In recent years there has been an emerging trend in many
European cities of constructing large-scale and prestigious
architectural projects as strategies for economic development.
The expectation is that a project with a good reputation will spur
an attractive image of the city and provide it with a source of
prestige (De Frantz 2005; Kaika 2010; Doucet et al. 2011; Smith
& von Krogh Strand 2011). Such projects are often referred to as
flagship buildings and are very closely linked to the process
of place branding. Place branding concerns attempts to generate
local economic growth through the strategic adaptation of
marketing techniques in cities and regions with the aim of
improving their attractiveness (Syssner 2012). Flagship buildings
are identified as strategic instruments used in place branding
(Ashworth 2009).
By constructing eye-catching architectural projects, it has been
suggested that cities can create economic “catalysts” that stimulate
investments and consumption in the local area and help to
build a place brand (Bianchini et al 1992; Kavaratzis & Ashworth
2005). Increasingly, local governments around the world are also
trying to reproduce other places’ flagship projects that have been
identified as “best practice” and successful for place branding,
such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Ockman 2004;
Grodach 2010; Smith & von Krogh Strand 2011) and the Turning
Torso skyscraper in Malmö (Ek 2007; Mukhtar-Landgren 2009).
In the place-branding literature the “copy-cat” process is
often promoted as a good strategic policy for urban development.
It is argued that every place can create a uniqueness that
can be promoted through branding, thereby differentiating a city
from other cities and creating positive perceptions of it in the
mind of the “place consumer” (Dinnie 2004; 2011; Kavaratzis
& Ashworth 2005; Jansson & Power 2006; Ashworth 2009).
However, it is also argued that copying successful place
branding strategies risks making cities more and more alike,
creating a “serial reproduction of ‘world trade centers’ or of
new cultural and entertainment centers, of waterfront development
… and the like” (Harvey 1989, 10). This in turn, it is
claimed, creates a paradox of many “equally special places, …
when authorities learn from other cities on attracting investors
and tourists” (Ooi 2011, 57–58).
The present article examines flagship buildings in the context
of best-practice policy recommendations for place branding, in
which flagship buildings are promoted as instruments for local
economic development. I argue that theories on place branding
provide a rather one-dimensional conceptual approach to flagship
buildings, focusing too heavily on deterritorialized aspects of
place branding such as brand perceptions and place attractiveness
and thus failing to acknowledge crucial territorial aspects of how
best-practice examples are created and reproduced.
I argue further that there is a dualism in place branding,
encompassing deterritorialized and territorial processes that in
interplay create what are considered best-practice examples.
By introducing the concept of “flagship space,” I aim to
broaden the understanding of the spatial materialization of place
branding when ideas about prestigious architectural projects
turn into successful flagship developments.
A conceptual framework emphasizing both territorial aspects
and geographically mobile processes and networks is used in this
article. The framework draws on ongoing discussions about the
effects of globalization, and uses concepts of deterritorialization
and reterritorialization presented in urban and economic geography
(Brenner 1999; 2004; McNeill & Tewdwr-Jones 2003;
McCann & Ward 2010). Although the various approaches have
somewhat different starting points and are not entirely compatible,
they share a conceptual deterritorial-reterritorial understanding
of cities. It is argued that globalization has created new types of
deterritorialized geographies, “where space is frequently being
imagined as a product of networks and relations, in contrast to an
older topography in which territoriality was dominant” (Amin et al.
2003, 6). From a reterritorialization perspective, these relational and
deterritorialized geographies are acknowledged, but are at the same
time argued to have spatial implications and outcomes, thus creating
counter-processes of reterritorialization (Brenner 1999). It is
suggested that globalization entails a dialectical interplay between
deterritorialization and reterritorialization, where global flows of
capital and information become reterritorialized in relatively fixed
and immobile spatial configurations, such as investments and
infrastructures (McCann & Ward 2010). The present article has a
conceptual approach that is equally sensitive to relational and
territorial geographies and the interplay between them.
The empirical analysis discusses the development of five
flagship hotels. The intention is not to develop a best-practice
model for flagship hotels, but to use the example of the hotels as a
platform for a wider discussion of a reterritorialized understanding
of flagship buildings and place branding (i.e., flagship space).