An agile literature review on the of City Image in Geographical Imagination Study

 

Working paper: jh-2021-03-24-a (https://josephho33.blogspot.com/2021/03/an-agile-literature-review-on-of-city.html)

 

 

An agile literature review on the of City Image in Geographical Imagination Study

 JOSEPH KIM-KEUNG HO

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Dated: March 24, 2021

 

 

Abstract An agile way to do literature review is quite useful to part-time Undergraduate students to engage in intellectual learning and perform well in academic tasks, e.g., doing course assignments and dissertation projects. This article presents an account on how to carry out an agile literature review exercise on the topic of City Image. Such an illustration (and literature review findings) on City Image offers a useful reading to part-time undergraduate degree students. It is especially relevant to those in the Housing Studies programme that includes the subject of Geographical Imagination.

Key words: agile literature review, City Image, intellectual learning, literature review.

 

Introduction

Both as a lecturer on the subjects of Geographical Imagination and Research Methods in the part-time Undergraduate Degree programme of Housing Studies, this writer is interested in the topic of literature review. In particular, due to the students’ profile as part-time students, the writer is keen on developing an agile way to conduct literature review. While literature review is required for students doing academic assignments and dissertation projects, the mainstream literature review approach, being vigorous, systematic and comprehensive, is a tremendous intellectual challenge to the busy part-time students. An agile literature review approach, being nimble and lightweight, is more in sync with the busy life rhythm of part-time degree programme students. This approach is illustrated in this article: it presents an account of an agile literature review exercise on City Image (a topic in Geographical Imagination). It should be of use to learners on the City Image topic and Literature Review at the Undergraduate Degree level on Housing Studies.

 

An agile literature review on the City Image topic

The literature review exercise on City Image is agile, which means that it is nimble, evolutionary, and responsive. Being agile suits the busy life rhythm of learners, such as the part-time students on the Undergraduate Degree programme of Housing Studies. This agile exercise was done by the writer from March 21-23, 2021. The literature search was done by using Google Scholar and two UK university e-libraries. The literature review findings are presented in Table 1.

Table 1:  A set of gathered academic ideas on City Image, grouped in three categories

