Selling Places: The Marketing and Promotion of Towns and Cities, 1850-2000 (Studies in History, Planning and the Environment, 23)

Selling Places explores the fascinating development of the place marketing and promotion over the last 150 years, drawing on examples from Northern America, Britain and continental Europe. The processes involved and the promotional imagery employed are meticulously presented and richly illustrated.

Today, the projected image of a city may play a greater role than its reality in shaping the views of visitors, investors, and, even, residents. High pressure marketing and sales techniques are frequently used to help troubled cities in their transition to post-industrial centers of tourism, culture and reinvestment. Yet for all the slick professionalism, none of this is new.

Selling Places details the successive waves of how places have been sold and marketed as attractive locations for resorts, residential areas, and cultural and business centers over the past 150 years. Stephen V. Ward uses original research and richly illustrated examples of promotional ads to show that the processes of promoting places started in the American West, with airy promises of fertility and prosperity, and currently continues with the staging of major spectacles including the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and Sydney in 2000.

BOOKCOVER......Page 1 HALF-TITLE......Page 2 COPYRIGHT......Page 7 CONTENTS......Page 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......Page 9 PICTURE CREDITS......Page 12 DEDICATION......Page 13 1 INTRODUCTION......Page 14 2 SELLING THE FRONTIER......Page 22 3 HEALTH RESORTS AND WATERING PLACES......Page 46 4 THE NATION’S TONIC......Page 74 5 MASS TRANSIT AND HEALTHY HOMES......Page 112 6 REALM OF ROMANCE......Page 142 7 SELLING PLACES OR BUYING INDUSTRIES?......Page 187 8 AN HONEST TALE PLAINLY TOLD?......Page 209 9 MARKETING RE-INVENTED CITIES......Page 242 10 COME CELEBRATE OUR DREAM......Page 268 11 CONCLUSIONS......Page 304 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 309 INDEX......Page 332 This highly illustrated book descibes how places have been "sold" or promoted to make themselves attractive locations as holiday resorts, business centres or residential areas. Explains the history of current practice, using world-wide examples Extensively illustrated, this book describes the way places have been promoted to make themselves attractive locations as holiday resorts, residential areas or business centres