Beyond “Guggenheiming” : From flagship buildings to flagship space in Sweden

• Flagship buildings are promoted as a good strategy to stimulate economic development. Pushed by a range of actors, “best practice” examples are being copied from place to place around the globe. Flagship buildings are accompanied by a discourse of place branding that stresses a need for cities to improve their attractiveness. Drawing on this discourse and ongoing discussions on deterritorialization and reterritorialization in urban and economic geography, the author argues that there is an overly deterritorialized approach to flagship buildings in the place-branding literature. Using a conceptual framework inspired by the reterritorialization debate, she introduces the concept of “flagship space,” emphasizing a dualism in place branding encompassing both deterritorialized and territorial processes that in interplay create best-practice examples. The empirical analysis examines the development of five flagship hotels in Sweden. The author concludes that the five hotels have both created and are constantly reproducing their statuses as flagship developments. However, the creation and reproduction of status is not only upheld by the operators of the hotels but is also a joint effort of actors in the local community. Through these processes and practices the understanding of the hotels is broadened from merely being flagship buildings to creators of flagship space.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

flagship buildings

hotels

place branding

reterritorialization

Sweden

Geography with Emphasis on Human Geography

geografi med kulturgeografisk inriktning

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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