Tuesday 25 March 2014

Sinopse do livro - VISUAL POLLUTION by Ashgate/ London

Visual Pollution: Advertising, Signage and Environmental Quality
Autor: Adriana Portella
Série: Design and the Built Environment
Editora: Ashgate, London.
ISBN: 978-0-7546-7534-1
                             

Nos últimos anos tem havido um considerável interesse em relação aos problemas que os espaços públicos enfrentam devido ao mau planejamento dos anúncios comerciais. São Paulo, por exemplo, passou por um processo de despoluição estética desde a aplicação da Lei da Cidade Limpa, em vigor desde 2007. As consequências negativas que esse tipo de mídia podem trazer à qualidade visual das áreas urbanas e a qualidade de vida das pessoas é o foco do livro ‘Visual Pollution: Advertising, Signage and Environmental Quality’, que será lançado em Abril pela editora inglesa Ashgate de Londres.

O livro aborda conceitos que vão desde a área da arquitetura, planejamento urbano, marketing e turismo até a da psicologia ambiental. Embora algumas dessas disciplinas pareçam distantes umas das outras, todas conversam entre si quando o tema se trata da cidade e das pessoas que vivem nela.

Embora a questão da poluição visual, como esse fenômeno é comumente chamado na literatura, tem sido amplamente debatida, não existe ainda nenhuma conclusão clara sobre a melhor forma de controlar os anúncios comerciais levando-se em conta a identidade da cidade e as características e preferências culturais dos usuários residentes nela. Será que um anúncio visto na Times Square em Nova Iorque seria avaliado do mesmo modo se colocado em Roma, ao lado do Pantheon? Pessoas de diferentes culturas possuem preferências universais quanto à estética urbana, ou há diferenças significativas entre essas avaliações, e, portanto, cada país, cada estado e cada cidade deveria ter um regramento específico levando em conta a identidade local? Essa e muitas outras perguntas geraram as discussões e reflexões apresentadas nessa publicação.

Existem hoje vários modos de controle da poluição visual aplicados em muitos países, mas essas iniciativas não estão baseadas em princípios vindos da percepção e avaliação dos usuários. Baseando-se em uma série de estudos empíricos de ruas comerciais em centros históricos no Reino Unido e no Brasil, esse livro examina questões relacionadas ao gerenciamento do controle dos anúncios comerciais do ponto de vista estético, da preservação do patrimônio histórico e das preferências dos usuários residentes nessas diferentes culturas. A autora faz uma análise de um grupo de cidades a partir de conceitos desenvolvidos na área da psicologia ambiental, envolvendo teorias, conceitos e metodologias da psicologia, arquitetura, planejamento e desenho urbano.

Ao fazer isso, verifica-se que há preferências visuais comuns à maioria das pessoas, independentemente do seu contexto urbano e cultural, e que esses pontos comuns são fundamentais para o desenvolvimento de uma metodologia que oriente o controle dos anúncios comerciais em áreas históricas. Para concluir, o livro sugere que a melhor forma de controlar a poluição visual não é apenas recomendar diretrizes relacionadas aos anúncios comerciais por si só, mas definir princípios de desenho urbano que promovam a criação de ruas avaliadas como um todo positivamente por pessoas de diferentes culturas. Segundo as análises discutidas nesse livro, defende-se que desenho urbano é um processo de planejamento que envolve diversas etapas e não apenas a solução de problemas pontuais, sendo a etapa mais importante a análise da identidade estética e compositiva da cidade considerando as características históricas (aspectos simbólicos) e formais do lugar relacionadas à percepção e satisfação dos usuários.

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754675341

Saturday 8 March 2014

SALES CONTINUE...


BOOK: Visual Pollution - Advertising, Signage and Environmental Quality

Series : Design and the Built Environment


In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the problems that public spaces face because of the design of commercial signs. The negative consequences that commercial signs can have on the visual quality of urban areas and further more, on people's quality of life, has been studied from both architectural, planning and psychological perspectives.

While the issue of visual pollution, as this phenomenon is commonly described, has been widely debated, there is as yet no clear conclusion as to how best to control commercial signage and whether different urban contexts and people from different backgrounds and cultures have universal or distinct preferences. Several different commenrcial signage approaches are currently applied to different historic cities, but these initiatives are not based on principles derived from the perception and evaluation of users.

Drawing on a range of comparative and contrasting empirical studies of historic city centres in the UK and Brazil, this book examines questions of commercial signage control management, the preservation of historic heritage and user preference and satisfaction. The author takes an environment behaviour approach to this research, involving theories, concepts and methodologies related to environmental psychology, architecture, planning and urban design.

