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Selling city living

Urban branding campaigns, class power and the civic good

George Mason University, USA, tgibson1{at}gmu.edu

This article examines the process through which urban leaders ‘brand’ their cities to appeal to target markets of affluent suburbanites. Drawing on a case analysis of Washington, DC’s recent effort to attract new residents, this article follows the district’s ‘city living, dc style’ campaign through three key moments in its circulation: the moments of production, text and context. In doing so, the article explores the historical motives, the political economic limits and the social consequences of such efforts to ‘reposition’ the urban ‘brand’. A concluding section discusses how this case study reveals an important, but as yet underdeveloped, point of contact between political-economic and cultural-semiotic approaches to critical media studies.

Key Words: cultural studies • gentrification • political economy

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