Selling the city: marketing approaches in public sector urban planning

Selling the city book authors are Gregory Ashworth (1941-2016) Officer of the Dutch Order of Oranje-Nassau. Holder of an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Brighton and Honorary Member of the Hungarian Geographical Society. Professor of Heritage Management at the University of Groningen published 20 books and 200 papers. Henk Voogd was a professor of Planning and Urban Geography at the University of Groningen (RUG) from 1985 to 2007. He died on March 8, 2007, at the age of 56. All those years he worked at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen, published 9 books and several papers.

The book can serve various audiences. Public sector planners and administrators could benefit from the case studies from around Europe applied with market planning. Planners in the private sector also could use the techniques provided in urban planning work. This publication serves the architects in terms of introducing the way cities are viewed by the public and the government side that affect their work whether it was an urban development or a building in any place in the city. As well as how the architects work to participate in building a city image and create a destination for inhabitants and visitors from other parts of the world. Investors and developers can understand the public sector’s work for building a competitive city that attracts people from the region and the world that serves them in allocating their development and taking effective decisions. Marketing agencies will find it a good source of information about the difference in marketing a product and a city physical object. How they could align their marketing plan for a development or a building with the public sector plans for the city to get effective results in their marketing campaign. Researchers who want to start research about urban planning from the city image building perspective will benefit from the concepts in the book and the ones already applied in various locations in the world. Here a researcher could find the intervention and the connections between location theory and market planning serving his research in many subjects from the two fields.

The book theme is centered on the city image created by the public sector for development using marketing planning. How world agencies rank cities competitiveness like the DATAR agency. By gradual discussion, the authors present the shift from industrialization to services ( the relationship between the change of urban living and labor mobility and economic activities). Defining what is city marketing and how the public sector participates in planning and intervening in market operations. The direct relationship between place marketing and economic activity. Defining urban planning as a mix of physical planning and city marketing. And how the conventional approach of analyzing market spatial characteristics failed by geographers.

The writers discuss the three major city marketing process elements (consumer/market/producer). Analyzing the city as a product which component( tourism, housing, industry, etc) needs more attention. What marketing goal is more appropriate like ( new function, maintenance, new activity, etc). Measures to achieve the marketing goals ( amount, size, scale, number). They discuss, in the stage of shaping the product, who creates the urban product? Planners, politicians, or tourism managers? And present guidelines for shaping the product.

Place and their images are created based on types of people perceiving them consumers, investors, and tourists. They affect individuals decision-making in using places. A detailed explanation of the human perceptual cycle is presented by the authors. Place images created by public sector researchers face the problem of the absence of agreed definitions, terminology, methods of data collection, and measurement. The promotion of places within the marketing planning faces various problems which are discussed in detail. The marketing ideas to market a city in various contexts are shown and their positive effect in the rehabilitation of towns. This activity is successful when the data and information of promotional activity are credentialed as people consider public sector data are reliable.

Finally, the authors reserve a full chapter of marketing planning in practice presenting case studies from EU countries. Here planner’s political ideologies affect the organization’s work. The effect of the absence of legal constraints in private organizations that free their work compared to public sector organizations. Types of public-private partnership relationships ( communication, political, legal, organizational, economic) where various case studies proved that the need for funds created many restructuring).

The book introduction declares that marketing planning is a new field within the public sector since the 1980s and examined widely its effect and outcome in the public planning system. How this field has been added to the planning system as an effective technique and method of defining and solving urban planning problems. How it is necessary to understand this field and the skills required to use it and how it works. And finally, the authors say that few have been engaged in marketing planning and to write about it.

Marketing planning is a mix of academic knowledge and professional practice experience though it is new in the planning system in the EU and US. The book contains various parts of research knowledge, methods, tools used in academy for marketing planning research. The case studies presented in two chapters of this book show how knowledge, methods, tools are applied and the ways to prevent failures in producing the desired outcomes in practice.

The book chapters are well tailored in terms of ideas connections to present how the public sector sells the city. From the initial stage of analyzing the market, building a marketing goal and strategy, and shaping the product for promotion. As mentioned earlier that marketing planning was and will always be ( with physical planning ) the core of the urban planning system. Many planning systems in the world nowadays still use the terms “ competitive city to live and work” which is the goal of marketing planning. The authors supplied many maps , diagrams, tables, and sketches within the studies they presented.

Well, every reader will find that the authors were very successful in selecting the book title that fitted well the content of the book. As well as the index of the book gives clear and detailed information for the reader about its content if planning to purchase it.  

There are many references within the text of the book as well as a wealth of references supplied at the end of the book for more detailed study and reading. Since the authors are professors in university and were engaged in academic research these references are of academic nature, the reader can find publications of the Netherlands and minor ones from EU public sector planning system.

When I received a recommendation from a university teacher in the UK to read this book I immediately purchase this book as a second-hand book. What I was looking for is the reality of the transformation of the Uk planning system. Here it was evident for me without reading all the book ( at that time) that there were no major changes in the planning system in reality, nor the plan-making process.  I wanted to investigate the reasons for the disappearance of physical planning in the UK system and unfortunately, there was not any real evidence of this transformation in the planning system as this book proves in some areas of the book.