FOOD FOR CITIES

On a transcontinental flight from Copenhagen to the 2013 City Branding Symposium in Beijing, we happened to glance through Scanorama (2010–2013), the inflight magazine of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). To our great surprise, we found that more than 50 per cent of the editorial pages contained pictures and text presenting food, eating, drinking, gastronomy, restaurants, bars, food festivals and ethnic cuisines. In most cases these images were related to distinct places, such as districts, regions, nations and particularly cities. We imagined that an airline has a strong vested interest in enhancing the attractiveness of the destinations they service, but is food a suitable means of conveying the appeal of a place, maybe even to enhance beautiful scenery, historical monuments or, for that matter, culture in general?

Literature is full of examples of how food and gastronomy in various forms has been used as an important element in making cities appear as attractive destinations to visitors, creative locations for companies and vibrant hotspots for investors. This is also consistent with earlier observations in studies of city branding processes in large metropolitan cities across the globe (Berg, 2010) (www.sbs.su.se/en/Research/Marketing/Research-Programmes/Stockholm-Programme-of-Place-Branding-STOPP/). Moreover, recent review of 170 published studies in the area of city branding (Lucarelli and Berg, 2011) shows that elements of food, beverages and gastronomy are used frequently as elements of city branding.

However, in most city branding studies these food or food-related phenomena are mainly noted as indirect activities or interesting side effects rather than as direct key elements in the city’s branding efforts. Apart from studies of regional food and wine related to tourism (for example, Kivela and Crotts, 2006, Croce and Perri, 2010), there are also relatively few scientific studies dealing with the use of food and gastronomy for the strategic branding and positioning of cities. This might be due to the absence of conceptual frameworks that take into account the role food and gastronomy plays in the formation of complex city brand images. We have, in fact, come to assume that the increased – and to a large extent indirect – use of food in city branding might reflect some fundamental and hitherto unexplained elements or processes involved in the formation of place images.

This assumption is also the point of departure of this article, which aims to present a tentative conceptual framework that may help us to identify and describe the means and mechanisms involved in using food and meals as elements in strategically branding and positioning cities. Put another way, in this article we are not primarily looking for the way in which food is used in cities, or by cities, but for way in which food can be used for cities in their branding attempts.

The article is divided into three parts. The first part is a clarification of key concepts and the methodology applied in the study. The second part is an account of food, meals and gastronomy as elements in place branding, based on the observations we made as part of a multisite field study of large metropolitan cities. The third section of the article is the presentation of a tentative theoretical framework developed to describe and explain the role of food in the branding and positioning of places.

SHORT NOTES ON FOOD, PLACE, BRANDING AND METHOD

What aspects of food are branded in cities? Let us start by stating that food is culture, and we will thus use a broad cultural definition of food as products (food and beverages), practices (eating and meals) and the art and customs of preparing and eating (gastronomy), as experienced by human senses. Thus, many different aspects of food and food-related activities are included: all kinds of food as well as wine, beer and other beverages, the particular origins of food (organic food, ethnic cuisines, locally produced, food and so on.), its preparation (for example, ingredients related to specific regions such as Nordic Cuisine), the way the food is served (fast food, slow food, street food, snow food and so on.) and the very environment in which it is served and consumed (restaurants, bars, markets, food quarters, streets and so on.). As we are addressing city branding, we also need to include those market segments specially addressed by food, such as gourmets and foodies (people with a refined interest in good food and drink as a hobby) and gastronomy tourists in general. For our convenience, we will simply use the term food branding from now on when we mean city or place branding in relation to food, beverages, meals, eating and gastronomy.

A second concept that needs to be defined is that of place. The concept of place branding (covering all kinds of places from small commercial clusters to cities, regions and nations) is the generally accepted term for territorial branding activities (Kavaratzis, 2004). In this article the main examples of food branding that we use come at the city level, as this corresponds to the empirical scope of our study – cities – and as it is by far the most common level of research when it comes to place branding (Lucarelli and Berg, 2011). However, recent developments in place branding through food also involve the positioning attempts of places other than cities. These include, for example, smaller parts of cities such as food districts, main streets, city centres, waterfront areas, city squares and commercial centres. The term ‘place’ might also refer to units larger than cities such as regions, clusters of cities and geographically connected ‘trails’ of cities. In the branding of national and ethnic identity, food also plays a historically important role as shown for example in French, Italian and Thai cuisines.

Thus, our conceptual framework will use the term place branding rather than city branding, to also include other cases of place branding. Another consequence of this perspective is that the place – as an agent of branding – takes on a somewhat different role than in traditional city branding studies. Inspired by Sloterdijk (1998), Latour (2006) and Thrift (2009), we see places as spaces of coexistence, i.e. the commonly or taken for granted elements of space that conceal information crucial to human co-existence, where many actors, stakeholders and audiences contribute to the creation of this common space – and its image.

