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Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on place marketing by focusing on the concept of strategic needs, i.e. the set of strategic priorities that a place could achieve in a medium- to long-term horizon to improve its development.

The research examines the strategic needs of four local territorial systems (LTSs), i.e. clusters of municipalities that share social, economic and spatial similarities, located in a southern Italian province, through an analysis of their competitive positioning over three temporal instants.

For each LTS, the analysis identified a number of development goals that local policymakers could pursue and the strategies most suitable to achieve the said goals.

This paper proposes a new methodological approach to set the development goals of local areas based on the simultaneous assessment of their attractiveness and competitive capacity.

Many scholars have addressed the concept of place-making, yet there is still little formal knowledge about how major societal changes have influenced place-making. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is an earthshaking event that changed the world, with regard to geopolitics and the internationalisation of our cities and places, thus generating many urban and tourism developments. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse how the term “place-making” has been variously defined and developed as a concept since the time of the fall. Furthermore, it intends to assess whether such analysis can reveal potential competition and synergy for places between tourism and urban developments.

To address these two questions, a systematic quantitative literature review of research published between 1991 and 2016 has been used, providing a 25 years overview that reveals the current trends in the research on this topic and highlights the gaps in the existing literature.

Findings concerns the variety of definitions, demonstrating the complexity of place-making; four emerging topics (place-making and globalisation; participation; conflicts/challenges; and trendy strategies); and a lack of synergy between tourism and urban development regarding place-making.

The major limitation to this research is the language criterion, restricted to English, thus automatically eliminating articles written in any other languages.

This paper can help key stakeholders to re-assess the place-making strategies in light of the findings.

This research demonstrates the emergence of new trends in place-making that need to be addressed to fulfil societal demands and own changes. It can be used as a basis to start reflection and further development for communities and a wide variety of stakeholders.

The originality of this research resides in the 25-year overview that displays gaps and trends around place-making.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and make sense of the confluence of theoretical and practical preoccupations that contribute to the current interest in place management.

The paper presents an overview and interpretation of trends that have led both policy‐makers and academics to an interest in the management and development of places. It demonstrates how various streams of thought coalesce into five key concepts: participation, distinctiveness, knowledge, relationships and values – that provide, at their meeting point, a cross‐disciplinary conceptual framework for place management and development.

The field of place management is located – both strategically and challengingly – at the crux of key contemporary policy issues in development and governance. There is a need to draw together insights across disciplines into a conceptual framework that will help both practitioners and academics make sense of the challenges we face.

Understanding where we have come from helps them to chart where we are going. There is opportunity to build a new a theoretical and policy framework around place management that articulates why and how place is important in the context of larger development and governance debates.

As a big‐picture overview of a cutting‐edge space, this paper is intended to help both practitioners and academics position their work in its broader context.

Strategic analyses of Mediterranean destinations have well documented the impacts of mass tourism, including high levels of seasonality and landscape degradation as a result of the “anarchic” nature of tourism development in these destinations. The lack of a strategic framework is widely recognised in academic and popular discourse. What is often missing, however, is local voice and attention to the local particularities that have shaped the course of tourism development in these places. Focusing on narratives of people living and working in Santorini, Greece, this paper aims to examine tourism development as a particular cultural experience of development.

The authors conducted narrative interviews with 22 local residents and entrepreneurs. Participants belonged to different occupational sectors and age groups. These are supplemented with secondary data, consisting of books, guides, documentaries and online news articles on Santorini.

The analysis and interpretation by the authors identify remembered, experienced and imagined phases of tourism development, which we label as romancing tourism, disenchantment and reimagining tourism.

Professionalisation has certainly allowed the improvement of quality standards, but in transforming hosts into service providers, a distance and objectivity is created that results in a loss of authenticity. Authenticity is not just about what the tourists seek but also about what a place is or can be, and the “sense of place” that residents have and use in their everyday lives.

Local narratives offer insights into the particularities of tourism development and the varied, contested and dynamic meanings of places. Place narratives can therefore be a useful tool in developing a reflexive and participative place-making process.

The study serves the understanding of how tourism, subject to the global-local relations, is a particular experience of development that shapes a place’s identity. The case of Santorini shows how place-making involves changing, multilayered desires and contradictory visions of tourism and development. This makes socio-cultural and environmental challenges hard to resolve. It is thus challenging to change the course of development, as various actors at the local level and beyond have diverse interests and interpretations of what is desirable for the place.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and clarify the relationship between creative developments and the concepts of place and placemaking.

This paper systematically reviews scholarly literature on the relationship between creative developments and the concepts of place, and critically analyzes the extent to which creative developments acknowledge different aspects of place.

The findings demonstrate that the relationship between creative development and place is multifaceted, and combines physical, cultural and social aspects of place. However, the literature also calls for the greater valuation of particular facets of place, including the daily experiences of communities and local cultural producers, alongside symbolic and imagined aspects of place, all of which inform either positive or negative perceptions of urban form. In addition, the authors argue that the cultural value of the creative industries needs to be better acknowledged in creative developments, implying support for a range of cultural practitioners.

The authors argue that embracing a more holistic understanding of place in creative development has the potential to minimize the negative impacts sometimes associated with such developments (like gentrification and social displacement) while generating greater social and cultural benefits to people and place. The study findings raise questions that frame a critical research agenda for creative-led developments and creative placemaking in this context.

