ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the conceived image of the city as a cognitive product, made of mental, abstract and discursive representations. It discusses the controlled production of cognitive urban images, and explores some of the strategies used by city promoters to build and project a particular place image, however fabricated, selective and utopian. The chapter examines more closely instances when the production of a mental place image falls outside the control of image producers, especially in the case of film and media productions. It also discusses the production of mental place images in the context of sporting mega-events, and examines the role played by the media in controlling these representations. The chapter explores how the development of a new mediascape and the use of new information technologies have impacted the formation, diffusion and control of event-related place images, drawing on examples from Olympic Beijing.