It is generally assumed that branding a city is a form of strategic, purposely organized and concerted activities designed to produce a ‘place-brand’ that generates favourable impressions of the place among selected audiences, that is, a place or destination image (Kavaratzis, 2005; Anholt, 2010). However, according to our experiences, even though an ‘official’ and distinct city brand, produced through a purposeful strategic city branding process, might well exist, the city brand image(s) is rarely, if ever, the outcome of a concerted and organized branding strategy. Not only are official brands appropriated differently by audiences but are also highjacked by groups with commercial or political interests quite different from those of the official brand owners (Berg, 2009). This is demonstrated by Lucarelli (2014) who has analysed the appropriation of the ‘Stockholm, Capital of Scandinavia brand’. Furthermore, one has to consider food, meals and gastronomy as part of the overall culture of the city, and as such intimately linked to other cultural expressions, such as design, art and music. Furthermore, food, meals and gastronomy are collective features delivered by many different producers with different, sometimes even conflicting interests and experienced and consumed by audiences with different tastes and preferences. Thus, if one is to understand the means and mechanisms in place branding through food, it is not enough to describe the direct and official branding activities, but also the indirect, informal and in many cases independent activities and events that makes up the totality of the way in which a city communicates itself to its audiences. This also calls for a particular character of an open and invocative (Berg, 2000) city branding strategy based on mobilizing and engaging actors stakeholders and audiences at many levels in the joint creation of a brand image.

Overall aim and design of the study

The empirical foundation for the article comes from the observations made during a multisite field study in combination with examples collected from a search of the web. The conceptual framework is based on a review of the literature of food in place and city branding.

The research design upon which this study thus consists comes from three sets of empirical data: a multisite field study, a review of the literature on food in relation to place and destination branding, and an Internet search for illustrative examples of city branding related to food.

The main part of the research design is a set of cases selected from an ethnographic multisite field study, carried out within the Stockholm Program of Place Branding (STOPP) at Stockholm University. From this programme, which comprises studies of 21 large cities around the world, 15 cities in which at least one of the two authors has been carrying out fieldwork were selected for this particular study, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 An overview of the 21 field studies of large cities in the STOPP Program
Full size table

The choice to study city branding processes related to food and gastronomy is inspired by Stolleŕs ‘quest for sensuous epistemologies’ (Stoller, 2011), that is, the pursuit of understanding the importance to also include what he calls ‘lower senses’(smell, taste, texture, sensations and so on.) in order to get hold of the metaphorical organization of the experience of a city. Thus from the beginning of our research we considered our physical presence at a research site as necessary considering our research topic.

Data from the different field sites was collected through a combination of methods. Brochures such as tourist pamphlets, destination promotion material and event information materials were also collected while on site. We did ethnographic observations (using cameras, notepads and other means to gather and store information) and focused interviews with main stakeholders in the branding process. We also used a snowballing technique for selecting potential interviewees when choosing key informants from each city – ending up in interviews with one individual or in panels with more than one participant. As it turned out, the majority of persons interviewed came either from the city administration (in most cases those responsible for the strategic branding campaigns), from the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferencing and Exhibitions) and tourism industries, and members from various committees or lobby groups involved in supporting – or in other ways influencing – the city branding efforts. Interviews were conducted in all 15 cities chosen for this study, and all together more than 140 persons were interviewed. All these interviews were tape-recorded and all data-material collected was later summarized in preliminary city reports.

The second part of the research design is a concise review of previous research on food in place branding. The objective of this review was to get an overview of the current state of knowledge in the area of place branding and food, as well as a foundation for our conceptual framework. This review, which was carried out in the Fall of 2013/Spring of 2014, used Google Scholar as the search engine and identified more than 100 qualified studies (published in peer reviewed academic journals) related to place branding in relation to the various aspects of food and gastronomy as described above. The wide variety of disciplinary perspectives in the field as well as the multitude of methodological and theoretical perspectives in the area of city branding are consistent with what Lucarelli and Berg (2011) previously have found.

The third type of data collection in this study is an extensive search of examples of the use of food in place branding efforts on the internet (see Kozinets, 2002; Langer and Beckman, 2005; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010 for a general discussion on the use of internet for collecting empirical data.) The purpose of the web search was to complement and compare our own experiences from the field studies with examples of different ways of directly or indirectly using food or gastronomy to brand a place. This search, which was based on targeted search words, such as ‘place, destination, city, region and so on’ and: ‘branding, positioning, marketing, promotion and so on’, in connection with ‘food, meals, gastronomy and so on’, did result in a number of illustrative examples of how food was used in the branding process in practice. By developing search queries based on a combination of place and activity data, we attempted to get an overall view of the scale and scope of food branding phenomena. What we were particularly looking for were cities that are not only claiming to be food cities, but where this claim materializes in actions and investments such as festivals, expos and fairs focusing on food and meals.

HOW AND WHY ARE CITIES USING FOOD TO BRAND THEMSELVES?

How do cities brand themselves with food?