Categories	Academic ideas
Category 1 [idea 1.1]: basic ideas of City Image	“Cities are considered multifaceted entities perceived from a range of perspectives (Laaksonen, Laaksonen, Borisov, & Halkoaho, 2006), and several different factors can influence image of a city. Past studies indicate that city image is a multi-dimensional construct (Cassia, Vigolo, Ugolini, & Baratta, 2018), which can offer people a better perception of cities. Following Kotler's definition of image, city image can be described as the set of beliefs, ideas and impressions people hold regarding any city (Kotler, 1997, p. 607)” (Priporas, Stylos and Kamenidou, 2020).
Category 1 [idea 1.2]: basic ideas of City Image	“Kotler et al. (1993) define the image of a place as ‘‘the sum of beliefs, ideals, and impressions people have toward a certain place’’. They argue that an image represents a simplification of a large number of associations and pieces of information related to a place, and is a cognitive product of the attempt to process large amounts of information” (Avraham, 2004).
Category 2 [idea 2.1]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“According to Philo and Kearns history is implicated in selling places in three different ways: (i) as a source of pride and inspiration for the present; (ii) through the use of ‘heroic’ imagery surrounding specific historical processes as a lever for money making and persuasion in the present; (iii) through the adoption of all manner of historical references, particularly architectural references” (Kinossian, 2008).
Category 2 [idea 2.2]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Following a rapid development of place marketing and branding after the millennium, the available definitions of place branding were converged from the disciplines of marketing and urban studies (Anholt, 2010; Govers, 2013). These definitions appeared to follow a path of evolution from image creation (e.g. Mommaas, 2002) to matching-up of expectations among brand stakeholders (e.g. Ashworth & Kavaratzis, 2009). In this regard, understanding the image and the perception of a city is a prerequisite when establishing a successful place brand, which was examined in a large pool of destination image studies (Gallarza, Saura, & García, 2002)” (Chan and Marafa, 2016).
Category 2 [idea 2.3]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“According to Relph (1976), images of places are conveyed by “opinion makers”, and distributed by journalists using stereotypes. Stereotypes are simplified attitudes or beliefs about a place that are not critically examined and difficult to alter (Avraham 2004)” (Broadway and Broadway, 2018).
Category 2 [idea 2.4]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Myths about places, be they positive or negative, may persist for many years. ….. , a negative image, was typical for many old industrial cities in Western Europe and North America in the 1970s and 1980s, as deindustrialization led to unemployment, capital flight and widespread social upheaval in many cities” (Broadway and Broadway, 2018).
Category 2 [idea 2.5]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Many different factors influence a city’s image or perception among those from out-of-town. Among these are: the characteristics of the city’s population, its status or political power, the size of its population, its crime rate, socioeconomic status and employment situation, the number and character of national institutions located within the city, its location and historical background, movies and television series that have been filmed on location in the city, its media coverage, atmosphere, entertainment options, tourist or cultural value, and physical appearance (Avraham, 2002, 2003a)” (Avraham, 2004).
Category 2 [idea 2.6]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Kotler et al. (1993) argue that a city’s image can be positive and attractive, negative, weak (as in the case of peripheral locations that are not well known), mixed (when the image includes both positive and negative elements), or contradictory (when the city has a favorable image among a certain population, and a negative image among another population)” (Avraham, 2004).
Category 2 [idea 2.7]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“When dealing with images, one can differentiate between two kinds of place images among target populations: ‘‘open images’’ and ‘‘closed images’’. ‘‘Open images’’ are those that enable one to add more characteristics, whereas ‘‘closed images’’ are those to which one is not likely to add new characteristics, or at least not likely to add characteristics that differ from the core image. Such images are also known as ‘‘stereotypes’’: simplified attitudes or beliefs about a place that are not examined thoroughly and are difficult to change (Gold, 1994; Elizur, 1986)” (Avraham, 2004).
Category 2 [idea 2.8]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“According to Barthes (1988), representations of a city “always tend to limit, to concentrate, to condense the center; the center-city is experienced as the exchange-site of social activities” (p. 200). This core phenomenon leads to the anchoring of the image in the center. Barthes (1991) states that anchoring is “a means of control, it bears a responsibility, confronting the projective power of the figures, as to the use of the message” (p. 29)” (Sadler and Haskins, 2005).
Category 2 [idea 2.9]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Based on Kevin Lynch’s (1960) city imageability concept, our goal is to explore the ways people understand and interpret Lynch’s five city elements—paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks—in the digital age. We also want to understand how using virtual mapping environments can help planners conduct Lynchian analysis and identify Lynchian city elements. City imageability is the quality of the city elements that trigger lucid images in an observer, while city image is defined as a public image of any given city, which is the overlap of many individual images (Lynch 1960)” (Meenar et al., 2019).
Category 2 [idea 2.10]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Lynch…. was a pioneer in the application of environmental perception and cognitive science in planning and urban design. He argued that by understanding how people perceive the city, we could create more imageable and psychologically satisfying environments. A central notion in his method is legibility, or the extent to which people read the streetscape in a comprehensible and coherent way” (Meenar et al.,  2019).
Category 2 [idea 2.11]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Despite individual differences, a “public image” of the city—the everyday mental pictures carried by a large number of people—can be conceived. He [Lynch] classified the elements of city image into five types: (1) paths: the channels along which the observer moves, the most significant organizing feature of cityscape, and the predominant element in the city image for many people; (2) edges: the boundaries between two regions; (3) districts: areas identified by common characteristics; (4) nodes: focus points for activities and/or orientation, which an observer can enter; and (5) landmarks: external points of reference. These elements are the raw materials of a city image (Figure 1), and the interactions of them may reinforce one another and provide a satisfying city image (Lynch 1960)” (Meenar et al.,  2019).
