City brand image formation by urban heritage initiatives

Abstract

In today’s world, as cities compete in the mar-ketplace, strategies for creating a city brand image are often shaped solely to meet the aspirations of profit, business development, and awareness. The preservation of culture, historical, and urban heritage remains important only in urban development strategies and not in actual development actions. The truth is, the image of a city is shaped by different historical, political, demographic, sociologi-cal, and economic factors which make up what we perceive as the brand image of a city. However, one of the most noticeable elements of the brand image of a city is the urban heritage based on national traditions. The aim of this article is to evaluate the effects of urban heritage initiatives in the creation of the brand image of the city of Vilnius. Research methods used in this article are qualitative content analysis and expert semi-structured interviews. Main conclusions stimulate debate, hesitation and criticism from communities and city researchers for using new heritage object and culture initiatives in order to create the brand image of Vilnius. The influence of urban heritage is inevitable when modelling the brand image of Vilnius, but there are no effective strategies to deal with the new urban heritage initiatives by creating the brand image of Vilnius yet.