01 082032 Jensen by Juan Pardo

Article

C U LT U R E S T O R I E S : U N D E R S TA N D I N G C U LT U R A L U R B A N B R A N D I N G Ole B. Jensen Aalborg University, Denmark

Abstract This article argues for a narrative approach to the study of urban branding and planning and presents an analytical framework for understanding narratives and place. The notion of the ‘representational logics of urban intervention’ captures this idea that urban branding interventions are guided by certain representations and embedded in certain norms and values. The analytical framework is applied to a case study of cultural urban branding, the harbour front in Aalborg, Denmark, where a number of flagship architecture projects and cultural institutions are planned. It illustrates the competing stories told by proponents and opponents of the interventions, and also shows how the relation to place in the stories differs radically according to their allegiances. The article aims to throwing light on the complex relationship between story and place. Keywords

cultural planning, narrative turn, urban branding

This article offers a conceptual frame for understanding the phenomenon of urban branding as it applies to new forms of contemporary urban governance – in particular within the realm of cultural planning (Bianchini and Parkinson, 1993; Evans, 2001; Kunzmann, 2004; Landry, 2000). The article argues for an understanding of cultural urban brands through a narrative turn in planning and social theory (Eckstein and Throgmorton, 2003; Finnegan, 1998; Sandercock, 2003). Central to the argument is a notion of a more spatially sensitive approach to urban branding. The article is therefore about how different actors tell different stories about the same place. Within this sphere, the vocabulary of global 211 Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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transformation, culture and the experience economy clashes with much less coherent narratives about how the city still needs to be accessible to all, and about tax prioritization. The case study explored is the harbour front in Aalborg, where the municipality has designated an area and some buildings to host the cultural activities and functions of the ‘Culture Triangle’. The article argues that a theoretical framework of narratives needs to be linked to notions of place if we are to understand the ways that narratives of culture are used as urban branding stories in contemporary city planning. The article is structured in five sections. After the introduction, the second section briefly describes the current urban situation as one of massive cultural transformations following from new global competitive challenges to the city. The third section presents the analytical framework for understanding the complex relation between story and place, which is then applied to the empirical case study in section four. Section five presents some conclusions.

The new cultural landscapes The societal transformation process in western countries has been characterized by a shift towards immaterial and experiential stimulation. Even though there are massive inequalities and welfare problems, the global shift has given completely new tools social agents, both for constructing identities and relating to one another. According to the German sociologist Gerhard Schulze, we are living in the ‘Erlebnisgeschellschaft’ or experience society, where the primary concern has shifted from subsistence to making sense of the world by seeking ever more stimulating experiences (Ritzer, 1999; Schulze, 1992). Owing to the global transformation processes of the contemporary capitalist economy, cities with an industrial background and heritage are therefore busy transforming or even erasing the traces of that historic legacy (Short, 1999). According to Pine and Gilmore (1999), the hallmark of our economy is that it is an experience economy. The addition of the symbolic dimension of a nice café atmosphere makes the ordinary cup of coffee multiply the revenue potential. As part of the culture shift, cities now represent themselves as fun places (Metz, 2002), which means places where the ‘good life’ is not only about employment but also increasingly about ample time for leisure (Short, 1999). Fun city and the new cultural narratives are thus part and parcel of each other (Boer and Dijkstra, 2003). These major global transformation processes are reflected in increasing activity at the urban level to attract attention, capital, residents and tourists. One such activity is the practice of urban branding.

Urban branding – a new role for culture As experience and culture gain importance, cities worldwide are engaged in constructing images and representations of their locations in accordance with these new trends. Therefore the culture-led, experience-oriented policymakers are looking towards the discipline of urban branding. The etymology of the word branding literally implies the notion of burning, but we have left Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Jensen

Culture stories: understanding cultural urban branding

behind the notion of burning cattle and are now dealing with burning the consumer-mind. The literature on urban branding is extensive (see Jensen, 2005 for a general coverage of the city branding literature). The idea is understood to involve selective storytelling, or attempts to re-imagine the city (Eckstein and Throgmorton, 2003; Sandercock, 2003). It has to do with coining concepts and articulating difference and identity. Seen in this light, urban branding is evocative storytelling aimed at educating its recipients to ‘see the city in a particular way’ (Selby, 2004). However, branding for identity construction also means branding for alterity construction (Czarniawska, 2002). In Czarniawska’s words: there is no reason to believe that the question ‘Who am I unlike?’ should be less interesting and important than the question ‘Who am I like?’ Translated to the field of urban branding, this means that city managers represent their cities with an eye not only to cities with which they would like to be compared, but equally importantly to those in whose company they would prefer not to be found! The role of the media and the public sphere in shaping the representations of the city is important in this. Furthermore, there will probably be a number of coexisting urban representations – often competing against each other (Greenberg, 2000). Greenberg sees urban branding as the creation of a monolithic, consumer-oriented representation. Thus the branding strategy, in a complex manner, bears witness to the way in which the ‘word city’ is overlaying the ‘built city’ (Greenberg, 2000: 230). In a dynamic process of socio-spatial dialectics (Richardson and Jensen, 2003), the city becomes the frame upon which its physical surface is inscribed with new ways of playing the global competitive game (e.g. by means of music houses at derelict harbour fronts or other expressions of cultural intervention). At the same time the city is represented in images, texts and logos and is thus embedded in a certain logic specific to the urban intervention.