Our first question will address how branding through food takes place. People are increasingly looking for new gastronomic experiences when travelling, and food and cuisine have become important elements in the promotion and differentiation of tourist destinations (Cambourne and Macionis, 2003; Lin, 2009). Possibly the most conspicuous way in which food is used in city branding is destination marketing. This appears in the area of Food or Culinary Tourism (Hjalager and Richards, 2002; Hall et al, 2003; Boyne and Hall, 2004; Hall and Sharples, 2008; Horng and Tsai, 2010; Long, 2013). Culinary tourism has also been developed as a label, and the industry’s first comprehensive culinary tourism certification programme for cities has been launched (www.culinarytourism.org). Another example of this trend is the rise in wine tourism focusing on cities and regions around the globe, like in the case of cities of Stellenbosch (ZA) and Beaune (FR), and regions such as Marlborough (NZ) and Bourgogne (FR).

Along with the tourist certification of cities, cities are also officially or unofficially certified for their food products, and institutions position themselves as food cities or gastronomy cities. In 2008, UNESCO started to put cities into a City of Gastronomy network, and states in its statutes that a City of Gastronomy should have a ‘Well-developed gastronomy that is characteristic of the urban centre and/or region, and a vibrant gastronomy community with numerous traditional restaurants and/or chefs’ (www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/creativity/creative-cities-network/gastronomy/). There are a number of regular rankings of ‘food cities’ as well as gastronomy places ‘worth the trip’ as noted for example in the Michelin Guide ranking system. We have also noticed that there are an increasing number of bloggers and journalists travelling to cities around the world who enjoy good food and meal milieus and rate their experiences accordingly, thereby signalling to the world which cities are worth visiting.

Cities are also branded through food festivals, events and exhibitions (Hall and Sharples, 2008; Robinson and Clifford, 2012). This includes examples like Crave (Sydney International Food Festival), the San Francisco Street Food Festival, Culinary Copenhagen (festival and culinary city walks related to Nordic Cuisine), Grüne Woche in Berlin, Oktoberfest in Munich, Culinary Amsterdam with its culinary events calendar and the Hong Kong Wine and Dine festival.

Not only food itself, but also modes and ways of eating are used in branding attempts today. In the contemporary setting, we are also witnessing food-related activities with a single important purpose: to brand places. An example is the Slow Food movement, with its CittaSlow (www.cittaslow.org) network of cities. These networks that are stemming from a grassroots response to globalization are in favour of ‘local, traditional cultures, a relaxed pace of life and conviviality’ (Knox, 2005).

In our brief overview, we have found that food is used in many different types of city branding strategies, from event-based strategies (for example, festivals and exhibitions), and excellence and core competence strategies (for example, City of Gastronomy and City of Origin), to various architectural and spatial strategies (for example, iconic food halls and waterfront restoration areas). In most such cases, food often is treated as one of many other possible attraction assets. Food can also be used as an element of a destination branding strategy and then as a way to contribute to an atmosphere attractive to visitors. Food and meals are also used to attract investment, strengthen a sense of local identity among citizens and mobilize local stakeholders.

There are two important implications of this short overview of how food is used in city branding activities. The first is that there is a multitude of actors and agents involved in marketing, promoting and branding cities with the help of food. Besides representatives from city management, tourist organizations and MICE organizations, there are real estate owners, food producers, restaurant owners, chefs, event managers and so on. In addition, local market venders, citizens, tourists and other visitors take part in this process. Our outset is thus that the brands of a place, or city are a result of a vast number of actors producing and reproducing the experienced brand images.

Why is food used in branding a place?

We have assumed that food, meals and gastronomy – in various forms – are important to the city itself and to its stakeholders. The validity of this assumption has yet to be proven, although it lies at the very core of the beliefs of scholars and city managers alike as not only a reason for their food-branding activities, but also for city branding efforts in general with the aim of making cities more attractive. It is worth noticing, however, that food and meals may also be used indirectly when attempting to create an attractive – and competitive – ‘atmosphere’ in a place that is vying for human, industrial and financial resources, and in its efforts to become a desirable tourist or wellbeing destination.

From our review of the literature on food branding and our interviews with city management in the 15 cities we found the arguments for becoming associated with attractive food products and meals to belong to three main categories. They are (i) to support food industry, (ii) to protect and amplify identities of places and (iii) to change the place. We will discuss these below.

