ABSTRACT
The main lessons derived from the case studies and analysis from a perspective of marketing the city are:
flagship developments require an overt marketing strategy;
flagship developments require management of the policy formulation, implementation and evaluation process;
the strategy and management may be project-, area- and/or city-based;
marketing concerns the creation and bringing together of supply and demand factors in an implicit exchange in the urban context;
success is not contingent upon public versus private finance or initiation;
design and planning should arise from the social relations—residents, business and organizations—in the affected areas and those envisaged for the area;
economic benefits do not trickle down to the disadvantaged;
all organizations must take responsibility for the impact of their development on others in order to make the market work, as well as for moral reasons;
political legitimacy and economic necessity will increasingly demand the participation of the local residents and other interests into the policy and development process to help maintain social stability, create a ‘saleable’ urban ‘product’ and create new development markets within the urban economy;
participation may produce benefits for all parties, yet it will be a politicized process, the balance of the benefits being the object of conflict and the outworking of transforming city lives and economies;
achieving in an efficient way participation of the subjects, transformation of the urban economy and of relations within it is a key management issue;
management, in this context, concerns identifying techniques and means to facilitate and accelerate the policy and the development process, rather than closing down the process: serving not controlling.
