Introduction > 3. Lit Review - Draft V1
Title: Before you brand a place: making visual communication design that advances an inner-city neighborhood and its multiple identities.
Topic Statement: A place brand cannot serve all identities living in Price Hill; visual communication designers must make better contributions when working in an inner-city community.
Since Milton Glaser's iconic I ❤️ NY design places around the globe use place branding to transform their effect and reputation and attract developers, businesses, tourists, and residents. These place-based exercises intend to make a place more competitive in a globalized market (see colonizing design {Moran et al., 2018, #30585}, which is essentially the economic argument for design {Heskett, 2017, #7005}.
Metahaven's description sums up place branding well:
"essentially little more than a first impression. It is the first two, three thoughts people have when they think about a place. To change these assumptions in a more "favorable" direction may require a stylish (or terrible) logo. However, it may also consist of more fundamental policy shifts which affect the lives of people: "defining the most realistic, most competitive and most compelling strategic vision for a country, region or city' this vision then has to be fulfilled and communicated," as the place branding expert Simon Anhold describes it. What makes place branding slippery in terms of its politics is that it increasingly stands as both a visual practice and a modality of governance." {2013, Page 2 #16334}
Many researchers blame austerity measures of neoliberalism—which lead to the entrepreneurialization of cities—as a cause for these exercises replicated from the business sector in public spaces {Harvey, 1989, #59561}. One researcher calls city branding a new form of urban policymaking originating within the genesis of biopolitics {Lucarelli, 2018, #128881}.
Stretching further back into human history, one might theorize that place branding manifests from homo sapiens infatuation with artifice {Flusser, 1999, #225277} or technique (efficiency), which an offbeat French protestant anarchist farmer and philosopher links to the Christian story of the fall of humans and a departure from life in the Garden (which was arguably not branded) {Ellul, 2017, #20494}.
This assertion of a type of governmentality through the linguistic landscape becomes clear in brand guidelines that suggest paint colors for private homes (Westside, Covington, Kentucky) and taglines like the "soul of Cincinnati" (Madisonville, Cincinnati, Ohio).
Elsewhere, in The Neighborhood Playbook "For Developers" and "For Everyone Else" {Wright and Nickol, 2018, #198849} the focus is on creating amenities for neighborhoods, or as Etymonline puts "creature comforts. {Etymonline, #279829}" The Playbook describes amenities to be "the things you create to make your neighborhood unique (see Collins' place brand definition). "Creating amenities drives demand for your neighborhood, leading to its growth and ultimately lasting investment in your community." Their method make entrepreneurs, as well as places. Once again, neighborhoods are presented with a false dilemma, brand or do not grow.
What is missing from the playbook and brand guidelines is an interrogation of "What is the place in the process of becoming? Which of its features are clues to an ongoing process that continue to exert decisive influence, and which are merely artifacts of the past that asset little influence now?" {Spirn, 2011, #293055} Before design, one must ask what needs to be "undesigned" {Shiman et al., 2021, #177091} or redesigned because of historical inequalities and power imbalances (cite Creative Reaction Lab).
Ignoring these features, place branding papers over genuine authenticity in a modern form of settler colonization "embedded systematically in the assumptive framework of modern societies" where "disregard, denial, and exploitation [are] primary to the epistemology of development [and design]?" {Moran et al., 2018, #30585}
Many scholars agree that these seemingly innocent techniques signify—often through seemingly innocent {Williams, 2019, #18875} forms of typography and creature comforts—the homogenization {Järlehed, 2021, #12560}and gentrification {Trinch and Snajdr, 2017, #21149} of urban spaces. Place brand markers are increasingly activated to differentiate, but they lead to a “glocal” sameness {Järlehed, 2021, #12560}. They describe themselves similarly, often using terms like "cosmopolitan" or "creative" {Masuda and Bookman, 2018, #287100}. "The marriage of Florida's [creative class] ideas with municipal action, therefore, brought into even sharper relief what was already one of the most economically and racially polarized large cities in the United States" {Zimmerman, 2008, #139949}.
Evidence of this phenomenon shows up in concerned citizens who develop bottom-up, inside-out counter-brands {Julier, 2011, #12772} to mitigate the effects of elite-led, top-down branding processes and methods. Design activism groups selectively appropriate the official brand identity elements to exercise power using the tactic of Détournement {Knabb, 2006, #281237}.
Only recently have researchers made an effort to capture bottom-up (deep and wide) inclusive (not design activism) place branding through participatory place branding efforts (utilizing Design Thinking, Participatory Action Research, and the Design Council's Double Diamond) {Källström and Siljeklint, 2021, #246928}. In the example, a diverse group of municipality members decides the meaning of a place's brand identity. While it is a helpful study, it does not share how a neighborhood initiates a participatory place brand project. In other words, who gets to decide to brand the neighborhood to start?
With some exceptions, the participant creators of these place brands are people with power. Put another way, those in the neighborhood "who have the capacity to achieve outcomes" {Mayorga-Gallo, 2014, #27672}. Participation typically includes outside consultants, business owners, and people involved in community councils.
In response, critical researchers considering the right to the city theory ask who owns a place brand {Masuda and Bookman, 2018, #287100}? Another researcher questions if community councils are the best brand managers and whether places need to focus on positioning themselves as unique—or competitive—amongst other neighborhoods and instead focus on achieving "sameness of quality of life" {Collins, 2021, #239114} across all neighborhoods.