Creative cities and the rise of the new ‘creative class’ As a consequence of the global shifts and transformation discussed so far, creativity and culture gain weight and importance on the agenda. There is a global discourse of the creative city, which gains currency by means of articulation and re-articulation amongst city fathers, developers, politicians, planners and other urban stakeholders. New planning frameworks for cultural planning (Kunzmann, 2004) and an increased awareness of the importance of innovation, art and creative capacities in cities are much in evidence (Landry, 2000). Substantial research indicates the importance of culture in the making of successful contemporary urban economies (Hesmondhalgh, 2000; Markussen, 2005; Stevenson, 2003; Thorsby, 2001). Also there is an increased awareness that art and business are joining forces in the new urban competitive economy (Caves, 2000; Hall, 2000). These understandings go alongside the development (and marketing) of the most widely known concept in this field, that of the new ‘creative class’. Coined by Richard Florida, the notion of a new social class with a particular creative potential has gained immense influence in urban policy and planning Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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circles worldwide. The discussion is how to create attractive urban environments for the new class. Florida defines this as some 38 million Americans within the fields of science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment (Florida, 2002). However, Florida’s conceptualization has not been without opposition; Kunzmann for instance sees simple answers to complex questions in Florida’s work (Kunzmann, 2004), and Markussen finds the creative class a ‘fuzzy concept’ mainly covering educational differences (Markussen, 2005). Another very influential voice in the field of cultural planning is British urban planning consultant Charles Landry, who has developed a different notion of the creative city based on decades of consultancy work (Landry, 2000). According to Landry, a good quality of life is to be used as a competitive tool. Leaning on the notion of agglomeration economies, Landry revokes Hall’s notion of the milieu: A creative milieu is a place – either a cluster of buildings, a part of a city, a city as a whole or a region – that contains the necessary preconditions in terms of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ infrastructure to generate a flow of ideas and inventions. Such a milieu is a physical setting where a critical mass of entrepreneurs, intellectuals, social activists, artists, administrators, power brokers or students can operate in an open-minded, cosmopolitan context and where face to face interaction creates new ideas, artefacts, products, services and institutions and as a consequence contributes to economic success. (Landry, 2000: 133)

Clearly, the presence of artists is the hallmark of vibrant urban sites, and the challenge to policy-making and planning is to make places attractive to such artistic communities, with their preference for dynamic networks, a climate of support for the arts and a good and affordable quality of life (Gertler, 2004; Markussen, 2005; Markussen and King, 2003; Markussen et al., 2004). Many larger city centres might be able to offer these facilities, but smaller urban communities would find it more challenging to make themselves attractive in this way. The relationship between the presence of vibrant artistic communities and the spatial transformation processes that are emptying industrial production sites is a well-known story, as described for instance in Zukin’s notion of New York ‘loft living’ (Zukin, 1988). What seems to happen when artists reappropriate industrial sites is the generation of a value increase in the housing stock, as well as added brand value for the city as a whole (Gertler, 2004), all one might add, at the risk of producing gentrification (Bianchini, 1993). How cities might profit in the market place from hosting creative communities of people is one way of thinking about the notion of urban culture (Caves, 2000). However, interesting experiences with more direct involvement of artists and communities are also being explored within more progressive forms of urban planning (Dang, 2005; Gordon, 2005; Landry, 2005; Sandercock, 2005; Sarkissian, 2005; Shaw, 2005). The point is that culture stories are found at different levels and that facilitating empowering processes may be a point of departure in the arts and their potential for unfolding such place-based narratives. Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Jensen

Culture stories: understanding cultural urban branding

The transformation of the global economy and the new urban competitive strategies discussed provide the context for the phenomenon that the article seeks to explore but, before addressing the case study, the analytical framework is presented in the following section.

What’s the story in this territory? Towards a spatially sensitive framework The central claim of this article is that cultural urban branding can be understood better when analysed through a spatially sensitive narrative frame. This section of the article presents such a framework. According to Jessop, all narratives have three elements: a selective appropriation of past events and forces; a temporal sequence (Aristotle’s beginning, middle and end); and a ‘relational emplotment’ of the past events and forces into a more general story that provides causal, or even moral, lessons to be learned (Jessop, 1997). Or in the words of planning scholar Bent Flyvbjerg: Events are then structured into a narrative by the conventional means of time, place, actors and context. . . . No phenomena can have only one narrative or a single genealogy. . . . Narratives not only give meaning to our past experiences, they also help us vision alternative futures. (Flyvbjerg, 1998: 8)

Finnegan also recognizes that some temporal ordering is necessary but that the route is not always linear (Finnegan, 1998). Therefore the articulation and organization of stories by means of constructing a plot or ‘emplotment’ is at least a fundamental dimension of narratives. According to Ricoeur, ‘emplotment’ is the operation that draws a configuration out of a simple succession (Kaplan, 1993). The distinction made by E.M. Forrester is helpful in understanding this. Accordingly, ‘the king died, and the queen died’ is a story, but ‘the king died, and the queen died of grief’ is a plot (Kaplan, 1993: 172). Taking inspiration from historian Hayden White in particular, Czarniawska argues for a more narrow understanding of narrative: Usually, however, a narrative is understood as a spoken or written text giving an account of an event/action or series of events/actions, chronologically connected . . . Historian Hayden White . . . has convincingly demonstrated the advantages of a narrower definition of narrative indeed of distinguishing between narrative and story. (Czarniawska, 2004: 17)

Authors such as Hayden White and Polkinghorne agree on an understanding of stories as more than mere narratives (Czarniawska, 2004). Accordingly, narrative in the broad sense understands any story as a narrative, whereas the narrow definition sees the adding of a plot to the narrative as what makes a story. To Finnegan (1998: 190), narrative is a category within the broader field of story: a mere listing of past events with no connecting thread does not make a story. We need something more than just temporal sequence, something to give it an intelligible plot. (Finnegan, 1998: 10)

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The notion of plot is therefore essential as it is the meaning giving feature to any story. In the words of Polkinghorne: Plots . . . is [sic] the basic means by which specific events, otherwise represented as lists or chronicles, are brought into one meaningful whole. (In Czarniawska, 2004: 7)