In doing so, it argues that there are in fact visual preferences common to the majority of people, independent of their urban context and that these common views can be useful to the development of a general theory of how to control commercial signage. In conclusion, the book suggests that the best way of controlling signage is not only to recommend general guidelines related to the operation of commercial signage, but also to recommend design principles that can create commercial streetscapes evaluated positively by different users.

Reviews: ‘Visual Pollution is both an exemplary and rare text in the fields of urban design and environmental perception, focusing as it does on a highly topical and important issue in built environment studies: the aesthetic experience of users, and how their appreciation of urban beauty can be measured’.
Alan Reeve, Oxford Brookes University, UK

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754675341

Wednesday 18 March 2009

Polêmica acerca da proposta de construção de uma torre de 396 metros de altura em São Petersburgo - Oktha Centre Tower


A cidade de São Petersburgo, fundada pelo Czar Pedro o Grande em Maio de 1703, foi a capital do Império Russo por mais de 200 anos (1712- 1918). O centro histórico da cidade, datado do Século 18, sobreviveu ao período da industrialização, às Guerras Mundiais, e ao comunismo. Hoje, é considerado um dos mais preservados do mundo, razão pela qual em 1990 foi incluído na lista do Patrimônio Cultural da Humanidade pela UNESCO. A cidade abriga, dentre outros tesouros arquitetônicos, o Museu Hermitage, o Palácio de Menshikov, e a Coluna de Alexandre. É construída sobre mais de 100 ilhas, possuindo atualmente 342 pontes em diferentes estilos arquitetônicos e períodos. Devido aos canais que caracterizam a cidade, São Petersburgo é conhecida como a “Veneza do Norte”. Atualmente, a cidade tem uma população de 4.6 milhões de habitantes e é a quarta maior cidade na Europa, só ficando atrás de Moscou, Londres e Paris.

Em Dezembro de 2006, a Gazprom, empresa russa de energia, e as autoridades locais de São Petersburgo, anunciaram um projeto de construção da nova sede da estatal, batizada de “Okhta Centre”. O projeto abrange 77 hectares e inclui prédios de escritórios, um museu, área esportiva, parques, áreas verdes, e uma polêmica torre de vidro com 396 metros de altura – “Okhta Centre Tower” –, que serão construídos em uma área industrial desativada no Vale de Okhta nas margens do Rio Neva. À época, o diretor do museu Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, assim como a União dos Arquitetos de São Petersburgo, manifestaram-se contráriamente à construção da torre devido a sua altura excessiva. No caso, importa observar que, com o objetivo de manter os prédios históricos como os pontos de destaque da silhueta de São Petersburgo, a legislação local admite a altura de 48 metros como a máxima permitida para novos prédios.

Também, quando da aprovação do projeto, três arquitetos de renome internacional (Norman Foster, Rafael Vinoly e Kisho Kurokawa) que faziam parte do júri que tinha incumbência avaliar a proposta apresentada, decidiram deixar o comitê de seleção, pois não concordavam com a altura proposta para a torre principal. Acredita-se que eles estavam sendo pressionados para aprovar a proposta apresentada pela firma britanica RMJM. Em Abril de 2007, o jornal russo “Kommersant” publicou o resultado de uma pesquisa de opinião que indicou que 40.4% dos entrevistados eram contra a construção da torre, enquanto apenas 18.5% eram a favor. Os respondentes não foram contrários a revitalizacao da área do Vale de Ohkta; eles apenas se opuseram a idéia de modificar a paisagem da cidade marcada por prédios de altura mediana.

Por fim, a própria UNESCO se manifestou sobre o caso: o diretor do Centro de Patrimônios Mundiais, Francesco Barandin¹, afirmou que “a Oktha Centre Tower é uma intrusão visual a paisagem de São Petersburgo. É uma interferência a paisagem história da cidade que é marcada por sua horizontalidade em termos de altura dos prédios”. Em Agosto de 2007 a UNESCO deu um prazo as autoridades de São Petersburgo, de até Fevereiro de 2008, para apresentar uma análise detalhada sobre os impactos do “Okhta Centre Tower” na malha urbana existente. Até então foi publicado nenhum progresso a este respeito no site da Glazprom (http://www.gazprom-neft.com/okhta-center/news/).