The argument to support and protect a strong and important food industry in a city is commonly expressed. One example is Parma with its food cluster while another is the Copenhagen/the Öresund region with its Food Science Platform. This motive is particularly evident when it comes to some of the food and wine regions in the world that claim place of origin as one of their prime competitive advantages (Andéhn and Berg, 2011). The most obvious way is when food, beverages and meals are used to strategically position cities as protected geographical markers of origin, for example, through the three EU schemes known as Protected Designation of Origin, Protected Geographical Indication and Traditional Specialties Guaranteed, which promote and protect the names of quality agricultural products and foodstuffs. This includes beverages (for example, Champagne, Rioja wine, café de Colombia and Darjeeling tea), food (for example, San Francisco sourdough bread, Asiago cheese, Kobe beef and Parma ham) and vegetables (for example, basil from Genua). In this case, the quality and status of the product becomes an integral part of the overall brand image of the place from which it originates (Frochot, 2003). Among industries important in branding, research shows that the majority of studies in the area of place branding using food are related to the industry of tourism. Destination marketing (Rand et al, 2003; Du Rand and Heath, 2006; Hashimoto and Telfer, 2006) and hospitality relations, for example, and are about how gastronomy is a way to attract visitors to a particular destination (Hjalager, 2002; Feagan, 2007), or about general place promotion (Boyne and Hall, 2004).

The second main reason expressed by a city for using food in its branding efforts is to protect and amplify the identity of a place (James, 1996; Everett and Aitchison, 2008; Lin et al, 2011; Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013), that is, the sense of sameness and belonging of a place. We can see that distinctive local, regional, national and ethnic cuisines are used to amplify the identity of larger regions and nations, such as the French, Italian, Thai, Mexican and Russian cuisines. Another example is the current awareness and determination to preserve and safeguard the culinary heritage of provincial France (Bessière, 1998) in order to maintain the nation’s attractiveness as a culinary destination. We have also observed the use of food in place and city branding, for example, in Nordic cuisine in the City of Copenhagen with the ambition to become the Gastronomic Capital of Scandinavia and a Danish island is using gastronomy as a way of positioning itself in order to become globally visible (Askegaard and Kjeldgaard, 2007). Another example is delivered by Ryan and Mizerski (2010) who describe how a town in Australia is building its brand on ‘bread, olive oil and wine’. Moreover, Tellstrom et al (2006) and Bianchini and Ghilardi (2007) have reported how food-related activities are introduced with the ambition to maintain or amplify local identities, cultures or ethnic profiles in order to strengthen the attractiveness of a destination’s image.

Another aspect of this identity creation is to use food the cultural core of a city’s brand identity. One facet of this is the way in which food is used as an element in expressing the heritage of a place as described by Fox (2007). This of course includes numerous examples of ethnic food, which have become important elements in heritage branding processes, since food and meals are claimed to be authentic expressions of the history and heritage of a place. This occurs for example in Bangkok, with its many food markets and canal markets presenting Thai cuisine. Tellstrom et al (2006) show that an association with an alleged origin in a local or regional food culture is seen as an attractive way to interest the urban consumer in new food product brands. This may take place through claims concerning local and regional produce and be clearly seen in the form of open-air markets. One such example is the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market in San Francisco. It is located in a restored ferry building, which is a California-certified farmers’ market operated by a non-profit organization.

Finally, food is also used explicitly to change the very experience and thus the image of a city. Examples of research within this area are Shultz et al (2005), who argue that food can be used ‘for recovery, sustainable peace and prosperity’; There are even those who argue that food might have a positive influence on policies in war zones (Shultz et al, 2005). One example is by turning parts of the inner city into dense culinary spaces, such as Darling Harbour with its restaurants in Sydney or for the same city, to develop ‘new’ cuisines in an attempt to position the city as a cosmopolitan city. Another example is the World Cup ‘fan walk’ in South Africa, the famous walk that was created from the railway station to the Cape Town Stadium. Even though this walk was created to handle the problems of traffic congestion during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, it soon developed into a parade walk lined with restaurants, cafés and street food trucks. A similar development took place in Bogotá, where the city regularly closes the city centre to motor vehicle traffic on Sundays, thus allowing for street food and open-air restaurants to operate in the streets (Boyne et al, 2003; Cassel, 2006). Burstedt et al (2006) depict food and gastronomy as a way to build local place brands in a Swedish archipelago. And a similar Swedish example is given by Berg and Östberg (2008). They portray the Malmö Festival, where a city square is redesigned into a food market with a particular focus on ethnic food and argue that this initiative seems to have contributed to positively changing the identity of the multicultural city of Malmö in the 1990s.

In summation, food, meals and gastronomy appear in various forms and are used in a multitude of ways, not only to promote the image of cities, but also in attempts to influence their identities and even to spatially transform them to become more desirable as a destination and attractive as a place to live and work. Food seems to be used extensively as an active ingredient in the attempt to produce, maintain or change city atmospheres. We see how a city’s cultural heritage is maintained and amplified with the support of food-related activities, but also how a city may create, restrict and transform a place.

Even though food branding may be the strategy chosen to improve the competitive strength of a place in attracting tourists and investment capital, for example, there often seems to be an intention to improve the atmosphere for its inhabitants, thereby also boosting quality of life. This can only be understood if we assume that when visiting a place, people do not only see and listen to the place they visit, as Lew (1987) once assumed: they also activate their other senses. People see and hear, but also smell, taste and have tactile experiences of a place. Food then, is very particular as it is truly experienced through all the senses. It is also from this basic assumption that we will develop a conceptual framework to argue for a number of rationales for using food in branding cities.