If design, as Heskett states, is "one of the basic characteristics of what it is to be human, and an essential determinant of quality of human life" {Heskett, 2005, #286767} (my italics), is place branding, an expression of design, the best tool in the neighborhood's backyard shed?
Quality of life, as defined earlier, is not universal. We see this in the fact that there are quality-of-life crimes and offenses {Unattributed, 2012, #121425} and {Williams, 2021, #126544} "based on moral or value judgments" which are often celebrated by the affective place brand messaging that posits how one should behave in the neighborhood {Miller, 2007, #212935}. In creating a neighborhood vision, place brands shape both perception and reality. However, they do not reflect the different subjectivities of a neighborhood. Instead, they often pull everyone together into a neoliberal mosaic shaped by diversity ideology {Mayorga-Gallo, 2014, #27672}, even if the neighborhood lacks integration {Howard, 1994, #157548}.
A future Price Hill place brand may utilize the features of a dynamic identity {Martins et al., 2019, #252257} like other Cincinnati Neighborhoods. For instance, Northside and Madisonville logos(appendix) act as containers holding a mosaic of images representing the identities of the neighborhood. Another standard route is to create a patchwork of colors often out of one letter form from the place name {Järlehed, 2021, #12560}. For example, the colorful "B" for Bellevue, Kentucky (see appendix), or abstract "W" that I designed for the West Price Hill flag (see appendix). The artifacts often commodify the exoticism of the neighborhood's non-white residents {Mayorga-Gallo, 2014, #27672}. They are broad representations made palatable for white audiences {Londoño, 2020, #57783}.
Focused on their "good intentions," place brand projects confuse themselves with emancipatory developments {Zwick and Cayla, 2011, #225684}. It is possible that instead, they introduce aesthetic "distinction," softly pushing out a lower classes of residents through "class settlement" {Trinch and Snajdr, 2017, #21149}. Graham (in Gainesville, Florida) and Miller (in the New Times Square) document these seemingly innocuous acts of design vividly {Miller, 2007, #212935} {Gram, 2019, #2810}.
Furthermore, the concept of design multiple complicates the efficacy of participatory processes. "A design multiple is an object that is multiply enacted in design practice (participatory workshops), and whose multiple enactments are materialized into several designs." Researchers designing for aging find that it is difficult, if not impossible, to connect design multiples into one object (or, say, one place brand) {Fischer et al., 2021, #38407}. The researchers share that "the different enactments and materializations of aging seem to reveal tensions and contradictions that are difficult to reconcile with one another." In other words, inclusive, participatory workshops do not give better evidence of the best design solution. Instead, we confront multiple possible realities.
Is the single-axis {Costanza-Chock, 2020, #96439}, consensus-based {Markussen, 2013, #13832} scenario inevitable? Or, are plural {Escobar, 2018, #64758}, differential {Ely, 2020, #28842}, and malleable {Dunne and Raby, 2013, #45197} visual communication design options available for the Price Hill neighborhoods? Is there room for multiple subjectivities {Campbell et al., 2021, #119065}; a neighborhood where many worlds fit {Escobar, 2018, #64758})? Is it possible to increase social capital {Putnam, 2001, #77235} by bridging people and groups inside and outside the neighborhood political boundaries without place branding?
When confronted with multiple realities, which reality is selected? How is it enacted? What are the outcomes? Are they good? For whom? What if design elements could be configured and used by multiple subjectivities to express and practice East Price Hill in multiple ways? {Campbell et al., 2021, #119065} How would one study the heterology of the neighborhood? {Cuthbert, 2011, #50769} Do we have the imagination to come up with something better {Miller, 2007, #212935}{Avle et al., 2017, #85688}?
Lit Review Summary
There is a need to explore alternatives to the false dilemma of top-down, "commercial objectives" of place branding in neighbors/communities. What does it look like when visual communication design (or place branding techniques) help "citizens nurture their feelings of local embeddedness, place attachment, care, and associated safety and security?" (Medway et al., 2021).
There is a need to assess the quality of life, existing design interventions, and thoughts on branding and its implications.
There is a need to explore ways to invite an ideal neighborhood representation in the decision-making process, including the choice to brand a place.
Argument
Neighborhoods do not need a place brand; visual communication designers need to invest in better identifying the needs and possibilities of the neighborhood.
It is impossible to determine one place brand identity framed through one place brand identity system when multiple and intersectional {Costanza-Chock, 2020, #96439} identities live within a multi-ethnic neighborhood like Price Hill. It does not matter how many codes of ethics (cite), design principles for equality(cite), or community-centered design processes (cite) we follow. A brand is competitive and unhealthy for neighborhoods, regardless of who participates. Instead, designers and communities need pathways that generate alternatives to place branding, giving communities the agency to choose their direction from more than two options.
Through the following methods and deliverables, I will demonstrate this theory by synthesizing the resulting data into several fictional groups for Price Hill, offering the Price Hill constituents a chance to the multiplicity of projects {Manzini, 2015, #77501} they might foster. The results will show multiple alternative pathways for designers working in neighborhoods.
As the editors of a recently published collection of place branding articles state, "it is not time yet to shut up shop and to give up entirely on place branding." However, "we are perhaps at a point in time [transitioning from Covid-19] where a logical and sensible step is to push the "reset button" on such activity and fully (re)consider its purpose and goals." {Medway et al., 2021, #69744} They speculate that place branding, beyond competition, "could have an important role to play in helping citizens nurture their feelings of local embeddedness, place attachment, care, and associated safety and security." For these ends, I skeptically move toward new means and opportunities for visual communication design to increase the quality of life in Price Hill, not just its perception or uniqueness.