A estatal de energia Gazprom e a empresa responsável pelo projeto, “RMJM”, em face das críticas apresentadas à sua proposta, defenderam-se afirmando que a torre será a contribuição do Século 21 à paisagem da cidade; que a área onde o prédio será construído está fora do centro histórico protegido pela UNESCO; e que a torre não será vista por quem estiver no centro histórico. Entretanto, do outro lado da margem do rio Neva, em frente ao local onde será construída a torre, está localizada a Catedral de Smolny, projetada pelo arquiteto Bartolomeo Rastrelli, datada de 1748, em estilo Rococó, caracterizada pelas curvas e pela profusão de elementos decorativos como conchas, laços, flôres e folhagens, em uma elegância requintada. Nesse contexto, cabe observar que, mesmo construída fora do centro histórico, um prédio de quase 400 metros de altura, com certeza, afetará a silhueta dos prédios históricos de São Petersburgo. De acordo com Mikhail Amosov, líder do grupo local de oposição à construção da torre e antigo coordenador do comitê de arquitetura e planejamento urbano da cidade, a altura da torre deveria ser reduzida para pelo menos 100 metros para não prejudicar o centro histórico.

As simulações computacionais feitas pela firma responsável pelo projeto, publicadas no panfleto de divulgação denominado “O Impossível é Possível” ², não estão convencendo a população local e tão pouco a UNESCO. Analisando essas simulações, as quais podem ser encontradas na pag. 39 do panfleto, o impacto não parece ser tão desastroso como o descrito pela mídia (tais como pelo jornal local “The St. Petersburg Times”). Entretanto, como arquiteta e planejadora urbana sei que simulações computacionais podem distorcer a realidade de propostas arquitetônicas, a fim de conseguir o apoio da communidade local. O vídeo da simulacao da torre disponível no site da Gazprom³ é interessante mas ao mesmo tempo questionável já que apresenta o Okhta Centre Tower como um objeto de um filme de ficção científica sem nenhuma conectividade com a parte histórica da cidade.

Ressalta-se que em matéria de inserção de novos prédios em altura em cidades históricas, existem exemplos positivos, como é o caso de Londres, onde a arquitetura antiga e contemporânea convivem de modo harmônico. A Catedral de São Paulo (que em 2008 completa 300 anos desde sua conclusão) foi a construção mais alta de Londres por muitos séculos, mas atualmente a paisagem londrina é marcada por diversos prédios em altura tais como o “Gherkin” (180 metros de altura), projetado por Norman Foster e localizado na rua St. Mary Axe. Desse modo, discordo com o afirmado pelo diretor do museu Hermitage em Dezembro de 2007, Mikhail Piotrovsky¹, de que “o centro histórico de Londres está completamente destruído, que as áreas ao redor da Catedral de São Paulo são o retrato de uma tragédia, e que Londres é o pior exemplo possível para São Petersburgo”. Do meu ponto de vista, Londres é o reflexo da evolução urbana e do positivo processo de preservação histórica de uma cidade. Assim, oportuno referir que as cidades devem ser tratadas como organismos dinâmicos e não como museus a céu aberto. As áreas históricas devem ser preservadas e a arquitetura contemporânea deve ser integrada à malha urbana existente de modo a respeitar as características históricas e, ao mesmo tempo, contribuir para a paisagem da cidade do século que vivemos.

Nesse sentido, considero positiva a proposta de revitalizar a área industrial do Vale de Ohkta em São Petersburgo através da inserção de um novo distrito econômico com prédios contemporâneos para as atividades de negócios (escritórios), cultura (museus) e lazer (áreas verdes). Também, acredito que a criação de um prédio contemporâneo baseado no design proposto (uma torre envidracada projetada em espiral, o que possibilita que de acordo com a posição solar a cor do prédio mude devido ao reflexo da luz) é positiva a medida que integrasse a paisagem de São Petersburgo como um ponto focal representado pela arquitetura contemporânea.


Por outro lado, me oponho a altura de 396 metros proposta para a nova sede da Gazprom. A criação de um prédio dessa altura afetará outras partes da cidade, notadamente, a que comporta o centro histórico. Reconhece-se que a construção de grandes arranha-céus trata-se de uma tendência em grandes capitais do mundo, como é o caso e Kuala Lampur, Hong Kong, dentre outras. No entanto, cada construção deve ser concebida de acordo com o contexto em que será inserida. Neste sentido, a altura de 396 metros proposta para a nova sede da estatal Gazprom parece estar mais vinculada a fatores simbólicos, como a representação do poder (variável já conhecida no meio arquitetônico) de uma empresa, gigante da energia, com mais de 500.000 mil funcionários, do que com a sua inserção e harmonia com a paisagem da cidade. A Gazprom quer que sua nova sede torne-se o maior símbolo contemporaneo da cidade de São Petersburgo, onde reside o antigo presidente da Rússia, um dos diretores da estatal, o novo presidente da Rússia - Dmitry Medvedev, e o coordenador do Departamento de Manejamento da estatal - Alexei Miller.

