Literature on place branding and marketing

Posted on: 12 June 2012
By: mackene
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This blog provides a short listing of articles on place branding and marketing.

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Parades to be proud of: Strategies to support local shops

Posted on: 11 June 2012
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This good practice and guidance brings together strategies that people have used to improve parades of shops in their own areas that might be useful in other locations.

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Parades of shops: Towards an understanding of performance and prospects

Posted on: 11 June 2012
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Existing research makes little reference to the performance of retail and service activities at the level of neighbourhood parades. This research seeks to build a picture – for the first time – of some of the key facts relating to neighbourhood shopping parades, highlighting common themes and good practice.

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Heathrow Garden City

Posted on: 29 May 2012
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Heathrow airport should be turned into a garden city if a new hub is built elsewhere, according to Graeme Bell, vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association. He proposes turning Terminals 1, 2 and 3 into mixed-use commercial development, and suggests putting a retail park at Terminal 4 and building homes for 30,000 people across four so-called garden suburbs.

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Meridian Water: Regeneration masterplan

Posted on: 25 May 2012
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Enfield Council has unveiled a masterplan for the regeneration of a 200 acre (82 ha) area alongside North London’s Lee Valley Regional Park, to be known as Meridian Water. The proposals will create a new mixed-use waterfront community and one of the capital’s largest regeneration and investment opportunities. When completed it will be one of the biggest eco-developments in the UK. The masterplan, developed LDA Design, seeks to build 5,000 new homes and create 3,000 new jobs as well as three new schools and a range of supporting community facilities, a new high street retail core and diverse parklands.

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Grow your own way: Taking a localist approach to regeneration

Posted on: 23 May 2012
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Localis, in partnership with the Local Government Association, has produced a report arguing that a new locally-driven approach to regeneration is needed. The report analyses the lessons from a number of case studies of successful regeneration programmes and concludes that local authorities are best placed to provide the local leadership that is crucial to drive successful regeneration. The report also advocates an expansion of the community budget pilots across the country and the introduction of bolder funding mechanisms to allow councils to coordinate and fund regeneration programmes from the bottom up despite the challenging financial climate.

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Cultural placemaking in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Posted on: 23 May 2012
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This document explores the relationship between local ambitions for arts, culture and creativity and economic development through planning in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The council aims to be the first UK local authority to integrate culture into its economic development through planning. Kensington and Chelsea has called on developers to embed culture and the creative industries into their thinking from the start of the development process and to be ‘more imaginative and bold’ in their proposals. The council has also launched a ‘creative district profiler’ which developers can use to identify the potential of a proposed site to become a creative district.

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Building communities: transforming neighbourhoods into community spaces. Brighton, 11-13 April 2012

Posted on: 15 May 2012
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The 2012 UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference addressed British, Irish, European and international approaches on the following: Neighbourhood and community planning; Planning for climate change adaptation; Mobility and infrastructure; Planning capacity, education and skills; Urban and rural regeneration; Green and blue space provision; Local enterprise partnerships and affluence; Urban design and real estate development; Planning for social difference; Urban and rural development and environmental impacts; Coastal and marine planning. Abstracts are available in the conference handbook.

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Partners for new URBACT projects

Posted on: 10 May 2012
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The 19 URBACT Thematic Networks approved in April 2012 are now looking for new EU partners, including cities but also regional authorities, universities and other public institutions, to join their work on integrated, sustainable urban development. During the 6 month Development Phase, all new URBACT projects have to extend their partnerships from five up to a maximum of 12 partners. The approved projects include:

CityLogo: City branding and marketing to promote better positioning of cities in the post crisis economic arena;

CSI Europe: Involvement of cities in Jessica Urban Development Fund (UDF) structures – Role of financial instruments in efficient planning;

DID-RFSC: Referential Framework for Sustainable cities – Monitoring local strategic plans to engage stakeholders/ citizens in an integrated and sustainable approach;

E4C: E-skills for innovative cities through joint definition of integrated urban strategies, policies and practices;

ENTER.HUB: Railway hubs/ multimodal interfaces of regional relevance in medium size cities as engines for integrated urban development and economic, social and cultural regeneration;

EUnivercities: Exploring the next generation partnerships between cities and universities for a more strategic and effective co-operation;

RE-Block: Creating sustainable high-rise blocks through social cohesion, green spaces and poverty reduction;

Sustainable food for urban communities: Innovative initiatives for more sustainable food production/ retail & consumption in urban communities;

URBACT Markets: Local markets as drivers for local economic development and regeneration by exploring the links between local sustainability and successful markets;

USE ACT: Fostering opportunities for people & businesses to settle in existing locations and avoid consumption of land, through new planning processes and partnership approaches;

USER: New processes and partnerships for Urban sustainable & efficient regeneration by integrating expertise of uses from inhabitants and field workers;

WOOD FOOTPRINT: Fostering local economic development through the use of brownfield and  buildings/ spaces abandoned due to the transformation of the wood/ furniture sector.

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Land Development and Disposal Plan 2012/13

Posted on: 9 May 2012
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The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has updated its Land Development and Disposal Plan, setting out how the Agency will use its land to accelerate economic activity, the development of homes and employment floorspace, and construction activity in support of local priorities. This document sets out: a summary of the HCA’s landholdings, including key changes during 2011/12 with the transfer of landholdings to the HCA from the Regional Development Agencies and from the HCA to the Greater London Authority; the principles by which the Agency disposes of its landholdings; and an overview of the landholdings that the Agency plans to bring forward for development or to dispose of over the 2012/13 financial year, and an indication of the disposal pipeline for remainder of the Spending Review period.

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