"Little Vienna" or "European avant-garde city"? Branding narratives in a Romanian city

Abstract

By connecting the literature on urban development processes in post-socialist cities with debates from the area of place branding, this paper critically examines recent narratives of city branding in Timișoara, Romania. The aim is to investigate one specific case in the reproduction and adaptation of global urban development policies and to examine its relevance for the context of post-socialist urban politics. Our findings indicate a specific circularity between city branding and urban development, which is used to align the city to the regional inter-urban economic competition and to promote it as a space of rapid development. The outcome is a mélange of different narratives, based on disparate histories and representations of the city, which are assembled in ad-hoc and often contradictory branding discourses.