Emplotted narratives – stories in this terminology – are central to any form of urban intervention. Whether it be regional planning or urban design, a story is constructed to motivate and legitimate the intervention. Furthermore, the making of such a story is an act of re-presentation. No narrative re-presentation can be made without a more or less explicit set of guiding principles. Such principles may be strongly normative and related to notions of the good life, whereas other logics of representations might be more instrumental, such as cost estimates. Then how should we start thinking about such examples of ‘representational logics’ in the act of urban intervention? A helpful notion has been developed elsewhere (Jensen and Richardson, 2004), where brands must be understood as articulations within discourses. Discourses are articulated in specific vocabularies, and transformed into social reality through the actions of social agents within institutional contexts. Thus a discourse is an entity of repeatable linguistic articulations, socio-spatial material practices and powerrationality configurations (Jensen and Richardson, 2004: 56). An urban intervention framed by a narrative may then be part of a larger discourse based upon underlying rationales and values, relating to a particular strategy, product, intervention, plan, artefact, etc. Narrative acts of representation are central to city planning and therefore may be said to resemble storytelling. If planning is storytelling then we should not only seek an answer to ‘who or what authorizes the authors?’ (Sandercock, 2003: 199), but also try to grasp how places are juggled at changing scales in order for some ‘authors’ to describe the place and its potential future: ‘story and imagined communities always have a spatial dimension and make a geographical claim. Neither authors nor readers always recognize this spatiality, but it is present nevertheless’ (Eckstein and Throgmorton, 2003: 6). This linkage between place and narrative is an under-developed theme in the conceptualization of narratives, and crucial if we are to understand contemporary cultural urban branding. In an interesting piece of urban ethnographic research on everyday life in Copenhagen, Simonsen argues for a narrative understanding that explicitly links the spatial and the narrative (Simonsen, 2005). Taking her point of departure in the work of De Certeau (1984), Simonsen argues for a spatiality of urban narratives and an understanding of how multiple narratives are organized in a play of shifting relations between different places. In Simonsen’s words, the narratives of the city makes the city inhabitable (Simonsen, 2005: 74). In parallel with this insight, we find that storytelling and narrative according to Eckstein are about setting community boundaries and thus defining some audience members within its territory whilst excluding others (Eckstein, 2003; Throgmorton, 1993). Thus the theme of power is added to the fundamentals of place and narrative. In fact one could say that power is what links narrative and place. Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Jensen

Culture stories: understanding cultural urban branding

When the issue is planning and urban intervention, no plan is made without a narrative element. However, no plan is made without a spatial referent either. Therefore the importance of understanding the relationship between the narrative and its place-bound context is of great importance. American geographer Ed Soja goes a step further and gives voice to a critique of narratives on the grounds of their silencing of the spatial: those promoting the usefulness of storytelling and the narrative form in planning and elsewhere need to be constantly aware of the challenges raised by the critical rebalancing that is taking place among historical, geographical, and social modes of analysis and interpretation. (Soja, 2003: 215)

Soja sees a danger of the narrative turn becoming preoccupied with the diachronic (time) and historical, neglecting the basic understanding of place and its link to the third element of his ‘trialectic’ ontology, namely sociality (Soja, 1996). This critique is timely and it is worth paying attention to it. However, the answer is not to dismiss the potential of the narrative turn but rather to open the theoretical and analytical focus towards an inclusion of the spatial. This is a solution that Soja himself seem to be aware of as a potential option, when he claims that ‘a new mode of narration is developing to meet these contemporary challenges, one that is thoroughly spatialized’ (Soja, 2003: 224). This critique is exactly what feeds this paper’s approach to the linkage of place and narrative – a notion of a ‘spatialized narrative’. What is needed is a refinement of our thinking about the relationship between power, the social and place to enhance an understanding of the ‘social production of space’ (Harvey, 1996; Lefebvre, 1974 [1991]). This means that places are represented by and intervened in according to a complex dialectics of socio-spatial relations: The basic proposition is that the socio-spatial relation works by means of its coercive or enabling capacities for spatial practices. Furthermore the socio-spatial relation conveys meaning to social agents via multiple re-presentations, symbols, and discourses. Thus the socio-spatial relation on the one hand expresses possibilities and limitations to social actions within the built environment. On the other hand the meaning and valuation of this relation is constantly negotiated and re-negotiated on the basis of social imageries and cultural values. (Richardson and Jensen, 2003: 15, emphasis in original)

Coming from such relational socio-spatial optics, the issue then becomes how to understand representational logics in their spatial context? This amounts to developing a notion of spatial narratives as not only representations of space, but also as performative and interventional ‘space producers’: Discourses produce lived spaces and actions within lived spaces in turn shape discourses. If discourse is necessary for attaching meaning to things in everyday life (as much as in policy-making, which is just one of those things that happen in everyday life), then analysis of discourse is inseparable from the analysis of space. In fact, analysis of space requires analysis of discourse if we are to understand how spaces come to be as they are, how people exist and act within spaces. (Jensen and Richardson, 2004: 43)

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Physical attributes (buildings, signage, etc.) must be understood as ‘signs in place’ in order to grasp how, for example, the culture hub of the ‘Culture Triangle’ is narrated, since ‘the way we narrate the city becomes constitutive of urban reality, affecting the choices we make, the ways we then may act’ (Sandercock, 2003: 182). It is of great importance to recognize the ‘plurality of narratives’ stemming from a number of heterogeneous voices (Finnegan, 1998; Sandercock, 2003; Simonsen, 2005). Such plurality immediately raises the issue of the relationship between these multiple stories and their author/reader subjects, and thus about the power-plays of urban representation that lie within the representational logics of the respective narratives. Moreover, this is the main reason for the terminology of narrative ‘turn’. There is no one way of doing narrative analysis, and there is no one narrative approach, let alone paradigm; rather there is an ‘ample bag of tricks’, to use the words of Czarniawska: In my rendition, the narrative approach to social sciences does not offer a ‘method’; neither does it have a ‘paradigm’, a set of procedures to check the correctness of its results. It gives access to an ample bag of tricks – from traditional criticism through formalists to deconstruction – but it steers away from the idea that a ‘rigorously’ applied procedure would render ‘testable’ results. (Czarniawska, 2004: 136)

Understanding the complex relationship between narrative, story and place is crucial to the exploration of contemporary cultural urban branding practice. Here we shall now summarize the analytical framework.

