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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.

The relationship between sustainable development and private finance initiative (PFI) procurement systems is clarified, and the current debate on the effectiveness of PFI in the UK and the benefits of PFI to deliver sustainable construction is reviewed. The study develops a sustainability assessment framework encompassing environmental, economic, social and technical aspects through the life cycle of the procurement process. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A comprehensive literature review develops a conceptual sustainability performance indicators framework. A national questionnaire survey measures existing PFI projects' sustainability performance level.

The study provides empirical insights about key performance indicators of sustainable PFI project development and a benchmarking for existing PFI project performance measurement. It suggests that successful sustainable PFI projects should integrate technical aspects into the traditional three dimensions sustainability model and achieve a balance between social and economic performance.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack in-depth analysis of individual projects. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the framework further.

The sustainability indicator framework proposed in this paper is readily applicable in PFI projects, as well as other types of PPP projects.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how the sustainability performance levels achieved could be effectively measured within PFI/PPP projects; while contributing to the debate on benchmarking and measuring sustainability performance in construction.

The paper ethnographically explores modes of urban resistance emerging in tandem with climate change mitigation programs in Copenhagen.

Building on 11 months of fieldwork with a Danish construction enterprise, the paper examines the politics of urban climate change mitigation programs through the lens of a group of builders' struggles to rethink and resolve dilemmas related to environmental concerns in construction and urban development.

Based on an analysis of a specific construction project connected to a larger urban climate change mitigation program in Copenhagen, the paper shows how the builders deliberately move between different perspectives and positions as they navigate the shifting power relations of urban planning. The paper argues that this form of crafty resistance enables the builders to maneuver the political landscape of urban planning as they seek to appropriate the role of “urban planners” themselves.

Taking up recent discussions of “resistance” in anthropology and cognate disciplines (e.g. Theodossopoulos, 2014; Bhungalia, 2020; Prasse-Freeman, 2020), the paper contributes an ethnographic analysis of struggles between diverging and, at times, competing modes of engagement in urban climate change mitigation programs and thus sheds light on how professional actors negotiate the ambiguity of “sustainability” in urban planning.