Designing the City Identity: Strategic and Product Design for New Experiential Ways of Living, Enabling and Interacting with the Urban Context

The increasing need for telling and promoting city identity arises from the new kinds of competition in global markets, proposing the subject of distinctiveness and relationship between places and—tangible and intangible—resources in a renewed manner. The territories, as the products, try to steer their own development and perception in such way as to be “desirable” (Buchanan, 2001), but their success is connected with various utility factors too, that is, the fact of proposing themselves as business-friendly environments and providing opportunities and distinctive qualities, and usability, that is, the possibility of being structured with networks of services and governance systems, such as to render the relationship between environment and its stakeholders easy. Territory desirability is connected to its identity perception, the implied promise of a system of values of excellence or specialization compared to other places. This is why cities' and territories' identity is increasingly becoming a core project and monitoring theme. Their identity is closely related to their competitive positioning (Anholt, 2007), necessary to attract investments and to facilitate processes of economic growth, environment quality, and social development.