The representational logics of urban intervention – framing the ‘narrative turn’ There are a number of important clarifying statements to be made. First, there is a hierarchy of concepts in this frame. Accordingly, narratives are smaller, meaning giving entities within stories that are themselves then nested within discourse. Second, all stories contain plots that are their identifying character. Third, there is a link between the narrative framing and the spatial interventions made in the city. This idea is captured by the notion of the representational logic of urban intervention; any given urban intervention is embedded in a linguistic representation (and at times a visual one). Such representation is understood to be based on a set of values and norms that guide the intervention. Using the concept of the representational logic of urban intervention, therefore, means that interventions are framed by representations that express a specific logic, in the sense of a set of guiding principles and values. Social agents give voice to ideas of spatial change in the city by means of local narratives and stories nested within discourses. Any discourse, according to this frame, must be thought of in terms of how the representations in words and images are linked to agents in institutional settings with the purpose of following certain normative ideas and rationales. Narratives are then embedded in localized stories that may link to larger discourses, as for example global urban competitiveness via culture-led interventions (often pitted against coalitions of agents telling stories about alternative uses of tax money). Finally, such representations are always spatially embedded. Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Jensen

Culture stories: understanding cultural urban branding

The analytical framework contains a hierarchical order of these concepts to enable a better understanding of their applicability to the case analysed in this article. To take this forward towards a more operational analytical framework, the more narrow definition of narrative will be followed from hereon. According to Czarniawska (2004), we can separate mere listings, as found in texts from narratives that are temporal in their organizational structure, from stories, in that the latter contain a plot. Seen in this way, texts are turned into narratives by means of temporal ordering and structures (beginning, middle and end). Narratives are turned into stories by means of emplotment, which is the basic meaning giving dimension to stories. Furthermore, stories are embedded within discourses as larger meaning framing systems. This conceptual hierarchy and its relation to various narrative modes of representations can be illustrated as in Table 1. The modes of narrative representation suggest that attention should be paid to how the place is framed in words. Is it a case of a mere listing of information, or is there a temporal structuring leading to a notion of cause and effect? Or perhaps the agents go further and represent the place by telling a story where the plot makes the intervention comprehensible. Finally, the hierarchy suggests that such explanatory stories may be linked to larger systems of institutionalized meaning and thereby nested within discourses. In such a case, it is the struggle for hegemony that we should be looking for, together with how the stories of the place link to notions of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;inevitableâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; form of intervention or plan proposal. However, such a frame for understanding the modes of representation needs to be spatially sensitive. As presented here, it is taken as the point of departure that any planning story has a spatial referent (be that a building site, or a larger spatial entity such as a city). In this sense, places are embedded within the representations in ways that make the narration of place inevitable: Places are never emptied. Rather what occurs is a form of discursive displacement. Planners and designers substitute a professional narrative for a multitude of shared histories, collective remembrances, and personal experiences. Unwieldy stories about the place are suppressed and replaced by more actionable understandings. Planners and designers abhor narrative vacuums. Even a cleared site has to have a meaning attached to it. To be cleared is to be prepared for, receptive to, a particular

TABLE 1

Modes of narrative representation

Mode of representation

Characteristics

Examples

Text

Detached information

Tables, lists, annals

Narrative

Information, temporal ordering, structure and causality

Chronicles

Story

Information, temporal order, structure, causality and plot

Life stories Novels

Discourse

Structuring meaning systems and institutionalised stories

Political ideologies Scientific medicine

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What Beauregard voices here is an understanding of the profound relationship between the representational framing and the place as it turns into a site of intervention. This resonates with the works of Allen et al. as they speak of a ‘relational’ understanding of place: That is, it [the relational understanding of place] understand both space and place as constituted out of spatialized social relations – and narratives about them – which not only lay down ever-new regional geographies, but also work to reshape social and cultural identities and how they are represented. (Allen et al., 1998: 1–2)

In a study of the south-east of England, Allen et al. show how this region is constructed as the dominant region both materially and discursively (Allen et al., 1998). According to this approach, any place must be thought of in terms of networks of relationships and interconnections stretching beyond the place and into the wider world (Allen et al., 1998). This way of thinking offers two important insights that have inspired this article. First, places must be thought of in terms of their relation to other places, and second, places have social as well as physical dimensions. Translated into the analytical framework, this means that the representations of the place must be checked for references to other places, and that the social agents narrating the place must be mapped. Analytically, this means that one should explore the ‘sense of place’ present amongst the social agents involved in the narrative framing of the intervention. From the relational understanding, the particular place is understood as related to other places that the social agents find of significance. Summing up, this means that an operational frame for understanding the representational logics of urban interventions should contain both a narrative dimension and a place dimension (Table 2). In order to comprehend the complex relationship between story and place in cases of cultural urban

TABLE 2

Analytical frame for understanding the representational logics of urban intervention

Narrative dimension

Information Temporal order/structure Causality Plot Discourse institutionalization

Sense of place dimension

Relations to other places References to physical attributes

Jensen

Culture stories: understanding cultural urban branding

branding, the analytical frame is a checklist that needs to be taken into account. From here, and applying the framework, I shall now look into a case of cultural urban branding.

The new ‘culture hub’ of Aalborg – a case of cultural urban branding I shall now apply the analytical frame to an empirical case by means of identifying culture stories as they are articulated by agents in institutional settings. The site is the harbour front in Aalborg (Figure 1). Located in the (peripheral) northern part of mainland Denmark, the city of Aalborg is illustrative of the transformation in old industrial production areas brought about by pressure from global economic competition, whilst at the same time the attention of local and regional stakeholders has shifted towards culture, creativity and innovation. Shipyards and other heavy production facilities have employed decreasing numbers since the late 1980s (Aalborg Municipal website). Parallel to this shift, the city has hosted Aalborg University since 1974. The university, acting as a regional motor in a number of activities as well as a branding icon, has put its mark on the city in terms of spin-offs in the retail market, housing market, the night-life, etc. But the difficult task of transforming the regional workforce into highly employable knowledge workers is still far from completion. The regional and local employees are still below the national average when it comes to

FIGURE 1

Photo of harbour front, Aalborg (author photo) Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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educational background (Nordjyllands Amt, 2003). According to the (now abolished) County of North Jutland, there is need for a regional, targeted innovation policy and for an increase in the use of research into regional production, if Aalborg is going to make a successful transformation towards the knowledge economy (Nordjyllands Amt, 2003). During the last few years, there has been a lively public debate in the local media on how the city and the region should face the issue of globalization and competition (see e.g. Hagerup, 2004). In the 2005 proposal for Municipal Plan, the Municipality of Aalborg identifies the new economy and the restructuring of both the economic and the physical urban landscape as the main theme for the future (Aalborg Municipality, 2005a). Accordingly, future urban development in Aalborg should take stock of density, variety, urban qualities, and street culture in its attempt to re-orientate towards an ‘experience city’ with a large input of service, knowledge and culture (Aalborg Municipality, 2005a, 2005b).