Entretanto, apesar de toda a polêmica e das milhares de vozes contrárias à construção da torre de 396 metros de altura, o projeto foi aprovado pelas autoridades locais, com previsão de conclusão das obras em 2012. Assim, faz-se necessário a realização, nos moldes estabelecidos pela UNESCO, de uma detalhada análise acerca do impacto da construção da torre no centro histórico da cidade, sob pena de perda da harmonia e descaracterização de um dos mais importantes conjuntos arquitetônicos do Mundo, Patrimônio Cultural da Humanidade.

As preocupacoes apontadas pela UNESCO em relação a altura da torre não podem ser ignoradas pela firma de arquitetura RMJM e pelo governo russo. Todos os países que assinam a Convenção para a Proteção do Patrimônio Mundial, Cultural e Natural e que possuem bens na Lista do Patrimonio Mundial comprometem-se em conservar os bens do Patrimônio Mundial localizados em seu território e proteger o seu próprio patrimônio nacional. Na sociedade do Século 21, o valor da arquitetura contemporânea como uma inclusão harmonioza em cidades históricas não pode ser substituído por interesses diversos, tais como o da criação de símbolos de poder e ostentação. Uma detalhada re-análise da altura da torre da Gazprom, considerando o seu impacto no centro histórico da cidade é a resposta que os arquitetos, os planejadores urbanos e a sociedade como um todo espera da Gazprom e das autoridades russas antes de qualquer início das obras. Os bens que fazem parte da Lista do Patrimônio Mundial são de interesse mundial, e não apenas do país em que se localizam.

1 www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/revolt-in-russia-765484.html
2 www.gazprom-neft.com/buklet-okhta-eng.pdf
3 www.gazprom-neft.com/okhta-center/

Thursday 1 January 2009

Marketing the City and Urban Tourism X Historic Heritage




What is Consumer Culture?


According to Mies van der Rohe (1926 quoted in Frampton, 1983, p.40) and Sassen and Roost (in Judd & Fainstein, 1999, pp.147-150), the built environment reflects material and symbolic changes in society, and cities have become important sites of consumption. The transformation of the appearance of city centres does not just express historic modifications; social relations and ideologies are also reproduced through it (Gudis, 2004, pp.50, 244; Sharrett 1989, p.178; Goss quoted in Jameson 1984, p.54). Historic and commercial city centres are characterized by interactions between consumption functions and commercial trends that have social consequences extending far beyond the behaviour of individuals. Shopping has become a key activity in the present day economy, and has been recognized not just as the action of buying goods, but as an entertainment and leisure activity (Thorns, 2002, p.133; Zukin, 1995, p.187). Places for shopping, fashion, eating, tourism, recreation and leisure have became important areas for demonstration of user social and cultural differences, as well as for the consumption of untouchable goods such as films and tourism destinations (Shane, 2005, pp.259-261; Thorns, 2002, p.121; Zukin, 1995, pp.188-189; Bourdieu, 1984, pp.257-259). Goss (quoted in Jameson 1984, p.54) suggests that consumption has become one of the main driving forces of contemporary life.

The context described above form a phenomenon known as “consumer culture”, which has caused a significant impact on the appearance of several cities around the world (Proto, 2006, pp.95-121; Knox, 2005, p.4; Thorns, 2002, pp.127-133; Marshall & Wood, 1995, pp.156-169; Campbell, 1987, pp.17-35). According to Sharrett (1989, p.178) and Goss (quoted in Jameson, 1984, p.54), in the “consumer culture”, people tend to be recognized for “what they can buy” as much as “what they can do”. This is related to social status attributed to products such as places, cars, clothes, shoes and so on. People consume brands and the symbols associated to these by what Thorns (2004, p.125) calls global culture. Goods begin to have more than utilitarian value; they become part of identity, personality, self-image, social position, attitude and aspirations of people (Marshall & Wood, 1995, pp.156-160). According to Sharrett (1989, p.178) and Goss (quoted in Jameson 1984, p.54), in fact, it is not the material object that is desirable by people, but the image associated with these objects. In this new era, Cass (in Lasansky & MacLaren, 2004, p.246) argues that architects design architectural commodities that in many cases users do not need to interpret for themselves because of the symbolism already created by the consumer culture. According to Cass, the consumer culture has dictated semiotic significances and cultural meanings for a set of architectural forms and commercial signage design.

