, is be a little more flexible on the issue of publication space, meaning that some issues of the JPMD may now have more than the typical six papers. This emphasises the fact that we will always try and publish good work, no matter how constrained we are by annual page limits and quotas. In this issue, for example, we have eight papers, a testament to the fact that the JPMD is in rude health.

Maria João Custódio, António Azevedo and Fernando Perna explore the impact of sports events on residents’ everyday lives and the local territory’s economy in their paper Sport events and local communities: a partnership for placemaking. Drawing on the case study of the Azores Rally, the authors address the limited existing literature studying the impact of sports events from the residents’ perspectives. Based upon a survey with local resident spectators on São Miguel Island, the paper finds that residents’ satisfaction with the sporting event is positively influenced by the quality of life provided by the host destination, particularly in terms of entertainment and local gastronomy. Furthermore, the authors discuss how residents’ self-esteem is impacted by this type of event. Finally, the paper identifies that, although sports events can contribute positively to the local economy, they can create issues for residents such as difficulties with car parking. Subsequently, the authors contribute insights into the central role of the local community as an active stakeholder which influences the sporting event’s key success factors and drives place-making.

In Unveiling the potentials of wine tourism: the way ahead for Limassol, Sotiroula Liasidou studies the rich wine culture of the seaside city Limassol found in Cyprus. Drawing upon Pine and Gilmore’s work into the ‘experience economy’ and their ‘4Es’ model, the paper investigates the ways in which Limassol’s wine history and culture influences everyday life in this place. Findings from semi-structured interviews with those involved in wine production in the region illustrate how Limassol has the potential to become a thriving tourist destination, as it provides visitors with educational, aesthetic, entertainment and escapist experiences, as found in the ‘4Es’ model. The author, however, observes how a lack of a constructive tourism policy focusing upon wine tourism is a hindrance to creating a stronger place identity in Limassol. The paper thus builds upon the existing literature surrounding consumption experiences and provides understandings of how tourist destinations should create unique experiences for visitors.

Lúcia Pato and Aurora Teixeira’s Rural entrepreneurship: the tale of a rare event investigates whether new rural ventures represent effective rural entrepreneurship, or whether they are actually entrepreneurial ventures that happen to be located in rural settings. The authors collect data from 408 new ventures headquartered in Portuguese business incubators and science parks, of which 142 are located in rural areas. The findings suggest that only a small percentage of the ventures operating in rural areas constitute examples of effective ‘rural entrepreneurship’, with the business of the majority being unconnected to their rural environment setting. The authors argue that the extant literature on entrepreneurship has neglected the empirical implications of mixing, confounding and/or merging the concepts of ‘rural entrepreneurship’ and ‘entrepreneurship activities in rural areas’. This study seeks to address this, discussing and analysing the empirical boundaries of such concepts and uncovering the extent of pure ‘rural entrepreneurship’.

In Influence of perceived city brand image on emotional attachment to the city, Simon Manyiwa, Constantinos Priporas and Xuan Lorna Wang compare the effects of perceived brand image of the city on emotional attachment to the city across two groups: local residents and visitors. Through a survey of residents of the city of Bratislava, Slovakia, and 100 visitors to the city, the study establishes that perceived city brand image does significantly influence emotional attachment to the city across both groups. Interestingly, the study concludes that the influence of affective city image on emotional attachment to the city is substantially more pronounced among city residents than visitors. The influence of cognitive city image on emotional attachment to the city does not vary across the two groups. As well as reaffirming the multidimensionality of perceived city brand image, these findings have potential implications for city tourism marketers, who the authors suggest should focus on improving city brand images to enhance tourists’ emotional attachment to the city to promote repeat visits. In addition, the paper’s focus on Slovakia, a city that, although well established in itself, is still in its infancy as an established tourism destination, provides an under-researched context for the study.

Francisco Sarabia-Sanchez and Maria Cerda-Bertomeu’s paper, Expert stakeholders’ expectations of how the public sector should act in place branding projects, conceives of a place brand as a public instrument, and explores the role of public sector stakeholders in the place branding process. Based on a web survey conducted with four types of ‘expert’ (politicians, scholars, public managers and consultants) in Latin America and Spain, the authors analyse the alignment and polarisation among these stakeholders regarding their expectations of how the public sector should act in the creation of place brands. They find that these stakeholders have a high agreement that the public sector should have an active role in place branding, and should also collaborate with the private and voluntary sectors. Subsequently, the paper addresses the underexplored literature surrounding experts’ (sometimes contrasting) expectations of the role that the public sector should play in place branding. The authors also contribute insights into how more open inter-stakeholder channels of communication could be fostered earlier on in the place branding process to minimise potential conflicts of interest, generate shared visions and foster more collaborative place branding efforts.

Cities from developing countries are striving to compete on a global scale, battling to attract and retain their residents by offering higher ‘liveability’ – a greater standard of living. Liveability, sense of place and behavioural intentions: an exploratory investigation of the Dubai urban area, by Laurent Tournois, examines the extent to which liveability influences a resident’s sense of place and behavioural intentions in a rapidly developing urban area. To this end, a survey of 362 residents of Dubai (UAE) is carried out. The findings demonstrate that residents’ preferences for different types of liveability attributes influences their sense of place. In turn, this shapes their behavioural intentions towards their place of residence. From a public policy standpoint, the study suggests that local authorities must identify a distinct set of economic and non-economic characteristics that will encourage residents to stay longer in the place that they live. As such, enhancing liveability represents a critical strategic initiative for cities from developing countries to make them a great place to live, and to grow and sustain their population figures.

In their paper Linking place attachment and social interaction: Towards meaningful public places, Norsidah Ujang, Marek Kozlowski and Suhardi Maulan explore the relations between place attachment and social interaction within public spaces. Drawing upon the case of Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and observations and interviews with users of three public spaces in the city, the authors seek to understand the social meanings attached to places across a culturally diverse mix of users. They argue that the street can facilitate social activities and interactions, which can in turn lead to greater place attachment. However, the authors find that in Kuala Lumpur, public spaces often provide limited opportunities for sitting and interacting with others. This is since these spaces are dominated by commercial use, and are thus considered to be private. The paper, therefore, indicates how more meaningful public places can be fostered when they provide a social function beyond the commercial realm. Subsequently, the authors contribute insights into how more resilient and sustainable urban places can be created for a diverse mix of users.

In their paper, How community event narratives contribute to place branding, Trudie Walters and Andrea Insch discuss the importance of community event narratives to the place branding process. Indeed, the authors argue that community event narratives can enhance place attractiveness for residents by building a sense of community. Based on an analysis of the public narratives of 14 community events, the paper explores the central role of the people and the place in community event narratives and brand image. The authors, in turn, present an alternative model to traditional city branding campaigns by demonstrating how place branding practitioners could align their branding strategies more closely with the values of the community by understanding community event narratives. Hence, the paper proposes a more values-based, event-led place branding strategy that could attract new residents who share the same values as the local community. It thus builds on the place branding and event studies literature by contributing insights into the significance of smaller local community events to place branding.

Finally, this issue of the journal includes a conference report by Mihalis Kavaratzis from the 2nd Consumer Research Summit – Place and Identity: Advancing Theory and Practice, held in June 2017. The beautiful city of Chester providing the setting for stimulating discussion and debate around place, identity and branding.