The Culture Triangle – towards a new culture hub There is an increasing awareness of the potential, especially of harbour front locations in inner cities, for cultural and creative planning strategies (Andersson et al., 2004; Carlberg and Christensen, 2005; Dovey, 2005). According to the plans for the transformation of the harbour front in Aalborg, there will be great emphasis on culture and cultural institutions. In the municipal vision document (Aalborg Municipality, 2004a) for the future development of the harbour front, there is specific focus on the triangle formed by the former power plant Nordkraft, the new music hall (the House of Music, designed by Coop Himmelblau), and the innovation incubator for small creative businesses (Dreamhouse). This selection of institutions and places is linked in a common narrative of the Culture Triangle (Table 3). The multiple global narratives and flows of ideas unfold around this ‘Culture Triangle’. The case paves the way for an understanding of how particular webs of meanings and ways of doings are articulated with the intention of facilitating TABLE 3

The activities of the Culture Triangle

Dreamhouse

House of Music

Nordkraft

Small business within:

Concert hall

Theatres

Architecture

Research and education

Music venue

Design

(music conservatory)

Sports facilities

Art

Cinema

Culture

Shops

IT and multimedia

Businesses

Communication

Art schools

Biomedicine

Youth music school Exhibition places

Jensen

Culture stories: understanding cultural urban branding

interventions in urban space. The culture hub known as the ‘Culture Triangle’ is one such strategic point of intervention. A culture hub is understood here as a site with high inputs, awareness and levels of cultural urban interventions. Furthermore, as there is more than one culture story, culture clashes occur; in this particular case where narratives of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture meet. Dreamhouse, the innovation incubator, is host to a number of smaller businesses working within the fields of architecture, design, art, culture, IT and multimedia, communication and biomedicine. This intervention is an index of the transformation towards a more knowledge- and culture-based economic portfolio. However, its impact in economic terms is not to be overstated. Here, its main function is to serve as the creative business dimension of the new culture hub and its accompanying narrative. The old power plant of Nordkraft (Figure 2), after its transformation and rebuilding, will host facilities like a theatre, music venue, sports centre, cinema, shops, businesses, art schools, a youth music school and exhibition places. Many of the urban stakeholders who have given voice to a story of Nordkraft, are also the opposition to the elitist House of Music. Thus, there is a storyline in circulation identifying the ‘high cultural’ with the House of Music, and the ‘low cultural’, or popular, with Nordkraft. The House of Music (Figure 3) is planned to contain a concert hall. This is the flagship project at the harbour front. The financing of the House of Music is a complex affair involving privately collected donations, municipal and county funding, state money due to the presence of the conservatory, and even

FIGURE 2

Photo of Nordkraft (author photo) Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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FIGURE 3

The House of Music seen from the Fjord (© isochrom.com)

regional funds from the European Union. The House of Music was initially given the public nickname of the ‘golden shrimp’ due to its spectacular design. However, due to budget disagreements with the Austrian star architects, the design has now changed considerably and is (next to the cost overrun) the main reason for public resistance towards the project. Figure 3 shows: The House of Music in North Jutland seen from south-west with the large flying concert hall gesturing towards the fjord. One of the primary characteristics is to retain contact with the fjord through the elegantly lifted building volumes. A constant view towards the fjord from Nyhavnsgade has been maintained giving the impression of an open connection to the city. The functions in the foyer are located below the flying concert hall which stretches out towards the fjord and North Jutland. From the upper balconies the audience can enjoy the view of the winding river, Nørre Sundby and Aalborg. The northern part of the building contains the music education programs for the Aalborg University as well as the Academy of Music and Aalborg Symphony Orchestra. (isochrom.com)

The story of the Culture Triangle is the first narrative to be related to the analytical frame (Table 2). Given the vast number of activities and plans for the whole harbour front area, the narrative framing of these three institutions and projects are an expression of some arbitrariness. However, by spinning them Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Jensen

Culture stories: understanding cultural urban branding

into the narrative of the triangle, they are framed as if they where parts of a more coherent whole. This whole is exactly the story of the new cultural hub of the harbour front in Aalborg. It is a hub provided with a story, and with links to the wider global context of interurban competition and branding based upon new cultural strategies and plan-making. The account of the Culture Triangle is one of a unison articulation. The voice of the municipality is dominant in its story of how the harbour front is transforming according to a specific logic of cultural branding. In the narrative dimension, factual information exists according to which one can understand the functionality of the place as well as the number of different activities to be inscribed in the new site. The temporal structuring is weak at the specific level. However, at the general level, the Culture Triangle is narrated into the before/after temporality of the shift from hard industry to cultural city. The plot of the Culture Triangle story is linked to the new cosmological figure of the triangle (much like the socially arbitrary notions of star signs). The story unfolds the plot with a clear reference to its wider discursive institutionalization: global interurban competition leaves no other option for telling a successful story of the harbour front in Aalborg than the one institutionalized in the municipal plan; this grants Aalborg a competitive cultural harbour front site with international branding qualities. In this sense, the narrative dimension is intimately linked to the sense of place articulated. The city and the harbour front (however abstract) are seen as linked to other sites and cities on the global horizon. Furthermore, the story of the Culture Triangle is imminently conditional on the physical attributes of the harbour and the fjord. Thus the water and the massive industrial building of Nordkraft is drawing on the historical continuity of a story where the site is changing by means of a deliberate mix of old industrial aesthetics and contemporary iconic architecture.