A SENSORY PERSPECTIVE ON FOOD-BRANDING CITIES

Urban designers are divided regarding what constitutes the urban quality and sensory experience of place. Some have emphasized design styles – the way in which buildings open out into spaces, landmarks and gateways – and thus provide ‘physicality’ as well as a more cognitively rational and ‘objective’ view of urban design. Others have focused on the ‘psychological’ factors of a place, which is described as a more romantic, subjective view that involves how a place feels: Is it safe, comfortable, vibrant, quiet and/or threatening? A third ‘sensory’ perspective, which presents a combination of the rational, the objective and the romantic, subjective view of urban design, implies that urban quality should be considered in a broader sense to include and combine quality in respect to three crucial aspects: physical space, subjective experience and activity (Montgomery, 1998; Urry, 2000). This latter view of city design and architecture is the one that is most in line with our research because it addresses the broad spectrum of sensory experiences that is connected to food, meals and gastronomy.

However, with this chosen perspective there are many different approaches available to the study of sensory experiences of places – from attempts to communicate taste and smell in written form (Swan, 2011) to arguments that cities need to be ‘experienced bodily’, and that marketing mechanisms need to be adapted to this (Pan and Ryan, 2009).

Food for a sensory experience of a place

The apprehension of things and events in terms of how they momentarily and simultaneously present to our senses is a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. Experiencing a place by visiting it involves all five senses; in other words it is an aesthetic experience. German philosopher Seel (2005) examined the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience and claimed that such involvement also results in an experience of ‘authenticity’. When a person visits a place like a city, he or she simultaneously engages thought, action and relationship. All these different aspects of a city experience complement each other and, according to Gambetti (2010) and Rämö (2011) they are relevant to the consumer experience and, thus, also to city branding and the sensory positioning of a place. Agapito et al (2013) and Agapito et al (2014), who show that the concept of sensory positioning is a traditional topic in tourism research, have also explored the conceptual foundation of the sensory dimension of tourist experiences.

Lindstrom (2005) argues that whereas the majority of all brand communication today is focused on two of our senses, namely our sight and hearing, 75 per cent of human emotions are generated by what we smell. In addition, smell is said to easily invoke one’s memory of a visited destination (Wilkie, 1994; Son and Pearce, 2005). This is also consistent with Agapito et al (2014), who identified four polysensorily informed themes (clusters) in South West Portugal and observed that all of these sensorily informed themes involve references pertaining to at least three external human senses.

In tourism and in research on tourism, we find a similarly limited idea – a particular emphasis on the visual, scenic and sightseeing aspects of a place. However, even within tourism the pattern is changing, and Löfgren (2013) claims that ‘tourism has gone from gazing to grazing’ following the argument that the more senses you appeal to, the stronger the message you convey (see also Bell, 2002).

Cuisine is also claimed to be the only art form that speaks to and involves all five human senses. We experience the food itself and the environment in which food is consumed through sight, smell, taste and our tactile senses, and our sense of smell is largely and strongly associated with and appealed to by the dining experience (Dann and Jacobsen, 2003). Food in all its forms is thus a potentially strong element in the branding of a city.

However, the idea of a distinctive relationship between food and culture is being strongly challenged today and replaced by the idea of displaced culinary cultures, as in the example of London, which is thriving in terms of its branding on its cuisines from all over the world (Cook and Crang, 1996). This idea is also challenged by the notion that food, particularly food that is foreign to the visitor, is not always perceived as enjoyable. The very nature of the food might in fact be repellent, such as when snakes, dogs or insects are presented as delicacies to a visitor, and the hygiene of the eating environment may also present a challenge. According to Cohen and Avieli (2004), culinary establishments facilitate overcoming these challenges by providing a ‘culinary environmental bubble’ to tourists, and daily ordinary food may not be noticed as experiences worth remembering about a place.

The city as a sensescape

Our claim is that stakeholders of cities today should consider sensory positioning and provide for polysensory experiences in their effort to foster a good brand image. For that, the landscape metaphor of places may be borrowed to capture modalities of sensory experiences. One example is soundscape, to denote the sound environment of a place (Garrioch, 2003; Landry, 2007); and yet another example is smellscape, to describe the distribution of smells in an area (Landry, 2007). Tourism researchers also use tastescape as a way to describe the distribution of gastronomic attractions at a destination; there are even those who talk of foodscapes (Adema, 2009), for example, in relation to the distribution of street food outlets in a place.

Yet another aspect of mapping the sensory landscape has been proposed by Dann and Jacobsen (2003) in their discussion of smellscapes. They argue that: ‘for a tourist destination to succeed, there has to be the aromatic equivalent of a flâneur or voyeur – maybe a dégustateur or flaireur, a connoisseur who, like a wine taster savouring a bouquet, can discover and nose-talgically possess aromas before they evaporate. Only the olfactory tourist, it would seem, can coterminously experience the past and the present in their full sensory richness’ (p. 20). In analysing more specifically how an atmosphere is felt and transmitted, Brennan (2004) puts great emphasis on smell; more precisely, she focuses on ‘unconscious olfaction’ and that ‘the “atmosphere” or the environment literally gets into the individual’ (ibid, p. 1).

