Monthly Archives: May 2012

by Ares | 31/05/2012 · 16:23

Bursting the expat bubble in Berlin

Watergate club in Kreuzberg

Have you ever been part of an expat community? I’m talking about those highly mobile groups who leave the comfort of their homeland for the latest fashionable place. They are very different from refugees or immigrants who are forced to leave for political reasons, even though expats love to play with notions of exile. A very luxurious exile indeed. Berlin seems to be the latest cry for expats and has been so for a while. For the untrained eye, the clubs and bars in the districts of Kreuzberg or Neukölln are full of tourists. But the people around you who speak English, Spanish, Swedish or French live in Berlin. At least for a limited period of time or repeatedly – again and again. Continue reading →

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Filed under pick of the day, research

Tagged as Annamaria Olsson, Berlin, Berlin expat integration project, gentrification, kreuzberg, Neukölln, tourism

by Ares | 28/05/2012 · 16:59

New Statesman – Exploding the myth of the feckless, lazy Greeks

An interesting article by Alex Andreou on national stereotypes and their consequences. As I have argued before, there are probably few countries in Europe with a worse image than Greece at the moment. How much of it is true, how much constructed by media or politics is a matter of debate. The foloowing article compares image and reality and is worth your time:

New Statesman – Exploding the myth of the feckless, lazy Greeks.

Guest article: The European Capital of Culture – Guimarães 2012. Can we build a place branding strategy with it?

The Guimaraes logo

by Eduardo Oliveira

The nomination of the Portuguese city of Guimarães as one of the two European Capital of Culture for the year 2012 (ECC-2012) raised great expectations in the local community, in the northwest region and in the country as well.

As usual, politicians, the media and local communities see the possible fame for country and region through an event of this size with enormous excitement. The hallmark events, such as the 2004 European Football Championship organized by Portugal, the European Youth Capital Braga 2012, bring the desire of achievements in the economic, social and cultural sense. Words, as ‘we can’, ‘we will continue working for the future’, ‘this is a signal that we are in the international realm’ are widely spread - with little impact in the long-term.

Continue reading →

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Tagged as Eduardo Oliveira, European Capital of Culture, event, festivals, Guimaraes, Portugal

by Ares | 23/05/2012 · 09:58

Crete: Blessed by Nature and Cursed by Tourism?

A view of the village entrance in Archanes

by Ares Kalandides

Dimitirs Mavrakis leaves his kitchen just for a couple of minutes, his face lined with flour, to say a warm hello and talk about the crisis. “What do the Germans say about us?” is the first thing he asks. Together with his wife Maria they have run the restaurant Kritamon on Crete for the past 5 years and they depend on tourists to survive. “We have our regular guests, but generally locals don’t come very often”, explains Dimitris. “We offer home-made food, a contemporary version of what our mothers and grandmothers used to cook. When people here go out they need something special, not the kind of food they traditionally make at home”. Yet Kritamon is probably one of the best restaurants in Crete, located in the small town of Archanes, about fifteen minutes from the island’s capital, Iraklion, in the midst of a large vineyard valley. Continue reading →

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Tagged as Archanes, Crete, gastronomy, Kritamon, mass tourism, tourism, tourism management

by Efe | 21/05/2012 · 16:40

Guest article: Ethics of Place Making and Altering (a.k.a. Place branding)

Ethics for Sale? (Image from BrandChannel.com)

By Efe Sevin

Last year, the Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy published a special issue on ethics of place branding, and I had the opportunity to put my two cents in with my article “Thinking about Place Branding: Ethics of Concept“. With recent encouragements from several colleagues, and the Turkish government’s most recent attempts to redesign national commemoration day celebrations, I decided to revisit some of the main arguments I made in the paper.

Continue reading →

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Filed under miscellaneous, opinions, research

Tagged as action. legitimacy, communicative, consistency, ethics, habermas, inclusion, Place Branding

by Ares | 18/05/2012 · 08:29

Guest article: Russian Place Branding – we start with the alphabet

The logo of the Siberian city Omsk and the Omsk Region

by Irina Shafranskaya

Russian cities have caught the virus of city branding. The competition of cities that can be branded is extremely wide among more than one thousand of Russian ones. Every city proclaims its brand as a tool of socio-economic development but surprisingly (or not) the branding process does not start from the city improvement or economy boost. It starts from the logo. Who, when and how taught the city mayors (who are the main decision makers of branding in most cases) that the logo is the most appropriate start – we do not know. It seems like an epidemic disease with quite clear symptoms. Moreover, the mainstream is city logo development is ‘alphabetical’ branding. Continue reading →

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Tagged as city branding, Irina Shafranskaya, logo, Moscow, Nevinnomysk, Omsk, Perm, Russia

by hanspul | 15/05/2012 · 13:26

Marketing of High-tech Regions (1): Karlsruhe “HighTech meets the Good Life”

Karlsruhe

By Hans Pul

Regional marketing booms. Small (and big) cities team up in regional cooperations, in order to get noticed in the international arena. Together, regional actors aim to attract investors, potential employees and tourists. Career opportunities and quality of life play an important role in this respect. Richard Florida’s well-known book The Rise of the Creative Class, Cities and the Creative Class (2002) proves to be influential once again. Continue reading →

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Tagged as Baden-Württemberg, benchmark, bioValley, branding, brands, clusters, cooperation, Europe, European Regions, Germany, high-tech regions, instruments, karlsruhe, Karlsruhe TechnologyRegion, marketing, metropolitan region, metropolregion, nanoValley, quality of life, R&D, regional marketing, technologieregion, TechnologieRegion Karlsruhe, technologyregion, trk

by renardteipelke | 08/05/2012 · 09:57

Three Short Movies about Traveling the World and Their Messages

By Renard Teipelke

Traveling the world as an adventure (or a luxury) undertaken by young adults has become a well-known part of life of today’s younger generations. Multiple blogs are filled with online diaries, pictures, videos, links, and other pieces of information that are shared with friends and the world wide web for various reasons. Rick Mereki, Tim White, und Andrew Lees have been on a six-week travel around the world and made three short movies with impressions from the eleven countries they visited. Each movie has been framed by a specific theme, and they all highlight (indirectly) many aspects of traveling the world and understanding its heterogeneity and complexity – both, as I would say, with regard to leisure activities as well as research. Continue reading →

The five best places to live in the world, and why | Money | The Guardian

… I always think these ratings are amazingly stupid, even if they are supposed to be humorous. I would not mind if the author used the first person (i.e. the best places for ME in the world), but he uses the second and tells me where it would be best for ME. I kept reading the article in terms of social benefits, human rights, quality of life (for ME) etc. and I only came up with one of his places after all. What do you think? Continue reading →

Monthly Archives: May 2012

Bursting the expat bubble in Berlin

New Statesman – Exploding the myth of the feckless, lazy Greeks

Guest article: The European Capital of Culture – Guimarães 2012. Can we build a place branding strategy with it?

Crete: Blessed by Nature and Cursed by Tourism?

Guest article: Ethics of Place Making and Altering (a.k.a. Place branding)

Guest article: Russian Place Branding – we start with the alphabet

Marketing of High-tech Regions (1): Karlsruhe “HighTech meets the Good Life”

Three Short Movies about Traveling the World and Their Messages

The five best places to live in the world, and why | Money | The Guardian

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