Urban branding as a postindustrial strategy in Pittsburgh

What is it about?

Pittsburgh's boosters launched urban branding campaigns as part of their decades-long efforts to remake their declining steel town around service and finance industries and medical and educational institutions. This article examines the development of those campaigns to show that they were part of a postindustrial urban strategy.

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Why is it important?

My findings show that urban branding campaigns helped create new mental maps of the Pittsburgh region that excluded its mill towns and manufacturing workers and emphasized, instead, the relationship between the city and its affluent suburbs.