The idea that all these multimodal experiences together form a unique universe, a ‘landscape’ of senses or a sensescape, is not new. Each ‘-scape’ is a perspective that is dependent on the situation of those navigating their way within it and how they experience and act upon it. We thus agree with Quan and Wang (2004), who argue that when communicating experiences in tourism, in addition to landscapes, several other sensory experiences or sensescapes, such as smellscapes, tastescapes and soundscapes, ought to be included.

Because the focus of these terms is on only one dimension of the sensory experience of a place, we have also chosen to generalize these terms as sensescapes in order to denote the full breadth of sensory modalities that allow us to interact with the environment and the full richness of the way we experience it.

Studies of the sensescapes of a particular place thus deal mainly with the totality of all sensory modalities: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. We assume that in the same way as cities have spatial topographies based on their physical geography; they also have sensory topographies related to their distributions of sensory experiences. Pan and Ryan (2009) give an example of this in their analysis of the sensescapes of the main destinations in New Zealand. They claim that sound, smell, taste and touch can be used to create an ‘ideal and mediated itinerary for visiting journalists to acquire a comprehensive experience of what NZ has to offer’ (p. 635).

Branding the city-sensescape

This leads us to the next step in our discourse: the way in which these sensescapes are communicated to audiences in and outside of cities. Appadurai (1990) and Wang (2005), for example, regard imagescape and mediascape as configurations of various images, sounds and programmes presented by the mass media. For our purposes, however, the most interesting concept is probably the concept of the brandscape (McCracken, 1988; Sherry, 1998; Kornberger, 2010), that is, the fabric of brands and brand-related items (logos, ads and so on.) within a culture or market.

However, in this study, we are particularly interested in the ways in which places are using the sensory elements related to food in their attempts to produce a desirable brand image of themselves. We know from contemporary research on branding that brand image concerns not only the way in which an agent is able to convey a captivating image of a place, but that it is also dependent on the way the place is depicted in popular media, and ultimately how the image is appropriated by audiences.

Given the all-encompassing view of food that we have adopted, which includes not only the particular character of the food and beverages related to a place, but also the meals themselves and the environment for exhibiting, buying and consuming them, it seems reasonable to take a look at the ways in which stakeholders of cities try to influence their sensescapes that are related to food activities. Here, we are particularly interested in the sensory communication of food for the purposes of competition between places. Thus, we look at such communication from a positioning perspective. Positioning has long been acknowledged as a core element in branding (Ries and Trout, 1981; Aaker and Shansby, 1982; DiMingo, 1988) aimed at designing an organization’s offering and image in order to occupy a distinctive place in the target market’s mind (Kotler et al, 2010). The concept of positioning has been used previously not only for cities but also for regions and nations (Quelch and Jocz, 2005; Harrison-Walker, 2011).

Sensory positioning can then be seen as one aspect of overall positioning, concerning the ways in which different types of sensory cues are drawn on – directly or indirectly – for the city to assume a desired position in the mindsets of external and internal audiences. Sensory positioning commonly relates to tourism, since tourism is involved in our sensual existence, and can accordingly be seen as the activity that ‘celebrates the bodily desires’ (Wang, 2005).

Sensory branding through food

From our field study observations, and readings of the literature in the field, we have come to the conclusion that there are three dimensions of the city-sensescape that are affected by sensory cues related to food: (i) spatial configuration, (ii) time flow and (iii) sensory iconography.

In the same way that cities are described to have spatial topographies based on their physical geography, we will assume that cities also can be described to have sensory topographies (Pan and Ryan, 2009), that is, spatial configurations of sensory cues.

One example of this is in the overall spatial design of the city, through the allocation of particular areas for food, thereby creating a denser, variegated and thus sensorily loaded experience. Traditionally, city squares have been used for open-air food markets or farmers’ markets, for example, and certain cities are famous for their networks of squares in which food is purchased and consumed. We have noted how the cities we have studies have revitalized their local markets, and how they have transformed parts of themselves into dense culinary spaces. Moreover, many places and cities have encouraged and funded extensive physical or institutional transformations of their overall spatial layout including the establishment of pedestrian plazas populated by restaurants (Lilla Torg in Malmö) and the development of new waterfront areas celebrating gastronomy (Barcelona, Sydney and Copenhagen). We have also seen a reclaiming of the city for pedestrians in Bogotá (Wright and Montezuma, 2004) as well as in Cape Town (Bethlehem, 2013), allowing for a rapid expansion of street food vendors in the reclaimed areas. All in all, we have observed various examples where cities appear to take food and gastronomy into consideration when spatially designing the city to promote the city’s attractiveness and how that also sometimes affects flows in the city.

