Locating the local : culture, place and the citizen

Cultural planning is also implicitly and explicitly about place. This is a concern that takes many forms, however. For instance, as well as seeking to create places that are meaningful to local people, cultural planning is also concerned with marketing place and positioning place-identity as part of broader city branding and reimaging strategies. Not uncommonly, however, it is the places of the inner city that are the focus of such initiatives which frequently involve gentrification and building specialist cultural and tourist precincts. Other parts of the city, in particular the suburbs where most people live, are the frequent silences of these place-making and branding strategies, while the situation (and applicability) of cultural planning to places within towns and regions beyond the metropolis is vexed and uneven. The aim of this chapter is briefly to trace the contours of these influential themes and to reflect on their consequences for the local.