‘Aalborg – seize the world’: the branding context for the ‘Culture Triangle’ The next narrative account to be presented is the official municipal branding campaign, another example of unison narrative framing. The Branding Aalborg campaign has ‘Aalborg – seize the world’ as its motto (Aalborg Municipality, 2004b). Under this heading, four values are identified that are supposedly quintessential to the identity of Aalborg: • • • •

diversity wide prospects teamwork drive. On the basis of the four values a short vision is presented. Aalborg wants to be a contrast to the traditional city. A bigger heart in a smaller space with wider prospects. We will cultivate the contrasts and create space for diversity. Seize the world. And through knowledge, teamwork and drive, secure the framework for a life in development. (Aalborg Municipality, 2004b)

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Unsurprisingly, the wording and articulation of the values have been heavily criticized in both public debate and the media (assessment based on the debate in the local newspaper Nordjyske from November to December 2004). Some find them too generic and general to be specific to Aalborg and thus not emblematic of the character of the city. The main critique raised has therefore been an issue of identification, and what sort of city the citizens think they live in. Others find that the four values are too broadly formulated, and thus not able to guide future branding actions. One of the other issues in the public debate has been whether the money spent (five million Kroner) would have been better used on other types of public services, like care for the elderly or maintenance of the municipal infrastructure – an argument to which the Lord Mayor countered ‘it’s no use that someone points at holes in the road when we are working to make more jobs’ (cited from Nordjyske, 26 November 2004). The motto ‘Aalborg – seize the world’ is accompanied by a logo (Figure 4). The logo tries to capture the idea of the outward-looking and global perspective phrased in the motto ‘Aalborg – seize the world’ as the colourful squares open up and connect to the wider global space. However, it might also be ‘read’ as a city in disintegration and lacking in coherence, rather than posing a positive connotation of the medium-sized city with an eye to global potentials. The branding booklet states that ‘we are not like anyone else’. From this premise, the four values are described. First of all, the notion of ‘diversity’ can be seen as one of opposites; small and yet globally connected, the rural countryside and the city core, the buzz of the big city and the quietness of small villages, peaceful enclaves and upbeat entertainment districts. In short (to quote the branding text), ‘Culturally Aalborg has the whole palette – from fine culture to subculture and avantgarde’. This clearly articulates an understanding of the local identity as being polychrome and diverse. But it might also be read as a symptom of indecisiveness and thus less precision – a major problem in framing identity as this triggers the before-mentioned reactions to the generic and empty categories with which the inhabitants rarely identified. The second value is ‘wide prospects’. This is an interesting value as it indexes not only the normative value of open mindedness and inclusiveness, but also

FIGURE 4

Logo for ‘Aalborg – seize the world’ (public domain) Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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the physical and geographical region in which the city is located. Thus, there is a conflation in the semiotic ‘work’ as it refers both to values and place. For generations, there has been a public notion of North Jutland as being special in terms of its blue sky and its wide horizons. Here, the branding taps into some of the folkways that could pave the way for a positive frame of identification. However, some of the critiques in the local media have been precisely from inhabitants who were disappointed to discover that this was more of a physical and geographical referent than anything else – and clearly not thinking that wide horizons were enough to articulate a specific identity from. The third value, ‘teamwork’, draws heavily on the local self-perception of being ‘strong and peripheral’. Accordingly, since the region always has been on the margins, a particular culture of collaboration and cooperation has developed (out of simple necessity the storyline implies). It is highlighted in the accompanying text that the transition from industrial city to knowledge city should be emblematic of this feature. Thus, the way in which the university, business community and local government has faced the challenges of industrial reconfiguration is emphasized. Finally, the virtue of collaboration is also said to be detectable in the many links that Aalborg nurtures with ‘friendship cities’ (twin cities) on a global level. This furthers the impression of the globally aware medium-sized city. On the other hand, the value of teamwork seems hard to understand as something profoundly belonging to Aalborg alone. Compared to other cities, Aalborg probably does not perform any better or worse. Again, the framing taps into more empty and generic concepts that void what really matters: local specificity and identity. The fourth and final value is ‘drive’. Again the peripheral identity of the national underdog is articulated, but this time with a twist as the merchant history of the city is included into the story of the city of high performance and activity. The before-mentioned transformation from the industrial society to the information society is again presented as an example of a particular entrepreneurial culture. The major events in the cultural sphere, such as the carnivals and the Tall Ships Race, are substantiating this claim to action. This value has the most specific examples attached to it. However, public critique of terms of extreme generalization has also been articulated. More interesting is probably the notion of Aalborg as characterized by ‘drive’ when seen articulated against the capital city of Copenhagen. It is said that Aalborg is not just a merchant city of some weight in the region, it is an ‘anti-dote to Copenhagen’. Clearly, this goes to illustrate the underdog complex and residents’ perception of their region. The values, the vision and the logo do seem to expose some degree of coherence, especially the elements articulating the global–local nexus and the importance of Aalborg as outward-looking. What works less convincingly is the widespread use of generic and general terms and descriptions of what should have been the identity-building place-specifics of Aalborg. Moreover, the downright negative labelling of ‘others’ as a way of promoting oneself does not seem to be in accordance with a cultural climate favouring tolerance and inclusion. This is an example of the old habit of ‘blaming the capital’ for all the evils of Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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today. Such branding practices might backfire since Aalborg is still dependent on good relations with all its urban contacts – including Copenhagen. In relating the branding campaign to the analytical frame, one should first note that there is a strong interpretative element at work here. The narrative dimension is much less factual and informational than that seen in the Culture Triangle story. Rather, we have left the realm of the factual, and become embedded in a visionary story of a city transforming its future in accordance with its history and identity. Again the plot is articulated on the basis of the city’s ability to compete globally. As such, the story merges into the discourse institutionalization of the municipality as found in the official planning documents (Aalborg Municipality, 2004a, 2004b, 2005a, 2005b). The sense of place articulated in the branding campaign is relational as it is very central to the story that Aalborg is linked to the rest of the world. However, the story also contains a notion of Aalborg as distinct, with its own spatial identity. Moreover, the difference articulated is an expression of alterity construction, as the capital city of Copenhagen serves as illustration of what the city is not! The branding story of Aalborg and how this medium-sized city tries to articulate a discourse of global connectivity, as well as local identity, illustrates how urban interventions are dependent on a specific representational logic.