Consequently, “consumer culture” can be described as the symbolism of objects. Aware of this, advertisers and shop owners devote their efforts to creating and displaying commercial signs to attend to new visual needs related to this symbolism. Marshall and Wood (1995, pp.159, 167-168) suggest that advertising strategies, media and sales practices are focused on the symbolism of objects to define how commercial signs should be designed in public spaces. As a result, the global phenomenon of “consumer culture” manipulates the layout of these media with respect to size, proportion, colour, lettering style and size, and their location in the city centre. Consequently, these influences on commercial signage design transform the image of whole cities where goods are made available and advertised (Harvey, 1989; Gibbs, 1988); the cultural context of consumption has become influential in the design and location of shop facades, malls and new developments in city centres (Marshall & Wood, 1995, p.160). In cities of different urban contexts, standard commercial signs are displayed representing the global effect of “consumer culture”; the most obvious consequences for the appearance of historic city centres have been standard commercial signs related to franchises, anchor stores, and shopping malls. These signs can be seen in many cities in the United States, China, South American countries and, increasingly, in Europe. At the same time, commercial signage has been designed to increase the commercial appeal of several historic city centres encouraging consumers to perceive these areas as centres of exchange, consumption and sources of commercial activities (Sasaki, 2002, p.11; Creswell, 1998, pp.273-277; Marshall & Wood, 1995, p.167).

Concept of Marketing the City


Cities have become increasingly shaped by the necessity to project a positive image of themselves, and there is no greater advert for cities than their own built environment and natural landscape (Hall & Hubbard, 1998, p.29). As discussed by Lang (2005, p.77), many local authorities have recognized the importance of open-space design in creating positive images of cities. Taking this approach to thinking, marketing became a discipline of city centre management during the 1970s and 1980s. According to Smyth (1994, p.12), strategies related to marketing the city come from different fields, such as economics, sociology, psychology, politics and biology. Marketing the city has been a concept debated by two approaches of thought: one group ties urban marketing to a deep economic analysis (Kearns & Philo, 1993; Harvey, 1989; Logan & Molotch, 1987), while another group focuses on the range and success of marketing strategies (Gold & Warn, 1994; Kotler, Haider & Rein, 1993; Ashworth & Voogd, 1990).

These two approaches are not exclusive and usually one complements the other. The primary concept of “marketing the city” is related to the publicity field; it says that creation of strategies for selling and satisfying users requires a high quality in production of goods and delivery of services. When this principle is applied to the built environment, this can be defined as the creation of strategies to promote city centres or entire cities for certain activities and, in some cases, to “sell” areas of a city for living, consuming, and productive activities (Selby, 2004, pp.16-18; Holcomb in Judd & Fainstein, 1999, pp. 54-65; Bill & Marion, 1997, pp.35-60). This concept involves the redefinition of the city as an urban product (Bill & Marion, 1997, p.37), and refers to the promotion of city images in order to attract people and increase social and economic vitality (Kelly & Kelly, 2003, p.15; Smyth, 1994, p.2). Complementing this idea, Fretter (1993, p.165) says: “Place marketing has thus become much more than merely selling the area to attract mobile companies and tourists. It can now be viewed as a fundamental part of guiding the development of places in a desired fashion”.

According to Paddison (1993, p.340), strategies for marketing the city are centred on four main objectives: increasing the competitiveness of a city in comparison with other places, attracting investments, improving the cities image, and promoting the well-being of users. The importance of the concept “marketing the city” in terms the economic development of cities is highlighted by Kotler, Haider and Rein (1993, p.20): “marketing the city is one of the most adaptive and effective approaches to the problem of urban settings”; these authors believe that cities that fail to market their images successfully can be affected by economic decline and stagnation. Several studies have already explored the relevance of this kind of thought (Kotler, Haider & Rein, 1993; Goodwin, 1993; Holcomb, 1993; Haider, 1992; Fleming & Roth, 1991; Ashworth & Voogd, 1990).