The influence of food is also apparent in contemporary city architecture. New spectacular food halls and food malls are appearing in the big cities around the world and old heritage buildings are loaded with food as meaningful sensory content. The restored old Ferry Building marketplace in San Francisco with almost 50 small shops and restaurants is a good example of this, another is the old heritage quarters in Cartagena, Colombia, as well as Paddy’s Market Food Court in Sydney.

Food is, however, not only used as an element in maintaining and amplifying existing elements in the sensory topography, but is also utilized to create or regenerate topography. Bromley and Thomas (2002) and, analogously, Coster and Kennon (2005) argue that if you want to regenerate a town centre, set up a local market. The regenerative function of food, where food is used as a component in the rejuvenation of places, can also be seen in numerous examples of waterfront development sites around the world, from Darling Harbour in Sydney to the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, Docklands in London and the waterfront area in Rosario, Argentina. In all these cases, a dense culinary environment of restaurants and bars seems to have been a leading ingredient in the physical transformation of these areas.

Taken together this means that the spatial configuration of sensory cues in a city needs to be taken into consideration when we try to understand the way in which food, meals and gastronomy are experienced and explained.

The second dimension of the city-sensescape that is affected by sensory cues related to food is the time flow in the city, or as we interpret it, the orchestration (Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya, 2006), which deals with the overall rhythm of a city, and the choreography (Bruno, 1987), which addresses the design and character of the movement in a city.

When it comes to the orchestration of the city-sensescape through food, it is necessary to distinguish between different time dimensions. Food can be seen as such a means of setting the tempo of the city. For example, Knox (2005) mentions daily, weekly and seasonal rhythms as the basis for the creation of a sense of place and community. Daily rhythms can be exemplified by the early cup of coffee (Milan), the mid-morning grocery shopping (Paris), a stop for coffee on the way to work, a beer on the way home from work (London), an aperitif before dinner (New York) and so on. Whereas examples of weekly rhythms include street markets and farmers’ markets, seasonal rhythms can involve food festivals, for example. These rhythms are dependent on certain kinds of spaces and places, such as public, open spaces, streets, squares, pubs, sidewalk cafés and trattorias.

Food festivals frequently target both food and wine tourism. In part, they differ from other kinds of festivals because of the importance of food and the part that food plays in consumption and the economic system on a daily basis. Food festivals are not only a part of food marketing, promotion and retailing but are also related to the nature of contemporary agricultural systems, the maintenance of rural lifestyles and communities, the conservation of rural landscapes, and the consideration of food quality (Hall and Sharples, 2008).

Many of the cities we have studied are also temporally committed to food, for example, through annual events celebrating harvests (wine and beer festivals in Europe) or heritage (thanksgiving meals in the United States). It is, however, interesting to note how most of the cities we have visited are nowadays also organizing food festivals – either to market their own produce or to affect the image of the city as a cosmopolitan city (the Malmö Festival) or just as a food city (the Wine and Dine festival of Hong Kong). Historically, hosting different kinds of events has frequently been used by cities to attract attention. Today, cities increasingly compete to host major events (Andersson et al, 2008). This is said to be due to the positive flow-on effects those events are perceived to have, such as job creation and increased economic activity (Dwyer et al, 2005). Also, events such as fairs, exhibitions and sports events are seen as important components in city branding (Berg and Östberg, 2008). Since events are related to the rhythms mentioned above, events are seen as having an impact on the daily pace of people’s lives (Whyte, 1980).

One of the best examples of the way in which cities attempt to directly or indirectly affect the sensory choreography of the city is through the use of public spaces, particularly market squares and pedestrian streets in city centres. These areas are intimately linked with the establishment of hawkers and vendors in street food stalls, and to restaurants and bars. A representative example is before-mentioned Bogotá in Colombia, where car-free days in the city centre and new legislation banning the parking of cars on pavements have led to an increase in restaurants and fast-food stalls, and correspondingly, a change in the flow of pedestrians that affects the choreography of the city (Wright and Montezuma, 2004). Another example is the narrow, densely populated street food filled Hutongs in Beijing, creating a particular and very intense atmosphere.

The third dimension of the city-sensescape that is affected by sensory cues related to food is the sensory iconography of the city, that is the particular depiction of the city-sensescape in terms of its sensory content. There are at least two ways in which cities are attempting to have an impact of their sensory iconography related to food. The first is through the sensory mapping of culinary landscape, in the shape of maps of restaurants, culinary highlights and food malls. One example of this is Copenhagen, with a culinary map of the city related to restaurants representing the new Nordic Cuisine.