Contested citizen voices A research project on the various urban citizens’ attitudes to Aalborg harbour front in general, found a number of interesting narratives on the cultural aspects of these visions and plans (Jensen and Hovgensen, 2004). The City Alderman with responsibility for urban planning frames the whole transition theme in relation to the cornerstone of the ‘Culture Triangle’, namely the House of Music: We are facing a process of ‘urban conversion’ where we are leaving, what should we call it, the heavy industry and then transforming into what will characterize Aalborg as a knowledge based city. When one wants to include the fjord and have the city to look towards the fjord then the ‘House of Music’ is an example of how we are trying to change. In relation to the demand and collaboration there is around the ‘House of Music’.

However, as an example of the (much less organized) voices on the margins expressing concern about the new culture-led urban strategy, we hear from a member of a local community organization bordering the harbour front area close to the ‘Culture Triangle’: I don’t think it [the harbour front after the House of Music] needs to be a place for what do you say, people with a ‘fat wallet’, or what do you say . . . just for the ordinary worker . . . [compared to] double income families dining at the harbour front. It must be for other groups as well. (Member of a local community organization)

Another community organization member sees the new network constellation between the city and the university as the power base for an elitist project: Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Many people see it [the House of Music] as a prestigious project. Given the intentions of the Lord Mayor and the University, right? Without its being for ordinary people to use. (Member of local community organization)

Clearly, projects of this magnitude are prone to be linked to economic issues in the public discourse. Thus another member of a local community organization located on the opposite side of the fjord speaks of the power of money: Yes, it is a question of money. That’s beyond any doubt. The land down there is worth a lot, isn’t it? So that’s beyond any doubt completely decisive. That’s also why everything is so heavily built at the other end, right? And that’s a bit worrying, that this could become too influential a factor. Those green breathing spaces we got out here are immensely important. That is extremely important, because when first we plaster everything in buildings, then the damage is done. That we have seen. (Member of local community organization)

Looking from the viewpoint of the business community and the local developers, a vivid sense of change and opportunity is seen as the storyline of ‘rebirths’ and ‘cleaning up’: Yes, yes there are some things which time sort have surpassed, right? Also because the infrastructure has changed, and there has to happen a rebirth I had almost said. That is, a renewal of those things. There has to be a certain cleaning up and there needs to be removed a lot of concrete-like things, cleaning up simply. And [there needs to be] made something that provides an active living to the city and the fjord again. (Developer)

One of the central issues when discussing the efforts of culture branding is the notion of the physical attributes. Since the National Exhibition in 1933, the Aalborg Tower (a steel tower made at the old shipyard) has been seen as the icon of Aalborg. However, with the advent of the new harbour front development, and the plans for the House of Music in particular, this spatial referent is now being contested: I think that Aalborg’s new brand will be the House of Music. That I am rather certain of. . . . And I think that the brand we are attempting to construct has something to do with the fact that there are wide prospects, that there are many cultural activities, and there is development. (City council member)

The City Alderman shares the notion of the importance of the new icon, but balances it by recognizing that a city may have more than one landmark building in its branding portfolio: We live in a small city in a big world . . . I don’t think people will accept if the House of Music became the new logo. They would still want the Aalborg Tower as it is. But one could have more than one logo. (City Alderman)

These contesting voices do not seem to suggest a coherent culture story for the harbour front area. However, the institutional affiliation of each voice and the organizational embeddedness of each of them should leave no doubt that the powerful and agenda-setting stakeholders are telling the same story about the old industrial city facing transformation in terms of shifting into a culture Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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and knowledge-led strategy. As such, there is a powerful network of urban stakeholders telling the culture story of Aalborg with reference to Bilbao and other global narratives of successful urban transformation on a large scale, as this developer claims: ‘I think that our House of Music eventually could have the same effect for us as is the case in Bilbao’ (developer). Such an understanding is contested by this member of the city council as she states that ‘I don’t think Aalborg will become the Bilbao of the North’ (city council member). Looking across the three narrative domains presented in this article, the question is whether there are any patterns and any institutional linkages and networks that make certain outcomes of the culture stories more likely than others. If the harbour front transformation is taken as a whole, it seems clear that there is a division between those social groups and agents in favour of spending money in order to transform the city, and those actors opposing the new transformations on less coherent grounds. The proponents and opponents are thus articulating opposing stories about the harbour front as they give voice to contesting representational logics of urban intervention. The differences are summarized in Table 4, showing the proponents’ and opponents’ views of the cultural urban interventions. Looking at the proponents of the new harbour front developments and discussing the themes of the analytical model, we find that information is factual and embedded in official planning documents. The temporal order/structure is one that stresses that previously the city was an industrial one, and now it is going to be a cultural one. The proponent story’s notion of causality sees the causal mechanism as one of economic competitiveness being dependent on shifts towards the new cultural economy. There is a strong plot inscribing the city into a new, culture-led branding logic. The plot is firmly embedded into the local and national policy interpretation of urban futures. Also it is strongly institutionalized in formal and informal urban networks in the city where stakeholders share the same story of ‘what must be done’. The place dimension of the proponent’s story shows a very strong sense of the city’s relational geography (main argument in the plot). Furthermore, there is a strong emphasis on the existing and planned physical attributes. Countering this with the opponents of the new cultural interventions at the harbour front, we find a much less organized picture. On the narrative dimension, the information of the opponent story is scattered, non-factual and experiential. The temporal order/structure is one where there might be a sense of history and change, but no clear notion of what comes next. There is a lack of a clear causal link between the city history and its future. There is a weak plot, where the plot divides into a critique of use of tax payers’ money and a critique of elitist downtown investments. This leads to a lack of discourse institutionalization at the local level. More generally the opponent’s story is inscribed into a populist shared fear of the elite. In the place dimension, there is no articulated sense of the place being relationally linked to other places, as the view is predominantly inward-looking and locally focused. In terms of references to physical attributes, there is a strong sense of existing and historical physical attributes. Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com by Juan Pardo on November 14, 2007 © 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

Sense of place dimension

Narrative dimension

The plot is firmly embedded into the local and national policy interpretation of urban futures. Strongly institutionalized in formal and informal urban networks in the city where stakeholders share the same story of ‘what must be done’

Discourse institutionalization

Strong use of the existing and planned physical attributes

Strong plot, where the plot of the culture stories is one of inscribing the city into a new culture-led branding logic

