Place brand-building. Urban Empathy as an evaluation method

Abstract

The image of urban areas created by an appropriate urban branding attracts population, when cities compete for inhabitants and businesses. Experience shows that not only the positive visual and spatial features attract people, but also hard to define “atmosphere”, mood, city narrative, related to activities, events and history. Author proposes a new method of urban assessment to define features that are important, but difficult to capture - the method of urban empathy. The empathetic perception of urban space is a broad-spectrum experience: it can be lived through learning the city’s history, narrative, events in a relation to physical urban space. Emotions mapped on urban plan create the emphatic image of the city.