Advertisements, the main components of marketing strategies, have been used by many cities to promote local economic development. After setting incentives and selecting desirable images that might be associated to places, a variety of advertisement packages, such as city guides, glossy brochures, fact sheets, xeroxes of industrial commercial information, and advertisements in newspapers, are used by the local authority. For example, many marketing strategies apply the terms “business” in slogan campaigns of cities to advertise that these places are good for investment, while in other cases, when cities are characterized by historic heritage, usually marketing strategies are designed to emphasize the advantages of these places to tourists and locals by means of analogy, for example: “sunny places”, “blue sky”, “historic heritage”, “local culture” and so on (Landry, 2006, pp.172-173; Knox, 2005, p. 4; Hall & Hubbart, 1998, p.61).

One example of an application of strategies for marketing the city can be seen in Old Havana, the historic core of Havana, capital of Cuba. This is one of the least altered colonial cities in Latin America, and was inscribed in the Unesco World Heritage List in 1982. In 1993, a Master Plan was designed to revitalize its historic city centre which was in ruins. Over 100 buildings have been restored, dozens more are in progress of restoration, and an equal number have been identified as sites for future work (Rodrigues, 1999, p.43). To promote this city as a tourist destination marked by a strong colonial historic character, a series of promotional materials has been published and distributed to residents and tourists. Promotional literature and well-maintained websites designed to advertise a net of hotels located in restored colonial mansions emphasize the historic importance and the individual character of these buildings and their surrounding areas. Pamphlets showing restored colonial buildings, maps of the city and posters were designed to promote the image of Old Havana as a well preserved historic colonial site. Even books were designed and published in order to attract tourist investors, and highlight the positive results achieved through the implementation of the master plan. The city centre has been packaged as a series of cultural and historic products of consumption in a manner that helps tourists navigate through the city. Although there are some criticisms related to the emphasis given in this master plan for the tourist industry, the strategies adopted to marketing this city centre have been successful in the promotion of the city image (Lasansky & MacLaren, 2004, pp.165-184).

In the British context, Glasgow has been seen as an example of adoption of strategies for marketing the city to improve its image. In 1983, a campaign named “Glasgow’s Miles Better” was launched; it was inspired by the earlier campaign promoted in New York in 1977 – “I love New York”. Advertisements were published in colour supplements, international business magazines, and displayed on the London Underground and the sides of red double decker buses. The idea was to change the image of Glasgow from a centre of production to a centre of consumption. This strategy was already applied in many cities in the United States; local authorities of places such as Boston, Baltimore, New York, Cleveland and other American cities had begun to apply marketing strategies to promote the image of these places as centres of innovation, commodity and quality lifestyle (Jaynes, 2005, p.169; Selby, 2004, pp.66-73; Hall & Hubbard, 1998, pp.31-53).

According to Smyth (1994, p.15), people and their activities give meaning and use to the built environment. In the process of marketing historic city centres or even entire cities, the images promoted through media, such as newspapers, post cards, pamphlets and websites, are not just related to the formal elements of places, but to their symbolic meanings as well. This idea is related to the field of Environment Behavioural research that has its conceptual basis on user perception and cognition of the built environment; in this research field, selling and defining a city centre requires the sale of what this place means, how it feels and what it looks like to users (Stevenson, 2003, p.98; Ashworth & Voogd in Gold & Ward, 1994, p.39). In this sense, Smyth (1994, p.1) suggests that the process of marketing the city can start from the question: what sort of cities do users wish to see?. Having answered this, by analysing user perception and evaluation of the appearance of city centres, marketing strategies can be designed and applied to intervene in the production and transmission of urban images, and to reinterpret these images as the bases of an initiative for “selling” city centres to residents and outside users (Smyth, 1994, pp.2-14). Symbolic factors associated with places need to be identified and packaged. For this, perception and evaluation of different user groups, such as local authorities, local communities, shop owners, visitors and investors, need to be investigated (Stevenson, 1999; Holcomb 1993). Approaches that take into account only the interests related to the development of tourist activities can create images of places not recognized by their own residents (Lasansky & MacLaren, 2004, p.183). In the case of Old Havana, for example, some promotional materials about its historic centre include services that only interest tourists and investors, ignoring the needs and interest of the local retailers, industry and community.

In places such as Piccadilly Circus and Times Square, commercial signs are designed to create images of multicultural, worldwide and international centres, which attract many users. In addition, according to Trulove (2000, p.108), in the Block at Orange, an open-air shopping mall in California, the commercial signage is designed to be “reminiscent of the word’s great city blocks, like Times Square, Pier 39, and Melrose Avenue, but with a California state of mind”. In this type of urban spaces, commercial signs are designed to increase social and economic vitality by maintaining order among physical elements and reinforcing the commercial appeal of these areas. At the same time, in many historic city centres, marketing approaches influence the design and control of commercial signs with particular focus on the preservation of historic buildings and places (Russo, 2002, pp.27-28). As opposed to the case of Times Square, for example, the image promoted by marketing strategies in historic city centres, such as Oxford and York in England, emphasizes the historic appearance of the area in an ordered streetscape, and not just its commercial functions.