Category 2 [idea 2.12]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Previous studies have documented the crucial role residents play in city branding (see Braun, Kavaratzis, & Zenker, 2013; Manyiwa et al., 2018; Zenker, Braun, & Petersen, 2017). However, the perceived image of a place is rather subjective (Loureiro, Stylos, & Miranda, 2019), and it can, thus, vary between individuals or different population groups, as in the case of, for example, of perceived images formulated by tourists and residents of a city (Manyiwa et al., 2018; Zenker & Beckmann, 2013). Residents who hold positive images for the place they live at, also tend to be more contend with their life there (Zenker & Seigis, 2012)” (Priporas, Stylos and Kamenidou, 2020).
Category 2 [idea 2.13]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“…Sahin and Baloglu (2014) point out that besides image, brand personality should be also taken into consideration when formulating destinations' (e.g. city) marketing. Brand personality is important to brand image as it mirrors the emotional side of brand image (Biel, 1997; Kaplan, Yurt, Guneri, & Kurtulus, 2010). Furthermore, city brand personality is meaningful for marketing communication in multiple ways (Amatyakul & Polyorat, 2016)” (Priporas, Stylos and Kamenidou, 2020).
Category 2 [idea 2.14]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“Any locality can be symbolically divided into certain zones on a particular basis. However, specific areas are born with zones and live by its own laws. They exist between zoned territories or on their borders – it is varying areas” (Kapustin and Kirpileva, 2017).
Category 2 [idea 2.15]: associated theories and concepts on City Image	“There are some objects and areas in any locality organized in a certain way and directly shaping its image. And in order for the territory of varied spaces disclosed the identity of the city, it is essential to organize the connection such type of objects with the territory. The authors of the article offer to solve this problem through creation the token-objects on the varied areas, which would someway make reference to the image-forming objects” (Kapustin and Kirpileva, 2017).
Category 3 [idea 3.1]: applications of the City Image notion	“Kearns used the concept of the ‘city as a spectacle’ to analyse the Parisian ‘grand projects’ as a materialisation of political competition but did not offer approaches or analytical tools to study the design side of that process.8 The literature on symbolic representation is concerned more with the built form, ‘‘the visible embodiment of the invisible,’’9 its cultural contents and meaning across time, using the concepts of identity and belonging” (Kinossian, 2008).
Category 3 [idea 3.2]: applications of the City Image notion	“It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to measure a place image by a single general parameter when a place (e.g. a city) is composed of multiple groups of stakeholders (such as destination or place marketers, local residents and visitors) (Echtner & Ritchie, 1993). Researchers have agreed that different stakeholders can have divergent perceptions of place image, the resultant place brand, and the expectation and satisfaction of a place as a tourist destination and living environment (e.g. Blichfeldt, 2005; Ooi, 2011)” (Chan and Marafa, 2016).
Category 3 [idea 3.3]: applications of the City Image notion	“Because scholars have emphasized that image building and branding should involve more bottom-up participation by stakeholders including residents (e.g. Braun, Kavaratzis, & Zenker, 2013; Hankinson, 2010a; Houghton & Stevens, 2011), a prerequisite of such a process is to understand the perceptions of city image among city consumers (Blichfeldt, 2005)” (Chan and Marafa, 2016).
Category 3 [idea 3.4]: applications of the City Image notion	“During the last two decades, many cities, basically in North America and Europe (e.g., Baltimore, MD; Buffalo, NY; Glasgow, Scotland; Marseille, France), have undertaken urban-regeneration planning to change the images of their cities. For this city “re-imaging,” they have used conventional marketing tools (i.e., slogans, logos, promotional literature) and sometimes more subtle techniques (e.g., staging events, constructing iconic buildings, implementing sophisticated public-relationship strategies; Smith, 2005).
Category 3 [idea 3.5]: applications of the City Image notion	“Due to the growing competition between cities and increasing globalization—leading to more emigration, investments and jobs out of town—many cities around the world constantly ‘‘re-package’’ themselves and their resources in an attempt to present an attractive image” (Avraham, 2004).
Category 3 [idea 3.6]: applications of the City Image notion	“…. many place leaders believe that their city’s negative image is an obstacle that prevents it from becoming more attractive and in fact forestalls a brighter future. The frustration of these place leaders is immense, since they believe that the negative image is false, and that the actual situation in their city is much better than public perceptions of it” (Avraham, 2004)” (Sainz, 2012).
Category 3 [idea 3.7]: applications of the City Image notion	“Eco (1977) proclaims that there is “a constant in American imagination and taste, where the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication” (p. 6). We have wax museums, zoos, historical monuments, and living farms, where people can experience a way of life foreign to modern society. We tend to forget, however, what the replica actually represents. Things must seem real to “connote the real,” but in the process, the “completely real” appears “completely fake” (Eco, 1977, p. 7). The death of authenticity breeds hyperreality. Within time, the recurring metonymic representation of the city makes people forget about the real New York” (Sadler and Haskins, 2005).
Category 3 [idea 3.8]: applications of the City Image notion	“The city is a tourist destination and a place of business and residence, but increasingly the shift has been toward marketing the image for visitors. The city becomes “an ecology of museums that is itself a museum, historicizing, monumentalizing, giving weighty pause to aspiration and accident alike” (Thall, 1994, p.14)” (Sadler and Haskins, 2005).
Category 3 [idea 3.9]: applications of the City Image notion	“Today’s virtual mapping environments can help us explore city elements at various levels (e.g., eye levels and bird’s-eye view), scales, and times (see Jiao, Holmes, and Griffin 2017; Kepper et al. 2017; Morello and Ratti 2009; Park and Ewing 2017). Urban planners are increasingly pairing physical environment exploration methods with virtual explorations (e.g., using Google Map/Earth/Street View) for performing site analysis or understanding urban environments (Christman et al. 2018; Li, Zhang, and Li 2017; Li et al. 2015; Odgers et al. 2012; Richards and Edwards 2017)” (Meenar et al.,  2019).

