ECOFORUM [Volume 6, Issue 1(10), 2017] Gabriela Virginia POPESCU National University of Political Studies and Public Administration,, Bucharest, Romania popescugabriela534@yahoo.com Abstract Brand strategies are becoming more and more common to all of us, irrespective of the field we carry our day to day activities: trade, politics, sports, art, education, fashion, everything is branded. This paper proposes an analysis of city branding process as a response to the local versus global debate, highlighting the city branding status in Romania, from the European perspective, as a first step, and further as an opportunity of accessing global community. In reaching this point, the paper provides a broader examination of city branding process, focusing on few successful city branding stories. The paper uses the experience of other Central Eastern European cities with which Romania shares the same (at a certain degree) political, social and economic background, to notice the similarities or differences between the cities of Romania and other countries’ strategies. Second data analysis will offer supplementary information about the effectiveness of city brand strategies. According to our research findings, the city brand is still in its early stages in Romania. Key words: city brand, globalization, local, Romania JEL Classification: M30, O18 I. I NTRODUCTION We are moving now to “the age of cities” (Chirico, 2014, p. 452): few facts about city present status and development perspectives should be mentioned. Five of the top ten global cities are located in Asia (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Seoul), three in United States (New York, Chicago and Los Angeles) and only two in Europe (London and Paris) (Chirico, 2014, p. 453). But five of the most powerful cities are located (each) in United States (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington) and Asia (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Seoul, Beijing, Osaka, Shenzhen) and six in Europe (London, Paris, Zurich, Brussels, Rhine-Ruhr) (Florida, 2012a), (Florida, 2012b) cited by (Anttiroiko, 2014, p. 28). According to FDI report Global Cities of the Future 2014-2015 (Global Cities of the Future 2014-2015: FDI Strategy, 2015, p. 23), only eight cities out of Top 25 FDI Strategy cities are locate in Europe, four in United States and the other are located mostly in countries with emerging economies. The idea is that the large cities of Asia and South America are recovering and becoming a threat to the European cities. The London School of Economics, in Urban Age Project, predicts that 75% of the global population will be concentrated in a few urban centers by 2050, and even today, 80% of the population of Latin America live in cities; London is responsible “for 20-25% of Great Britain GDP”, and Moscow and St. Petersburg megacities represent 30% of Russia GDP (Nordstrom & Schlingmann, 2015, pp. 25-26). “Today, the world is one market; the advance of globalization means that every country, city and region must compete with every other for its share in the world’s commercial, political, social and cultural transactions” (Anholt, 2010a, pp. 3-4). “[…] cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built” (Khanna, 2010). II. F ROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL WITH CITY BRANDING. L ITERATURE REVIEW Global and local are two terms we cannot, for the moment, dissociate or place in an antagonistic relationship. The place brand concept itself associates these terms: globalization (Andrew, 2011, p. 52)) is “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa”. He considers globalization as a “process of expansion” of “relations between forms and social local and distant events” and “local events” though similarly, may have different interpretations or manifestations, depending on their evolution conditions and exemplify through “global relations can lead to prosperity in a city while the same process can cause a downturn in another city” (Andrew, 2011, p. 52). Local is not necessarily defined as the opposite of global. The place is defined in the dictionary as “a point, a portion determined in space” and the local is “a characteristic of a particular place or region; specific to a certain place” (www.dexonline.ro). “Local development is defined as the expression of local solidarity, creating new social relations, revealing the will of the inhabitants in a region to capitalize local resources” (Dinca & Dumitrica, 2010, p. 62). The development involves “shifting from one old qualitative state to another new”, implies not only increase, but also change and determines increased quality of local life (Dinca & Dumitrica, 2010, p. 63). It is a “complex process of improving welfare, in a territory through concentrated actions of local, regional and national players” (Dinca & FROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL WITH CITY BRANDING brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Ecoforum Journal (University of Suceava, Romania)