Concept of place promotion


Place promotion is part of a system of communication in which meanings of places are encoded and decoded by advertisers, and decoded in many different ways by users (Selby, 2004, pp.98-103; Britton, 1991, pp.451-478; Burgess, 1990, pp.139-140). Place promotion involves strategies which come through artistic historic approaches [MD1] in which techniques of iconographic and related analysis are applied to promotional materials. Promotional messages have created images of cities communicated by different kinds of media, such as television programmes, films, advertisements, post cards, books and newspapers (Gold & Ward, 1994, p.21). Representations are pivotal in shaping the ways in which users recognize the built environment. Images of cities can be advertised through all kinds of popular culture such as magazines, newspapers, literature, art, photographs and songs (Stevenson, 2003, p.10). According to Taylor (1991, pp.xiii- xiv), posters displayed on streetscapes or in the formats of postcards and pamphlets are the elements that most help in the promotion of city centre images: postcards, for example, are designed to persuade people to visit distinctive urban sites, and can lead to the creation of urban itineraries among historic and tourist points. This kind of advertisement is able to target cities as attractive places to visit and holiday in. Sometimes, according to Taylor (1991, pp.xiii-xiv), posters help to reverse a nineteenth century idea that cities are unattractive places, rather than tourist destinations.

As argued by Thorns (2004, p.145), positive images of places are usually created by local authorities and private-sector boosters to encourage local residents to feel good about their city and the quality of life that places can promote. In the United States, for example, the “Main Street Approach” is a recognized method for revitalizing commercial city centres. This is mainly a method used to revitalize older and traditional central areas. The underlying premise of this approach is to encourage economic development within the context of historic preservation in ways appropriate to the marketplace. This approach is based on four issues taken into account in the process of revitalization of central areas: organization (fundraising, committee structure, membership recruitments), promotion of the city, design of buildings and signage, and economic restructuring. According to a study carried out by Robertson (2004, pp.60-61), promotion is the most utilized component to improve the appearance of city centres. This is applied as a tool to sell a positive image of commercial city centres, and encourages consumers and investors to live, work, shop, play and invest in these areas.
One role of place promotion strategies is to communicate images of city centres for people in different places at the same time. This allows many individuals, who have never been to places like London and Paris, to have strong images of the physical and symbolic forms of Piccadilly Circus and Champs-Elyses, for example (Stevenson, 2003, p.10). These images are the result of a process which is not just related to how people respond to and interpret the place, but this also concerns configurations of meanings, feelings and expectations, which are involved in user cognition of a city (Kearns & Philo, 1993; Madsen, 1992; Ashworth & Voogd, 1990). Thorns (2002, p.130) says that users no longer know a city because they have been there, seen and touched its public spaces; they shape their views of the world through the images provided by the media. When people go to Las Vegas, for example, they already have a pre-conceived image of this city. In this process, perception and cognition are steps that happen before users come to know the real place (Stevenson, 2003).

Pre-conceived images that users have of cities have been analysed by cognitive and behavioural studies. These investigations are related to a broad movement which has been developed in geography, sociology and environmental psychology research fields. Since the late 1960s, researchers have examined representations of places as sources of environmental information and influence on user behaviour (Gold & Ward, 1994, p.22).

With regard to Smyth’s studies (1994, p.13), one problem can occur in the application of place promotion ideas: some user expectations can be raised to the level of fiction. In many cases, the reality of city centres does not correspond to the images advertised by promotional materials. In this regard, users may evaluate as unpleasant places that when observed through postcards are evaluated positively. According to Hall and Hubbard (1998, p.28), several place promotion strategies and projects of economic development can be labelled as “carnival masks of late capitalism”. They create images of cities which hide the problems that need regeneration projects in the first place (Harvey, 1989, p.35). In some cases, the image promoted of cities can be categorized as cosmetic make-overs (Holcomb, 1993, pp.140-142). Another issue is stereotypic ideas of cities; once formed, stereotypes are an important category in environmental cognition. Usually, these concepts are resistant to change and supply summaries of understanding of cities. It is not uncommon for users to classify places according to categories: they assume that a set of cities, for example, have the same physical and symbolic attributes. Such stereotypes can be prejudicial to the development process, damaging city chances of gaining new investments, and affecting its reputation with residents, tourists and investors (Gold & Ward, 1994, p.23).

