Copenhagen blogging as vernacular city-branding of liveable urbanism

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Abstract

Over the past decade liveable urbanism has along with green urbanism come to stand at the core of the Copenhagen’s regional identity promoted to foreign tourists, highly skilled migrants and capital through the city’s branding practices. At the same time, the official municipal actors are increasingly not alone in the selling of the city as a paragon of liveable urbanism. Unlike much of the scholarship on city branding that focuses on city-led strategies and politics of branding, this paper examines two of the most successful migrant bloggers of Copenhagen as engaging in what I call vernacular city branding. Drawing on the sociological theory of translation as a productive practice that constructs new meanings through selective interpretations, I conceptualize these bloggers as popular “translators” of the city to newcomers and outsiders alike. Relying on the analysis of their blogs and Instagram posts, and on interviews, the paper considers the extent to which their personal translations dispersed through the digital world draw on but also diverge from the official promotional representations of the city. I argue that the success of their vernacular city branding is dependent on its distanced and ambivalent complementarity with the official branding.

Original languageEnglish
Publication date2024
Publication statusPublished - 2024
EventThe 10th Nordic Geographers Meeting: Transitioning Geographies - Biocenter, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 24 Jun 202427 Jun 2024
https://ngm2024.com/

Conference

ConferenceThe 10th Nordic Geographers Meeting
LocationBiocenter, University of Copenhagen
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityCopenhagen
Period24/06/202427/06/2024
Internet address

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