By examining the broader relationship between creative developments and place and identifying areas neglected by researchers, this research contributes to an articulation of “creative placemaking” that moves creative city policy toward enhancing community development.

This paper aims to present an interdisciplinary approach for the development and design of place brands, which goes far beyond communication strategies and advertising campaigns. The so-called “Brand-driven Identity Development of Places” (short: BIDP) approach provides a structured three-phase model that can serve as a practical guide for the development of commercial, touristy, urban and rural places.

Longitudinal collaborative action research over a time span of 20 years plus extended case study research supported the evolution of the BIDP approach.

BIDP is a circular three-phase model starting with the definition of the intended place brand identity, which in Phase 2 becomes translated into concrete touchpoint experiences along the main constituents of the place, and finally materialising into the new place format. The case study of the City of Innsbruck is prototypically used to illustrate the application of the designed approach and to report achieved results.

Place brand development based on translating socio-cultural meanings into touchpoint experiences to materialise and align place constituents is opening up new avenues to initiate and govern place development. At present, the approach is based on case studies in the western region of Austria and South Tyrol.

The three-phase model represents a practical tool for place brand managers, who want to renew and to develop their place format in a structured way. The BIDP model can be applied for all forms of places.

Foremost, the described place branding collaborations reassure the proposition of Olins (2002) and Schmidt (2007) that place branding is a crucial internal project that unites groups of people around a common strategic vision providing sense and direction besides reaching out to the traditional customer–stakeholder audience.

A structured model for brand-driven place development, which evolved during 20 years of longitudinal collaborative action research with executives and representatives of commercial, touristy, urban and rural places, BIDP locks into anthropological research findings where cultural meanings are considered as the main source for the construction of brand identities.

This paper aims to explore the rationale, the process and the outcomes and risks of place branding in rural China.

An in-depth case study analysis, including interviews, has been conducted.

Place branding in the case of China is practiced and dominated through administrative entities by using subsidies and regional development programs to coordinate, organize and promote local agricultural resources. Although this government-led place branding has effective effects on rural development, it is unsustainable and unstable because it lacks sufficient market and stakeholder participation.

The effectiveness of place branding in China has been examined and proved.

The government’s role in place branding in China should be adjusted. The government should position itself as a service and auxiliary role. Simultaneously, it should strengthen market-oriented operations and stakeholder participation in place branding.

This paper is one of the first contributions to examine the impact of place branding as a rural development policy tool in China, and the in-depth case study examines and proves the effectiveness of place branding in rural China.

Between 2013 and 2016 Western countries experienced a nearly 600% increase in terrorist attacks. Among the most significant shift in terrorism trends during this time is the recent focus on civilians in crowded places as a frequent target. Although crowded places have become critical targets for terrorist attacks, there remains a dearth of research studying crowded places or the built environment practitioner's role in creating crowded places that are as resilient as possible against terrorism.

This paper presents the results from 33 in-depth, semi-structured, one-hour interviews with property developers, property investors, property managers, security consultants, designers, planners and government/policy officials in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, Australia. A purposive, snowball sampling method was used to identify participants in the study.

This research extends the existing literature base on counterterrorism protective security, a distinctly under-researched component of the terrorism research discourse, by developing a baseline of threat considerations considered during the planning, design and development process. This paper presents the Australian results of a first-of-its-kind international study that connects the planning, design and development of real estate in crowded places with planning for protective counterterrorism, and investigates what, when and how counterterrorism protective security (CTPS) is considered in the development process of crowded places. The findings show that a series of common threats were identified across the stakeholder groups, including development risk, development location/site selection, natural phenomena and human-induced issues.

This research extends the current knowledge base on CTPS and has the potential to influence decision-makers in both the counterterrorism policy landscape and those influential in developing standards for the planning, design, construction and management of real estate assets.

An original contribution of this research is detailing the significant range of threats, impacts of events and organisational influences that exist in informing the real estate development process.

This study aims to explore the development of a new city brand in Saudi Arabia. Place Branding theory is geared towards existing places and does not take into account newly developed cities. Here “Place Branding” takes on a new significance. How do we develop a brand for a city that does not yet exist? Who are the actors involved and how do they influence the process?

The study uses discourse analysis to investigate the interplay between actors and place brand development in King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) for two separate branding scenarios. It is further structured through the theoretical lens of actor-network theory (ANT) to take advantage of relational aspects that can lend insight on how a brand is created and enacted.

Initial findings suggest that branding messages in KAEC are fragmented with little government or other stakeholder involvement leading to poor brand awareness and performance. The study also emphasises the importance of branding practices in the beginning stages of new city development. It further suggests that the message itself, the conceptual place brand, can represent a socially constructed idea or belief that can shape perceptions about the project before physical form is developed.

The case study in Saudi Arabia will highlight the opportunities and pitfalls associated with place branding in the Middle East while comparing the findings with traditional place-branding approaches in existing cities. By contextualizing discourse analysis research within an ANT-based exploration of the KAEC brand’s gestation in Saudi Arabia, the study highlights the meaningfulness of a place brand construct in the process of city creation.