Concept of urban tourism


The concept of urban tourism is described by MacCannell (quoted in Taylor, p.66) as “a way of attempting to overcome the discontinuity of modernity, of incorporating its fragments into unified experience.” According to Stevenson (2003, p.100) and Thorns (2004, p.141), urban tourism involves the redevelopment and regeneration of the city, image-making and application of marketing strategies focused on production of leisure spaces. Moreover, in many cases, the term urban tourism has been understood as the revitalization of declining cities or parts of cities into centres of tourist destination. MacCannell’s study (quoted in Stevenson, 2000, p. 100) suggests that local authorities can attempt to discover or reconstruct cultural heritage and the social identity of places through urban tourism initiatives. He believes that many cities become aware of themselves as tourist attractions, such as Las Vegas and New York, because of the urban tourism process. Reynolds (1988 quoted in Miles & Hall, 2004, p.171) says that “the growth of the tourism industry has a great deal to do with the growth of every other industry or business: the opening up of the regions as fine places to visit means that they’re better places to live in – and thus better places to work (…) a higher quality of life benefits employees”.

One purpose of urban tourism approaches is to create landscapes for international comparison (see section 2.2.2.2); they aim to promote images of cities to compete with images of other places located in different urban contexts (Hoffman, Fainstein & Judd, 2003, pp.25-33). According to Stevenson (2003, p.99), what distinguishes urban tourism from traditional tourism is the way that images of places are packaged and marketed. Law (1992, p.599) argues that urban tourism strategies are applied to transform city centres into places of consumption and leisure. Moreover, images of cities divulged by these strategies are used to build user perception and evaluation of places (Miles, Hall & Border, 2000, p.108). As suggested by Ockman (in Lasansky & MacLaren, 2004, pp.227-232), Bilbao in Spain is an example of the application of urban tourism and marketing the city strategies: since 1997 this city has been known as a popular tourist destination mainly because of the postmodern architecture of the Guggenheim Museum. This building immediately became synonymous with the entire city and a symbol of regeneration for a declined region of Spain. The application of urban tourism strategies in order to remake a place can also be seen in places such as the Gold and Sunshine Coasts in Australia, Costa del Sol in Southern Spain, Pattaya and Phuket in the Gulf of Thailand, and Bali in Indonesia (Thorns, 2004, pp.143-144).

Urban tourism is also related to “tourism shopping”, a term applied by Page and Hall (2003, pp.133-139). According to the English Historic Towns Forum (1992), there is a relationship between tourism and retail activities as the majority of tourist destinations combine shopping and visiting attractions. Many successful cities in Europe have applied urban tourism strategies and promoted unique leisure shopping to establish their popularity as international destinations. In this context, the overall significance of the visual quality of public spaces is considered as essential to promote tourism in historic city centres: usually users look for a unique shopping experience which can be created through the design of shop windows, shopfronts and building facades. Page and Hall (2003, p.137) also suggest some issues that could be considered by city centre managers in order to promote urban tourism: (i) image of the place, leisure setting, display of goods on the streets, street musicians and artists, (ii) aesthetic value, image of maintenance and safety, (iii) architectural design of buildings, streets, shops, windows, sign boards and lighting, (iv) animation, entertainment, amusement and surprise. Moreover, these authors also describe that the following factors could be considered by local authorities to attract visitors to historic city centres: (i) marketing the destination based on an identifiable theme, using historic and cultural attractions of a place, (ii) investing in attractive shopping galleries, facades, shopfronts, layout and design of the built environment and in the preservation of the historic architecture.

The importance of the concept of urban tourism is related to its influence on the operation of commercial signage controls adopted in historic city centres. In many cases, commercial signage controls are incorporated in urban tourism strategies as a tool to create or reinforce the visual character of a historic city. Usually, one of the aims of this kind of commercial signage control approach is to develop the local tourist economy of the city by attracting visitors. This type of control can help to promote historic city centres as tourist destinations with unique identity. However, in some cases, this can also be applied to promote a manufactured character of city centres. Examples of commercial signage controls influenced by the application of urban tourism strategies, and designed to reinforce the manufactured image of the city promoted by the local authority to attract tourist, consumers, potential residents and/or investors can be found in Gramado and Campos do Jordao in Brazil, in Celebration and Sea Side in the United States, and in Bicester Village in England.