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Participatory place branding through design: The case of Dunga beach in Kisumu, Kenya

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Abstract

For place branding to reach long-term commitment and legitimacy a large number of stakeholders needs to be involved. This calls for innovative ways of approaching the process itself, permitting it to be participatory and changeable. In this article, the purpose is to describe, in detail, how a place branding process can take place in practice, and illustrate how an integration of design can act as a mean to reach community participation. The example is a tourism development case in Kisumu, Kenya where the authors were actively involved in destination branding. The findings show how the empathic and intuitive process of design allows each activity to lead to the other in an evolutionary way, and how visual tools can strengthen communication between participants as well as stimulate idea generation. The implication is that place branding should be viewed as consisting of several ongoing processes with multiple stakeholders. With the introduction of evolutionary and visual elements to these processes, they become more participatory, changeable and sustainable.

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Acknowledgements

We want to give our thanks to the main funders of the project, Mistra Urban Futures, which is a centre for sustainable urban development with headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, and their Local Interaction Platform in Kisumu (KLIP). We would also like to thank all the people in Dunga who have participated. Thanks also to the two reviewers for their comments and suggestions on structure and contents of the article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, Centre for Tourism, School of Business, Economics and Law at University of Gothenburg, PO Box 610, Gothenburg, SE-405 30, Sweden

    Eva Maria Jernsand

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  1. Eva Maria Jernsand
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  2. Helena Kraff
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Correspondence to Eva Maria Jernsand.

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Jernsand, E., Kraff, H. Participatory place branding through design: The case of Dunga beach in Kisumu, Kenya. Place Brand Public Dipl 11, 226–242 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/pb.2014.34

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