Urban branding is a multi-billion dollar per year industry with a straightforward goal: to help cities differentiate themselves from other cities. Because cities are in competition with one another for low-cost residents, new investors, and tourists, urban branding is used by local leaders as a political-economic tool to ensure that their city is an attractive destination for these target audiences. However, in practice cities tend to adopt a similar set of branding strategies that make them

more »

... k not more distinct, but more alike. Although many studies recognize this phenomenon, most of them are purely descriptive and fail to provide an explanation for why cities adopt such similar approaches to urban branding. When an explanation is presented, it is usually couched in macro-structural terms, placing the majority of blame on political and economic forces that leave little room for the agency of groups or individual actors to influence branding decisions. I argue that such explanations are not only insufficient for explaining these similarities but are also hampered by the fact that they cannot account for changes to branding practices if and when they do occur. new location for its credit card processing center in the early 1980s, company executives were enticed by the low corporate tax rate in Nevada, the lack of a state income tax, and the availability of cheap land in one of America's fastest growing cities. However, they were also leery about the prospect of their customers having to send their monthly credit card payments to an address in a city with such a controversial image and reputation. City leaders in Las Vegas, eager to diversify their local economy and determined to not let the city's reputation kill the deal, devised an ingenious plan. To get around the use of the name Las Vegas in the mailing address, the city offered to cede the 40-acre parcel of land to CitiBank and convinced the U.S. Postal Service to agree to the creation of two new zip codes specifically for the site, which would be given its own name, The Lakes. 1 With its concerns alleviated, CitiBank decided to move its western processing center to Las Vegas-or technically, to The Lakes (Citi's city within a city)-thus shielding the business's image and reputation from that of its real place of operation. 2