What Brand Is This Place? Place-Making and the Cultural Politics of Downtown Revitalization

Abstract

This article investigates place-branding as a contested “cultural politics.” Through a case study of the creation of a “Downtown” Pomona (California) from the “Antiques Row” and “Arts Colony” that preceded it, the framework furthers our understanding of place-branding by highlighting how communities of interest contest competing cultural outlooks and further outlines the consequences of inadequate attention to the cultural economies that are supported by the meaning-making and place-making strategies of this cultural politics. In discussing how coalitions that cut across business and community interests contest cultural outlooks in an intralocal politics, the analysis offers an alternative to both elite/local and use/exchange approaches to the study of place-branding.