The second way in which the cities we have studied are indirectly using sensory iconography is through the food and restaurant rankings. Today there are a number of ranking institutions for food that aim to influence tourists and the preferences of other actors. Some of these rankings may create values for cities or parts of cities that iconize them. In the contemporary setting, cities can become famous for their unique cuisines (Horng and Tsai, 2010). People who enjoy good food and meal atmospheres create the rankings, and by rating their experiences, they signal to gourmets which cities are worth visiting. In addition to the more well-established rankings (such as the 50 best restaurants in the world (www.theworlds50best.com/)), there are a number of unofficial, independent ratings of cities worth a visit because of the quality of their food. Not all of these raters come to the same conclusions. For example, a journalist from the Food and Wine magazine announces in a list of the 20 best food cities in the world that does not include Osaka but does include Paris, Sydney, Bangkok, Rome, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, New Orleans, Lyon, Singapore, New York, Montreal, Buenos Aires Oaxaca, Istanbul, San Francisco, Bombay, San Sebastian, Brussels and Marrakech, whereas a blogger claims that Osaka is the greatest food city in the world.

The process could also occur the other way around, that is, that place icons also affect the production and consumption of food. Wai (2006), for example, has studied how iconic fragments of ‘Old Shanghai’ have been foregrounded and shown in muted colours by the Xintiandi landscape after urban regeneration.

The phenomenon of rankings and expressing one’s own preferences for a certain place and its food activities demonstrate explicitly that the branding of a city is not entirely in the hands of the stakeholders of a city. Free agents, such as international organizations, travel magazines and other media that address consumers of food activities or just tourists may have a pivotal role in the creation and maintenance of the attractiveness of a place. We also note how chefs are achieving celebrity status by bringing their cooking to audiences through television shows under names such as ‘Iron Chef’ and ‘The Naked Chef’. Some of the most well-known celebrity chefs, such as Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Bobby Flay (www.zimbio.com/Celebrity+Chefs/articles/d6Ex2fDmqkf/10+Most+Famous+Chefs+World), travel the world in search of new and different gastronomies, ingredients and new culinary destinations (Kivela and Crotts, 2006). Moreover, cities themselves engage in food-related awards systems for restaurants and chefs, such as Hong Kong with its annual ‘Best of the Best Culinary Awards’ where top chefs compete for the glory of winning the first prize, while tourists take the opportunity to enjoy the high-quality cuisine that the competition generates (Horng and Tsai, 2010). The connection between iconic restaurants and/or chefs and a city may be seen as beneficial to the city brand, but a branding activity designed by free agents might just as well be harmful for a city striving to increase its attractiveness.

SENSESCAPES, ATTRACTIVENESS AND CITY BRANDING

We started our discussion by showing that food and gastronomy are increasingly important as a way to communicate the key characteristics and the attractiveness of a city to its audiences. We have also advanced the hypothesis that the use of food and gastronomy in direct and indirect city branding efforts can be explained by the relative impact of the poly-sensory cues related to food, meals and gastronomy. One of the contributions of this article is thus a conceptual framework based on such sensory cues, which is used to describe and explain the ways in which city images are formed.

Our framework is based on the idea that cities can be seen as sensescapes organized in space, orchestrated in time and iconically mapped. We also propose that experiencing a place as a sensescape may result in an engagement with the place that could be described as feeling an atmosphere. Of course, we do not consider an atmosphere to be something out there, outside of the subject. It is an integral part of the subjective experience, and thus a performative concept.

Instead of being seen as something that just ‘adds on’ to an attractive atmosphere of a city, we have tried to show how food increasingly is used, directly or indirectly, as a means in reengineering cities spatially as well as in terms of time-space flow and iconography. Put in another way, from the city being the context in which food is experienced, our framework proposes that food and gastronomy to a certain extent can also be seen the other way round, that is, as the context which gives the city its meaning!

For practitioners involved in city branding, our conclusions above give strong support for using food, meals and gastronomy in their city branding efforts, not only because it will have a strong impact on the way the atmosphere of the city – and thus its attractiveness – is perceived, but also because it might be a powerful tool to revitalize previously dormant city areas. The statement, quoted earlier in this article that the best way to revitalize a city is to start a local market, may thus indicate the opportunity to engage local resources in a city branding effort, as well as being an important element in recreating a genuine and attractive atmosphere.

However, in the end of the chapter it might be apt to err on the sign of caution. Food and gastronomy is only one of many elements in the cultural fabric of a city. As, for example, previous studies of the European Capitals of Culture have shown us, other cultural expressions, such as art, music, theatre and not the least the popular culture of a city, might play an equally important role in the regeneration or change of a city. The framework we are proposing might suggest that one possible comparative advantage of food and gastronomy in building and branding cities might be its close relationship with the atmosphere of the city, that is the immediately experienced, ‘space-producing affect of a site as in a sixth sense’ (Thrift, 2009).

Maybe, one could say though, that what has been described above is a small sign of how ‘culture’ – partly anyway – takes back the development of the cities from the planners. In the best of worlds, this might lead to more humane conditions for coexistence in our cities. In the worst of words, it might lead to a mainstream and flat disneyfication (Bryman, 2004) of the cities, without the tensions and diversity that is a precondition for human growth and development.