 

 

Referring to Table 1, there are three categories of academic ideas gathered from the agile literature review exercise, namely, “basic ideas of City Image” (category 1), “associated theories and concepts on City Image” (category 2) and “applications of the City Image notion” (category 3). The key words in the gathered academic ideas are in bold font. A summary of these ideas are as follows:

On the “basic ideas of City Image” (category 1), the notion of City Image is considered as a multi-dimensional place-image construct about the set of ideas and impressions on a city held by people.

On the “associated theories and concepts on City Image” (category 2), the City Image notion is studied using the following main theories and concepts: place branding, images of places, place stereotypes, myths about places, city image influencing factors, attributes of a city image (e.g., positive, attractive, negative, weak, open and closed, the center-city, city imageability, Lynch’s five city elements, legibility, role of residents in city branding, city brand personality, locality and zoned territories, and territory object types.

On the “applications of the City Image notion” (category 3), the City Image notion has been to study (i) the Parisian ‘grand projects’ (with particular usage of the ‘city as a spectacle’ idea), (ii) measurement of a place image, (iii) city image building, city re-imaging, and re-packaging”, (iv) negative city image, (v) the recurring metonymic city representation, and virtual city explorations.

 

In short, the academic literature on the City Image notion comprises relevant concept definitions, concept typologies, concept research and measurement techniques, and related empirical observations. Mastery of these ideas associated with City Image is useful to learners who are learning the subject of Geographical Imagination to do academic assignments or dissertation projects, e.g. in Housing Studies degree programmes. The referencing and references offer further useful reading list to those who want to study the topic of City Image in more depth.

 

Concluding remarks

Conducting an agile literature review exercise is a nimble way to engage in intellectual learning. It is especially suitable to part-time undergraduate degree students, e.g., on the Housing Studies programme, who typically have a busy life-style. This article presents such an exercise on the topic of City Image. It is thus a useful reading especially to part-time Undergraduate students on the Housing Studies programme. Nevertheless, the agile literature review exercise method itself is general enough to be relevant to all intellectual learners in Social Sciences. Students committed to intellectual learning and high academic performance in assignments and dissertation projects will benefit from studying this exercise method.

 

References

Avraham, E. 2004. “Media strategies for improving an unfavorable city image” Cities 21(6): 471–479.

Broadway, M. and Broadway, J. 2018. “Cleveland reimaged: changing news media images of Cleveland, 1985–2015” Journal of Cultural Geography 35(1): 75-101, DOI: 10.1080/08873631.2017.1363615.

Chan, C.S. and Marafa, L.M. 2016. “Perceptual content analysis for city image: a case study of Hong Kong,” Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research 21(12): 1285-1299, DOI: 10.1080/10941665.2016.1141226

Kapustin, P.V. and Kirpileva, I.R. 2017 “Approach for City Image  Strengthening Through Urban Environment Interpretation“ IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 262 012128.

Kinossian, N.V. 2008. “The Politics of the City Image: The Resurrection of the Kul-Sharif Mosque in the Kazan Kremlin (1995-2005)” Architectural Theory Review 13(2): 188-205, DOI: 10.1080/13264820802216551.

Meenar, M., Afzalan, N. and Hajrasouliha, A. 2019. “Analyzing Lynch’s City Imageability in the Digital Age” Journal of Planning Education and Research: 1–13.

Priporas, C.V., Stylos, N. and Kamenidou, I.E. 2020. “City image, city brand personality and generation Z residents' life satisfaction under economic crisis: Predictors of city-related social media engagement” Journal of Business Research 19, October: 453-463, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.05.019.

Sadler, W.J. and Haskins, E.V. 2005. “Metonymy and the Metropolis: Television Show Settings and the Image of New York City” Journal of Communication Inquiry 29:3 (July): 195-216.

Sainz, M.A. 2012. “(Re)Building an Image for a City: Is A Landmark Enough? Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum, 10 Years Together” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 42(1): 100–132.