This volume examines the potentially deleterious impact of place branding on the social fabric, ecosystems and local economies of the places concerned. As the different essays show, place branding is a fundamentally political practice, often driven by hidden agendas that marginalize certain groups within society. Contributors explore place branding from a wide variety of angles, including: the role played by the visual arts in city branding; the applied arts, and speci cally the fashion industry's potential for shaping perceptions of a particular place; the different ways in which sport has been exploited by the political elites; the role of design in place branding, including the architectural design of sports stadia; and the potentially insidious economic and societal consequences of excessive consumption of branded places.

Whose Space Is It Anyway? Place Branding: Past, Present, Future Pascale Cohen-Avenel & Graham H. Roberts - Imagining Space - From Drancy to Alentour: A Symbolic Metamorphosis. From Disadvantaged Suburb to UNESCO World Heritage Candidate Heidi Wood - Ethnic Districts Beyond Spectacularization: Mobilising the Public Imagery of Milan's Chinatown Through Graphic Novels and Artistic Interventions - Giada Peterle & Tania Rossetto - (Re)fashioning Space - From the Steppes to the Runway: Mongolia's Fashion Imaginary Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas & Babette Radclyffe-Thomas - (Dis)playing Space - Kazan, the 'Sports Capital of Russia' Lukas Aubin - Branding Springbok Rugby, Branding the Nation: Memorial Marketing and Nation-Building in South Africa - Bernard Cros - Designing Space - 'Your Hub in Eurasia!': Spectacular Logistics and the Rebranding of Azerbaijan Yéléna Mac-Glandières - Consuming Space Who Pays the Price for Consuming Nature? Tourism and the Politics of Belonging in the Rural Coastal Community of Newport, Oregon, USA - Akbar Keshodkar - Beyond Sun, Water, Mountains and Wine: A Question of Rebranding in Mendoza, Argentina Joy Logan - The Businessman as a Samurai: Exoticism in Western Management Literature of the 1980s Séverine Antigone Marin - Afterword - Branded Visions of the Future: Places, People, Politics Nadia Kaneva - The Authors