Plot

References to physical attributes

The causal mechanism is that of economic competitiveness being dependent on shifts towards the new cultural economy

Causality

Strong sense of the city’s relational geography (main argument in the plot)

Before the city was an industrial city, now it is going to be a cultural city

Temporal order/structure

Relations to other places

Factual and embedded in official planning documents

Proponents

Strong sense of existing and historical physical attributes

Not articulated as the view is predominantly inward-looking and locally focused

Lack of a clear discourse institutionalization at the local level. More generally the contra-story is inscribed into populist articulated fear of the elite

Weak plot, where the plot divides into a critique of the use of tax payers’ money and a (less developed) critique of growth and elitist downtown investments

Lack of clear causal link between the city history and its future

Sense of history and change, no clear notion of what comes next

Scattered and non-factual and experiential

Opponents

The proponents and opponents of the cultural urban interventions

Information

TABLE 4

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Put on a formula, the stories can be seen as two sets of ‘master stories’ that could be synthesized in the following manner. The proponent master story might sound like this: ‘If this city, once an industrial site, is going to prosper, it has to change into a cultural and knowledge-intensive city with global networked relations.’ The opponent’s master story is articulated on the basis of a critical scepticism: ‘This city, once an industrial site, is now running the risk of being socially segregated by elitist culture projects wasting the tax payer’s money.’ The difference in narrative framing clearly has to do with the interests driving the different social agents. Thus, it is not surprising to see that the opposition tells a story about the place as it used to be and how this may become jeopardized by what it sees as an elitist threat. The different stories also have to do with the power bases and the networking capacities of the agents. So when the municipality, the university, the developers and the many vocal local politicians tell a story about the Culture Triangle and the harbour front transformation as a precondition for the city’s successful entrance into the new millennium, this is more than a simple narrative framing. It is the official story of a transformation that is being inscribed and institutionalized into the general discourse of ‘what needs to be done’.

Concluding remarks The narratives are grounded, or fixed, in the sites and buildings of the ‘Culture Triangle’. Therefore, a spatially sensitive narrative approach is vital, both in analytical terms, as it enables us to get closer to the phenomena studied, but also in a more critical sense. Thus, the narrative and physical construction of a culture hub, such as the one discussed, seems lacking in public validation. This is where the story cracks, as serious doubts are raised about community engagement and support, especially regarding the House of Music project. The fact that the project has been narrated under the label ‘elitist’ by some of its antagonists shows this clearly. The narrative of the ‘Culture Triangle’ in Aalborg illustrates the point that place and discourse are intertwined in very complex ways. The built environment of the location is subject to physical interventions in order to express the narratives of culture and thus serve as a material index of the new story. At the same time, the ‘Culture Triangle’ is being told into being, in the sense that the location is provided with a storyline of the new economy, urban transformation and competitiveness. The ‘Culture Triangle’ thus carries the hallmark of a place myth (Shields, 1991) and is an example of the social construction of place, in much the same respect as an arbitrary collection of stars in the sky might be bundled together in a story of a particular mythological or astrological plot. In Aalborg, there is a merging of multiple storylines and narratives into a story of urban transformation as the former industrial and peripheral city is being re-told as the new cultural centre of an experience and knowledge-driven

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economy. The culture story in Aalborg is a complex narrative, woven with storylines emerging from a very diverse set of sources: the municipal plan, the branding documents, the local developers, city council members, the business community, the university, and the culture scene. As there is only scattered and unorganized opposition to these new interventions, the story seems all the more coherent. The only really strong local opposition is to the House of Music, owing to the fact that the project, even before being built, is facing severe budget overruns. Nevertheless, the persistence and perseverance of local stakeholders within the very broad spectrum of state, market and (to a certain extent) civil society in telling this culture story and embedding it in material interventions alongside the harbour front, seem to make these changes inevitable, as the fusion of the ‘word city’ and the ‘built city’ keeps being told around the forceful culture story featuring the House of Music as a central plot. In accordance with the analytical frame, ‘the representational logics of urban intervention’ should be understood as pinning down two competing discourses. Mapping the representation in words suggests that there are two radically different stories, which see the harbour front interventions as either ‘necessary for attracting global capital and development’, or as ‘needless waste of tax money’ (the latter includes a smaller faction which argues that they are ‘blocking investment in ordinary liveable spaces’). Mapping iconic representation in images reveals two competing icons: the industrial age icon of the Aalborg Tower versus the new post-industrial culture hub flagship of the House of Music. In mapping clusters of practices, agents and institutions the picture is more complex; on one side are the municipality, most city council politicians, urban developers, the university, and some citizens and community organizations; on the other is a much smaller collection of citizens, politicians and community organizations. In mapping power-rationalities, this corresponds to a pro-growth rationale of urban competition and branding versus a less coherent mix of urban sustainability, anti-fine culture and tax expenditure issues. Identifying two different sets of stories and agents is not a precise description, however, of the de facto political situation, or of the power situation current in the culture hub. The prevailing story is the narrative of culture of the ‘Culture Triangle’, with its widespread support for any interventions helpful in transforming Aalborg from an industrial city into a new, globally aware, culture and knowledge city. The opposing voices are clearly on the margins and seem to be pushed even further back with every new intervention that the municipality endorses at the harbour front. The point in this article has been to show the complexity involved in understanding the way places are told and read, constructed and de-constructed – in this case by means of culture stories.

Acknowledgements This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the AESOP Conference ‘The Dream of a Greater Europe’, Vienna, 13–17 July 2005. The author wishes to thank the House of Music secretariat for giving access to the illustration of the House of Music as it looked in January 2006.

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Websites www.aalborg.dk (Aalborg Municipal website). www.brandingaalborg.dk

Ole B. Jensen is Professor of Urban Theory at the Department of Architecture and Design, Aalborg University and Visiting Professor to the Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield, UK. His main research interests are within urban theory and power, the cultural sociology of space, city branding and urban mobility. Address: Department of Architecture and Design, Aalborg University, Gammel Torv 6, DK-9000 Aalborg, Denmark. [email: obje@aod.aau.dk]